DWD's Reviews

The controversial winner of the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for fiction Here we are, decades years later and The Confessions of Nat Turner is still in the news. Recently, Henry Louis Gates, Jr made comments (positive ones, now. Originally negative impressions, years ago) about the book. The primary controversy is quite simple - how can a white man, a southerner, and the descendant of slave owners write a novel about one of the few slaves who actually stood up and demanded his freedom by leading a rebellion? Some have even asserted that he did not even have the right to write the book in the first place - after all, it is not HIS history. But, is Nat Turner to be forever held apart? Is African-American history to be held apart? Can an African-American write about the Japanese Shogunate? Can an Asian-American write about the Alamo? Of course and of course. Gates makes this point in his comments (correctly). History is human history. Nat Turner (1800-1831) Styron's fictionalized...

A throwback to the early days of 'Spenser'  Robert B. Parker (1932-2010) This edition of Spenser reminded me of the early days of the series - the days before Spenser would assemble a gigantic posse of bad guys and policemen (ie, Potshot ) in order to get the job done. Thankfully, this one is also basically Susan Silverman-free (not that I mind Susan, it's all of the repeated conversations about their relationship - it just gets old!) Unfortunately, School Days is also Hawk-free, so the experienced reader of Spenser books will definitely miss the witty banter the two often share. However, Spenser manages to get in a few good lines without the extra help and he does get a bit of outside help from some unusual sources from the past. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon here:  School Days (Spenser) Reviewed October 9, 2005.

This is my first Forsyth novel and for the first 250 pages... ...I had determined that it would be my last. Forsyth spends the first half of of the 500+ page  Icon just setting the reader up for the real plot of the novel. Unfortunately, the setup consists of a series of disjointed flashbacks interspersed with seemingly unrelated tales of what is going on in the present of the novel (1999-2000 in the old USSR, now Russia). Frederick Forsyth Suddenly, once the flashbacks work their way up to the present time the real story starts and it is a great adventure story! The meandering story redeems itself. There is a lot of action, intrigue and a bunch of frustrated Nazis. Unfortunately, the ending is just too neat - it ends the book with everything too well resolved. I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Icon by Frederick Forsyth . Reviewed on October 9, 2005.

YIKES! (NOTE: this is a review of the 1st re-cutting of this movie. Stone has since re-cut it into "The Final Cut.") Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) 20 minutes into this movie I was thinking that it had real potential. We get to see the ugly details of Alexander's childhood. We get an understanding of his need to conquer, the need to achieve more than his father and his fascination for the non-Greek world (thanks to his mother). An hour into the movie I was confused and disappointed. Confused because of the incessant flashbacks. I knew what was going only because I teach this stuff for a living. How could the average movie-goer possibly understand why Alexander invaded the Persian Empire based on the feeble information supplied by Stone? Stone has an oblique reference to Phillip's murder, but the average movie-viewer does not know even know who Alexander the Great is, let alone that his father was murdered(he shows it in detail in a flashback...

Not the strongest of the series but very, very good Michael Connelly is one of the two best living detective writers, in my opinion, the other being Robert Crais. Having noted in the title for this review that this book is not the strongest in the series, I must also note that it makes this book receive a grade of merely an "A" rather than the normal "A+." Michael Connelly Bosch's books are gritty but not over the top. He is principled but not a boy scout. This particular Harry Bosch novel, City of Bones , deals with an old homicide uncovered in the hills surrounding Los Angeles. Bosch finds romance, has a major career shift and it has a surprise ending. No other plot details to avoid spoilers. You can join the Bosch novels at any point but I'd recommend starting at the beginning. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: City of Bones by Michael Connelly . Reviewed on May 3, 2009.

Oh, how I wanted to be able to recommend this book! As a history teacher I often decry the politically and factually correct, but dreadfully dry and boring history textbooks. I was hoping that this book, The Dangerous Book of Heroes , could be a popular antidote and a return to the famous Landmark books series that I grew up reading. Mostly, A Dangerous Book of Heroes is just that - a collection of biographies - some just a few pages, some longer. They are illustrated with the same kind of line drawings that I remember from the Landmark books. But, this book does have a danger to it, and not the tongue-in-cheek kind suggested by the title. The publisher has declared that it's target audience is 18 years old and above. If this was truly was aimed at high school seniors and college students, we have become an illiterate society indeed. Not that this book is horrible, it is just simplistic. College students should be reading real biographies, not 8 page biographical sketches ...

A prototype of the current crop of approachable books on economics 12.5 hours 10 CDs Read by James Adams Free To Choose: A Personal Statement is the manifesto on the power of capitalism and freedom (and how they go hand in hand) that was designed to be read, digested and discussed by the common man, not the economist. In fact, this is the book that was designed as a follow-up companion to a 10 part PBS mini-series that fleshed out the ideas in the series and addressed issues and further questions that came up in the making of the television program. Listening to Free to Choose as an audiobook is sort of ironic since the Friedman's mention that the book is a superior form for deep thinking on these topics because the reader is able to re-read passages, turn down pages and compare passages at will. Try that with an audiobook, especially with the relatively unsophisticated CD player in my car! Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1976 (he a...