DWD's Reviews

Absolutely Fantastic Original Radio Broadcast by NPR Duration: 3 hours Published 2011 by HighBridge Audio NPR's American Chronicles: World War II is a 3 hour collection of 27 stories broadcast over the radio network from 1982 to 2010 around the topic of World War II. This collection is not designed to introduce the reader to the war or to its causes - it assumes the listener has a basic grasp of the facts. But, what it does do is delve deeply into certain topics that are associated with the war, such as the life of Londoners during the Blitz, the story of a young Japanese man who was in an internment camp, the Doolittle Raid, Bill Millin - the "Mad Piper" who played the bagpipe for his Scottish regiment as they landed at Normandy (because tradition demanded it), women on the home front, artists who may have used their skills to help the Americans to trick the Germans, and an interview with one of the pilots of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. ...

Ambitious idea but it tends to drag. Read by Tom Weiner. Duration: 20 hours, 16 minutes. Published by Blackstone Audio, Inc. Unabridged. Multiple award winner and science fiction legend Poul Anderson’s The Boat of a Million Years did something that science fiction all-too-rarely does when it was published in 1989 – it got the attention of the mainstream literature critics. The New York Times named it a “ New York Times Notable Book.” Besides mainstream recognition, it was also nominated for multiple science fiction awards as well. The Boat of Million Years follows a group of immortal people through their lives. These are regular people in every respect except that they never age. They were not all born at the same time – some were born earlier (as early as 5,000 years ago), some later but there seems to be no pattern that explains their immortality. Their ancestors are not necessarily long-lived, their descendents do not inherit their immortality. They recover quickly...

Power plays in Afghanistan and in D.C. Published in 2011. When I first picked up the book Tribe , I assumed that the title referred to the complicated loyalties of local Afghan politics that create the hard-to-decipher undercurrents that permeate Afghan politics. After all, the cover photo features the silhouette of what looks to be a mujaheddin soldier brandishing an assault rifle. My assumption was wrong on multiple levels. If I were more adept with my weapons identification skills, I would have known right away that the soldier was brandishing an American M16, not the omnipresent AK47 favored in Afghanistan - which is a clue to the direction of the book. While wild and hairy adventures in Afghanistan and Yemen exist in the book, this is not really a book about American adventurism in the Muslim world. Instead, the tribe referred to is the brotherhood of intelligence agents - Russian, Afghan, American who do the secret work of their governments but really have more in common with...

A story of a man and his dog and so much more Read by the author, Tom Ryan Duration: 9 and 1/2 hours. Published: 2011 by Harper Audio Unabridged At first glance, Following Atticus is a simple book: A man gets a dog and the dog changes his life. This is true, but this book is so much more than that. Tom Ryan has written a deep, thoughtful book about a man and his dog, but also about a man and his work, fathers and sons, the relationship between man and nature and men and women. In short, this book about a little dog and a lot of hikes in the woods is also a book about life itself. Tom Ryan is the editor of the upstart newspaper the Undertoad in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He has a full life with plenty of friends, a fulfilling job and all of the challenges of a small business. An exceptional elderly dog comes into his life and he realizes he has been missing some things, especially companionship and love. When that dog passes away, Ryan quickly buys another and he and h...

Three solid adventure stories Multicast Performance with music and sound effects Duration: 2 hours, 2 minutes. Published by Galaxy Press Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead is part of a large series of books and stories that are being re-published by Galaxy Press as part of their Golden Age Stories series. In reality, they are a collection of L. Ron Hubbard's early works that were published in magazines and as pulp fiction books. Hubbard was a prolific writer and he wrote a lot of action stories that translate quite well into the multicast performance audiobook format. This edition features 3 short stories. The first is Tomb of the Ten Thousand Dead , the story of a team of freelance archaeologists that are searching for a lost treasure of Alexander the Great in what is now southern Pakistan. When a down on his luck pilot and a local guide find the map, well, who knows what they will find? The second story, Price of a Hat , is the weakest. It is set in Siberia at ...

A glimpse behind the veil in Taliban-held Afghanistan Read by Sarah Zimmerman Duration: 6 hours, 16 minutes Publisher: Harper Audio, 2011 Unabridged. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon had an interest in how women survive in male-dominated war zones. In the modern world, the war zone is, all too often, not a distant battlefield, but instead includes cities, small towns and plenty of women and children. She was interested in the types of businesses women might open in order to feed their families and she was given the name of Kamila Sidiqi, a college-educated woman who lived through the Taliban invasion of Kabul. Kamila Sidiqi (right) Kamila Sidiqi considered fleeing to Pakistan or Iran but decided that she would stay in Kabul with most of her family. Women were mostly confined to their homes, unless accompanied by a male "minder" to do the shopping. They were certainly not supposed to attend school, have a job or own a business. Kamila Sidiqi does all of these things during the...

An Eye-Opening Book - A Must for Parents and Teachers Published in 2011 by Mariner Books. This is revised and updated from the 2002 edition. Rachel Simmons ' Odd Girl Out helped open up a mostly hidden world for me, a dad and 22 year teacher. Sure, I have lots of experience dealing with kids, but I was missing some of this subtle meanness because I am a guy and the minds of  most guys just don't work this way. Since Simmons completed her original work she has become a teacher and she can now add the perspective of an outsider to the tone of her original book which was based on a series of interviews with girls from around the country in a variety of schools.  The basic concept of the book is that girls bully one another in a way that goes under the radar in schools and at home. Unlike the overt taunting and physical violence that often happens in male bullying, girl bullying is more sly and includes such actions as shunning, sharing secrets, building alliances of frien...

A different kind of book Read by Linda Emond Duration: 10 hours, 45 minutes Published by Harper Audio. Unabridged. Laura Lippman's The Most Dangerous Thing is a superbly deep character study that looks into the lives of 5 suburban children in the 1970s and follows them into the present. These kids are the best of friends for a couple of summers. They consist of three brothers, a beautiful tomboy and a chubby girl who blossoms. They come from three different families, go to three different schools but all live in the suburban neighborhood of Dickeyville, near Baltimore. They spend hours exploring the woods near their neighborhood and what they find there becomes part of a secret that eventually drives the least stable member of their quintet to commit suicide as an adult decades later. Laura Lippman As the friends gather for the funeral the secret is slowly drawn out for the reader through a series of flashbacks (through the eyes of all five of the friends and their pa...

A troubling biography. Published in 2011. Thomas Nelson Publishers has stepped out and published an attractive series of short biographies of American generals - all nicely bound and immensely readable. But, I found Sherman: The Ruthless Victor to be more than a little troubling for what really amounts to just a few sentences in a 163 page book. Clearly von Hassell and Breslin are not writing this biography as fans of Sherman - they dislike the man as a person and do not respect his accomplishments on the battlefield. That is fine. I can live with a negative biography of an historical figure, but this book has moments that stretch the limits of responsible biography. For example, on page 22 the authors note that Sherman's difficult childhood may have caused strains in his relationships with his wife and his children. Reasonable assumption. But, then they go on to say that his "revulsion from scenes of domestic happiness" caused him to be particularly rough on the Sou...

A very busy book that just didn't do it for me. Published in 2011.  I enjoyed meeting retired detective Harlan Donnally in Act of Deceit . Donnally was forced to retire due to an injury sustained during a shootout. He goes about his business with a battered body but a world class commitment to following the trail to wherever it leads. But, the book has so many twists and turns that it felt like the author was whipsawing the story around just build an artificial sense of tension. We start out with an investigation that dates back to the Haight Ashbury Summer of Love movement in San Francisco but the investigation soon veers into other territory: Catholic priest sex abuse and international sex trafficking as well as the dynamics of the dysfunctional relationship between a father and son. The first part was interesting to me, the last part - old and tired territory. Gore notes at the end of the book that his wife is involved in investigating Catholic priest sex abuse accusations...

Lots of Fun! Duration: 1 hour, 50 minutes Multicast Performance Published by Galaxy Press First published in 1936, Sky Birds Dare! is part of a large series of books and stories that are being re-published by Galaxy Press as part of their Golden Age Stories series. In reality, they are a collection of L. Ron Hubbard's early works that were published in magazines and as pulp fiction books. Hubbard was a prolific writer and he wrote a lot of action stories that translate quite well into the multicast performance audiobook format. Sky Birds Dare! is the story of Breeze Callahan, a young glider pilot who is convinced that the U.S. military's pilots could learn a lot from learning how to pilot gliders before they fly motorized aircraft. A glider is like a small plane that has no engine and is towed into the air by a motorized plane or by a car with a rope (much like a person running with a kite trailing behind). Callahan and his mentor Pop Donegon are thwarted over and ...

Wow! Read by Donald Corren Duration: Approximately 9 hours. Published by Blackstone Audio, 2011. Unabridged. T.C. McCarthy ’s Germline is a non-stop military techno-adventure set in the middle of a war in Central Asia in the 22 nd century. Russia and the United States are fighting over the resources of Kazakhstan. It turns out that Kazakhstan is rich in rare metals that are needed for the 22 nd century’s technological devices. They have to be mined deep in the mountains of Kazakhstan and the mines, countryside, little villages and cities of Central Asia become battlefields. Oscar Wendell is a washed-up, drug-addicted reporter for Stars and Stripes . He is the only reporter in the entire theater of war and he is not quite sure how he was picked over better-known reporters. But, he is determined to make the best of his opportunity, already envisioning the Pulitzer Prize as the world’s biggest story unfolds in his lap. He is given some very basic training sent to the fr...

A tepid introduction to Dostoevsky Published in 2011 by Thomas Nelson. I freely admit to knowing only the barest of details about Fyodor Dostoevsky before starting this book. I was aware of the arguments of some of his works and am familiar with the broad strokes Tsarist Russian politics before the Revolution. I picked up this book after becoming intrigued with some of Dostoevsky's ideas while reading a book by A Point in Time by David Horowitz. Horowitz quotes extensively from Dostoevsky and talks about his thoughts about evil in the world, God's place in the world, if there is one. Sadly, I learned more about Dostoevsky's philosophy from Horowitz than I did from this slender biography dedicated to the man. Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) Don't get me wrong, this is a solid little book to learn about the details of his personal life, but it suffers from the lack of in-depth discussion about his ideas and the use of reconstructed conversations throughout tha...

An entertaining superhero story with a twist Published 2011 by Tor. Imagine if your parents were both legendary superheroes and you have no super powers at all. In fact, the closest you have come to being physically heroic is winning a silver medal at a high school swim meet.They have been "outed" and everyone knows them by their regular identities and as superheroes and you are a frequent target of various super criminals who kidnap you to try to influence your parents. It happens so often that it would be funny if it wasn't interrupting your attempt to blend in, be normal and succeed in your career as an accountant. Carrie Vaughn That's the premise of After the Golden Age , a book that promises a superhero story with a twist and delivers. Celia West is a promising young accountant whose parents are the larger-than-life superhero duo of Captain Olympus and Spark. He's a Superman knock off with the nasty attitude and wealth of Batman. She creates fire a...

An interesting history that has been told plenty of times before. Read by the author, Bill O'Reilly Duration: 8 hours Published by Macmillan Audio Unabridged. Probably no figure in American history has received more attention than Abraham Lincoln. Political commentator Bill O'Reilly was, in the early 1970s, a high school history teacher. He wrote this book out of a true passion for Abraham Lincoln. It is clearly not a professional work since it does contain many simple mistakes (for instance, he refers to the Oval Office when it was not actually added to the White House until the early 1900s). I listened to the audio version of Killing Lincoln . To be honest, I was reluctant to listen to it since it is narrated by O'Reilly and I am not a huge fan of his work as a political commentator. In fact, O'Reilly's rather odd style of speech both made the read more interesting. John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865) The book tells the story of the last few days of Lincol...

Fun and you just might learn something. Narrated by Tom and Ray Maggliozzi Duration: 3.5 hours. Publisher: HighBridge Audio Tom and Ray Maggliozzi's car repair show, Car Talk , has been a NPR staple for years now. The show features the two wise-cracking brothers as they field questions about cars and car repairs from all over the country. Car Talk Classics: The Pinkwater Files features four complete shows from the mid-1990s that featured phone calls from author and NPR commentator Daniel Pinkwater. Pinkwater's sense of humor is different than the Maggliozzi brothers, but they roll with him quite well and those four phone calls are the highlight of the collection. Pinkwater never really has a question for the brothers but instead offers his observations concerning his struggles with getting a car that fits his stocky build, how to know when your dog is going to throw up in your car and the Theory of Displaced Misery (this theory states that a person can only have so m...

A smart spy thriller Published in 2011 by HarperAudio. Read by Simon Vance Duration: 12 hours, 15 minutes Unabridged. Daniel Silva 's Portrait of a Spy features Israeli master spy Gabriel Allon, now semi-retired and living and working in rural England as a restorer of paintings. Europe is suffering a wave a suicide bombings. While in London on business he spots a suicide bomber on his way to blow himself up in a London open-air area of markets and restaurants. He steps in with his weapon but is stopped by UK agents that think that he is the threat and the bomber detonates himself. Allon is told to walk away but he is haunted by his failure. When he is approached with the chance to infiltrate the financial network of the same terror network he leaps at the chance. This is a joint CIA/Israeli operation and the muddled politics of our current administration (make grand overtures, continue the rendition program, bomb some dictators, not others) are mirrored in this fictional a...

Published in 2011 by Regnery History Regnery Publishing's newest imprint, Regnery History has found something new to tell about one of the most written-about parts of World War II: D-Day. You may ask yourself, what else can be said about D-Day that hasn't been said? We have had powerful, visceral movies like Saving Private Ryan , The Longest Day and Patton and the famed HBO series Band of Brothers . Article after article and book after book have been written about D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge and the final days of Nazi Germany but somehow we have failed to have had a serious biography of one of the invasion's central planners and one of the men who engineered the entire campaign from the beaches of Normandy until the defeat of Germany: American 5 star general Omar Bradley. The problem with Omar Bradley and historians is that he is not Patton. Patton is brash, daring and iconic. Bradley did not chase headlines and did not wear fancy pistols. He was daring, but not a...