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Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas: The Story Behind An American Friendship by Russell Freedman

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Another winning book by Russell Freedman To be published in June of 2012 by Clarion Books (DWD's Reviews received an advance copy for review purposes) Russell Freedman received the Newbery Medal for his 1989 book Lincoln: A Photobiography and he returns to familiar ground with this dual biography. He begins with Douglass and then alternates back and forth between the two men, highlighting important aspects of their lives and the areas that they had in common (such as being self-educated, self-made men). The almost square shape of the book lends itself to pictures and Freedmen fills the book with drawings, etchings and photographs of the era, including the image I have included here of a "Watch Meeting." Thousands of people gathered together to await word of Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation (he had promised to do so several months earlier unless the Confederate States returned to the Union). I had no idea that such events occurred, but Freedman inc...

Idiots Unplugged: Truth for Those Who Care to Listen (audiobook) by Glenn Beck

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Beck makes his points but this is a tedious collection. Published in 2010 by Simon and Schuster Audio Read by Glenn Beck and Pat Gray Duration: 1 hour, 15 minutes Idiots Unplugged is a collection of promotional sketches that were aired on Beck's nationally syndicated radio show to promote his 2010 book Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government . Every sketch starts and ends with the same theme song (which means you get to hear it 15 or 16 times in an hour and 15 minutes of listening! Fun? No.) Every sketch consists of Pat Gray speaking with a muppet-like voice and stating some sort of fairly common liberal argument. Beck then lays out his counter-argument, tells you where to find it in his book and then the liberal caller calls him fatso or makes some other insult about his weight. While Beck's arguments were generally sound, the easy, slow pitch softball style set up of the questions make the arguments way too pat and simple. These sketches w...

The Phantom Patrol (audiobook) by L. Ron Hubbard

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Duration: Approximately 2 hours Multicast Performance Published by Galaxy Press First published in 1935, The Phantom Patrol 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. The Phantom Patrol is the story of Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Johnny Trescott who commands a patrol boat looking for drug smugglers off of the coast of Louisiana. He and his small crew have been working for months to catch one smuggler in particular and are close to catching him. While closing in on this smuggler, they are called away by a distress call from a plane that has made an emergency landing in the water. The smuggler turns the tables...

Flameout: The Rise and Fall of Burger Chef by John P. McDonald

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Lessons on how to grow and then kill a restaurant chain Published in 2011 by CreateSpace I n Flameout , John P. McDonald tells the story of Burger Chef, the one burger company that outpaced McDonald's and could have taken its place at the top of the fast food heap. In 1971 there were 1,200 Burger Chef restaurants and less than 1,300 McDonald's restaurants. By 1982, what was left of Burger Chef was folded into the Hardee's chain and was no more. I was particularly interested in this book because when I was a kid, the Burger Chef Fun Meal with Burger Chef and Jeff and all of the punch out things you could make with the tray/box were just about the best restaurant experience a little boy could have. This could have been a very boring tale, but McDonald makes it interesting. He tells about the innovations that took Burger Chef from being just a demonstration restaurant (it was designed to showcase the restaurant equipment manufactured by General Equipment) to the fast...

Roadwork (audiobook) by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)

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A story of a man whose world has fallen apart Published in 2010 by Penguin Audio Read by: G. Valmont Thomas Duration: 9 hours, 40 minutes. Way back in 1981 Stephen King released Roadwork under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Bachman was the name King used to sell pulp fiction type stories so that he could afford to pay his bills and not hurt his reputation as he waited for his work he submitted under his name to take off. King opens this book with an interesting introduction that explains his rather complex relationship with his pseudonym. Roadwork , on the surface, is simple enough. A man in this forties is losing his house, his job and the memories that he holds dearest to the expansion of a highway through his neighborhood. Due to imminent domain , Barton George Dawes will lose his last connections to his son who has died three years earlier due to a brain tumor. He will lose the house that he and his wife scraped and scrimped to buy. He will lose his career at the local...

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves by Dan Ariely

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To be published in June of 2012 (DWD's Reviews received an uncorrected proof advance copy) by Harper. Dan Ariely's The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty is a fun look at a serious topic - lying. Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, describes his simple experiments and details his results in a light, easy to understand way. His results are often surprising and counter-intuitive. For example, it is often considered that people are dishonest because they have calculated the risk of being caught and the reward if they get away with the dishonesty and act accordingly. Ariely demonstrates that this is incorrect and spends the rest of the book showing what conditions are more likely to cause dishonest behavior and what conditions decrease dishonesty. This could have been a stupefyingly dull book, but Ariely has a deft touch and makes it a very fun and very quick read. I rate this book 5 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: T...

Imperfect: An Improbable Life by Jim Abbott and Tim Brown

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Entertaining Sports Autobiography Published by Ballantine Books in April of 2012 Jim Abbott will always be known as "that one-handed pitcher" and in Imperfect he discusses the fact that his life has always been defined by his birth defect. Or, has it? As I read this book I found myself wondering if his missing hand limited him, propelled him or if he would have gone just as far if he had had both hands? Abbott and Brown work together to create a very readable, entertaining book. I found the descriptions of 1970s and 1980s era Flint, Michigan and his life growing up just as compelling as his stories of how he overcame the difficulties he encountered by having just one hand. I was aware of Jim Abbott as he played but as his career waned I lost track of him. Also, I had no memory of his playing in the 1987 Pan-American games in Indianapolis even though I have always lived in Indiana and those games were a very big deal when Indianapolis hosted them. Abbott tells the ...