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A satisfied listener in Kentucky

Reviewed: 09-22-23

Have read the Gresham series and enjoy her story following the extended family and Gresham neighbors - all interesting well developed characters with their back stories and transitions as they experience life.
Excellent narrator who brings to life a wide variety of characters’ voices.

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Treasured memories

Reviewed: 08-10-20

Silverswift reminded this 74 year old listener of the magical experiences shared with her beloved grandmother a life time ago as they roamed the beach collecting shells and sharing stories. It was beautifully narrated and so peaceful to listen to while sheltering at home during the 2020 pandemic which has shattered the world.

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Not a balanced account

Reviewed: 12-24-11

This book wasn???t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Someone already convinced of a libertarian view.

What could David Boaz have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

More in depth knowledge of competing views. More knowledge of US history. Libertarianism was not the founding idea of the US, as Boaz says. What we had then and continue to have today is an essential and healthy tension between libertarianism (Jefferson, republicanism) and Hamiltonian Federalism. How much and what kind of government has always been a pertinent question.

What aspect of Jeff Riggenbach???s performance would you have changed?

None - very good

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6 people found this helpful

All over the place

Reviewed: 11-02-10

This is a history of the Paris Salon in mid nineteenth century where every year paint artists compete for space at the exhibit in the Champs Elysee palace. It's mainly about Manet and Meissonier with asides about other impressionists. The core is a discussion of the transition from realism ( Meissonier) to impressionism (Manet and others) and the politics of the Salon. Not very interesting, yet somewhat informative. The text is rambling but has a good narrator.

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1 person found this helpful

Great history well spoken but...

Reviewed: 09-28-10

I cannot understand why a history of this quality would have such affectations both from the writer and the narrator. The author in his preface says he's going to Anglicize certain German words for ease of understanding. Mein Kampf becomes "my struggle" and Der Fuehrer becomes "the leader". These two German terms are so well known that it's hard to listen to their being spoken this way. "The leader" is often confusing. Which leader are we talking about now?

The narrator has done a great job with German and other language terms. But there are glaring mistakes. For example the Reichstag is not pronounced as tag as in license tag but as tahg with a soft g, almost a ch sound. Other such gaffs should have been caught in the editing.

All this makes for a feeling of amateurishness, marring an otherwise superb history.

All three volumes are topical and sequential but not a narrative history with in depth treatments of many important topics like the origins of racial policy and the economics of the Reich. How did Hitler pay for rearmament? It's easy engrossing listening that explains a great deal about how a well educated population could be psychically captured by a lunatic. It's a lesson that will endure.

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13 people found this helpful

Big daddy in the sky

Reviewed: 11-24-09

Kids have imaginary friends. Adults have God.

Dawkins points out that religion may simply be a carryover from childhood's imaginary friends. Like adults, children need consolation and inspiration from imagined persons like the trinity and the saints. There is a strong emotional belief in these persons that causes rigidity of thought and has led to enormous harm to society in the form of bombed abortion clinics, and other acts of murder in the name of these imaginary friends. More heinous to Dawkins is inculcating in children a catechism of beliefs before they have critical faculties. This ensures the slavish and blind passage of belief across generations until, it is hoped, they are old enough to read this book.

Dawkins makes it clear that religion is irrational and inhumane. It treats people as passive receptacles not as thinking humans. The privileged social position of religion also means that believers are immunized against criticism and cannot be challenged without the challengers being dismissed as "ungodly".

The back and forth between the two narrators is very effective. Their speaking voices have the clear enunciation of Oxford English.

Overall, the book is a devastating critique of religion. I wish I had had this book for all those college dorm debates.

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2 people found this helpful

Potboiler

Reviewed: 08-14-08

This book is about meetings punctuated by predictable unsuspenseful action. Just Macho drivel. Its only asset is George Guidell who reads it extremely well. Please George this is beneath you.

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2 people found this helpful

Soap

Reviewed: 04-19-08

There are five parts to this Audible book. I got thru four and 1/2 before I just gave out. The story moves along and the characters are mildly interesting for a while, but there really is no compelling reason for these characters to live. The plot is fairly simple: let's build a cathedral. There's interesting detail about the lives of the people and lots of descriptions of breasts - a Follett fetish I think. Toward the end the author loses the various narrative threads and gives quick summations of how things turned out rather than fleshing them out. It appear he too was tired out and rushed the ending. The book had all the appeal of a soap opera.
The plotting is very thin. Tell me, for example, how a woman carrying a newborn baby makes it on foot from England to Spain and finally Paris without much trouble.
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3 people found this helpful

Bad boys

Reviewed: 08-17-07

John Dean's very fine book on the authoritarian conservative tradition is, despite its title, an excellent primer on contemporary American politics in general. Other writers, whose books are available from Audible, have noted that, at one time or another, both Democrats and Republicans have been the bad boys of Congress. LBJ stole, among other things, the 1948 Texas Senate election from Coke Stevenson (LBJ: Master of the Senate by Robert Caro). JFK was a randy, immoral, secretive executive willing to use the Mafia to topple Fidel Castro (Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas). Nixon used the CIA to oust Salvador Allende from his elected presidency of Chile (Nixon and Kissinger by Robert Dallek) . It goes on and on. Amoral authoritarian behavior is not just Republican. It's the core of a life of political power.

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8 people found this helpful

Page turner,but...

Reviewed: 07-27-05

Robin Cook can write a nice page turner, but it's hard to swallow some of the events of this book. Number one: the protagonists, two MD lovers, both forensic pathologists. She finds out she's pregnant and is quite surpised, even though she and he have been using the rhythm method, notorious for its unreliability - hard to accept that two MDs wouldn't know better. Right at the outset the author lets you know there's a serial killer in the hospital exterminating sleeping patients with IV potassium chloride. We wait while our two somewhat slow-witted (remember the rhythm method)pathologists struggle through endless toxicology tests trying to find the poison in the dead patients. When they turn up nothing, you wonder why they don't think of potassium, a compound that injected in this way would disappear from the blood after death (common knowledge), but these are the guys who still think the rhythm method is a great form of birth control. Other plot elements like managed care as a sinister force and a glaring paper trail of criminal activity are also hard to swallow. But I have to admit I turned all the pages and enjoyed the story.

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3 people found this helpful