DWD's Reviews

This must be THE definitive book on John Singleton Mosby John Singleton Mosby (1833-1916) James A. Ramage has written what must be THE definitive book on the life of John Singleton Mosby, Gray Ghost: The Life of Col. John Singleton Mosby . I cannot imagine a more thoroughly written book on the topic. Ramage discusses his family history, his childhood and more. Of course, the largest amount is written about his service in the Civil War as a partisan ranger that terrorized the Union troops arrayed against Robert E. Lee. Ramage is definitely a fan of Mosby, but he refuses to get involved in the hype that Mosby and his contemporaries sometimes engaged in concerning how effective Mosby's men were. Ramage agrees that Mosby was cost-effective, meaning that his small groups of men - usually around 120 or so - would tie down thousands of Union soldiers, but disagrees with Mosby himself that he tied down tens of thousands. The real strength of this biography is that R

Caleb Carr's plodding plot mars mystery Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) as an NYC Police Commissioner This is the second Caleb Carr book I've read and it will be the last. Carr follows Charles Dickens in the time period of the book and in the tradition of using 100 words to say what 15 could have said. The plot of The Alienist is painfully slow to develop. Carr sacrifices reader interest for the sake of creating mood. He succeeds in doing both - mood is created and I nearly lost interest. I forced my self to move on, suck it up and finish and I was rewarded with a decent last 100 pages or so. But, the payoff was not early enough for all the build-up. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this book to anyone except for the most hardcore fans of mystery, New York City and/or Teddy Roosevelt who puts in an appearance as the Superintendent of the Board of Police Commissioners of New York City. That job title was soon after changed to Chief of Police. He held t

Rings true to this classroom teacher Daniel J. Kindlon As a classroom teacher that first came into the profession at the height of the Reviving Ophelia type of research done by Mary Pipher. I have participated in classes, seminars and training sessions about how girls are being short-changed in the classroom and in our culture. It was not until I ran across some research I was doing in my Master's Degree program some 15 years later that my eyes were opened to a new possibility: the girls are, on the whole, doing just fine. The boys, on the other hand, are falling by the wayside in heart-cringing numbers. Go to any public school and you can just about guarantee that 7 or more of the top ten will be girls. Look at the special education numbers and 7 out of 10 will be boys. Dan Kindlon 's Alpha Girls: Understanding the New American Girl and How She Is Changing the World does not address what is going on with boys, but it does look at a relatively new phenom

Pretty good sci-fi movie I am not much of an anime fan, but I do like a good sci-fi show and Vexille was pretty good. The animation of everything that was non-human was fantastic (in my newbie-to-anime eyes). The metallic structures were perfect. The sunsets, explosions, splatters, etc. were wonderfully done. The human faces (and to some extent, the body movements) were not as good - but that is understandable. We humans spend so much time actively looking at faces and body language as compared to cars, sunsets and explosions, that the art cannot stand up to that type of detail. Anyway, the story is pretty strong, although you need to pay attention. Japan has sealed itself off from the world because the rest of the world has decided that cyborg technology is a danger to the human race. Japan has embraced this technology, however. The story is interesting, but sometimes they over-narrate and sometimes there's not enough narration. I got a bit confused when due to the

Over-testosteronized. First things first. I am a fan of good action stories. David Morrell - great. Robert Parker - Very good. This book. Ugh. It's as though John Clarkson sat down after watching an A-Team marathon and decided what he needed in order to write this book was a little more cartoonish violence, a lot more sex, long descriptions of S&M sessions and a James Bond girl. One Man's Law was too much for me. I can't tell you how many cars exploded from being shot in the gas tanks. The lead female character is aloof and built like a fashion model. Don't worry - Devlin will get in her pants over and over again! The bad guys have hundreds of guns an unlimited supply of money and some are even trained killers. Don't worry - Devlin and his Samoan-stereotype sidekick will just run fast, kick and punch harder and shoot accurately on the run while hundreds of bullets zing harmlessly by (if Devlin does get hit, it will only be a flesh wound and

Looks at both sides of the Atomic Bombing debate Hiroshima: Fifty Years of Debate is intended for middle and high school students. It is designed to give them both sides of the debate over whether or not the United States should have dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. It offers a short re-cap over the issues involved, including a short synposis of the war. It includes fairly comprehensive arguments from both sides and shows pictures of the results of the bombings. I would have only added one thing to the arguments: the United States was unwilling to trust its intelligence estimates of Japan's ability to continue the war since it had bungled on the German front the year before and nearly lost everything in the Battle of the Bulge (there were 75,000 American casualties) - a battle that was considered impossible by Allied intelligence since the German's were supposed to be close to surrender by that point. I will