DWD's Reviews

  Published by Macmillan Audio in July of 2022. Read by Ari Fliakos. Duration: 10 hours, 30 minutes. Unabridged. Malcolm Nance served for 20 years in the U.S. Navy in cryptology. His work led him to work in intelligence and counter-terrorism. Since his retirement from the military he has worked an additional 20 years as a consultant to the military, as a college lecturer on the topic of counter-terrorism, and as the head of a think tank. Nance applied what he knows about terrorism to the January 6 Riot and comes up with a series of disturbing conclusions. Nance is concerned that the most extreme elements of the MAGA movement have gone beyond rhetoric and casual flirtation with militia movements and have actively engaged with them. This book was published in July of 2022 but yesterday (November 29, 2022) two leaders of the Oath Keepers militia were found guilty of seditious conspiracy for their actions at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Why was a fringe militia group in W...

  Published in 2020 by Seven Stories Press. Edited by Dan Wakefield. Introduction by Dan Wakefield. Many of the well-known quotes from Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) were not actually in his novels - they came from speeches he gave (mostly) in the latter half of his career. Vonnegut became quite a popular deliverer of graduation speeches. And why not? He was witty, irreverent and sometimes came up with a great quote like this one: "Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody want to maintain it." (p. 230) The title of this book comes from a story that Vonnegut has included in other essays. Vonnegut had two uncles who responded very differently to his World War II experiences. His Uncle Dan congratulated Vonnegut for having gone to war as a boy and come back as a man.  His Uncle Alex was a different sort of man. The kind of man who encouraged everyone to notice the good things of life as they happen around us. "...when life was most agreeabl...

  Published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company in October of 2022. Read by Shamaan Casey. Duration: 10 hours, 57 minutes. Unabridged. Jackie Robinson.  He is an icon of sports. And politics. And American history. All fans of baseball know at least the broad strokes of the story of Jackie Robinson (1919-1972) and how he integrated baseball. This book offers a detailed re-telling of that story with a twist - a look at how Jackie Robinson's faith led him to this path and helped sustain him. Robinson's early life, his time in service during World War II and his college sports career and his relationship with his wife are all covered. The biggest single part of the book is, appropriately, the story of how he and Branch Rickey (the head of the Brooklyn Dodgers) worked together to integrate Major League Baseball in 1947. The book also looks at how Rickey's faith led him to act to make the world a more just place by acting in such a symbolic manner. Jackie Robinson stealing hom...

  Published in 2008 by Blackstone Audio. Originally published in 1963. Read by Jesse L. Martin. Duration: 2 hours, 45 minutes. Unabridged. James Baldwin (1924-1987) was an African-American essayist, playwright, poet and novelist. This book is a collection of two lengthy essays on race and religion in the United States. The book comes from a line from the song Mary Don't You Weep : God gave Noah the rainbow sign No more water, the fire next time. The first essay is in the format of a letter to his nephew entitled " My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation ."  As suggested by the title, it is about America's ugly racial history, including incidents from Baldwin's life. The second, longer essay is " Down at the Cross: A Region in my Mind. " This is a discussion of religion in America, including how Christianity had been warped into a tool to prop up a social structure that kept whites on top and blacks on th...

  Published in November of 2022. Read by Titus Welliver, Christine Lakin, and Peter Giles. Duration: 9 hours, 37 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: The latest Harry Bosch novel has Bosch returning to work with LAPD as a retired volunteer. Renee Ballard was offered a chance to "write her own ticket" because of her work (and very ugly internal politics) in the last novel. With the help of a sponsor on the city council, she re-established the cold case unit. It has a shoestring of budget and she is the only full time officer in the unit. Everyone else is a volunteer with different skills - a former prosecutor who helps with search warrants, a former FBI field agent, an expert in making family connections with DNA results, an officer who retired early due to health reasons are part of the team. But, Ballard's biggest catch for the team is her sometime unofficial partner - retired LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch. Bosch may be old (70+) but he is up on the current technology an...

  Published in 2022 by Macmillan Audio. Read by Christina Delaine. Duration: 9 hours, 20 minutes. Unabridged. Montana private investigator Cassie Dewell's latest adventures are actually two overlapping cases. One involves a hidden treasure of gold coins. Clues to the treasure were written by an unknown poet who wrote them in a poem on a dry erase board (the "daily specials" board) in a small town restaurant. Dewell is ostensibly hired by the author to see if the treasure can be found by tracing the author's literary footprint. I was immediately struck by the thought that a treasure hunt inspired by a poem story line had already been explored in the TV show Longmire.  I would imagine that a great proportion of C.J. Box readers are also Longmire viewers. The second case involves a swindler who finds lonely wealthy widows, romances them and bilks them out of some of their money with fake investments. Another private investigator from Florida had come to Montana with a l...

  Published in 2019 by Hourly History. Hourly History is a series of histories and biographies that a reader can read in about an hour. Sometimes, that works out quite well. Sometimes, the topic is just too big to cover in an hour. I am an avid reader of history, but I have areas of weakness that I am perfectly willing to shore up a bit, but I don't want to invest a ton of time. I want to know a bit more, not become an expert. The British Royal Family is just one of those areas for me. I know more than most people, but I can see the glaringly empty areas of my own ignorance. I recently read Hourly History's biography of Henry VII (the king that defeated Richard III in battle and took his throne). Usually, I find the British Royal family to be a tedious topic, but I found the Henry VII biography to be quite interesting. I was hoping to have a similar experience with the biography of Richard III. King Richard III (1452-1485) Richard III took the throne towards the end of the slo...