Eater of Books

Foon-ghee?

Reviewed: 05-02-23

is that related in some way to fung-gai? that was only the most pronounced of some of the very bizarre pronunciation otherwise, a very useful and handy book.

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translated from English to Martian to English agai

Reviewed: 02-01-21

the information this book was very good and very helpful. however, it was recorded at such a slow speed that you have to speed up the narration to 1.5 x in order for it to be bearable to listen to. then, once you've done this some of the sentences don't really make any sense. also, the narrator sounds like she's never spoken English before in her life and it's just reading it phonetically. vocally she ends sentences before they are over and then continues on afterward making you have to do some mental gymnastics to figure out what the sentence was supposed to be.

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Best Audio Overview of the Revolution Thus Far

Reviewed: 11-12-20

I've been looking for an audiobook that would cover the grand sweep of the French Revolution from start to finish and finally found this Great Courses lecture fits perfectly with my needs. It covers everything from the state of France prior to the start of the Revolution through the end of the Revolution itself in great detail and with good firsthand accounts of events and the reactions that people had to those events while living through them. Very vivid.

I do have one complaint and one minor nitpick.

1) In Lecture 13 "The Revolution and the Colonies" when speaking about the status of blacks under the revolution, "How many deputies should they have? The planters argued that the 600,000 slaves of the Caribbean counted as part of the population, so the colonies should have lots of representatives. Interestingly, the American authors of the Constitution had recently debated this exact same question. Famously, they decided to count each slave as 3/5ths of a man." This is extremely disengenous and highly misleading. The 3/5ths compromise was reached because the South refused to abolish slavery altogether and still wanted to count 100% of the slave population for purposes of representation in Congress. Desan is implying that the American founders thought that blacks were only "3/5ths of a man", which is an insult and absolutely WRONG. Slaves were counted a 3/5ths for representation purposes, so "3/5ths in a CENSUS". Free blacks voted in the North under 1 MAN, 1 vote.

Even Frederick Douglas knew the 3/5ths compromise was explicitly ANTI-SLAVERY. Getting details like this so staggeringly misrepresented calls into question what she is attempting to teach about the French Revolution.

2) The annoyance is whenever Desan begins reading a sentence that contains a list, she uses this now-common but annoying verbal trick to highlight the items in the list by increasing the vocal pitch of each item in the list and dragging out the pronunciation of the vowels in the word in a bizzarre verbal arc. This is made all the more grating because Desan also lowers the tone of her voice when doing this presumably to maintain some sort of baritone in her voice. I don't know what the origin of this verbal trick is, but when people use this in a sentence, I begin to socially avoid them. Yeah, it's a list. I understand. No need to draw it out, just get on with it.

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2 people found this helpful

great book, interesting, but ...

Reviewed: 02-05-20

it's a really good book, very interesting. a good review of the history and the science behind DNA research. my only complaint would be that it abruptly ends in the middle of the story. perhaps if I knew more about the surrounding details of that story I would understand why it ends where it does. was Watson involved in the discovery? and thus he didn't want to comment further? if so that makes sense, otherwise did he run out of time? did the publisher demand the book right away or they wanted their advanced back if they didn't get the manuscript? kind of strange.

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great information, too short!

Reviewed: 01-20-20

really enjoyed catching up on dinosaur science. in fact I got so interested, I was sad when the book ended.

also, not as much interested in the preaching us at the very end about the horrible effects of human life on the planet. take your anti-humanist agenda elsewhere please.

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interesting read

Reviewed: 06-10-19

interesting read, well written, but stop lecturing about modern American politics. Yuck. stick to anthropology please.

as far as his analogy about political leadership goes, with the ability to appropriate resources including food and mates determining whether a liter is a "baboon"-type leader or an "elephant"-type leader, we are then instructed to throw that interesting insight out the window and instead always castigate baboon type leaders. elephants in his opinion are always better. however, since he doesn't know anything about modern political structures, there's no analysis as to why a baboon type might be called upon at certain moments in history even in advanced societies and an elephant type leader would be a disaster in that situation. no, always elephants. and of course he views elephants as those he agrees with. whereas someone from another point of view I would say that the leaders he thinks are elephants are more baboon types and vice versa.

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