DWD's Reviews

Originally published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 1998. Read by Cotter Smith. Duration: 4 hours, 20 minutes. Abridged. General Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (1890-1969) I don't know how many books historian Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002) wrote about the D-Day Invasion, but they all a little different and they are all quite enjoyable to read. Ambrose is perhaps most famous for writing the history that inspired HBO's excellent  Band of Brothers , which was also based on the same theme. Ambrose had a gift for writing histories that were informative, entertaining and, at times, quite moving and this one was no exception. The focus was on the D-Day invasion, the immediate aftermath, the Battle of the Bulge and the final push into Germany. There is no discussion of how the war started and little of how it ended, but almost everyone who would read this book knows all of that anyway. The audiobook was read by Cotter Smith who did a nice job. I rate this audiobook 4

Originally Published in 1993. A lonely gentle giant named Max and his tiny Kevin, nicknamed "Freak", become neighbors and eventually the best of friends in this "coming of age" story. Max lives in the basement of his grandparents' house. His grandparents are raising him because his father, Killer Kane, killed his mother. Other kids taunt Max because of this. Max just goes through the motions at school. One day, Max meets Kevin (Freak). Kevin has Morquio Syndrome which has caused him to be very small. But, Kevin is also very bright and very willing to engage the world. Max, despite his large size, would prefer to be ignored by everyone. Kevin begins taking Max on so-called quests - basically they are exploring the neighborhood but Kevin makes them sound so much more interesting once he describes these trips in his own imaginative style. Max carries Freak on his shoulders as they travel, an arrangement that works out well for both of them. Freak can travel mor

                   I tried. I really did. Published in 2017 by Tantor Audio. Read by Johnny Heller and Jo Anna Perrin. Duration: 8 hours, 58 minutes. Benito Juarez (1806-1872) Unabridged. The premise of this book is interesting. The idea is to place the American Civil War in the context of the currents of the politics of the larger world of the time in order to show how the war changed the politics of other areas (prime examples are the Dominican Republic and Mexico - both were invaded by European powers while the United States was unable to enforce the Monroe Doctrine) and how those outside political forces influenced the Civil War. One of the stated goals is that teachers read this book and try to bring these insights to their students in the classroom. Don H. Doyle is the editor of this book. I think that it more accurate to say that he "collected" a series of essays by experts in non-American history that focused on how the Civil War affected their regions. I wi

Published by Random House Audio in 2013. Read by the author, Bill Bryson. Duration: 17 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. Boxing champ Jack Dempsey (1895-1983) Bill Bryson's  One Summer: America, 1927  is an immensely interesting book, as would any book that featured Charles Lindbergh, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Sacco and Vanzetti, Jack Dempsey, Gutzon Borglum, Charles Ponzi, Al Capone, Al Jolson, Zane Grey, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Henry Ford, several Hollywood stars and more. The book starts out with the story of Charles Lindbergh and the other flyers that were attempting to cross the Atlantic in a non-stop flight to claim the $25,000 Orteig Prize. Bryson moves on to tell the stories of the other people I named above - often cleverly lacing them together with the story of Charles Lindbergh. We learn about baseball, boxing, Hollywood (there's a hilarious story about Jack Dempsey with a starlet), the beginnings of "talkies" and the mov

To be released on August 21, 2018 in the United States by Dey Street Books. Kate Harris and her childhood friend Mel decided to go on a bicycle adventure that approximates Marco Polo's trip along the Silk Road from Turkey to China. This is not a trip taken on a whim. Harris has read about explorers and dreamed about being an explorer all of her life. She's a scientist by training but she can't stand to be in a lab - she has to get out and see the world. Actually, she started out wanting to go to Mars and actually went so far as to participate in a Mars simulation complete with spacesuits out in the Utah desert.  The simulation told her one important thing - being in a space suit denied her the tactile experience of exploration such as the wind in your hair and the smells. So, rather than Mars, she decides to go to one of the most remote areas of the world, for a couple of Canadians - Central Asia. It has vast deserts, literally the tallest mountains in the world and ar

Published by Macmillan Audio in 2017. Read by Xe Sands. Duration: 5 hours, 24 minutes. Unabridged. The author. Tali Sharot has written an interesting little book about our brains and the way they work. Clearly, she is an expert with a PhD in psychology and neuroscience, but she has that rare talent of being able to make the complicated seem pretty basic using real life examples. If you've ever had an online argument, you know the frustration of doing research to show your opponent that they are clearly wrong, only to have them completely ignore the facts. I recently had this experience with a friend that posted a story about a single truck stop in a nationwide chain that had stopped flying the American flag. The "reporter" asked a cashier why the flag was not out and he said it was because they didn't want to offend drivers from Mexico. Boom! Big story, right? It turns out that their oversized flag pole's mechanism for raising and lowering the flag was