DWD's Reviews

Published by Tantor Audio in February of 2017. Read by David Colacci. Duration: 6 hours, 23 minutes. Unabridged. Broken features Daniel Briggs, a former sniper and a war veteran who is struggling to incorporate himself back into society. He suffers from PTSD in the form of anger control issues. Until recently, he copes by drinking, although in this book he has put the bottle aside. He also copes by drifting from job to job and place to place, avoiding deep connections. While in Seattle, working at a fish market, Briggs encounters an elderly woman wandering the streets with an 8x10 photo of her son, a war veteran who disappeared when he returned. Briggs decides to look into the situation and soon discovers that there are a lot of missing veterans and this is part of something much larger then he had ever imagined. The Daniel Briggs character is reminiscent of Lee Child's Reacher character and fans of Reacher might want to check this series out. I liked the Briggs character but...

Published in April of 2017 by Simon and Schuster Read by the author, David McCullough Duration: 4 hours, 13 minutes Unabridged The American Spirit is a collection of speeches delivered by the two time Pulitzer Prize winning author. The topics vary in length and topic but are all bound by two common themes: American history and the importance of knowing that history. I listened to this collection as an audiobook over a period of about a week and found it to be quite enjoyable as I walked the dog every evening. The speeches are usually not too long and not too short, informative, interesting. McCullough has re-recorded these speeches for this audiobook and his voice does show a little age, but it is still a wonderful voice to listen to and his delivery, combined with his words help make this an enjoyable audiobook.  I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The American Spirit .

Published in June of 2017 by Blackstone Audio Read by Liisa Ivary Duration: 3 hours, 28 minutes Unabridged White Working Class grew from an article that the author wrote after the 2016 Presidential Election. She wrote this article to explain the results to her friends in what she calls the "professional elite". The article created a lot of buzz so she expanded it into a small, accessible book that I found to be very accurate. Williams distinguishes the working class from the poor and the professional elite. In layman's terms, the working class is the middle class. It consists of factory workers, teachers, police officers, mechanics and restaurant managers. People with training and skills that literally go to work every day. The professional elite are doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, professors at elite universities and the political class. Williams details why the working class looks at the world differently than the professional elite and why the policies an...

Published by Random House Audio Originally published in book form in 1997. Read by Dick Hill Duration: 17 hours, 47 minutes Unabridged I've been listening to the Jack Reacher series for a couple of years now, and I have been slowly working my way through the series in a random order. That's okay, though, because Lee Child doesn't write this series in any sort of chronological order. While Killing Floor is book #1 in terms of when it was written, it comes as #8 in the current lists of Jack Reacher books and stories according to Jack Reacher's chronological perspective. For me, this book was particularly interesting because it filled me in on a frequently-mentioned event in Jack Reacher's life - the death of his brother Joe. Jack Reacher decides to get off of a bus in Margrave, Georgia on a whim and ends up under arrest for a brutal murder in this town's small warehouse district out by the highway where Reacher got off the bus.  Soon enough, Reacher prov...

Published in 2017 by Listening Library Read by Abigail Revasch and Tara Sands Duration: 7 hours, 53 minutes Unabridged I am new to Squirrel Girl, sort of. Years ago, I had a middle school student on the autistic spectrum in my class with a comprehensive Marvel heroes book. He loved to look at that book rather than do his class work so I would "borrow" his book and find an interesting character and then talk to him about that character later on. Squirrel Girl caught my eye because, on the surface, she is ridiculous. All cute, fluffy and imbued with all of the powers of a squirrel. Doesn't seem like much when compared to the Incredible Hulk, does it? So, I told him my favorite all-time superhero was Squirrel Girl. And, to be honest, I liked the idea of a superhero that is not enhanced with over-the-top powers so she became my default answer to the question, "Who's your favorite superhero?" (asked by students who want to get off topic). In reality, The...

Published by HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books in 2007 Read by Garrison Keillor Duration: 8 hours, 22 minutes Unabridged Evelyn Peterson is the town iconoclast in many ways. She is an active member of many town institutions, but she also is one of the few that questions any of the cherished beliefs of the town of Lake Wobegon. But, she is also quite elderly and she has passed away in bed. Her daughter Barbara, a cafeteria lunch lady and often the opposite of her mother, discovered her body and a note that details how she wants her body to be disposed of. This note kicks off the a great deal of the rest of the story. Throw in a woman who made it big in California returning to Lake Wobegon for her wedding, a visiting delegation of Lutheran ministers from Denmark, the discovery of a great number of family secrets that were held by Evelyn, a really stinky stray dog, a glider, a bowling ball urn and an Elvis impersonator and you have the recipe for a day that Lake Wobegon wi...

Published in 2008 by Ace In Marsbound , Earth is just starting to colonize Mars and the Dula family was picked to go as part of a weighted lottery system. The story is told through the eyes of Carmen Dula, a 19-year old college freshman.  The first part of the story is a technology-based sci-fi adventure. Lots of explanation of the technology to get to Mars, but at a layman's level and with an eye for the kinds of things that teenagers are concerned about - entertainment, potential romance, how annoying the slightly younger passengers are, and so on. Carmen accidentally stumbles into one of the most remarkable events in human history - literally. A near-fatal fall while on an unapproved excursion away from the colony buildings initiates first contact with an alien species (this is not a spoiler, it is in the inside cover of the hardback). At this point, the book changes focus into a clumsy first contact book. The motivations of some of the characters get more unclear and errati...

Published in 2014 by Ace Work Done for Hire features Jack Daley, a former sniper turned down and out author in this near future sci-fi tale. But, he gets an odd offer to write the book adaptation of a movie before the movie script has even been written. Basically, the offer is to write the book and they'll adapt it a little or a lot to make the movie. And, he doesn't have to turn it in now, he can turn it in as first draft chapters as he goes along. One of the more interesting features of the first part of the book is that it goes back and forth between Jack's story and the story he is writing - mostly in alternating chapters. He also gets a second offer - from an unknown person that obviously knows his schedule and can track his movements. He has to kill someone with a sniper rifle (Daley was a sniper in a war, but not the Iraq War or the Afghanistan War) or his girlfriend will die.  So, he goes on the run with his girlfriend. He uses a laptop to write his book and ...

Published by Books in Motion Read by Rusty Nelson Duration: 6 hours, 55 minutes Unabridged Sixty-two year old Undersheriff Bill Gastner is recovering from heart surgery in Bitter Recoil . He has been told to get out and exercise more and to get away from work. You see, Gastner has a lot of bad habits when he works. He doesn't sleep, he gets involved in things that get him hurt and he eats large, spicy burritos. So, Bill decides to go on a camping trip and visit a former colleague, Estelle Reyes-Guzman, who has taken a job in the sheriff department of a different county in New Mexico - up in the mountains. But, while he is trying to sleep in a campground he hears sirens and sees lights so he decides to go check it out. Soon enough, Bill is working with Reyes-Guzman and investigating a murder, looking into a smooth-talking hippie-type who quotes the Bible and brandishes a gun and eventually ends up questioning a priest. Heck of a vacation, huh? This was an interesting change ...

Published by Tantor Audio in 2004 Read by Shelly Frasier Duration: 8 hours, 5 minutes Unabridged One fact about life on this planet - we are all going to die. Mary Roach takes a look at what happens once we're dead in Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers and asks what happens next? She's not exploring the afterlife - she is looking, literally, at what happens to our bodies when we "shuffle off this mortal coil." Roach explores what happens when you donate your body to science - everything from a medical school to a once-living crash test dummy. Or, you can donate your body to a mortuary school so prospective morticians can practice their future craft. Maybe you don't want to donate your entire body. What happens if you just donate some of your organs? What if you are not donating anything. What happens when you have a traditional funeral? How about if you are cremated? There are new ways to dispose of a body as well, including one that pretty much co...

Published by Random House Audio in 2014 Read by Dick Hill Duration: 7 hours, 9 minutes Unabridged The collection in Three Jack Reacher Novellas are all prequels to the current Reacher timeline. Two are set in Reacher's childhood and one is set during his service as an officer in the Military Police. 1) Deep Down is set during the 1980s. Reacher is asked to investigate a potential leak of military secrets to the Soviet Union via fax machine from the U.S. Capitol building. The potential leakers are a set of officers working in a committee to flash out the characteristics needed in a new sniper rifle should the Congress decide to fund the creation of a new sniper rifle and buy it. Reacher is added to the committee as part of an undercover operation to figure out who the bad guy is. This is the strongest story in the collection. 5 stars. Lee Child 2) In  Second Son , Lee Child takes us all the way back to 1974. Jack Reacher is 13 years old and his father has just been tran...

Published in 2013 by Penguin Audio Read by Chris Sorensen Duration: 12 hours, 58 minutes Unabridged Nathaniel Philbrick's Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution is misnamed. While the battle is in the book, it is only a part of the story. In reality, this book is a history of Boston from the 1750s and 1760s right up to the Declaration of Independence. In a lot of ways this book is much more of a biography of Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the leaders of the Sons of Liberty movement, along with Samuel Adams, John Adams and John Hancock. Warren is often overlooked nowadays because he died at Bunker Hill (which was really mostly fought on Breed's Hill). The excessive focus on Warren was, in my mind, one of the great weaknesses of the book. Philbrick spent too much time worrying over Warren's alleged personal failures and not enough time getting on with the story. It just bogged things down. Philbrick does not gloss over the warts of our Founding Fathers, noting that som...

Originally published in 1964. Why We Can't Wait is Martin Luther King's (1929-1968) well-written defense of the Civil Rights Movement. As the title suggests, it is the argument detailing why African-Americans could no longer wait for the rights that they were guaranteed by the Constitution to be eventually given to them and the best way to do that was the application of nonviolent direct action.  The strongest part of the argument is the middle third - the entire text of his famed Letter from Birmingham Jail .  I think Letter from Birmingham Jail is one of the most profound documents in American history. Its arguments pull from multiple points and authors in history, the very documents and history that white Americans prided themselves as the roots of their own country while King sat in a jail - and shows that those roots were being ignored in defense of the indefensible when it came to African-Americans. It is truly a brilliant piece of writing because it is shows Americ...

Published in 2015 by Scholastic  Paul Beck's SOLDIER! looks at 15 examples of soldiers throughout history, starting with Imperial Roman infantry and ending with a U.S. Navy Seal. It is composed of 48 8.5 x 11 inch pages and includes a full-color tear-out poster of every soldier.  Most descriptions are 4 pages, including a map where the soldiers would have operated. It also includes a full page drawing of the soldier with notes about the weight and length of their weapon(s). The third and fourth pages include more information about optional weapons, training or tools.  The only complaint I have about the book is that it could have included a little more diversity. 12 of the 15 soldiers came from Europe or America. For example, the Aztec warriors that confronted Cortes had unique weapons and armor and would have been a great addition.  That being said, the book was well-done. The pictures were interesting as were the factoids. This would be a good book fo...

Published by Random House Audio in 2014 Read by Dick Hill Duration: 12 hours, 55 minutes Unabridged In Personal Jack Reacher gets brought back into military duty, but not officially this time. An extremely talented sniper has taken a shot at the President of France. The shot was taken from an extreme distance and was only stopped by a revolutionary bullet proof glass screen. The various intelligence agencies are sure that this was just a dry run for the G8 economic conference that is coming up soon in England in which several world leaders will be present. There are four snipers capable of such a shot and 16 years ago Reacher put one of them in jail for murder when he was in the military police. A former boss of Reacher thinks that he has some sort of insight and he partners up with a young CIA / State Department operative and they are off to France. She is the brains, and he is the brawn, at least that's the way it is supposed to be. But, once they start digging, Reacher st...

Published in 2014 by Random House Audio Read by Catherine Taber Duration: 14 hours, 46 minutes Unabridged In Gray Mountain , John Grisham explores Appalachian coal country in this novel through the eyes of a young New York lawyer named Samantha Kofer. Kofer has just lost her job in real estate development law at literally the world's largest law firm in the wake of the financial collapse of 2008. Her firm gives her the chance to work for a non-profit for a year without losing her insurance or her seniority and she ends up in the legal aid office in Brady - a tiny town in southwest Virginia in the heart of coal country. As Kofer starts to work in the office she discovers the world of day-to-day law and how America's poor get bounced around in a legal system with all sorts of hidden rules. Turns out that she has a knack for it. She picks up a case with a coal miner suing for disability due to black lung and she discovers that Big Coal rules all in this region - and there...

Published in 2017 by Blackstone Audio Read by Keith Szarabajka Duration: 10 hours, 34 minutes Unabridged The Gus Murphy series is quickly becoming a favorite. Gus is a retired Long Island police officer who provides security and drives the shuttle van back for a tired hotel that pretends to be luxury but really isn't fooling anyone. Gus retired because his college-aged son died of a heart failure playing a pick up basketball game and it simply destroyed his marriage and his interest in being a police officer.  In the first book in this series, Gus was a complete mess. Since then, he has gotten his life back together again, in a manner of speaking. He has friends again, especially his friend Slava, a fellow employee from Eastern Europe with a hidden background as a soldier of secret police. Gus also has a love life and he's even bought a car. And, he's got a new case - looking into the murder of a millionaire's estranged granddaughter. But, when his friend Slava...

Published in 2000 by Random House Audio Read by the author, Tom Bodett. Duration: 5 hours, 30 minutes Unabridged Thirteen year old September Crane and her 12 year old brother Ivan live on Bag Bay in Alaska, practically in the middle of nowhere - and they love it, mostly. They enjoy the interaction with nature, they know the bay and how to travel across it. They know how to get clams, how to put vegetables away for the winter and just about how to do everything else for themselves.  They have to know because their father is a fisherman is often gone for a few weeks at a time. Their mother died on the bay, killed by a rare, powerful storm front called a williwaw, when they were much younger. Their father trusts them to follow the rules and take care of themselves so long as they check in with him on the radio on a regular basis. But, when Ivan decides to splice into the charger for the radio to charge up his handheld video he blows up the whole rig and that's just the beginn...

Published in 2006 by Penguin Audio Read by Edward Herrmann Duration: 5 hours, 57 minutes Abridged Everybody knows the story of the Mayflower and the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving. Or, they think they do, anyway. Nathaniel Philbrick's re-telling of this oft-misunderstood story in Mayflower A Story of Courage, Community, and War is a very approachable for the average reader. He begins with an explanation of the religious differences between the Puritans and the Church of England and how the politics of the day exacerbated the situation.  Philbrick's re-telling of how the Pilgrims moved from England to Holland and eventually to the New World was very well done, as was the story of the first few seasons of Plymouth Plantation (Plymouth colony), starting in 1620. In fact, the book flowed very well throughout, even though it was abridged. Oftentimes, abridged books are clunky, but this one was not. The story finishes with King Philip's War (1675-1676). This wa...

Published in 2015 by Thomas Nelson. I am a giant fan of Tim Hawkins and have been ever since he used to run an infomercial on late night TV for his 2007 DVD Full Range of Motion .  I have tickets to go see him in concert at the end of July with my family.  But, this book was mostly a re-hash of his routines - routines that I dearly love but not nearly as funny when I am reading them as they are when he delivers them. As I was reading, I kept thinking that these would be a whole lot more funny if he was saying them. Hawkins added extra material to support the stuff from his routines but the whole package ends up being just 3 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Diary of a Jackwagon by Tim Hawkins.