DWD's Reviews

   Libertarians and Conservatives - Natural Allies, Natural Rivals Published in 2015 by Crown Forum Charles C. W. Cooke is a writer for National Review  and as such he has been in the center of a storm as the political Right works through a new generation of thought on a variety of issues. In some issues, the political Right is united, such as on the concept of Limited Government and keeping taxes as low as possible. Ron Paul Generally speaking, Libertarians bond more readily with the Right than the Left, which is why Ron Paul identified as a Libertarian for years yet caucused with the Republicans in the Congress and ran for president as a Republican. The dislike of the Nanny State on many issues pushes them together as temporary allies on many issues. But, on other issues such as the War on Drugs and Gay Marriage the Right is split and split deeply. Cooke is attempting to nudge the Republicans a little more to the Libertarian point of view on things so that these temporar

Published in in 2009 by MacMillan Audio Read by William Dufris, Callista Gingrich and Eric Conger Duration: 12 hours, 23 minutes Unabridged To Try Men's Souls is a powerful piece of historical fiction that focuses on three men in the American army at its lowest point in the Revolutionary War - right before the famed surprise attack on the Hessians at Trenton. The story follows three men - one is a New Jersey private with family on both sides of the war, the other two are George Washington and Thomas Paine. The book is fairly complicated in its structure with lots of flashbacks and intertwining story lines. Through George Washington the reader learns the long sad story of the shrinking American Army's numerous retreats throughout the summer and fall of 1776 and how Washington gambled it all on a surprise raid to raise American morale. Thomas Paine's character was a bit more complicated. These are the months just after the success of his tract Common Sense  that

Published by Hachette Audio in November of 2014 Read by Titus Welliver Duration: 10 hours, 11 minutes Unabridged In a book that feels like the beginning of the end to the long, productive career of LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, Bosch and his new partner work on two different cold cases. One case is unique in that the murder victim just died but the shot that killed him was fired years before - the injury finally overwhelmed him.  The second case is personal to Bosch's new partner, Lucia "Lucy" Soto. As a child, she was in a day care that was operated in the basement of an apartment building when someone set fire to the garbage in another part of the basement with a Molotov cocktail sort of device. The resulting fire killed a number of the children and their teacher. Since Soto has such a personal stake in this case she should preclude herself from it - but Bosch works it so that they can re-open the case as part of another case. Michael Connelly. Photo by Mark

Published in 2012 by BBC Audiobooks Ltd. Read by Frances Barber Duration: 1 hour, 13 minutes Unabridged Two physicists are working in a secret lab in a massive space station that literally encircles a planet. Their secret project is kept hidden from everyone - even the power to run it is taken siphoned away from dozens of other locations on the space station. Down below, a unique planet is being studied. In the lab, a a stable wormhole is being perfected. As the wormhole stabilizes, the TARDIS arrives right in the middle of it all. The Doctor (Matt Smith's Doctor) doesn't know where they are at first and he certainly doesn't know why he is there. Once they start to figure things out they discover that things are weirder than they even imagined... Frances Barber was picked to read this audiobook. The producers tried to tie a little Doctor Who authenticity to the book by picking a Doctor Who alum to read the book. Barber played Madame Kovarian - the Eye Patch Wom

Originally published in March of 2014. Installment #13 in the Joe Pickett series left us wondering what Joe would do with himself and how the series could continue. Joe had just quit his job as a Wyoming game warden due to his absolute disgust with a case of government abusing its power and causing an innocent man to be pushed beyond his breaking point. But, what would Joe Pickett do if he wasn't a game warden? As a practical matter, how would the series even continue? It's not like Joe Pickett and Nate Romanowski could open up a private detective service in rural Wyoming. So, Joe is back to what he was doing a few books ago - he has been restored as a game warden again but he is working for the governor as a "troubleshooter." He is the governor's one man personal police force, but the governor hasn't called on him for anything...until now. The governor wants him to discretely look into a mysterious out-of-state man who has moved into north-easte

Published on July 7, 2015 by Jubilo In many ways, the fight over whether Kansas would be a slave state or a free state was the first fighting of the Civil War.  In a shortsighted move, the Congress of the United States decided to let the Kansas Territory decide for itself if it wanted to be a slave or a free state. It was shortsighted because it put off a festering political problem and let it be decided in a far away territory with little thought to what would happen in that territory. Immediately, this became a real-life struggle, the physical embodiment of the arguments taking place across the country about slavery and its future. Slave states rightly determined that they needed to bring Kansas in as a slave state and they immediately sent financial backing to support pro-slavery settlers and pro-slavery men from neighboring Missouri who would cross the border and illegally vote in the election. Abolitionists sent settlers, financial aid and weapons to counter. Soon enough,

Audiobook Edition Published in 2009 by Tantor Audio Published in hardback in 2006. Read by John Allen Nelson Duration: 11 hours, 13 minutes Unabridged The massacre at Fort Pillow truly stands out in a bloody Civil War in which hundreds of thousands of men and women died. Even though the American Civil War had so many casualties, the war itself was remarkable in that the two sides were often quite civil with one another off of the battlefield. There are numerous stories of local truces to trade coffee for tobacco and the like. My favorite is the story of Confederate and Union pickets (perimeter guards) who co-built a cabin in stages during the winter and agreed to share it in shifts as the day went along. Prisoners of War were generally cared for (there were exceptions, but they stick out as exceptions), the enemy wounded were treated by the doctors (the care was bad, but the best that was available), and so on. Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877) The battle at Fort Pillo

  If you like the Mission Impossible movies, you'll like The Demeter Code Normally, I don't review two books at the same time. But, the author of this series sent me both books together, explaining that they are closely tied. From what I have read in other reviews, Unsavory Delicacies (really, it is a 30 page collection of short stories) served as sort of a bridge between books 1 and 3.Personally, I think you should just jump into book three, The Demeter Code . I felt no better informed about what was going on at the beginning of Book 3 than I would have if hadn't read 2. So, if you just jump into book three be prepared for a little confusion, much like at the beginning of the first Mission Impossible movie. In fact, this book reminded me quite a bit of that series due its fast-pace, dramatic action scenes and the emphasis on working as a team and trusting the team over everything else. The real action starts out with an American operation in Europe going bad, res

    If you are not a parent, you will probably not get much out of this book Published in 2011. Familyhood is Paul Reiser's follow-up to 1994's Couplehood ,   and 1997's Babyhood . Reiser is best-known for his television show Mad About You. If you have children you will certainly understand the big gap between the publication of Babyhood and Familyhood - life with children consumes your time. And, Paul is more than just happy about that fact, he is thrilled with it.  Paul Reiser. Photo by  Thomas Atilla Lewis When he wrote this book he his two sons were ten and fifteen years old. I just read it and my two daughters are nine and fifteen years old. So much of this book rang true to me, especially his discussion on page 24 about how hard it is to just sit down and have time to talk with his wife. He writes, "This may seem to be a mighty meager aspiration - to simply talk to the person with whom you have committed to share your life - but I assure you it i

Published in October of 2014 by Simon and Schuster Read by the author, Gillian Anderson Duration: 9 hours, 34 minutes Unabridged A Vision of Fire is a mix of political thriller with sci-fi and a heavy dose of the occult thrown in as well. The book starts out with top-level negotiations taking place at the United Nations between India and Pakistan over the disputed region of Kashmir. Both countries are nuclear powers and both countries are sending troops to the border. An Indian ambassador is trusted by both sides and he is trying to broker a peace between them before a nuclear war starts. But, after dropping off his daughter Maanik at her school mysterious assassins make an unsuccessful attempt on his life. He reassures his daughter that he is fine and proceeds to the negotiating table. But, his daughter starts to have some sort of break down and starts clawing at her arms.  She is rushed home and heavily sedated because she is hurting herself. The translator for the ambas

Published in 2015 Michael Putzel has written a sort of unit history of C Troop 2/17th Cavalry 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam, also known as the Condors. The tales of combat in Vietnam and Laos are exceedingly well-told, riveting and harrowing. They tell of bravery, loyalty and loss and gave me a picture of a part of the war that I really knew very little about before. But, as good as those stories are, the real strength of the story is the story about what comes after the war. The title, The Price They Paid , is more than just story of who was injured and who died in the war. Certainly, they paid the highest price. But, the men who were injured, the men who lost their friends, even the men who went through unscathed - those men who survived to go home also paid a price and that is what I found most compelling. The book focuses on Jim Newman, a  man who started as a private in the army, worked his way to becoming an officer. In Vietnam he led his men in the Air Cavalry (

Published in 2015 by HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books in May of 2015. Multicast performance Duration: 2 hours, 20 minutes Unabridged In a lot of ways the first story in this 30 story collection typifies the entire collection. It is called "Grizzly Encounters" and is an almost 6 minute long recounting of three different encounters with Grizzly Bears. We were on a long family trip and you could almost sense the family settling in for what was sure to be an interesting story. But, after we had listened to each of them sort of peter out to a "that's it?" moment I stopped the CD and asked if I was the only one that was disappointed in that story. Everyone, even the nine year old, thought the story was a disappointment. So, on to the next story - a story about bats in a mine that I remember most for telling me this was the sound of the bats that they had been hunting (and me thinking that this would sound great in the awesome speakers of the rental S

Published by Random House in 2009 Read by Titus Welliver Duration: 5 hours, 7 minutes Unabridged In the third book in this series, Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch do a lot, but at the same time I felt like this book went nowhere and made a lot of noise doing it. In short, Cole and Hitch begin the story looking for Cole's ex-girlfriend Allie French. You have to have read the first two books to even begin to wonder why Cole wants to find this woman again. They find her in the worst brothel in the worst part of town and rescue her and a fight ensues. They all leave town and eventually find a town that needs two deputies and they take the jobs. In the town there are multiple saloons, including one led by a former army officer who was cashiered from the service because he led his men on an attack on an Indian village and killed old people, women and children but no warriors.  There is also a church in town with a curious brand of Christianity led by a megalomaniac who believ

Published in October of 2014 by Random House Audio Read by the author, Jim Gaffigan Duration: 7 hours, 17 minutes Unabridged My wife and two kids and I listened to Food: A Love Story as we drove on our family trip this summer. We are fans of Jim Gaffigan (I really appreciate the fact that our children can listen and he rarely uses an inappropriate word, let alone vulgar commentary or topics. If you are not familiar with Jim Gaffigan than stop reading this and follow this link to the Amazon page and read the lengthy excerpts that are provided. They give you a real sense of the book. If you are familiar with Gaffigan, he does go over a lot of stuff that he already covers in his stand up routines. But, he expands on them quite a bit and covers things that I never heard him mention in one of his specials. The book is obviously about food and Jim rarely deviates from it. He is not a "foodie". He is not driving out of his way to get something new. He is not travelin

Published by Marvel Press and Blackstone Audio on April 10 of 2015. Read by Tom Taylorson Duration: 1 hour, 34 minutes. Unabridged. This is my third audiobook of a junior novelization of a movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  They adhere closely to the movies, have all been well-read, easy to listen to and, on the whole, quite enjoyable.  But, this one is troubling because it only covers half of the movie. Literally, this audiobook is about half of the length of the other audiobooks as well. If you have seen the movie, it only goes to the fight scene in the ship that is being harvested for scrap metal and it alludes to the Iron Man/Hulk fight scene. That's it.  Ultron Up to that point, it's an enjoyable audiobook. Reader Tom Taylorson does a very good job with the different voices of the Avengers, especially Thor. He also does an especially good job with the voice of Ultron - sometimes he sounds exactly like James Spader who voices him in the movie. The pro

Published in 2015 by Blackstone Audio Read by Jim Meskimen Duration: 2 hours, 52 minutes Unabridged Marvel Press has released a series of junior novelizations of their Avenger and Avenger-related movies. The term "Phase One" in the title means that this is a pre-Avengers book that serves to introduce an Avenger. The publisher recommends them for ages 8-12 but my wife and I listened along with the kids in the car and we enjoyed it as well - my wife was really getting into it. I was the only one in the car that had actually seen the The Incredible Hulk  movie. This is a faithful re-telling of the movie. Unlike some novelizations, this one does not really expand past what the movie reviewer would have seen in the movie. No new secrets revealed or anything. The book starts with Bruce Banner already having been exposed to gamma radiation and having already changed into the Incredible Hulk. In fact, the real plot gets going five years after his exposure. Banner is on