DWD's Reviews

Published in 2023 by ChristianAudio.com. Read by the author, Kaitlyn Schiess. Duration: 6 hours, 27 minutes. Unabridged. I first heard about Kaitlyn Schiess on one of my favorite podcasts: The Holy Post . She is one of the three regular hosts of the show and often serves as their in-house theologian. She is well-suited for this role because she offers well-considered answers and she thinks them through before she answers, rather than just shooting her mouth off - all the more impressive when one considers that she is by far the youngest member of the podcast. I was drawn to The Ballot and the Bible because: 1) I am concerned the rise of Christian Nationalism in America and the damage it does to the Christian witness; 2) I knew that Schiess would give thoughtful answers. The intermingling of Christianity and politics is not a new phenomenon in the United States (or in the rest of the world - but that is not the focus of this book.) Schiess looks at the intermingling of faith and politi

Published by Dreamscape Media, LLC in 2021. Read by Natalie Naudus. Duration: 9 hours, 13 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Felicity Harland is a former FBI agent just turned investigator for the Investigative Services Branch (ISB.) ISB is the criminal investigation unit for the National Park Services. They investigate serious crimes that happen in National Parks.  Harland has been called to Sequoia National Park because 2 customers of an ultra-glamping camping service has disappeared in a remote mountainous location called Emerald Lake. No one knows if they are dead, have intentionally gone missing, or have simply wandered off into the wilderness. No one will say anything about who the supposed victims are because this service is ultra-exclusive and treats the names of its customers like its a national secret. Harland, along with an old crusty park ranger, and an ex-Navy SEAL who has just joined the park service search for the missing pair. What they discover next leads them to one sus

E-book Published by Amazon Digital Services in 2010. I have a real soft spot for books about travel - especially travel in odd ways. I have read a book about a guy who backpacked across Europe, a man who hiked across Afghanistan in 2002, a man who biked from England to India, two women who biked from Turkey to China, a man who hiked from Mexico to the Darien Gap in Panama, the same man hiked the length of the Nile River, a man who found a little dog while in a hiking competition in the Gobi Desert, a man who hiked all 48 mountains in New Hampshire with his little schnauzer dog, and more. One of these travel stories was by this author, Keith Foskett. Last year, I read the story of his trip up the Pacific Crest Trail  - from Mexico to Canada and almost all in the mountains. This hike was much more sedate and featured less extremes in the weather. The Camino de Santiago is a well-established route. It has been an pilgrimage route for more than 1,000 years and in the last 30 years or so F

  Published in 2015 by Now What Media, LLC Synopsis: Set in Czechoslovakia during World War II, The Golem's Voice  is the story of a young Jewish mom and her two sons trying to escape relocation by the Nazis. This was in the time when the Nazis were still telling Jews that they were relocating them to alternate settlements rather than just taking them to work and death camps. As they are being loaded onto trains, the mom gets a bad feeling and tells her boys (Yoakim and Yakov) to just run. She does not join them because they are much faster than her and she just wants them to escape and live. Her boys run under the trains and, at first, things look good. But, soon enough, Nazi soldiers are in full pursuit and Yoakim is shot providing cover for his little brother. Yakov continues to run to the only place the knows - the Jewish ghetto neighborhood that he just came from. He hears a voice in his head calling him to the home of a long-dead rabbi named Yudah Loew . Legend has it that Lo

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in November of 2013 Read by the author, Brian Stelter Duration: 11 hours, 16 minutes. Unabridged Brian Stelter is a former CNN commentator. While in college, he started a blog about news commentary shows and the personalities that make them what they are. In a way, he has been working on this book for more than 15 years.  Stelter pored over the paperwork from the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News to help write this 2020-2023 history of the cable news giant.  He spends the most amount of time looking at the biggest show with the biggest host on Fox News at the time - Tucker Carlson. He goes over a litany of Tucker's Greatest Hits - the Great Replacement Theory , The January 6 Insurrection was just a tourist event , Ukrainian biolabs , transgender conspiracies , and, of course, the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen . He looks at the power dynamics at the top of Fox News, including Rupert Murdoch, the board at Fox News, the

Published in 2013 by Marvel Worldwide, Inc. This collection is the inspiration for the Disney+ series "Hawkeye." I really enjoyed this series and thought I'd read the source material.  Just like in the series, most of Hawkeye's adventures are small time affairs.  That's okay by me. Every adventure can't be (and shouldn't be) a "save the world" event. Fans of Hawkeye in the MCU will be surprised that Hawkeye in the comics is not a family man. He's also a lot more disjointed and unorganized than he is in the movies. That being said, this was an enjoyable read and this Hawkeye may not have an overwhelming love for his family, but he has a big heart in different ways. I very much enjoyed the simplified art design and color scheme of most of this graphic novel. It gave it a sense of moodiness.  I rate this graphic novel 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:   HAWKEYE VOLUME 1: MY LIFE as a WEAPON (graphic novel) by Matt Fraction,

Published in 2001 by Delacorte Press Synopsis:  Rachel lives in Australia and is a brand new graduate of high school. She is ready to head off to college but she needs a job and a place to live that is close to the university. She finds both when the enigmatic Mr. Preston offers her a place to live just a few blocks from campus in exchange for watching over a woman named Grace.  Rachel knows that Grace was brain damaged in some sort of accident, but not much more than that. Grace can walk and feed herself - but that's about all she can do. She cannot talk, she cannot bathe herself, she cannot communicate in any way. Rachel spends the night with Grace, feeds Grace and watches over her much like a nanny watches a small child. She gets time off for classes, when the nurses come for physical therapy, and when Mr. Preston comes over to spend time with Grace. My Review: The author I expected nothing from this book. Several year ago, I picked it up from a pile of books that were being shi

Published by Tantor Audio in 2020. Read by Tom Parks. Duration: 6 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. Whitehead and Perry are the first sociologists who set out to do an in-depth study of Christian Nationalism and Christian Nationalists. Whitehead (Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis) and Perry (University of Oklahoma) both hail from states where Christian Nationalism plays a strong role in the political and cultural realms. First, you need a working definition of Christian Nationalism. Whitehead describes it as:    "a cultural framework that is all about trying to advocate for a fusion between Christianity — as they define it — and American civic life." I also like this description by a completely unrelated person,  Rev. Skye Jethani :  "Christians participating in politics or influencing society with their values is NOT Christian Nationalism.  Christians believing they have a God-given right to dominate the government & society by excluding & dimin

  Originally published in book format in 2000. Published by Listening Library in 2003. Read by Trini Alvarado Duration: 4 hours, 42 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: Esperanza is the main character in a fictionalized version of the author's grandmother's adolescence.  In Mexico, Esperanza is the daughter of a wealthy landowner in Aguascalientes. On this ranch, life is wonderful. She has servants and attends a private school. But, life in Mexico in 1930 is fraught with danger. It is only 10 years after the 10 year long Mexican Revolution and armed bands still roam the countryside. One of these groups kills Esperanza's father and her conniving uncles take the ranch and burn the house down to make sure they keep the land.  The author, Pam Muñoz Ryan Esperanza and her mother join a family of their servants (the ranch manager, the household manager, and their son) and flee to America (California) with false paperwork. They hope to work on American farms and re-establish themselves.

  Published by Bloomsbury Publishing LLC. Read by Tosca Hoskins. Duration: 11 hours, 26 minutes. Unabridged. The book is a detailed look at the Christian Nationalist movement in America. The strength of the book is its meticulous research. It ties together famous names and organizations with less famous names pulling the strings through not-for-profits and political action committees across the country. The author, Katherine Stewart I come to this book as a lifelong, politically aware Christian. I vote, I read about politics and religion, I post about politics and religion and I listen to podcasts that discuss politics and religion. That being said, I am all for keeping politics and religion separate because politics taints and corrupts religion every time and twists it into something it is not meant to be. The book does have its weaknesses, though. One is that the author, Katherine Stewart, does have some degree of anti-religious bias. She is really bothered by religious groups rentin

  Published in 2023 by Penguin Audio in July of 2023. Read by the author, Russell Moore. Duration: 6 hours, 46 minutes. Unabridged. Russell Moore is currently a theologian for the magazine Christianity Today , but he is more famous for being one of the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) for the last 20 years - both as a professor and at the national level. He's also a prolific author and very media friendly. In many ways, Moore was the perfect media face for the Southern Baptist Convention - smart, likable, pleasant and often funny. But, he butted heads on a variety of topics with the rest of the leadership. He was against gay conversion therapy and he wanted the SBC to listen to women who accused men in church leadership of sexual abuse. He especially wanted Southern Baptists to talk about racism and its complicity in upholding Jim Crow laws and distance themselves from Confederate symbols like the flag.  The biggest thing they disagreed about and the thing that rea

  Published in 2012 by Thomas Nelson. Very simply put, the two authors are advocates of Christians focusing their attention of the Red Letter verses in the Bible and endeavoring to live their lives by those verses. If you are not familiar, since 1899 some publishers have decided to print the words of Jesus in red ink. Claiborne and Campolo have decided to take those words very seriously - Jesus is the model of how they try to live.  This emphasis on the Red Letters means that their version of Christianity has a lot of emphasis on verses like Matthew 25: 31-46: 3 1   When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:   32   And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:   33   And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.   34   Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye bles

  Book edition originally published in 2006. Audiobook published in 2019 by Listening Library. Read by Asmeret Ghebremichael. Duration: 3 hours, 0 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis: This short piece of historical fiction focuses on a slave family in Georgia in the 1790s. The main character is Sally. She has a brother, a mother and a father. The one thing that this family has going for them is that their owners have a policy of not breaking apart families. That is the policy until relatives of the owners find themselves struggling financially. In a couple of days, Sally and her brother and 3 other slaves are going to be sent to the other plantation to help it get back on its feet again.  The family decides to run away together rather than be split apart. After some discussion with a friendly house slave who has done some traveling with the family, they decide not to head north. They haven't seen a map but they know that the trip across northern Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, a

  Published in 2009 by Listening Library. Performed by multiple actors. Duration: 2 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged. July of 1863 was the height of the American Civil War. The month contained the Battle of Gettysburg, the end of the long siege of Vicksburg, and the battle at Battery Wagner where the 54th Massachusetts demonstrated that African American soldiers would be an effective and important addition to the Union Army. It also featured one of the worst riots in American history - the New York City Draft Riot. The riot was ostensibly a violent reaction to the imposition of a draft to fulfill state military quotas, but it was more than that and this short audiobook does a very good job of looking at those reasons. The draft was unpopular for more than just the fact that the men who were drafted did not want to join the army. Rich people could afford to pay $300 to avoid military service if they were drafted. It took most workers more than 6 months or more to earn this sort of money. T