DWD's Reviews

Published in 2009 by Hachette Audio. Read by Peter Giles. Duration: 11 hours, 15 minutes. Unabridged. The author, Michael Connelly The Scarecrow is a sequel to one of Michael Connelly's earliest books - 1996's The Poet.  In The Poet, newspaper reporter and FBI agent Rachel Walling solve a murder mystery and defeat a serial killer. Since that time, McEvoy wrote a book about his experiences, moved from Colorado and took a job with the LA Times . Now, 12 years later, he is being let go as the Times is going through a round of lay-offs. He has been given two weeks notice and told to train his younger replacement on the crime beat. Meanwhile, a parent calls to complain to McEvoy about an article he wrote saying that her teenaged child had killed a woman and stuffed her body in the trunk of a car. McEvoy decides to look into the case and he and his reporter-in-training uncover some interesting facts that make it clear that the boy didn't do it. Instead, McEvoy is on the

Published in 2013. If you were a kid in central Indiana in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's you knew the local kid's TV show stars of Channel 4: Janie, Cowboy Bob, and Peggy. If your parents let you stay up late to watch scary movies, you also know Sammy Terry and his evil laugh. This book tells the story of how these characters came to be, why the television landscape favored these types of shows at the time and why they are no longer around nowadays. Getting to know a little about each of the actual people behind the TV characters was a lot of fun. Sammy Terry - an all-around TV guy and the owner of a music store. Janie - an elementary school teacher. Cowboy Bob - a musician and a TV cameraman who got a big break. Besides the big names, the book also tells about Brian (Jerry) Reynolds who started at WTTV while he was still in high school and soon enough was writing and producing for the various live action shows on WTTV. It was a small station and everyone had mu

Published in January of 2016 by HarperAudio. Read by Tristan Morris. Duration: 10 hours, 42 minutes. Unabridged. Stephen Prothero takes a look at American history through the lens of "culture wars". Culture wars, for Prothero, are more than the typical left-right discussion  - they are a left-right discussion with serious religious overtones. Prothero's thesis is that the major debates in American history have been those types of debates. He looks at 5 areas: 1) The fight over who would run the country after George Washington - the John Adams (1735-1826) inheritors of the Calvinistic Puritans (John Adams) or those with a vaguely defined faith (Thomas Jefferson); 2) Catholics vs. Protestants; 3) Everyone vs. Mormons; 4) Fundamentalism vs. Modernism as commonly typified by the Scopes Monkey Trial (which only gets a passing mention in this book); 5) Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority types vs. abortion, gay marriage, the Equal Rights Amendment and more. While h

Originally published in 1984 by The Free Press. Note: This is a review of the original version of this book, published in 1984 and ending with the first Reagan administration. It has been expanded and updated to include events up to 2012. Soldiers in the Korean War in 1950. Way back in my undergrad days at Indiana University I took a class called American Military History . It was taught by a visiting professor from West Point and this book was an excellent choice for the text for the class. For 30+ years I have carried this book around with me - through 5 different moves and who knows how many book shelves this book was the anchor of my history section because it is quite beefy. But, I decided it was time to clear out some books. Technically, this book was a re-read but I didn't really remember anything from all of those years ago so... The book starts with colonial defense and moves along with the same format up through the early 1980's. There is a chapter about a

Published in 2014 by Hachette Audio. Read by Len Cariou. Duration: 50 minutes. Unabridged. This short story was the closest thing to a straight out police procedural that I have read from Michael Connelly. By that, I mean that although Harry Bosch is the main character in this story, it really is just the story of how a police officer reviews a cold case and figures out who the bad guy is based on one new clue. Any police officer could have been the main character because Harry Bosch was just sort of along for the ride. Len Cariou read the book. Cariou used to read a lot of Connelly's books. Now The narrator, Len Cariou, at the dinner table on his TV show. Cariou is best known as the grandfather on the TV show Blue Bloods and I kept imagining that he was reading it to me at the dinner table from the TV show, which kind of ruined the mood of the story (not that it was much of a story). I rate this short story 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Switchblade

Published in 2006 by Tantor Media. Read by Grover Gardner. Duration: 10 hours, 10 minutes. Unabridged. Winston Groom, best known as the author of Forrest Gump , is also a historian of sorts. He has written 14 non-fiction books, using his research skills he honed as a journalist to investigate a historical topic. In this case, the topic is the Battle of New Orleans. Most people know everything they know about the battle from the catchy Johnny Horton song: I n 1814 we took a little trip,  Along with Colonel Jackson down the might Mississip We took a little bacon and we took a little beans And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans. I knew a little bit more, having read a little about the battle. I didn't know much, however, not really being a fan of the War of 1812 or Andrew Jackson. But, I am a fan of Winston Groom so I decided to give it a try. Groom is skilled at telling a narrative history and at the end, I had a much better idea of how the Battle of New Orl