DWD's Reviews

Highly Recommended Published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2012 Last summer I read David K.Shipler's first book on this topic, The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties (see my review by clicking here ) and I found it to be the most profound book I read that summer and maybe all year. I began my review of that book with this thought: "I always tell people that the traditional left-right continuum used to describe someone's politics is so inaccurate as to be useless. Really, what is the difference between an aging hippie living on a hill somewhere  raising some dope for personal use and telling the government to get out of his business and a Barry Goldwater-type conservative (like me) living by himself on a hill somewhere that tells the government to get its nose out of his business? Some dope. Otherwise, they are both determined advocates of civil liberties - keep out of my business if it is not hurting anyone else." When I read the fir...

Published in 2012 by Thomas Nelson Grant: Savior of the Union is an enjoyable, easy-to-read biography of Ulysses S. Grant, the Union General that seemingly came from nowhere to become the man that engineered the conquest of  the Confederacy. Yockelson covers Grant's entire life and also a bit of his father's life, with an appropriate emphasis on Grant's military service in the Mexican War, his resignation from the army between the wars, his difficulties as a civilian and his return to the service once war broke out between the Union and the Confederacy. Two-thirds of the book covers the four years of service in the Civil War. His Presidency and retirement years are quickly brushed over. Grant's career is dealt with fairly throughout the book. His great decisions are applauded, his mistakes are pointed out (Cold Harbor, in particular) and the reader gets strong feel for his calm, determined leadership style and his emphasis on substance over style. This is a much...

Published by Simon & Schuster Audio in 1994 Read by Jonathan Frakes Duration: 2 hours, 55 minutes. Abridged Based on a script by Ronald D. Moore and Brannon Braga All Good Things... is an abridged audiobook presentation of the novelization of the two hour series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation .  There is a lot of room there for errors to be made. Will the reader interpret the material well? Is the abridgment done well? Is the novelization of the script done well? That's a lot of steps between the original authors and the audiobook listener and any of them done poorly could result in a poor audiobook presentation. Jonathan Frakes as Commander Will Riker This audiobook was done quite well. The novelist is a prolific author of Star Trek books so he knows his material. The abridgment was done well. The reader was Jonathan Frakes. Frakes played Commander Will Riker throughout the show's run (and directed several of them) so he knows how everyone is suppos...

Audio version published by Skyboat Road Company in 2008. Multicast Performance Duration: 16 hours, 25 minutes Unabridged. The premise behind Resonance is simple - the magnetic poles are starting to switch and it is starting to cause frogs to be born deformed, messing up migration patterns and kill people who are in "hotspots" (areas where the reversal has already started). Scudiere does a great job of creating believable characters and her five main characters are quite strong. We have two young doctors from the Centers for Disease Control and their boss (played by Arte Johnson of Laugh-In fame), a young narcissistic geologist and a young biologist who specializes in frogs. These five race around the country documenting "hotspots" and trying to figure out why people exposed to them die. As they travel, we learn a lot more about the characters and a romance starts to bloom. Well, it would start to bloom except for two things: 1) the entire world suddenly sh...

Published by Doubleday in 2012 If you remember the giant television shows of NBC's heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, Top of the Rock will be fascinating. Shows like Cheers, Cosby, Law & Order, ER, Will &  Grace, Friends, Frazier, 3rd Rock From the Sun, Mad About You and Seinfeld ruled the airwaves. Thursday nights were dominated by NBC and NBC usually made more money on that night than the other six nights combined - literally billions of dollars. Warren Littlefield was directly involved in the creation of these shows or the in the decision to put them on the air. Littlefield tells the story of "Must See TV" through the voices of the participants themselves. The book is literally a series of quotes with very little in the way of narration from Littlefield himself. Littlefield calls it "oral history" format. If this book were a movie, it would be one of those "talking head" documentaries full of people talking. But, what a documentary it ...

Published by Random House Audio in 1999 Read by Anthony Heald Duration: 2 hours, 59 minutes. Abridged Probably no one, even George Lucas himself, knows more about the Star Wars universe than prolific author Michael A. Stackpole. He has authored comics and novels and helped to build the entire post- Return of the Jedi storyline. Isard's Revenge is set several years after the last movie. The New Republic (the government that took over from the  Rebel Alliance in Episodes IV, V and VI) is mopping up the various bits and pieces of what is left of the Empire. Several warlords have set themselves up here and there and the New Republic is negotiating or fighting with them.  In this storyline, a warlord named Ysanne Isard, the former Director of Imperial Intelligence, presumed defeated and dead, has returned. She has put together a rather complicated plot to draw Wedge Antilles (newly promoted to General by Admiral Ackbar) and his Rogue Squadron into a trap so she can wipe them ...

Published in 1992 by AvoNova (Avon Books) Tim Sullivan's Lords of Creation tries (and really tries hard) to pull together a whole lot of ideas and one really big one and put them all into a 242 page sci-fi paperback novel. It is set in the year 1999. Instead of a successful first Gulf War,  America gets bogged in a protracted fight that saps its political vitals at home. The Republicans work with a growing Christian Milleniallist movement who believe that the end of the world as we know it is coming and America should be prepared. A Department of Morality is developed and led by a preacher who attacks all of paleontology as "the work of Satan." Entire university departments are shut down due to a lack of funding and only amateur paleontologists can continue to dig. A fossil dig in Montana. Photo by SD Public Broadcasting One group of such amateurs are digging at a remote site in Montana when they find a odd metal box buried deep in a fossil bed, with the fossi...

Published by Borders/Recorded books in 1990. Narrated by George Guidall. Duration: Approximately 6 hours, 30 minutes. Unabridged The Blessing Way is the first of the Leaphorn books but, ironically, Leaphorn is a mere supporting character throughout most of the second half of the book. College professor/archaeologist Bergen McKee is the main character - the one who has the most growth and teaches the reader the most about Navajo society and culture. Tony Hillerman (1925-2008) Nevertheless, The Blessing Way is an enjoyable book. I have read all of Hillerman's books at one time or another so I am going back and listening to some of the older ones as a high-quality diversion from my boring work commute. I intentionally picked this one, the oldest of the series, since I recently read and reviewed the newest of the series ( The Shapeshifter ), which, ironically enough, also prominently featured the Navajo Wolf/Witch/Shapeshifter. His descriptions of Navajo society...

An American Odyssey -Slow start, but once you get past the first 50 pages or so you won't want to put it down. Winner of the 1997 National Book Award Originally Published in 1997 by Atlantic Monthly Press Cold Mountain is really a set of very, very short stories all tied together into two main narrative lines. It can be very frustrating to some who just want to get the story moving, but that the main plotlines are not really the point. The wonder and randomness and beauty and brutishness of this thing we call life is the point. This is no "Pilgrims Progress" in which the main characters struggle and eventually reach a higher consciousness and understanding.  However, it is  a Post-modernist American Odyssey. In the original Odyssey, Odysseus goes from one adventure to the next on his way home from war. In the telling it the reader (originally the listener since it was originally an oral story, not a written story) learns life lessons and Odysseus comes home a ...

Published in 1989 by Books on Tape, Inc. Read by Michael Prichard Duration: 4 hours, 45 minutes. Unabridged. I read Looking for Rachel Wallace years ago, but I don't have a great memory for all of the plot details so I am re-enjoying the Spenser books as audiobooks. In this case, Spenser and Rachel Wallace kept me company while I wrapped presents and fed my one-year old. And they were quite good company. Rachel Wallace is a lesbian feminist activist who lives to shock and provoke the sensibilities of middle America in the late 1970s. Her activism has made her the recipient of several threats so Spenser is hired to protect her. If Rachel Wallace is anything, she is an ultra-feminist and no ultra-feminist (at least not in this book) is going to run to a big strong man for protection. Rachel Wallace realizes this and fires Spenser. But, soon enough, Rachel Wallace is actually kidnapped and Spenser goes on the hunt for her out of a sense of personal obligation. The climax...

What this book is and what it is not Published by Tyndale House Publishers in 1997.  I picked Mysteries and Intrigues of the Bible up somewhere along the way and I am sure when I bought it I thought that it was something that it is not. What I thought the book was: -I thought it was a Graham Hancock-type (ironically, Graham Hancock is referred to in the text of this book) look into some of the oddities of the Bible. What really happened at Jericho? What does the archaeological record say? Where did Moses and the Israelites cross the Red Sea? Are there possible explanations for a parting of the Red Sea besides a divine one? What about those that claim that Jesus did not really die on the cross? Is the popularly referred to "Swooning" of Jesus an explanation for his resurrection. If not, why not. The kind of stuff you get on the History Channel from time to time That is not what this book is (although if anyone knows of such a cool book, let me know!) What...

This movie swings for the fence with every pitch... Directed by Wolfgang Petersen   Released in 1985 This movie swings for the fence with every pitch. If you are not a baseball fan, that is saying that a batter swings for the fence means that he only goes for home runs and does not try to just get on base.   And, for you baseball fans out there, you know that the long ball hitter that swings for the fence with every pitch strikes out an awful lot. But, the fans love him anyway because when he gets hold of a good one it's a home run! Enemy Mine is a lot like a long ball hitter - the director tries to go for a home run on so many levels that you end up alternating between shaking your head at the cheesiness of it all and wiping at a tear at the way some of the scenes work so perfectly. The premise is that two enemy fighter pilots in a bitter intergalactic war shoot each other down over some horrible planet that will barely support life. One is human. On...

A Scotsman, a mastiff and a feudal nation Published by Mariner Books in 2006. When the United States first invaded Afghanistan one of my friends wondered aloud if we intended on keeping it as a colony. I quipped that we already owned a mountainous desert area full of people that have a religion that we don't understand - we call it Utah (with apologies to my Mormon friends out there). After reading The Places In Between I truly realize the depth of our misunderstanding of the situation in Afghanistan. I keep up on the news better than most. I've spoken with veterans who have returned from Afghanistan. Yet, as I read Stewart's account of his walk across Afghanistan just weeks after the fall of the Taliban, I realized that this truly is a foreign culture - as alien to me as any on the planet. I am amazed that the mission in Afghanistan has been as successful as it has been. Stewart introduces us to the variety of cultures that Afghanistan possesses. He ...

Going back for a second read - this time as an audiobook Published in 1988 by Books on Tape Read by Michael Prichard Duration: 5 hours, 12 minutes (unabridged) I've long since read all of the Spenser novels but I am enjoying a second time around with the older ones as audiobooks - I listen while commuting. The Godwulf Manuscript is the first in a very long line of Spenser novels. The most essential parts of Spenser are here - wisecracks, details about cooking, his mostly unused office and a healthy interest in the opposite sex, Lt. Quirk (I'd forgotten he was Spenser's first "buddy" in a long line of buddies) and Spenser's self-deprecating inner voice. The Godwulf Manuscript is a much more "noire" style book than most of the rest of them - but then again it's not much of a surprise really - authors change over time. Spenser, however, does not change. The book is set in 1973 and Spenser is 37 years old. He makes more refere...

  Published by Dh Audio in 1982. Read by Samantha Eggar Duration: approximately 3 hours. Abridged Many years ago, in the early 80s, I was a devoted reader of all things Heinlein. Somewhere along the way I guess I lost interest (I don't remember), but I found this audiobook version of Friday and thought I'd re-live the old days a bit. From the product description on the back of the box I did not remember having read the book, but soon enough, I vaguely remembered the plot a bit. So, how was it re-visiting Heinlein? It was okay. The story line was not nearly as interesting as the backdrop (a fragmented United States - how I'd love to see a short history of this vision of earth plus a short description of the technology - Heinlein accurately describes the internet - not bad for 1982). Friday is a genetically modified human being created from bits and pieces from all around the world. She lives in a remarkably open society that openly discriminates against...

Thompson's original essay was much better Published by Sentinel HC in 2006 For those of you who do not know, Keith Thompson's first draft of Leaving the Left was a column in the San Francisco chronicle (found here ). I thoroughly enjoyed the original essay. I printed it out, read it to my wife, forwarded it to friends. A copy of it has set on my desk for the better part of two years - mostly in the way, but also as a reminder of my own personal journey away from the Democrats (my first 4 votes in any sort of Presidential race were proud votes for Jesse Jackson, Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas and Bill Clinton). Really, though, it's not so much that I've moved from them as they have moved from some of their core values to new core values. Political parties, like people, evolve in their thoughts. Keith Thompson, like many others, discovered that the political party of his youth (he was the youngest delegate to a Democratic national convention in American ...