DWD's Reviews

Published in 2015 by Scholastic  Paul Beck's SOLDIER! looks at 15 examples of soldiers throughout history, starting with Imperial Roman infantry and ending with a U.S. Navy Seal. It is composed of 48 8.5 x 11 inch pages and includes a full-color tear-out poster of every soldier.  Most descriptions are 4 pages, including a map where the soldiers would have operated. It also includes a full page drawing of the soldier with notes about the weight and length of their weapon(s). The third and fourth pages include more information about optional weapons, training or tools.  The only complaint I have about the book is that it could have included a little more diversity. 12 of the 15 soldiers came from Europe or America. For example, the Aztec warriors that confronted Cortes had unique weapons and armor and would have been a great addition.  That being said, the book was well-done. The pictures were interesting as were the factoids. This would be a good book for students from

Published by Random House Audio in 2014. Read by Dick Hill Duration: 12 hours, 55 minutes Unabridged Jack Reacher gets brought back into military duty, but not officially this time. An extremely talented sniper has taken a shot at the President of France. The shot was taken from an extreme distance and was only stopped by a revolutionary bullet proof glass screen. The various intelligence agencies are sure that this was just a dry run for the G8 economic conference that is coming up soon in England in which several world leaders will be present. Lee Child There are four snipers capable of such a shot and 16 years ago Reacher put one of them in jail for murder when he was in the military police. A former boss of Reacher thinks that he has some sort of insight and he partners up with a young CIA / State Department operative and they are off to France. She is the brains, and he is the brawn, at least that's the way it is supposed to be. But, once they start digging, Reach

Published in 2014 by Random House Audio Read by Catherine Taber Duration: 14 hours, 46 minutes Unabridged John Grisham explores Appalachian coal country in this novel through the eyes of a young New York lawyer named Samantha Kofer. Kofer has just lost her job in real estate development law at literally the world's largest law firm in the wake of the financial collapse of 2008. Her firm gives her the chance to work for a non-profit for a year without losing her insurance or her seniority and she ends up in the legal aid office in Brady - a tiny town in southwest Virginia in the heart of coal country. As Kofer starts to work in the office she discovers the world of day-to-day law and how America's poor get bounced around in a legal system with all sorts of hidden rules. Turns out that she has a knack for it. She picks up a case with a coal miner suing for disability due to black lung and she discovers that Big Coal rules all in this region - and there's nothing an

Published by Penguin Random House Audio Read by Dick Hill Duration: 1 hour, 27 minutes Unabridged short story Lee Child, the author of the Jack Reacher series does not feel constrained to write his Jack Reacher books and short stories in any sort of chronological order - a fact that I find immensely interesting as a reader because it is so very unusual.  Lee Child In Second Son , Lee Child takes us all the way back to 1974. Jack Reacher is 13 years old and his father has just been transferred to Okinawa as a part of the U.S. Marines along with his mother and his slightly older brother Joe.  Moving to a new place is always hard and Okinawa is no exception. Reacher must prove himself to the neighborhood bully, he meets a girl and he solves two mysteries.  The story is fun, but 13 year old Reacher is way too smart for a middle school kid, even if he is Jack Reacher. But, the mysteries were fun. In fact, the whole story was fun, kind of like looking at old yearbook photos

Published in 2017 by Blackstone Audio Read by Keith Szarabajka Duration: 10 hours, 34 minutes Unabridged The Gus Murphy series is quickly becoming a favorite. Gus is a retired Long Island police officer who provides security and drives the shuttle van back for a tired hotel that pretends to be luxury but really isn't fooling anyone. Gus retired because his college-aged son died of a heart failure playing a pick up basketball game and it simply destroyed his marriage and his interest in being a police officer.  In the first book in this series, Gus was a complete mess. Since then, he has gotten his life back together again, in a manner of speaking. He has friends again, especially his friend Slava, a fellow employee from Eastern Europe with a hidden background as a soldier of secret police. Gus also has a love life and he's even bought a car. And, he's got a new case - looking into the murder of a millionaire's estranged granddaughter. But, when his friend Sla

Published in 2000 by Random House Audio Read by the author, Tom Bodett. Duration: 5 hours, 30 minutes Unabridged Thirteen year old September Crane and her 12 year old brother Ivan live on Bag Bay in Alaska, practically in the middle of nowhere - and they love it, mostly. They enjoy the interaction with nature, they know the bay and how to travel across it. They know how to get clams, how to put vegetables away for the winter and just about how to do everything else for themselves.  They have to know because their father is a fisherman is often gone for a few weeks at a time. Their mother died on the bay, killed by a rare, powerful storm front called a williwaw, when they were much younger. Their father trusts them to follow the rules and take care of themselves so long as they check in with him on the radio on a regular basis. But, when Ivan decides to splice into the charger for the radio to charge up his handheld video he blows up the whole rig and that's just the begi

Published in 2006 by Penguin Audio Read by Edward Herrmann Duration: 5 hours, 57 minutes Abridged Everybody knows the story of the Mayflower and the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving. Or, they think they do, anyway. Nathaniel Philbrick's re-telling of this oft-misunderstood story is very approachable for the average reader. He begins with an explanation of the religious differences between the Puritans and the Church of England and how the politics of the day exacerbated the situation.  Philbrick's re-telling of how the Pilgrims moved from England to Holland and eventually to the New World was very well done, as was the story of the first few seasons of Plymouth Plantation (Plymouth colony), starting in 1620. In fact, the book flowed very well throughout, even though it was abridged. Oftentimes, abridged books are clunky, but this one was not. The story finishes with King Philip's War (1675-1676). This was a sad war. Wars are all sad, but this one was part

Published in 2015 by Thomas Nelson. I am a giant fan of Tim Hawkins and have been ever since he used to run an infomercial on late night TV for his 2007 DVD Full Range of Motion .  I have tickets to go see him in concert at the end of July with my family.  But, this book was mostly a re-hash of his routines - routines that I dearly love but not nearly as funny when I am reading them as they are when he delivers them. As I was reading, I kept thinking that these would be a whole lot more funny if he was saying them. Hawkins added extra material to support the stuff from his routines but the whole package ends up being just 3 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Diary of a Jackwagon by Tim Hawkins.

Originally published in 1976. Reprinted and sold by Eastern Acorn Press through the National Park Service. Something like 24 years ago I went with to Gettysburg with a wife and a friend for a weekend trip. On that trip I bought this little book. It sat on my shelf unread for more than 2 decades. No reason for that - I am an insatiable student of the war - I have reviewed 91 books on the subject before this one. But, it sat there unread until now. This is a readable and quite thorough history of the events leading up the famous Firing upon Fort Sumter. The best feature of the small book (fifty 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages) is that it doesn't just tell about Fort Sumter, but also about Fort Pickens. The book details how Sumter was part of a larger policy. Most histories separate the two of them and that is a mistake. The book also describes the duplicitous actions of Secretary of State William Seward throughout the affair. Seward seriously doubted the abilities of President Lincoln a

Published in May of 2017 by Peter Nealen, LLC Read by Cody Parcell Duration: 12 hours, 23 minutes Unabridged The Yuan in the title Kill Yuan is a Chinese Navy captain who has stolen his frigate and its crew and become a pirate leader in the South China Sea. For some reason, the government of China is not acting against him and the other governments in the area are not strong enough to move against a true military ship the size of a frigate (in the pirate world a frigate is much larger than most of their re-purposed ships). The United States has ignored this new pirate leader because its forces in the area are busy playing cat-and-mouse war games with the Chinese Navy. Cut to Dan Tackett. He is a former member of the U.S. military who has done some independent work as well. But, he has stopped all of that because his wife has died in a car crash and he has to raise their two children. But, making the money he needs while repairing motorcycles is tough and he has to make it up w

Published by Penguin Audio Originally published in 1998. Read by Jonathan McClain Duration: 14 hours, 47 minutes Unabridged Jack Reacher helps out a lady in need with her dry cleaning and ends up being kidnapped, thrown in the back of a van with her and driven across the country as part of an over-the-top plan. Reacher tries to figure out a way to escape while simultaneously trying to figure out why the kidnappers them in the first place. Of course, once he starts to figure out things, he discovers that their near hopeless situation is actually worse than he thought... Lee Child This is a great Reacher novel. I am listening to them all out of order, which isn't much of a problem since Lee Child isn't really writing them in any particular order. Lots of action, plenty of plot lines and Reacher himself make this entry worth reading. This is the first Reacher novel I have listened to that was read by Jonathan McClain. Most of them I have heard were read by Dick Hil

Originally published in 1985. This is the book that inspired the Kevin Costner movie of the same name. It has a lot of similar features but the movie changed a great deal. Gordon Krantz is a survivor of the Doomwar, a nuclear and biological war between all of the world powers. The war was bad enough but survivalist groups called the Holnists made survival in what was left behind. The Holnists are united by a common ideology that teaches that some men are naturally superior to others and every man must grab what he can get in this world. Krantz is slowly working his way across the country. He started out in Minnesota and 15 years later he has made it to Oregon. He has to walk because the nuclear pulse wiped out the electronics. Life is tough everywhere, but in most places it resembles the Mad Max movies more than anything else so it is slow going. Krantz loses everything to a group of thieves and luckily stumbles upon a mummified letter carrier in a postal jeep - a man who drov

This is the story of a real-life Civil War hero. Despite technically not being able to join the army at all because she was a woman, Emma Edmonds joined crossed the American-Canadian border to join the Union army for the action and adventure. She knew full well that she could keep up with the men because she grew up helping on her family farm. But, she never expected the adventures she experienced during the war. Emma Edmonds (1841-1898) Seymour Reit tells a fictionalized version of this true story (the events are real, the details, like conversations, are made into a story) that starts out working in an army hospital but soon ends up dressing up in different outfits and crossing the enemy lines to act as a spy and had all sorts of close calls while generating plenty of usable information. This is an immensely readable book. My fifth grader chose it to read for a school project and her enthusiasm for the book inspired my wife and I to read it as well.  I rate this book 4 st

Published in 2007 by Clarion Books Indianapolis native John David Anderson's Standard Hero Behavior is a tongue-in-cheek look at the Lord of the Rings type fantasy world, sort of like The Princess Bride .  Mason Quayle is a young, under-employed bard (he write epic songs about heroes and the like) and his best friend Cowel sells epic plumes for the hats of heroes (think Three Musketeer hats). The problem is that they live in a town that used to be full of heroes but the new duke of their city has the monsters under control. It used to take dozens of heroes, now it is handled by one man. Mason can't figure out how he does it all by himself because his father used to be the most-requested bard for all of those heroes and he's very familiar with the old songs and stories. But, that was a long time ago. His father is gone, disappeared along with several of the most powerful heroes while off on an epic quest.  One day Mason is summoned to the Duke's home and he

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2008. Read by Dick Hill Duration: 12 hours, 2 minutes Unabridged Jack Reacher is just hanging out in a New York City coffee shop, drinking coffee and staring out the window when he gets caught up in a kidnapping case. Turns out he witnessed the money hand off without even realizing what he was seeing. The ransom payer tracked Reacher down, picked him up and brought him to his exclusive penthouse apartment/office. Turns out his wife and stepdaughter have been kidnapped and he has decided to leave the police out of it and just pay the ransom. The millionaire runs a quasi-legal mercenary operation and has decided to use his best men to search out the kidnappers and eliminate them...and he wants Reacher to help due to his previous police experience and offers him a hefty cash bounty if he produces. But, as Reacher starts to dig into why someone would want to kidnap his new employer's wife and stepdaughter he starts to find a lot more nagging qu

Published by Highbridge, a division of Recorded Books in January of 2017 Read by Eric Martin Duration: 3 hours, 4 minutes Unabridged I love Bruce Catton's histories of the Civil War. As a rule Bruce Catton (1899-1978) wrote histories that are easy to read, thorough enough to give the reader a solid grasp of the issues and peppered with well-told human interest stories.  Confederate Major General George Pickett (1825-1875) This history of Gettysburg feels a bit disjointed, sort of like it was a knitted together from a series of articles that Catton wrote for American Heritage magazine. For example, it spends a lot of time looking at the events just before the battle and skips one of the more dramatic and important moments of the battle on the second day (Little Round Top). However, the exaggerated emphasis on the first day did not bother me. Too often the first day is sort of skipped over and it's not like the second day was ignored - it just focused on Dan Sickles

Published in November of 2012 by Macmillan Audio. Read by William Dufris Duration: 12 hours, 2 minutes Unabridged Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen conclude their Revolutionary War-based trilogy with an up-and-down look at the final year of real action in the war (October of 1780 to October of 1781). Surrender of Lord Cornwallis by John Trumball The actual battle descriptions are quite good in the book. The book is absolutely great with its explanation of the strategies employed to maneuver Cornwallis into the Yorktown fortifications, the coordination between the French and American forces and demonstrates just how narrow this victory really was.  However, the audiobook starts out with a two hour overwrought description of the execution of Major Andre. Andre was the British officer that conspired with the infamous American traitor Benedict Arnold. While this scene was used referred back to often throughout the rest of the book, the scene itself was very repetitious 

Published in 2015 by Penguin Audio Read by Clare Corbett, Louise Brealey and India Fisher Duration: 10 hours, 59 minutes Unabridged Every day Rachel sees the same couple in the same house as she is commuting to London on the train. The train makes a regular stop near this house while waiting for another train to clear the track and Rachel stares out at the backyards of the neighborhood where she used to live before her husband left her for another woman. She notes the attractive new couple that has moved in a couple of houses down from her old house and makes up pretend glamorous background stories for this seemingl y happy couple whose house is identical to the one she used to live in. One day she is shocked to see the lady from her fantasy world kissing another man. Even worse - soon after, that woman disappears, is presumed dead and becomes the center of a media frenzy. Rachel tries to get involved by telling the police about the other man but she tells her story so poor

Published in 2015 by Random House Audio. Narrated by Dick Hill Duration: 1 hour, 30 minutes Unabridged Lee Child. Photo by Mark Coggins Jack Reacher is back in his Military Police days in this short story. He has been moved to a new base in Georgia and immediately has a murder to investigate - a new female intelligence officer who is beautiful, rich and is on the fast track to the top is found dead beside her Porsche on a country road near the base. Jack Reacher starts to dig and quickly puts all of the pieces together in a satisfying, but too-short story. All of the stuff you love about a Reacher novel are here:  smart comments, a little bit of fighting, quick thinking and an ending that makes you think about the difference between what is legal and what is just. Dick Hill's narration is spot-on, like always. I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. This audiobook short story can be found on Amazon.com here: Small Wars by Lee Child .

Originally published in 2005. Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett has been re-assigned. Normally, he covers the area around the town of Saddlestring but he has been temporarily re-assigned to a plum location - Jackson, Wyoming - the home of the Grand Tetons and a well-known retreat for the rich and the famous. While Joe is thrilled for the opportunity, he is not happy about the circumstances behind it. A fellow game warden that he knew and respected suffered some sort of mental breakdown and killed himself. Plus, his family has been receiving ominous "breather" phone messages at all times of day and night... So, Joe Pickett goes off to Jackson only to find that this new assignment is extraordinarily complicated by politically-connected power players, trendy protesters and the investigation into the previous game warden's suicide and things are getting weirder and more complicated all of the time... I am reading this series in what seems to be an insane random order.

Published by Highbridge in February of 2017 Read by Paul Boehmer Duration: 2 hours, 47 minutes Unabridged Four P-51 Mustangs in formation over Britain. Stephen W. Sears used to write for the magazine American Heritage  and in that capacity more than 50 years ago he wrote a short and simple history of the air war over Europe in World War II. It was designed to be an introductory read for high school students. I am not sure if this audio edition is the same book, but it is serves the same purpose. If you are a casual student of World War II, the kind of person that watches an occasional documentary from the time to time, this is the perfect book. There are details, but not enough to drown the reader. Sears moves the story along at a brisk pace, but still slows down enough to tell a personal story to remind the reader that this was a real story full of real people. He is more likely to tell the story of the average airman than of the generals. Sears discusses the air war over

Published in March of 2017 by HarperAudio Read by Fred Sanders Duration: 12 hours, 56 minutes Unabridged Adam Piore describes the advances in medicine in a number of areas, especially (but not limited to) recovering from injuries, illness or dealing with genetic disorders. He starts out with a profile of a leader in the field of prosthetic limbs who has reverse-engineered the human leg and, for the first time, makes the idea of TV's "Six Million Dollar Man" seem like a real possibility. There is the amazing story of the engineer who created a device that allows a blind woman to "see" with her ears. Piore describes advances in experimental genetic engineering and muscle therapies that promise not only to help with genetic disorders but also may ultimately end aging as we know it. But, it's not just about the body, it is also about the mind. There are advances in figuring out what causes Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Parkinson's and those