DWD's Reviews

Read by David Ackroyd Duration: 3 hours, 5 minutes (abridged) Strengths: When Elephants Weep is full of moving anecdotes concerning animals and the possibility of them having emotions. It is a pleasant listen and usually not "over the top" in its preachiness. It was well read by narrator David Ackroyd. The authors make a compelling, if not scientifically rigorous argument for animal emotions. Weaknesses: The authors are continually preaching against scientists who do not believe that animals have emotions and may even doubt that animals can even feel pain. However, they rarely point out the scientists or the studies that espouse this view. It felt like a straw man argument after a while. They also fail to cite any work that backs their claims besides convincing rhetoric. In the end, it was a convincing, mostly entertaining book that was a lot more entertaining and pleasant than a PETA brochure, but without much more actual content than such a brochu

A wonderful introduction to Kahlo (a review of the English translation) Frida Kahlo with Diego Rivera in 1932 If you saw the Selma Hayek movie on the life of Frida Kahlo and want to know a bit more, this book is a wonderful introduction to her professional life. In fact, the movie and this book complement one another quite nicely, since the movie tended to focus on her personal life. Andrea Kettenmann's book follows the life of Kahlo and does a great job of explaining the symbolism of Kahlo's work as it pertained to her personal life, her health setbacks and her political beliefs. In my opinoin, the intensely personal nature of her work is what makes her such a compelling artist. She was especially good at depicting her pain, both psychic and physical. This book goes a long way to explaining many of her works. There are 93 illustrations in this book and most of them are of her paintings. Also includes a couple of photographs of Diego Rivera's works that i

Strong history, only limited by the fact that the book itself is practically an antique At the time of this review, this book is 41 years old. It was published in 1966 by Time-Life books as part of a series of books entitled "The Great Ages of Man." Of course, several of the photos of contemporary Africa are now hopelessly outdated (but you can choose to look at the book itself as a piece of history and look at those pictures as photographic evidence of historical Africa) and any references to contemporary Africa are not accurate - no mention of any of the tragedies that continent has witnessed over the last 25 years - starvation, genocide, AIDS, etc. Fortunately, those references are few and far between. Mostly this is a well-written, accessible history that taught me more than the half-dozen or so textbooks that I read in college as part of my coursework. Its greatest strength is in detailing the civilizations that were built from roughly 1000-1600 AD in West Afri

Confederate Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan Nice history of Indiana's "moment" in the Civil War Published in 1993 by TaylorMade WRITE From July 8-13, 1863, Indiana became the focus of attention in the Civil War. Despite the massive losses incurred by the Confederacy from the surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863 and the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1-3, the Confederacy still had enough life to mount an invasion into the North (albeit small) and it caused a first-rate scare throughout the Midwest. "With Bowie Knives and Pistols": Morgan's Raid in Indiana is a good, detailed history of the Indiana portion of the raid (it continued on into Ohio). Taylor starts with a short general biography of Morgan and his famed cavalry unit. Taylor also describes the situation in the Kentucky theater of war and explains the logic behind Morgan's raid and why he went against his orders to carry the war into Indiana and Ohio. What could be a tedious read

Poor detective story, mostly the story of a romance between two high school kids Published by HarperAudio in 2012. Read by Mitchell Greenberg. Duration: approximately 12 hours.  This is the 20th book in Faye Kellerman's long-running Decker/Lazarus series, featuring police detective Peter Decker and his wife Rina Lazarus. Peter and Rina are serving as foster parents for Gabriel Donatti, a boy with parents who are estranged from him and one another. His father is a mobster and his mother is out of the country starting a new life. A great deal of the book follows Gabe, although there is a mystery for Peter Decker to solve. It involves a suicide by a student from a local, very expensive private school. The case seems fishy to Decker as he and his team uncover nebulous links to a group of bullies from the elite school who like to pretend they are gangsters, carry weapons and intimidate teens in and out of their school. Unbelievably, these same kids get involved with Gabe and h

Many hated it but I think it may be Crichton's best book Published in 2006 by HarperCollins Michael Crichton (1942-2008) I have not read all of Michael Crichton's books but I have come close. His best books are generally warnings about the dangers of science without the guidance of ethics: Just because you can do something - does that mean you should do it?  Next delivers that theme in spades. It is all about genetic manipulation - not just genetically modified corn or houseflies. No, Crichton is talking about genetically modifying people to eliminate certain behaviors and even splicing human DNA into animals. The book comes at the reader in a kinetic mish-mash of bits of plot from several plotlines, news headlines and news articles. This mess finally coalesces into a real story about halfway through the book and I assumed that Crichton's writing had deteriorated when he wrote this thing and he was just not able to juggle it all. Then, I got it. This