DWD's Reviews

  Published in 2020 by Random House Audio. Performed by multiple voice actors. Duration: 4 hours, 35 minutes. Unabridged. Set in the time between Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode IV) and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Episode V) , Doctor Aphra is the story of a rogue archaeologist who specializes in weapons of the past. It is based on a comic series. She doesn't collect them to stick them in a museum, she collects them to use them. She thinks an ancient weapon unused is a travesty, like an ancient symphony unplayed. So, she specializes in tracking down weapons that were locked away and hidden so no one could get their hands on them. Her other skill is modifying ships and droids to make them effective weapons. While Dr. Aphra is looking for the operating system of a murderous protocal droid (he hates "organics" and loves to torture), she is captured by Darth Vader. Vader doesn't care about the droid software, but he does want to use Dr. Aphra's skills to track

  Published in 2015 by Tantor Audio. Read by Joe Barrett. Duration: 8 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged. Garbology is the study of garbage. Archaeologists use garbology to learn all about ancient societies - what they ate, their tools, their clothing, their toys, their technology, etc. You can also apply garbology to modern garbage dumps and Humes uses this as an entrance to discussing all sorts of issues about our modern world and our problem with waste. Humes figures that the average American is on pace to create more than one hundred tons of garbage per person per lifetime. This is higher than the estimates you usually find because those estimates don't include the waste created on your behalf by manufacturers and service providers. The book starts out very strong with a look at how landfills and trash removal have evolved over time. Sounds boring but I found it to be very interesting. Later, he moved on to pollution, especially ocean pollution and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch -

  Published in 2021 by Grand Central Publishing. Read by the authors, Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar Duration: 5 hours, 21 minutes. Unabridged. Amber Ruffin is a writer for Seth Meyers' late night show and she has a show on the Peacock streaming service. I have never watched her show (nothing against her - I just can't keep up with all of the platforms out there) but I have run across video clips on social media. Ruffin's style is very quick and very clever. In this book, she doesn't get into sexual topics or anything that a lot of people would find objectionable. Except for the racism. There is a lot of racism. Just tons of it. Amber Ruffin (left) and Lacey Lamar (right) Lamar and Ruffin are sisters. They grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. And, they are African Americans. Ruffin moved away to New York City and has made a living in comedy. Lamar stayed in Omaha and has worked in health care.  The premise of the book comes from Lacey Lamar's habit of texting Ruffin when she r

  Published in 2020 by Random House Audio. Read by multiple readers (see text of review). Duration: 9 hours, 50 minutes. Unabridged. A leader in the tech industry has built a completely new type of housing development in rural Washington state.  They are designed to use as little energy as possible, recycle the human waste and run on solar panels. The community is small and isolated - just a few homes in order to lessen the overall environmental impact. If you are old enough to remember the Mt. St. Helen eruption in 1980, in this novel, the same thing happens to Mt. Ranier. This is a complete possibility in real life and it is generally believed that the consequences would be much, much worse with Mt. Ranier. When Ranier erupts, this community is completely isolated by the chaos that follows. The government is doing the best it can, but this is a full-blown crisis and a few missing people in the woods (even if they are rich and connected) can't compare to the floods, bridge failure

  Published by Random House Audio in 2011. Read by Dick Hill. Duration: 14 hours, 5 minutes. Unabridged Any fan of the Jack Reacher series knows that they are not written in chronological order. This one is set in Reacher's later years in the Army. He is a major and, as fans know, he is part of the military police. Chronologically, it is set directly before the events of The Killing Floor , the first Jack Reacher book that was published. Jack Reacher has been sent to Mississippi as part of a two man team to investigate a murder of a young woman that took place outside of a military base. It is presumed that the murderer was a soldier on base, maybe even the captain of a team of Rangers that have been shuttling in and out of Kosovo on secret missions as part of the Balkan civil war that followed the collapse of Yugoslavia. That is a problem because this captain is very connected politically. His father is a U.S. Senator that is on the committe that helps set the military budget.  Th

  Originally Published in 1960 by Louisiana State University Press. Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) Five Civil War historians were asked to present papers at the Annual Civil War Conference at Gettysburg College. While these were all experts on the Civil War, each had a slightly different topic to create a more well-rounded discussion.  The first essay, God and the Strongest Batallions by Richard N. Current, looks at economic factors that gave the North a decided advantage and how the North exploited them. It also looks at things the Confederacy failed to do to maximize their strengths. T. Harry Williams wrote the second essay. It is entitled The Military Leadership of North and South. Norman A. Graebner's essay Northern Diplomacy and European Neutrality  actually looks at both Northern and Southern diplomatic efforts. This one interested me because it took a hard and sustained look at the responses of the governments of Russia, Great Britain and France

  Published in 2021 by HarperAudio. Read by Vikas Adam. Duration:  8 hours, 32 minutes. Unabridged. Pounce is a top-level nannybot in an unspecified future time in the combined city of Dallas and Austin, Texas. The world is an unsettled place because robots like Pounce replaced people in all of the repetitive and unskilled jobs all over the world. But, those people didn't go anywhere, they are simply given a Universal Basic Income and left to live their lives without any sort of work. Some find productive ways to live their lives, some turn to drinking, drugs or even fringe political movements.  The author If you can imagine that Frosted Flakes' Tony the Tiger character as a robot, you get the idea behind Pounce. He was purchased to be the caregiver for an eight year old boy named Ezra.  Pounce works with Ezra's parents and the older housekeeper robot to help maintain a safe and supportive environment for Ezra. Pounce walks Ezra to and from school and is his constant compan