DWD's Reviews

Published in 1973. I n 1973, undoubtedly to prepare for the upcoming 1976 bicentennial of the American Declaration of Independence, BBC reporter and author Alistair Cooke released a book and a television mini-series telling the history of the United States to the U.K. The book and the series came to America as well with the book selling nearly 2 million copies. This massive "coffee table" type book has 393 pages and weighs in at 3 pounds, 9 ounces (compare that to a random paperback book I weighed at just 5 ounces). Photo by Lewis Hine Cooke presents a straight-forward history of America, skimming over lots of details but getting the highlights. This has to be the case when you cover more than nearly 500 years of history in less than 400 pages. He focuses half of the book on the exploration/colonial/Revolutionary War/Constitutional era and it is by far the strongest part of the book. This book is filled with beautiful, sometimes profound photographs. On pages 312-313 ...

Published by Penguin Audio in 2019. Read by Will Damron. Duration: 10 hours, 17 minutes. Unabridged. In Range David Epstein presents a strong argument that lateral thinkers (people that know a little about a lot of things) are stronger members of a team than the experts that know a whole lot about a narrow subject. He also argues that people who pick a specialty later in life have a wider perspective on things and can bring fresh ideas into a stale discussion. I literally have no problems with anything he says in this book, but I did find the book to be poorly put together. It just rambles along from one (usually, but not always) interesting topic to another and makes all of them about 30% too long.  So, I am going to rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  RANGE: WHY GENERALISTS TRIUMPH in a SPECIALIZED WORLD . 

Published by Blackstone Audio in 2016. Read by Andrew Elden. Duration: 7 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. In 2012, Ken Ilgunas embarked on a 1,900 mile hike from the beginning of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline in Alberta, Canada to its terminus on the Gulf Coast of Texas.  He did this because he is opposed to the pipeline and is very concerned about the expanded use of fossil fuels, the environmental damage caused by the mining of oil sands and the potential for spillage from the pipeline. Along the way, he blogs about his experiences with his iPad in the hopes of creating a little buzz about the topic. He was inspired to do this by a series of conversations he and a friend had during a stint in the kitchen at a Prudhoe Bay oil drilling site. They were going to hike the entire length together, but his friend begged off and fell into a support role, occasionally mailing him food and replacement pieces of equipment and boots (he went through 3 pairs of boots on this hike). Ilgun...

Originally published in 2001. The greatest argument among people who study the Civil War isn't who was the best general or what would have happened if Lincoln hadn't have been assassinated or even what would have happened if the Union had lost at Gettysburg. No, the greatest argument is this: What caused the Civil War? For the better part of the last century, the argument has been that the Confederacy seceded in order to protect "their rights". The counter-argument has always been to protect "the right to do what?" For me, the answer has always been a simple one - they fought for their right to own people and to keep African Americans at the bottom of the heap in Southern society. For the Confederate States of America, slavery was the reason to fight. For the Union army, maintaining the Union, with or without slavery, was the reason to fight - a goal claimed many times by Lincoln himself.  There will be arguments that claim that Confederate states secede...

Originally published in 1959. Audiobook published in 1998 by Blackstone Audio. Read by Lloyd James. Duration: 9 hours, 52 minutes. Unabridged. Winner of the Hugo Award for best sci-fi novel of 1960. Way back when - when I was in high school and Ronald Reagan was President, I used to read a lot of Robert A. Heinlein. Now, as an adult, I find myself all over the place with my ratings of Heinlein, mostly average. With this book, I will have two 5 star ratings, two 3 star ratings and two 2 star ratings. That makes a very mediocre rating of 3.333 out of 5. That would be a C+ on a grading scale and I agree with that assessment. This book marks the transition in Heinlein's professional career from writing science fiction for kids and young adults to writing for adults. This book was originally supposed to be for kids but the original publisher rejected it so Heinlein shopped it around, found a new publisher and never wrote for kids again. The book Starship Troopers is a rare book in ...

Originally printed in 2001. One of my favorite people in history is Levi Coffin. I have visited the Levi Coffin House (an official Historic Site maintained by the state of Indiana) so many times that it feels like I am making a semi-annual pilgrimage when I go.  The thing is, I find myself inspired every time I visit - both as a history lover, a champion of individual rights and as a Christian. Levi Coffin was an instrumental figure in the Underground Railroad and the abolition movement. He was not simply  a theoretical supporter of the movement that wrote letters and collected donations. He helped more than a thousand slaves escape, many of them spending time in his own home. His home in Indiana was even modified so that he could hide ten or more people at a time, if necessary. Here is a picture that I took of a great quote from Levi Coffin that is on the wall of the visitors center at his house in Fountain City:  This short book tells an interesting story of...

Published in 2015 by Simon and Schuster Audio Read by Tim Sample. Duration: 1 hour, 20 minutes. Unabridged. Stephen King uses the voice talents of Tim Sample, a humorist that specializes in talking about Maine. Fans of Stephen King know that the prolific author loves to set his stories in his home state of Maine. This one is set on the corner of a lake surrounded by vacation homes. Two families are part of a year-after-year fireworks contest. One is a family from Rhode Island. The other is an older mom and son who grew up in the area and bought their dream home on the lake. They don't know each other well, but their sense of pride get in the way as their desire to "one up" each other gets more and more ridiculous as the years go along. The folksy manner of the narrator makes this predictable story a lot of fun. It is the perfect matching of author and narrator. I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Drunken Fireworks by Stephen King.