DWD's Reviews

Published by Scholastic Press in April of 2015 Spencer Quinn is best known for his dog and owner Chet and Bernie detective series. Now, he takes this winning formula in a new direction. Rather than have a police dog (almost) and an army veteran turned detective solve murders, Quinn has re-tooled things for a different series. But, he keeps the most important part the same - the story is told from the point of view of the dog! In Woof , the first book in the Bowser and Birdie series, Birdie Gaux, a little girl living with her grandmother alongside a swamp in St. Roch, Louisiana. Her grandmother runs what some might call a bait shop and conducts swamp tours in her small boat. Birdie's mother works on an oil rig and talks with Birdie on Skype. Birdie gets a shelter dog for her birthday and she chooses Bowser. Bowser has had a pretty rough go of it and he hates the shelter. But, boy, does he love Birdie. They make quite the pair as they try to figure out who stole the stuffed Bla...

I have rarely been so glad to have been done with an audiobook as I was with this one. Published in 2013 by Post Hypnotic Press Narrated by Michael Puttonen Duration: 21 hours, 56 minutes. Unabridged. William Egan Colby was present at the beginnings of the CIA and served as an inserted commando with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in both France and Norway during World War II, pioneering the kind of action he advocated for during his years in the CIA. The beginning of Shadow Warrior is excellent as it details Colby's life and his World War II exploits. But, as it transitions from World War II to the early years of the Cold War to the Vietnam War the book becomes bogged down, especially in the endless detail about the politics of South Vietnam. Clearly, the Vietnam War was a pivot point for America and for Colby so it should be stressed. However, hours and hours of details about the governing elite of the doomed country were simply tedious. Colby moves back to Amer...

A Remarkable Tale To be published in the United States on July 21, 2015.  I received an "Advance Reading Copy"  Eunsun Kim's tale of her escape from North Korea, along with her mother and her older sister is remarkably easy to read, remarkable engrossing and just a remarkable tale in general. When Eunsun Kim was 11 years old her mother determined that they could no longer live in North Korea. Eunsun's grandparents were dead, her father was dead, almost everything in the house was sold for money to buy food but there was almost no food to be had because North Korea was in the middle of its Great Famine (1994-1998). Depending on whose statistics you use, the estimates range anywhere from 250,000 to 3,500,000 people starved to death or died from starvation-related causes. Of course, it is hard to say for sure because North Korea is such a closed off society. Eunsun Kim and her family lived in the northernmost part of North Korea and they decided to cross ...

Published in 2010 by Riverhead Books The Eastern Stars is more a history of the Dominican Republic than a baseball book, but as author Mark Kurlansky clearly demonstrates, for the last 40 years or so the history of the Dominican Republic has clearly been molded and in some ways defined by its love of baseball. It is also a clear sign of the unhealthy state of economic affairs in a country when so many young people see no hope in moving up in the world except for playing professional baseball in America. Kurlansky takes his readers through a meandering history of the Dominican Republic, moving backwards and forwards through time detailing a number of interesting stories about this Caribbean country but always coming back to the present to touch base and remind the readers that this is a baseball book, too.  The Dominican Republic has had a long love affair with baseball thanks to American economic and military excursions into the country. It also has been so poorl...

Published in 2012 by HighBridge Audio Multicast performance Duration: 2 hours, 16 minutes This collection was inspired by listeners who wrote NPR and commented on why these stories from their vast treasure trove of stories have stuck with them for so long. Some are funny, some are sad and some are thought-provoking. They are also a mixed bag. Some are great, some are so-so and some had me wondering why they were included at all. Pretty typical of the collection is a skit called "Complexities of Modern Love in the Digital Age". It features the two voice actors that you most typically hear when you call a big corporation for customer service and they lead you through the phone tree. In this case, they have the two voices talk to one another and date. The idea is sort of cute but the actual skit was not as funny as the idea of the skit. A Kathy Griffin interview. Eh.  The Cookie Monster interview was fun. I loved the story about a stray cat that wandered into a pri...

P ublished in 2012 by  Cincinnatus Press   Insurgent is a worthy successor to the original book in this series, Republic: A Novel of America's Future.   Book One details how a fictional confrontation between the state of West Virginia and the federal government over the proper role of the Department of Homeland Security eventually leads to a very short war in which West Virginia is quickly defeated.  Book Two deals with post-war relations between the occupying federal government, its troops and the people of West Virginia and the closely monitored civilian government of West Virginia. The flag of West Virginia The parallels between this fictional war and the Iraq War and the multi-year struggle to create a stable environment in Iraq once Sadaam Hussein was removed from power are striking and, I am sure, quite intentional. And, since this is a book about Americans in a situation similar to that experienced by the people of Iraq, the...

Published in 2010 by G.P. Putnam's Sons Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett is in the last week of his exile to a lonely post - Baggs, Wyoming in Nowhere to Run . Most men would take this last week to fill out the last bits of paper work, say goodbye to new acquaintances and maybe just take it easy. Not Joe Pickett. Joe loves the mountains of Wyoming and he looks at this as one last chance to take a pass through some wild and rugged territory that he may never get to see again. So, he heads off to check into a complaint about butchered elk (a hunter wounded an elk and before he could catch up to it to finish it off someone had already finished it, butchered it and carted off the best pieces) and several comments from long-time locals that the area just felt like something was wrong. So, Joe heads off with a couple of horses, his nearly useless pistol (Joe is a great guy but a terrible shot with a pistol),his trusty shotgun, and all sorts of camping gear to investigate. He also has...

Published in March of 2010 by HighBridge Audio Multicast Performance Duration: 2 hours NPR Classic Driveway Moments is a collection comprised of 13 stories (and one intro track) culled from 31 years of NPR radio stories (1979-2010). Most of these stories have depth but not all are equal.  I was profoundly moved by a story called "My So-Called Lungs" featuring a young woman starting college while struggling with cystic fibrosis. It was engrossing on multiple levels and my high school-aged daughter and I were captivated by the woman's honesty, grace and humor in the face of inevitable death.  On the other hand, the story "Death of a Child: Losing Adam", featuring a child who was dying from a terminal illness just felt intrusive and maudlin.  The interview with George Foreman was interesting and quite enjoyable, although NPR being NPR, they found a way to bring a downer note to it by tying the George Foreman grill into it and interviewing homeless people ...

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2009. Duration: 13 hours, 30 minutes Read by Gerard Doyle Jack, the apprentice Bard from late 8th century Saxon England and his difficult friend Thorgil, the Viking girl, continue their adventures in The Islands of the Blessed, the conclusion to their trilogy (although there is an opening for the series to continue...).  As with the other books in this series, Jack and Thorgil come into contact with a host of fairy tale creatures such as Mermen and Mermaids, Hogboons, Half-trolls and even a Viking god as Nancy Farmer demonstrates the depth of her research into European mythology. Jack and Thorgil join the bard on a quest to correct a horrible wrong done by Father Severus on a Mermaid  years ago (the Merpeople are called Fin Folk in this book) that has caused her to become a fearsome ghostly creature that kills and spreads disease and destruction.  A Viking Longship in the Bayeux Tapestry. Photo by Urban. In this book, ...

Published by Ryan Pyle Productions in 2014 Photographer Ryan Pyle has traveled extensively throughout China and India, Luckily, he brings his camera along and takes plenty of pictures.  His book  Chinese Turkestan focuses on the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the most trackless part of the old Silk Road that has connected Europe and China off and  on for well more than 2,000 years. The Uyghur are Muslim and their large but sparsely populated homeland lie at the crossroads of Islam and secular Communist China. Their territory touches Tibet, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. What Pyle calls Chinese Turkestan is often at odds with the rest of China. The Uyghur are Muslim while China actively promotes secularism. China seems bent on modernizing as quickly as possible but the Uyghur sometimes seemed locked in the past. As Pyle notes in his introduction, "There were many occasions when I stood in a crowded marketplace, enveloped in...

Published by HighBridge Audio in 2011. Multicast Performance Duration: 2 hours, 7 minutes Photo by Pharaoh Hound NPR's Driveway Moments collection are called "Driveway Moments" because the idea is supposed that the stories are so good that the listener sits in the driveway and listens to the end of the story when he/she gets home rather than just turning off the car and going on into the house. In this collection, the emphasis is on dogs and this collection covers all sort of dogs. From homeless chihuahuas in Los Angeles  to massive sheep dogs in Turkey. There are celebrity dogs, blind dogs, war hero dogs and dogs that go to church. We also hear from two different dog trainers, learn about DNA testing for dogs and learn about a mother dog that adopted a nursing tiger Cub.  The collection is up-and-down but the strong stories are good enough for me to rate this collection 4 stars out of 5. Reviewed on March 7, 2015

Should be called "Funny People in Rather Boring Interviews"   Published by HighBridge Audio in 2010 Multicast Performance Duration: 2 hours, 12 minutes This collection of performances from NPR's vast radio library is the second volume of "Funniest Driveway Moments." They are called Driveway Moments because the idea is supposed that the stories are so good that the listener sits in the driveway and listens to the end of the story when he/she gets home rather than just turning off the car and going on into the house. But, most of this 2 CD set should be called "Funny People in Rather Boring Interviews."  The collection starts out with a run-of-the-mill interview with Joan Rivers (Sorry NPR but discussing her husband's suicide is just not funny) and the most boring interview with Harry Shearer that I have ever heard. There was an interview with Harold Ramis about how to write comedy that was vaguely humorous and I was really beginning to w...

Published by Berkley Windhover in 1974 Bruce Catton was the most famous Civil War historian of his era and mastered the art of writing narrative history for the masses. I freely admit that I am an unabashed fan of Catton. I am quite sure that he kick-started my interest in the Civil War that has caused me to fill my shelves with over 100 Civil War books. Catton tells the story of Gettysburg in slightly more than 100 pages His approachable style is in full display here. For example, his description of Confederate General A.P. Hill: "...a heads-down slugger always willing to take a blow in order to land one." (p. 20)   No one is better at telling a Civil War story than Catton and Gettysburg is the single biggest story of the war. He knows how to keep the story moving but to add just enough detail to make it feel like a special re-telling. The book is full of great maps, illustrations and photographs and is well worth the time of a student of the Civil War or someone who is ...

Published in 2009 by HighBridge Audio Multicast Performance Duration: about 1 hour. National Public Radio has combed through its broadcast archives and found 13 different stories about the great American institution - the road trip. But, these aren't just any stories. These are stories that feature another great American institution - the roadside attraction.  The stories cover a variety of quirky attractions including the Elvis Is Alive Museum, The Velveteria (featuring black velvet paintings of Elvis and lots more!), the world's 2nd biggest ball of twine, a series of backyard folk art exhibits in Michigan and even a couple of more famous attractions like Florida's Cypress Gardens and Seattle's Space Needle. A slightly off topic, but very interesting, story about the famed Burma Shave signs is also included. The stories wind up with the story of an epic musical piece written in the classical style about the trials and tribulations of the family car-based vac...

Published in 2005 by W.W. Norton and Company This wonderful set of nine essays is just about as complete of a discussion of the South, the Civil War, Reconstruction, family, home, historical research and some practical applications of the lessons of the Civil War for us today as I have read . It seems to me that most of these essays have been published somewhere else first. That being said, Ayers has arranged the essays in What Caused the Civil War in a rough chronological order based not on the historical topic of the essay but on Ayers's own life. He starts with his own childhood in Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina and his own growing understand of what it means to be a Southerner. As the essays go along, Ayers goes to college, travels the world a bit and eventually returns to the South to do research and eventually teach at the University of Virginia.  As Ayers moves through his education and his career he develops a perspective on the Civil War and that pers...

Published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Press Victor Davis Hanson, best known for his works on Ancient Greece, looks at five different generals from five different time periods and discusses how these generals became what he calls "Savior Generals". This book is very similar in structure to his 2003 book Ripples of Battle . Hanson picked five generals to discuss in The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost - From Ancient Greece to Iraq .  All are from the West and he notes that this is not an all-inclusive list. They are not even particularly spread out well over history. One is from Ancient Greece, one from the early Byzantine Empire and three of them are American generals. In my opinion, not all of them fit the mold perfectly. In fact, I think only two of them do. To be a Savior General you have to have been on the outs with the establishment and then, when everything has fallen apart and the situation is about as dire as possible, the establish...

THE BEST OF 2014 This is a list of the best of the best of the 72 books and short stories that I read or listened to in 2014. They did not have to be released in 2014. I broke the books into several categories. The reviews are linked.  * indicates the best book in that category. Fiction books: The Black Box (Harry Bosch #18)   by Michael Connelly Steelheart (The Reckoners Book #1)   by Brandon Sanderson Republic: A Novel of America's Future by Charles Sheehan-Miles Short Story: The Big Trip Up Yonder by Kurt Vonnegut Noose by Ernie Lindsey Mildred by Sean Ryan O'Reilly Hard Place by Ernie Lindsey Non-Fiction books: * R ipples of Battle: How  Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think   by Victor Davis Hanson Game Plan:  How to Protect Yourself from the Coming Cyber-economic Attack   by Kevin D. Freeman An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America by Nick Bunker Crazy is Normal: A Classr...