DWD's Reviews

  Published by Random House Audio in 2011. Read by Dick Hill. Duration: 14 hours, 5 minutes. Unabridged Any fan of the Jack Reacher series knows that they are not written in chronological order. T he Affair is set in Reacher's later years in the Army. He is a major and, as fans know, he is part of the military police. Chronologically, it is set directly before the events of The Killing Floor , the first Jack Reacher book that was published. Jack Reacher has been sent to Mississippi as part of a two man team to investigate a murder of a young woman that took place outside of a military base. It is presumed that the murderer was a soldier on base, maybe even the captain of a team of Rangers that have been shuttling in and out of Kosovo on secret missions as part of the Balkan civil war that followed the collapse of Yugoslavia. That is a problem because this captain is very connected politically. His father is a U.S. Senator that is on the committee that helps set the military budget...

  Originally Published in 1960 by Louisiana State University Press. Five Civil War historians were asked to present papers at the Annual Civil War Conference at Gettysburg College. While these were all experts on the Civil War, each had a slightly different topic to create a more well-rounded discussion in Why the North Won the Civil War. The first essay, God and the Strongest Batallions by Richard N. Current, looks at economic factors that gave the North a decided advantage and how the North exploited them. It also looks at things the Confederacy failed to do to maximize their strengths. T. Harry Williams wrote the second essay. It is entitled The Military Leadership of North and South. Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) Norman A. Graebner's essay Northern Diplomacy and European Neutrality  actually looks at both Northern and Southern diplomatic efforts. This one interested me because it took a hard and sustained look at the responses of the governmen...

  Published in 2021 by HarperAudio. Read by Vikas Adam. Duration:  8 hours, 32 minutes. Unabridged. Day Zero is a book about Pounce, a top-level nannybot in an unspecified future time in the combined city of Dallas and Austin, Texas. The world is an unsettled place because robots like Pounce replaced people in all of the repetitive and unskilled jobs all over the world. But, those people didn't go anywhere, they are simply given a Universal Basic Income and left to live their lives without any sort of work. Some find productive ways to live their lives, some turn to drinking, drugs or even fringe political movements.  The author If you can imagine that Frosted Flakes' Tony the Tiger character as a robot, you get the idea behind Pounce. He was purchased to be the caregiver for an eight year old boy named Ezra.  Pounce works with Ezra's parents and the older housekeeper robot to help maintain a safe and supportive environment for Ezra. Pounce walks Ezra to and from sc...

Originally published in 2005 Published when Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) was 82, A Man Without a Country is a series of short essays from a man who is pretty embarrassed by his country with the election and re-election of George W. Bush - thus the title. (One can only imagine Kurt Vonnegut's reaction to the election of Trump!) But, very little of the book directly deals with politics. He wanders from topic to topic - this sounds like it should be a mess, but each of these essays flow right along, breaking every rule that your English teachers taught you about having a proper opening paragraph, a clearly stated thesis, etc.  But, then again, your English teacher wasn't Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut, by the way, strongly recommends against the use of semi-colons. I absolutely agree.  If you haven't read Vonnegut, brace yourself. He is angry, sarcastic, insightful and brilliant. He writes about a wide variety of topics. Some are dated, like the comments about the fights over placing t...

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2018. Only available in audiobook format. Read by the author, Michael Lewis. Duration: 0 hours, 54 minutes. Unabridged. Originally, Has Anyone Seen the President was originally written for Bloomberg View , the editorial/opinion site of Bloomberg News. Lewis went to Washington. D.C. during the run up to President Trump's "State of the Union Address". Lewis visits the press room in the White House, speaks with a former press secretary from the Obama Administration and visits with Trump advisor Steve Bannon. He also spends time with a former ethics official in the government who quit because President Trump and his administration openly flout the standards for ethics that were established in previous administrations (like divesting your portfolio of investments that could be a conflict of interest with your position in government). Finally, Lewis ends up watching the State of the Union with Steve Bannon in Bannon's home with runn...

  Published in 1951 by Random House. I n the 1950's and 1960's Random House created an extraordinary history series for children called Landmark Books. There were 122 books in the American history series and 63 in the World Landmark series. A very solid description of the series can be found here:  link . When I was a kid my little hometown library had what seemed like an endless shelf of these books (I even remember where it was in that little library nearly 40 years later). Undoubtedly, these books are part of the reason I am a history teacher. I have started a collection of these books. When I run across them at library sales and thrift sales I pick them up. Some of the texts have aged well, some have not. Custer's Last Stand  is aimed at students from 3rd to 8th grade. It is a simple read with line drawings. It could use a few more maps.   The history is basically accurate in the broad strokes, but it is full of "quotes" and scenes that never happened in order...

Published in 2020 by Random House Audio. Read by the author, Alicia Garza. Duration: 9 hours, 31 minutes. Unabridged. Alicia Garza is one of the founders of the organization Black Lives Matter .  This reader decided that he only had a superficial knowledge of the movement and wanted to learn more. The Purpose of Power seemed like a reasonable place to start. The first part of the book is basically a recounting of Garza's early life and her beginnings as a community organizer. This was quite enjoyable. Garza is a talented writer and she tells her story well. The author, Alicia Garza The middle part gets bogged down with some esoteric political movement talk. Lots of discussion over meanings of words like "intersectionality." I thought she made her point very clearly early on and kept on making it. This was clearly very important to the author, but the lay reader who is not heavily invested in the movement and its specific language would, like me, find this to be too much ...