DWD's Reviews

Published by Dreamscape Media in 2023. Read by Cady Zuckerman. Duration: 9 hours, 26 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Forgotten Trail is the third book featuring Felicity Harland of the Investigative Services Branch. If you are not familiar with the ISB, join the club - I had no idea that it was the "FBI" of the National Parks Service. If the local park can't deal with it, they call in the ISB. That always include murders. Harland is partners with a park ranger nicknamed Hux. He is a big, strong guy. Harland is a short (but very tough and determined) lady. There is always of undercurrent of romantic attraction between the two, but there is caution about acting on this attraction for fear of messing up their friendship and very strong working relationship. Her dog rounds out the trio. In this series, ISB is called out to a different park for each book. It lets the reader get a feel for a new park in every book. In this book, a brutal murder has taken place in a room at a br...

Published in 2025 by Bloomsbury Publishing. Read by Patricia Rodriguez. Duration: 11 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged. In Money, Lies, and God ,  Katherine Stewart takes a hard look at the intertwined worlds of MAGA, Christian Nationalists, big money backers (old money and new tech money), the Claremont Institute , White Replacement Theory folks, militias, and groups like Moms for Liberty.  It looks like a lot to connect but, in reality, it's not too hard. Think of your stereotypical Christian Nationalist mega-church. They're going to be MAGA voters. They are exposed to materials produced by think tanks like the Claremont Institute or Focus on the Family that are financially supported by big money backers. Moms for Liberty will already be there, hyping up the dangers of public schools and certain reading materials. Some megachurches host faith and freedom conferences that are strong on the politics and feature a bit of Christianity. The author, Katherine Stewart I was distressed...

Published in 2023 by Hourly History. I chose to read this short history about Chechnya in order to be a bit more informed about Putin's wars in Chechnya and then apply that knowledge to the war in Ukraine. What I read does not inspire confidence. Chechnya is an unfortunate victim of geography - it lies in a buffer zone between traditional great powers - the Russians, the Ottoman Turks, and the Persians. Even worse, they are on a natural land bridge between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea. Throw in a religious difference between Russia and the Chechens and you have even more trouble. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Chechnya made a serious effort at independence that ended up in multiple military incursions by the Russians and decades of on and off irregular warfare (think guerrilla warfare plus outright terrorism). For their part, the Russians responded with their own forms of irregular warfare - assassinations, possible false flag operations, and more. As I read this, th...

Originally published in 2016. Audiobook published by Well-Tailored books in 2024. Read by Shamaan Casey Duration: 11 hours, 54 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis:  Set in a future megalopolis called Metropolis, Liquid Cool is the story of Cruz, a young hustler that wants to become a private detective. Cruz is mostly known for restoring vintage flying cars, his fedora hat, and his super attractive girlfriend that thinks he can be more than just a street hustler. Cruz really wants to be a private detective, but obtaining a license from the city's convoluted bureaucracy is shockingly expensive. When a local boy turned millionaire offers Cruz the chance to do some detective work on the side, Cruz jumps at the opportunity. He picks up a how-to book from a famous private detective and starts to teach himself how to do the job. After a few of these detective side gigs, an unknown benefactor offers Cruz an office and a secretary just like the ones that all of the film noir detectives have and h...

Originally published in 1973. Breakfast of Champions , to me, is the second most well-known Vonnegut novel after Slaughterhouse-Five .  The plot of this story is deceptively simple and the writing style is not complicated - but this story has a lot going on. There are three main characters. One is Dwayne Hoover, a very successful owner of a Pontiac car dealership from Midland, Ohio and numerous other small businesses. He is by far the most successful man in town. He helps bankroll a fine arts festival that the town helps will make them known as a cultural center. He is also going crazy. The fine arts festival has invited Kilgore Trout, a recurring character from other Vonnegut novels, to be the star of the arts festival. Trout is a prolific, but unsuccessful author. He is published, but only by publishers of porn novels. They use his books as a way to make their books seem more legit, kind of like Playboy used "the articles" to make the magazine seem classier. Trout iis so un...

Published in 2024 by Hourly History. Betty White was a staple of the American entertainment scene for literal decades. She was on multiple highly-rated TV shows, was a regular on several classic game shows, guested on dozens of TV shows, and even made one of the most popular Super Bowl commercials of all time.  This short e-book gives the outline of her nearly 70 year career. It's pretty much a "just the facts" sort of book due to the limitations of this book series. Eech history and biography published by Hourly History is designed to be read in about an hour and the sheer length of Betty White's career means that the depth of this biography is fairly limited.  Even if it is limited, I still found this biography to be enjoyable. I rate this e-book 4 stars our of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Betty White: A Life from Beginning to End .

Published in 2018 by IVP. A few years ago I was determined to learn a lot about immigration in the United States. I bought Welcoming the Stranger during that time, but I put it aside because the other books I had read were, to put it simply, not good.  So, this book went into the dreaded to-be-read pile, and it might have stayed there forever except for the reelection of President Trump. His actions to fight immigration of just about any sort prompted me to pick up this book and learn a little more about the immigration system. Even though this book was written in 2018, just 7 years ago, some parts of it felt hopelessly out of date thanks to Trump's relentless push against so many norms, rules, and laws in 2025 when it comes to immigration.  The basics are there, however, so the book does have value as a primer on immigration. But, the book is more than that - it is a Christian look at this issue because the authors work for World Relief , a Christian organization that works ...