DWD's Reviews

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2016 Read by Timothy Andres Pabon Duration: 10 hours, 9 minutes Unabridged In the year 2035 America is almost unrecognizable. Environmental collapse due the abuse of aquifers and mountain run-off in the West has caused the governments of many Western states to practically collapse. The highway systems have become "No Man's Land" and the Arizona border has practically been overrun by drug cartels who often act as a brutal de facto government in some areas. California has escaped this fate due to a strict resource protection regimen that limits travel, and strictly watches how much water and electricity each household consumes. The relationship between the strict (yet successful) government of California and the often ineffectual federal government is strained to the point that there is an open and active movement that is pushing for California to secede. Political assassinations and the sabotaging of a critical power plant make the pol

A Review of the Audiobook Published in 2013 by Dreamscape Media, LLC. Read by Adam Verner Duration: 9 hours, 18 minutes Unabridged Carter Ross is an excellent reporter in the newsroom of a slowly dying newspaper in Newark, New Jersey. When he hears of the death of a police officer, he immediately rushes to the family and convinces them to talk to him about the officer and the kind of life he lived. Ross is certain that he has the makings of a top-notch human interest story - the kind of story that he would be proud if the family saved it for the officer's tiny baby son to read someday. But, when Ross calls in the good news to his editor he is immediately waved off of the story because the Newark police are telling everyone that this officer killed himself after he got drunk on the job. But, that sounds fishy to Ross so he starts his own investigation into the case - and soon he finds that he has more suspects than he can possibly investigate... Brad Parks has a way of mak

Published by Stark Raven Press in 2017. Narrated by Charles Craig. Duration: 3 hours. Unabridged. Bass Clayton is a bounty killer, basically a paid assassin, in the Old West. He has had no qualms about doing this job - at least he didn't until he tried to kill Silver Grimes. He fired blindly into Grimes' cabin with a shotgun, wounding Grimes and splattering Grimes' girlfriend all over the bed. Clayton walks away from his bounty hunter gig and becomes the town drunk in a town called Rueful Regret. His plan to slowly drink himself into oblivion is going well until Grimes walks into the bar... I did not enjoy this audiobook. The book was full of too many folksy expressions and was surprisingly slow-paced considering that it was just a three hour audiobook. But, the worst aspect of the book was an overly detailed description of animal cruelty and bestiality that did nothing to advance the plot. All it did was provide a few minutes of padding in an already slow story

Originally published in 1996. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar presents a look at American history through a different lens than you usually see. This book follows from even before the arrival of Columbus through Rosa Parks receiving her just accolades in the 1990's. His underlying theme, as explained in the title, is that African-Americans have been contributing in important ways the entire time, but they are often "whitewashed" from history. Abdul-Jabbar is best known for his time as a top-level basketball player. But he is not just a jock (if you are a fan, you know he never was JUST a jock) - he is also an amateur historian and quite thoughtful. Clearly, he was inspired by the book Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy but this book is not structured in any way like that classic. The book starts with its weakest proposition from a historical perspective. There are historians that assert that African peoples were heavily involved in Mesoamerican history (Mayas, Aztecs, Olme

A Review of the Audiobook Winner of the 1957 Pulitzer Prize Originally Published in 1955 Published by HarperAudio Duration: 3 hours, 10 minutes Read by John F. Kennedy, Jr. Abridged President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) If you have not read Profiles in Courage , it is comprised of 8 short biographies of Senators that JFK found to be inspirational in some way or another. Those Senators are: John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston, Edmund G. Ross, Lucius Lamar, George Norris and Robert A. Taft. Each of these men's stories were very well done, even if some of them, like John Quincy Adams' biography, actually seemed very short compared to what these men actually accomplished. But, then again, this is just a look at one point in time, not a complete list of each man's accomplishments and an abridged version of that short look on top of that. This audiobook version of JFK's classic work is read by the President's son, John F.

Published in March of 2018 by Thomas and Mercer. Ian Ludlow is an author of action thrillers. He writes an over-the-top action series that makes James Bond look like a kindergartner and he's on a semi-successful book tour. But, he knows something wrong (besides the tour and his lame attempts to flirt with his tour handler) when a plane is remotely attacked during a terrorist attack in Hawaii. He knows how it was done because he dreamed it up years before when he was a part of a CIA-led author retreat. The purpose of the retreat was to have authors of thrillers think up "out of the box" terrorist ideas so that the CIA could have an idea of what they might be up against in the future. But, it turns out that it wasn't the CIA that hosted the retreat - it was a private group that wants the CIA's operations to be outsourced to them so they can make a fortune - and they are trying to kill off the only surviving author from the retreat - Ian Ludlow. Just to be clea