DWD's Reviews

  Published by Tantor Audio in November of 2021. Read by David Marantz. Duration: 7 hours, 13 minutes. Unabridged. Saul Griffith makes a convincing argument that the clean energy future to prevent excessive global warming (No carbon) only comes from making everything, and I mean everything, electric (with the exception of air travel) - electric cars, electric boats, electric trains, electric heat pumps to heat homes, electric stoves, electric ovens, electric water heaters, and electric clothes dryers.  I mostly picked up this book as a reaction to the fact that so many people in my social media feed keep re-posting anti-electric car memes that they did not create. Someone is really pushing back hard against the concept. I saw this book and began to wonder if this concept were even possible. According to Griffith, it is very possible and with almost no "and then we come up with magic technology" moments baked into his plan. Based on what is already being done in Australia and

  Published by eChristian in November of 2021. Read by the author, John Pavlovitz Duration: 6 hours, 19 minutes Unabridged. John Pavlovitz is a minister who has done a lot of thinking about how Jesus told us to act and how formal "name brand" Christianity often acts to those that it deems as "less". We all know that thinking of people as "less" is not really a thing Christ endorses, but it is still an all too often sad reality. Who are the less that have been in the news lately? Immigrants, LGTBQ people, Muslims...and more.  Pavlovitz asks: "If God is love and if you're emulating that God, then you should be loving. If you claim a religious worldview or have spiritual aspirations, those should yield more compassion, not less; more decency, not less; more generosity, not less. If not, what's the point of having them?" Great question. What's the point? I've had these thoughts more than once in the last 6 years, coinciding with the c

  Published in November of 2021 by Penguin Audio. Read by the author, Jonathan Karl. Duration: 10 hours, 32 minutes. Unabridged. In 2020, ABC White House reporter Jonathan Karl wrote a book about his experiences covering Donald Trump's run for President in 2016 and the first three years of his Presidency. It is called Front Row at the Trump Show . Karl follows up with this book of the last year of the Trump Administration and the first few months of his post-Presidency.  Karl meticulously names his sources and plays actual audio tracks as he tells this sordid story of misinformation, deceit, outright lies and a botched attack on the Capitol building in an attempt to thwart the results of an election. If the previous paragraph upsets you and you think it is full of lies then you do not want to read this book unless you enjoy being upset.  If that paragraph sounds about right to you, I highly recommend this book as a primer to what you are likely to hear from the January 6 Commission

  Published in November of 2021 by Random House Audio. Multicast Performance Duration: 18 hours, 57 minutes. Unabridged. I have developed a new hobby as of late - I read books that politicians tell people they should not read. The former governor of Indiana (and later the President of Purdue University) tried to prohibit Indiana University (or anyone else) to use a well-known history book to teach anyone anywhere. I read it. The Lt. Governor of Texas cancelled a book reading about the Alamo because it was not a hero worship book. There's a politician in Texas that  posted a list of 850 books  that he wants to ban across the state that has provided a lot of potential reading.  But, in the last couple of years nothing, absolutely nothing, has compared to the  1619 Project and the controversy it has generated. If you have not heard of the original 1619 Project , you have not been paying attention to America's culture wars. President Trump hated it so much he created a commission

  Originally published in 1927. Winner of the 1928 Pulitzer Prize. This book has been on my To-Be-Read list since I was in high school. One of my English teachers back in high school used to talk about this book quite a lot and I finally got around to reading it. Synopsis: The setting is Peru, back when Spain held it as a colony. Outside of Lima in the Andes Mountains there is a magnificent rope bridge for pedestrians. Baggage and animals take a long trail they take down to the river below and they cross a traditional bridge that takes a lot longer. One day the rope bridge breaks and several people fall to their deaths.  A monk is approaching the rope bridge and sees it break and everyone fall to their deaths. He decides to investigate the lives of each person who fell. He wants to see if there is something in common - perhaps they were all adulterers or thieves or the like? What follows are elaborate character sketches for each of the victims all ending with them walking across the br

  Published in 2007. Heather Cox Richardson is a historian I have only recently discovered because of her prolific social media presence that she developed while under Covid lockdown. She writes a daily news summary of a few paragraphs with a view towards how these events match up with historical events or trends. Plus, she takes questions from people and develops a one hour daily online lecture. They are interesting, sometimes rambling little presentations and this book shares a lot of the same features.  Teddy Roosevelt (center with glasses) and the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War Richardson is looking at the time right after the Civil War in American History.  In the history books, Reconstruction, the Old West, the Gilded Age and the Spanish-American War are all treated a separate things. Combining all of these typical divisions of American history into one book makes for a more comprehensive study of the time period.  Traditionally, they are studied separately - in a typic

  Published in 2016. This little biography is part of an extensive series of short histories produced by Hourly History. The idea is to be a history or a biography that you can read in an hour. Amazon says that his particular biography is the equivalent to 48 pages long.  Some historians have asserted that there are more biographies written about Lincoln than anyone else in history, with the exception of Jesus. This is the 73rd book that I've reviewed that with the #tag of "Abraham Lincoln." What does this book have to offer that literally thousands of biographies and histories haven't already covered? To be honest - nothing. But, it is exactly the sort of biography that someone who hates history might pick to read because it is not an intimidating length and it is not written in highfalutin language.  There is nothing in this biography that is inaccurate, just a matter of what the Hourly History people decided to highlight and emphasize. I rate this kindle book 3 sta