DWD's Reviews

A must for Indy 500 fans Part of a series of DVDs produced by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, this collection reviews all of the races from 1980-1989. The collection features original TV & radio commentary, sound and video and lots of interviews with the drivers and owners. Some of the interviews are from the 1980s and some are from nowadays looking back. 1988 Indy 500: all Penske front row (Mears, Sullivan, Big Al) Indianapolis 500: (The 80's) A decade for The Ages is more than mindless promotion of the race - the lowlights (1981 and the ridiculous court case that determined the winner) are exposed as well. Changes with racing technology is highlighted throughout. DVD features include collecting all of the bits and pieces of interviews with several drivers and some owners and adding a few bonus bits. Rick Mears, Roger Penske and Tom Sneva are especially strong interviews. Another nice feature is the inclusion of an uninterrupted highlight reel o

    A NASCAR legend deserves better Cale Yarborough's famed 28 car in the 1980s Published in 2008 by Triumph Books. Cale Yarborough is a living symbol of NASCAR from its beginnings to the very creation of the dizzying heights that it has achieved nowadays. Sadly, most of the Johnny-Come-Lately fans have no idea, or at best, only a very dim idea who he is. Sadly, this biography of Cale Yarborough, They Call Him Cale: The Life and Career of NASCAR Legend Cale Yarborough , only covers half of his career. Indeed, most of the book covers his life before NASCAR. There are only 203 pages in this biography and he joins NASCAR full-time on page 169. Considering that the last 11 pages discusses his retirement years, that leaves 23 pages to discuss his amazing run of 3 championships in a row, the famous fistfight at the 1979 Daytona 500, his decision to run a partial schedule for more than 7 years and his 11 year stint as team owner (just 5 pages for that). The book coul

A very short short story Dayle A. Dermatis' What Dragons Prefer is a Kindle "freebie"from Amazon.com, at least it is at the time of this review. If it were printed in book form it would be 5 pages or less, I am sure. The plot revolves around a "dragonseeker," a woman who was brought to a small town to deal with a dragon that lives nearby. The dragonseeker knows how to get rid of a dragon, if necessary, but her expertise is really knowing about dragons - how often they eat, what they eat and what they really like. The mayor of the town is a horrible, lecherous man and once his boorish ways get to be too much for the dragonseeker, she turns the tables. The story in and of itself is quite easy to read but it telegraphs its punch line early on. It's satisfying, but not overly so. I rate this story 3 stars out of 5. This short story can be found on Amazon.com here: What Dragons Prefer . Reviewed on July 29, 2011.

Funny story with a grisly ending. Read by the author, Stephen King Duration: 1 hour. Stephen King Read by Stephen King at a live performance in the UK, LT's Theory of Pets is an entertaining short story about a couple with two pets - a cat and a dog - and what the fact that family pets tend to actually prefer one member of the family over the others. LT is a friend of the narrator of the story - they work at the same packing plant in Iowa. LT's wife left him nearly a year before and LT has become quite adept at telling the story of how his wife left him and why she took their dog with her and left the cat with him. LT's telling of the story is quite funny. His wife's "Dear John" note she left him on the refrigerator the night she left him has to be the funniest Dear John note ever written. LT's observations about pets and married life are quite funny. The end of the story has a hurried feel to it. King prefaces the story with a short intr

While it does not feature any factual errors, you start to wonder... ...is this a book that you really had to be written? I know that the top-rated, best-selling history authors depend a lot on writers like W. Fred Conway in order to get the more popular, wider-audience histories written. Why? Because Conway is a fan of Indiana history and he has done a lot of research that people like James McPherson would never have time to do simply out of a love for his local area. This is one of the many books he has written about Indiana, Kentucky and/or Ohio and life along the Ohio River. Conway knows his stuff but... Boyhood of Lincoln by Eastman Johnson, 1868 Well, I am also a proud son of the Hoosier state and I found Young Abe Lincoln: His Teenage Years in Indiana to be more than a little pointless. The important facts could have been written in about 10 pages, maybe less. A little more than 5% of the book is the hopeful reminiscings of women that Lincoln may or may no

Reviewed by a history teacher seeking reading material for his classes I picked up No Promises in the Wind without much in the way of expectations since I am not that big of fan of Irene Hunt's most famous novel for the younger set, Across Five Aprils . However, I am pleased to say that this is a much better book. No Promises In The Wind is about two brothers who leave home during the Great Depression simply because there is not enough money at home to buy enough food to feed everyone. They head off from Chicago with no plan except to try to survive as best as they can. A soup line during the Great Depression As a teacher, what I like best about this book is its portrayal of the complete and utter economic collapse that the Great Depression entailed. Most students have no conception as to the breadth and depth of the Great Depression. By looking at this small family, readers gain an inkling as to what went on. Modern readers might question why this fami