Tim

A strong but somewhat amateur story

Reviewed: 08-09-21

This book excels far more on the worldbuilding front than it does with narrative or characters, but the whole holds together well and delivers an enjoyable experience. The central character will frequently test the reader's patience, as an overly gifted archetypical fantasy protagonist who is also a rapist and war criminal who hates himself, are difficult characterisations to weave together, and the author only sometimes succeeds. The pacing of the story also feels inconsistent at times, presenting as a meandering wanderers adventurer most of the time, but attempting to focus back in to a predestined path of redemption at irregular intervals leading in to the climax. But on the whole, the imaginative world and it's complex and satisfying interlocking parts were enough to keep me engaged the whole way through, and the magical powers on display are variable and quirky enough to feel refreshing compared to similar fantasy novels. I look forward to seeing what the future of this setting has in store in the promised sequels.

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Very good, when you can hear it

Reviewed: 01-13-21

This was really well done, and gives that authentic old-timey radio show feel. My only real criticism was how inaudible some of the (supposed to be static-heavy) early transmissions about the antarctic expeditions were. Listening on a commute with background noise made those parts practically impossible to understand, and I had to try listening to them again later in total silence to try and make anything out.

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2 people found this helpful

A wonderful love letter to government

Reviewed: 07-07-19

If you want a book that will help you appreciate everything government accomplishes, and the inherent risks of handing it over to the ignorant and malicious, this is the book for you.

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An absolute must-read for critics of capitalism

Reviewed: 04-08-19

I had heard a lot of off-hand references to the Shock Doctrine from many thinkers critical of modern capitalism, and now I see why. This book is an amazingly comprehensive account of the formation of the disaster capitalism operating behind the scenes of all of today's most insidious neoliberal global forces. The book's account ends around 2006, and by the end, your only wish is that it would keep going to provide that same clarity to the years encompassing the great recession and the subsequent set of reactionary right-wing turns in governments around the world. If you want a better sense of how and when democracy and capitalism come into conflict with each other, I can't recommend a better entry point than The Shock Doctrine.

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Interesting central point, but evasively written

Reviewed: 09-27-18

Bloom's highly specific focus on the shortcomings of empathy as the process of feeling someone else's imagined feelings, while extolling the merits of reasoning (once one grants motivational states like caring about the outcomes of others or acknowledging common humanity) has some merit, but the book is filled with arguments that split hairs in self-serving ways. Sure, we don't need to empathise with others to reason about how to help them when in need, provided we already sincerely care about their outcomes, but this begs the question, because without empathy we have little grounds to acquire concern for the outcomes of others from which we can then reason. The book is also filled with errors of scale, suggesting that caring about climate change cannot be motivated by empathy since there's no specific, present victim whose mental state we are empathizing with. This ignores the obvious point that much of empathy hinges on imagining people (real or fictional) in hypothetical situations, and using our own reactions as testing grounds for whether we should pursue or avoid that hypothetical. So examples, like this climate change one, fall flat on their face.

The most charitable position Bloom takes in the book is the milk metaphor: that perhaps infants and children truly need the mechanism of empathy to develop values of compassion, but that adults don't strictly need empathy any more, and for many of us excessive indulging in it can be bad for us. I wish he had developed this approach further, rather than padding so much of the book with argumentative double-standards, for the sake of maintaining a more provocative thesis.

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Unbelievably poetic and insightful

Reviewed: 09-15-18

Phrased as an account of his life and worldview, expressed to his son, Coates summarises and clarifies the condition of being black in America in a way few other authors can equal. His atheism, and the cosmic pessimism that comes with that, is especially refreshing when meditating on the plight of a people who demographically find so much solace in the promise of redress in an afterlife, or faith in the just curve of the moral arc of the universe. Extremely moving, challenging, and inspiring.

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An impactful curation of poetic, insightful essays

Reviewed: 09-14-18

Kendzior's articles and essays are each excellent on their own, but their curation and combination in this book combines her body of public writings into a coherent thesis on the neglected economic pressures that ultimately shape the lives of modern Americans, particularly those who do not live in elite coastal cities. As inspiring as it is eye-opening, this is a genuinely enriching book, even this many years after the writing's initial publication.

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Great for Chapo Trap House fans

Reviewed: 09-08-18

And good for anyone sufficiently immersed in leftist politics to parse all the in-jokes and sarcastic telling. For that subset of listeners, it's a genuinely fun and sometimes inspiring listen.

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Junk that started in my library

Reviewed: 06-19-18

I really like Audible, generally speaking, but one point of irritation that I have never been able to reconcile is the excerpt for this book. I didn't want it, never asked for it, but not only did it appear unprompted in my Audible library near the beginning of my membership, but I can't for the life of me find a way to remove it! Every time I look over my audiobooks, it's right there, to irritate me all over again. Why?!

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A cure for the delusion that gender is simple

Reviewed: 01-19-18

Neuroendocrinology is complicated as all hell, yet we have a profound social tendency to speak in reductive absolutes about the differences between males and females (both within our own species, and generally across the animal kingdom). This book doesn't seek to deny those regularities that do exist (at least within specific species), but instead explores areas of biology and behavioural science that most laypeople never hear of, to inject some much needed nuance into discussions of sex differences, and make us more aware of the biases that help sustain oversimplified and reductionist views on the topic.
A must read (or listen) for anyone who professes to approach sex and gender from a scientific perspective.

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2 people found this helpful