DWD's Reviews

Published by Random House Audio in 2013 Narrated by Paul Michael Duration: 22 hours, 5 minutes Just to establish where I am coming from - I am a huge Civil War buff. I have over 100 books on my shelf. Although I live in Indiana, I have managed to make it to three Civil War battlefields in the last two years (Murfreesboro, Fort Donelson and Chickamauga) and I just bought my father the original Shaara Civil War trilogy (the one based around The Killer Angels ) for Christmas. I own Shaara's World War I and World War II series as well as his original Civil War series and his Mexican War book. I am a fan. Confederate Lt. General John C. Pemberton (1814-1881) But, I am not a fan of this book. I have no problem with the authenticity of the book and there are parts that are amazing, intense and just about perfect. But, the first half of this book feels like it is trying to be "The Great American Novel" and failing at the attempt. There is so much repetitious intros

Published by Tantor Audio in May of 2015 Read by Tom Perkins Duration: 8 hours, 16 minutes If you are a person that likes to debate on the internet than you have undoubtedly experienced Godwin's Law . Godwin's Law states that if you debate long enough on the internet, someone will inevitably make a comparison to Nazism, Hitler, the Holocaust ("You don't like Donald Trump's hair? What are you the hairdo Nazi?!?").  A similar rule exists when discussing American politics - eventually someone will refer back to the Founding Fathers. It is especially easy to quote Thomas Jefferson - he was so prolific and well-written that it is easy to break out a quote to support your point of view. In the case of Jefferson, it is often too easy because he was extremely inconsistent in his political views. To start easy, he did write " We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unaliena

  Disappointing Collection Originally Published in 1996. Re-Issue Published by Castle Books in 2003. Great Gambles of the Civil War focuses on those moments when a general took a risk to give himself an advantage.  One could argue that all of war is a risk, including every battle and every maneuver but Author Philip Katcher has limited his book to just thirteen events. Some are battles, some are campaigns but all demonstrate risk. Philip Katcher has written numerous books on the Civil War so this has all the hallmarks of being a great book. While there is no doubt that Katcher knows his stuff, most of these thirteen stories are just not interesting, or at least not told in an interesting manner. It's not that the stories aren't fact-filled, it's just that some are paced so poorly ("Mulligan Defends Lexington" comes to mind - it just drug on and on and almost made me quit the book entirely) that the story itself is lost in the telling. I think Shelby Foote

  Takes too Long to Get Started Published in 2013 by Bantam Janet Evanovich, the famed author of the fun and sexy Stephanie Plum series, and Lee Goldberg, succesful author and screenwriter of the fun and quirky television series Monk  (and too many other shows to list here) team up in a new series.  The premise is fairly simple. A super-slick con-man, Nicolas Fox, creates elaborate ruses involving teams of like-minded criminals are successful over and over again in stealing prestigious pieces of art and the like. They are being pursued by a beautiful FBI agent, Kate O'Hare, has literally dedicated her life to the capture of Fox. Once Fox is captured he quickly escapes and Fox uses her personal time (saved up over the years of dedicated pursuit) to track him down. She discovers that Fox has cut a deal with the government and is going to use his talents to help the government take down bigger and badder bad guys than himself in order to stay out of prison. All of this work

Published in 2008 by The Indiana Historical Society Press In the great state of Indiana 4th grade is the year that the social studies classes focus on Indiana history. My youngest daughter is in 4th grade and her entire class read this book. The book is set in 1833 and even though it has been a state since 1816, in many ways Indiana is still a wild frontier, especially in northern Indiana (the Ohio River was often the route that settlers took to Indiana in the early days and it forms the southern border of the state). Road crews are working on building Michigan Road - a "road" that will connect the Ohio River to Lake Michigan, a distance of more than 250 miles. Photo by DWD While somewhere in the vicinity of what will eventually be Logansport, Indiana a thirteen year old member of the crew is sent to Detroit all by himself for more ink to draw out the maps and keep track of the surveys that the crews were taking. This trip is well more than 200 miles one wa

Published in 2012 by HighBridge Multicast performance Duration: 1 hour, 7 minutes NPR has searched its archives for stories about America's National Park System for this enjoyable collection. These stories don't just tell us about the park but tell us an interesting story in the park. Thaddeus Kosciuszco  (1746-1817) The stories vary from the humorous (the story about the smallest National Park - Thaddeus Kosciuszco National Memorial in Philadelphia which consists of a single room and covers .02 acre to honor this figure from the Revolutionary War) to the wondrous (Death Valley in full bloom after a once-in-a-lifetime rainstorm). The listener learns about the small city of employees that run Grand Canyon National Park, spooky tales of love at White Sands, an effort to preserve the music of New Orleans and a park employee who charts and maps the roadkill that he finds as he goes about his work.  The audio quality is, of course, excellent since these stories were

Published by GraphicAudio in August of 2013 Multi-cast performance Duration: Approximately 5 hours Marvel Comic's Spider-Man swings into action against a robot attack against New York's Diamond District in a scene that was very reminiscent of the classic Superman cartoon " The Mechanical Monsters ." But, Spider-Man always has a different take on things than the Man of Steel. Spidey's comments and tendency to not quite have everything under control give this caper a unique twist. Of course, J. Jonah Jameson continues his media barrage against the webslinger, Peter Parker and M.J. are working through relationship issues and Spider-Man continues to struggle with his work/superhero/home life balance. But, in this story he faces other issues, including robot attacks from an undetermined source, a messed up Spidey Sense and a non-stop rainy weather pattern that make his webs a lot less effective and make it hard to swing through the city. This is an interesti

Published by HighBridge in April of 2015. Multicast Performance. Duration: Approximately 3.5 hours After 35 years on the air, there are no more Car Talk episodes being made.Tom has passed on and Ray Magliozzi is retired. But, they still are broadcast on NPR stations across the country. NPR is also going back and searching for great episodes to sell. This is a four episode collection that probably dates from the late 1990s, based on the cars that they were discussing.  In these episodes Tom and Ray weigh in on the following: -The lady in Alaska whose truck only goes up hills in reverse (and how she ended up in Alaska in the first place). -The woman whose husband bought a car to rebuild and restore that only worked in reverse. -The woman who had 33 different cars in the last 15 years. -The astronaut who called from the space shuttle and knew Tom and Ray when he used to go to their shop back when he was in college. -The freshman student who was suffering from intens

Published in 2009 CreateSpace. I picked this novel because I am a sucker for books set in my adopted hometown - Indianapolis. The author is a resident (or, he was when he wrote the book) and you can really tell that he knows his way around the East Side of Indianapolis (I am a West Sider but I get all over town). Reservoir Road starts with a lovely couple who buy a fixer-upper on Indianapolis' East Side (Irvington) and he starts a career as a teacher. They have a baby and then he loses his wife and son in an unexplained double murder in Covington, Kentucky. The surviving husband doesn't even know why they were in Covington and the murder is never solved. He cannot deal with this and tries to solve the murder himself. He just cannot. But, he is moved to do something. While on the Crime Stoppers website (If you are not familiar with Crime Stoppers, they offer reward money for tips that lead to arrests and convictions) he realizes that there are so many victims like him -