DWD's Reviews

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in July of 2019. Read by Kristin Millward. Duration: 7 hours, 15 minutes. Unabridged. Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, a Norwegian ecologist, specializing in insects, has written an interesting, often funny and thought-provoking introduction to the world of insects. She gives the reader lots of interesting trivia, such as the story of male bugs that die at the climactic moment of mating due to their genitals exploding. She also tells of plants that trick dung beetles into planting their stinky seeds for them, the importance of wood beetles to keeping soil nitrogen-rich and the super-long (and boring) lives of the 17-year cicada. None of these insects gets an in-depth look because this book is an introduction because you can't seriously expect any book to cover the hundreds of thousands of species of insects in any sort of depth She looks at how insects could be helpful in the fight against pollution and could be managed to help limit the use of pe

Published in 2018 by Tor. In this near-future sci-fi novel, a horrible disease called Haden's Syndrome has struck, leaving many people stuck in bodies that simply won't obey the commands of their brains. The response was a technological blitz that created an online world for these people (called Hedens) accessed by a technological interface. Later, these interfaces were used to control androids called "threeps" to walk around in the real world. They can actually feel what the android feels. And, someone figured out how to turn this into a sporting event. Two teams of threeps carrying medieval weapons line up on a football field. On each team one person is "it". The other team is supposed to go after the threep who is it, bash or cut his/her head off, pick it up and get it to the end zone for a score. It has all of the violence with none of the real world consequences because the threep pilot cannot be hurt by this. Until one of the threep pilots dies, tha

Performed by a multicast. Duration: 5 hours, 35 minutes. Unabridged. Set in the days after the conclusion of the superhero Civil War , this book deals with the aftermath of the assassination of Steve Rogers (aka Captain America) on his way to a courthouse to face a judge for not complying with a superhero registration policy. If you are only familiar with the Marvel movie Captain America: Civil War, this movie will be confusing. The movie is inspired by this comic book series, but does not follow it. The superhero world (and the regular people, too) is mourning the murder of Captain America. In particular, Bucky Barnes (aka The Winter Soldier) is on the hunt for the killer. He is not alone. Falcon, Black Widow, Nick Fury and Sharon Carter are also looking. Turns out that even though Captain America is gone, many of his oldest enemies are still on the prowl... I really enjoyed Civil War , but the follow up was just so-so. The big plot from the bad guys was unnecessarily complicated an

Published in 2018 by Simon and Schuster Audio Read by Beau Bridges. David Morse, Richard Thomas, Jay O. Sanders and the author. Duration: 18 hours, 5 minutes. The author, Doris Kearns Goodwin Unabridged. Doris Kearns Goodwin often is labeled with the title "presidential historian" and, really, that is a pretty accurate term for her. As a young historian, she worked personally with Lyndon Johnson on his presidential memoirs. She has written about both Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Her book Team of Rivals is a modern classic and has redefined the popular image of the Lincoln administration. In this book, she looks at various qualities of leadership that each of these very different men exhibited. She begins with interesting pre-presidential biographies of each of these men. She focuses on Lincoln's expressed desire to become a person that was worthy of the esteem of his community. Theodore Roosevelt's ceaseless energy and desire to experien

Published by Indiana University Press in 2000. Russell F. Weigley (1930-2004) was a professor of military history at Temple University for 36 years. He wrote a whole bookshelf full of military histories, but only one book that focused exclusively on the Civil War (however, he was working on a multi-volume study of Gettysburg when he passed away).  This is an excellent single volume history of the Civil War saddled with an unfortunate piece of art done in American primitive style that makes it look like it was illustrated by the author's elementary school-aged great-grandchild. I know you aren't supposed to judge a book by its cover, but this cover makes the book look like a children's book. This is far from a children's book.  No more than a page or two is spent on the issues that brought on the war and no more than a page is spent of Reconstruction, but t his is a Civil War history for people who have read a lot of Civil War histories. It tells the same story as

Published in 2010 by Random House Audio. Read by Dick Hill. Duration: 13 hours, 45 minutes. Unabridged. Fresh off of the action in 61 Hours , Jack Reacher is hitching his way to Virginia. He is nursing his injuries from that adventure and has made it from South Dakota to a lonely hotel in rural Nebraska. When he is drinking coffee at the hotel bar the local drunk gets a call at the bar. Turns out he's also the local doctor and Reacher shames him into going to treat the woman who called to ask him to treat a bloody nose that won't stop bleeding. Reacher suspects she's a victim of spousal abuse and it turns out he's correct. The doctor has been told not to treat her by her husband's family. They rule the area with an iron fist and maintain a crew of 10 former Nebraska Cornhusker college football players to make sure no one steps out of line. Reacher steps out of line, though. He tracks down the abused woman's husband, takes out his bodyguard, breaks the husband