Cat_Named_Middle_C

Honest and eye-opening

Reviewed: 12-30-23

A must-read that challenges white listeners on race, class, Disability, and other issues often left out of white mainstream feminism and reproductive rights movements.

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Refreshingly honest intro

Reviewed: 08-20-22

Definitely a good read. Ironically I was nervous to read it (yeah, I know), but I'm glad I did. I'm white and the book's focus on our actions' and emotional outbursts' effects on People of Color made a lot of sense. Whether or not you think you will agree with the book, give it a read/listen!

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Makes a tacked-on defense of Hoover at the end

Reviewed: 03-13-22

The book is a good intro to Hoover's life, machinations, and work as FBI director. The intro, fairly, paints him as a contradictory set of opposing forces. The end of the book, however, makes an off-putting attempt to be "fair to Hoover," implying that it's unfortunate he's known for his secret files. The book ends by quoting a Lord Acton line that "great men are almost always bad men," which is not only untrue but a very thin excuse for the damaging actions Hoover took against civil liberties, the civil rights movement including Dr. King, etc. The misguided quote implies that to be a "great man," one must do damage. In Hoover's case, the damage was almost always intentional.

On the plus side, the book does mention Hoover's obsession with leftists and Reds while seemingly not caring to defend Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights movement, and having his office literally seek to blackmail King into ending his own life.

Additionally, I'm not sure why the editors felt the need to whitewash Hoover's personal life, stating that there was no evidence he ever had a partner of either sex. (I'm sure Hoover's longtime partner would have disagreed). Why the book tries too hard to cover up certain aspects of Hoover's life, I'm not sure, especially since Hoover made no attempt to protect the reputation of others.

Overall, the book tries to "be fair to" Hoover, portraying itself as balanced and not sensational, but ends up almost apologizing for his misdeeds. 3/5

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1 person found this helpful

Too fixated on pitying Oppenheimer?

Reviewed: 03-12-22

This is a great, detailed book that covers all aspects of Oppenheimer's life, including his being subjected to the harassment and injustices of character assassination as supposedly "Red".

However, the book doesn't mention if Oppenheimer had any knowledge or sympathy for the very specific suffering of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (ie, the hideous effects of radiation poisoning, etc). Instead, the book repeatedly suggests that Oppenheimer was a scientific "martyr" (!) and even implies that his death by cancer, caused by decades of smoking, were somehow part of the effects of being repeatedly harassed in the Red Scare by an ungrateful government. The book also doesn't mention how many other Americans, other than a few of his friends, were subjected to anti-Red suspicion. Again, "poor Oppenheimer" seems to be painted as the exception.

The book is too close to Oppenheimer's own tone of self pity. However, I would still recommend reading this book for a good intro to a complex and morally ambiguous character. 4/5

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Good but too expensive

Reviewed: 12-19-21

The narrator has done a good job, although I cannot figure out why he inexplicably chose a Scottish accent for Tyrion Lannister. The rest of the Lannisters don't have this same accent. Was he exiled as a baby far from Westeros? There's nothing to account for this.

Oddly, Shae has a Yorkshire-style accent and it makes her sound more working class (less like a high class foreign born courtesan) than does the TV show. Not that the show is the measure of everything. Overall it's a good narration, just costs too much.

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Useful document, feels longer than it has to be

Reviewed: 02-24-18

Having read about the gulag system from different authors before, I was interested to see what a Soviet employee working in the gulag would say about the camps, how he treated prisoners or saw prisoners being treated, etc.

This memoir is something different, since it is written by a construction engineer. The memoir is told in a variety of episodic chapters, not necessarily in chronological order. Each episode reads something like this:

Gulag employee (author) is given a unique problem to solve with an inefficient system and/or badly treated prisoners. Employee can solve problem when no one else can (even at age 22), often by streamlining process, bending the rules to get prisoners fed, or negotiating with others to find a work solution. This formula is repeated again and again throughout the book. He is put in a work situation in some camp he does not know. He comes in and sizes up the situation, and somehow is able to pull people together to solve the problem.

I was slightly skeptical that Mochulsky (author) would be *this* good at negotiating with prisoners, criminal prisoners, foremen, and the NKVD, even in his 20's, upon entering a new camp. I'm sure he had a talent for leadership, but this seems like he is the miracle fix-it man.

I was glad he was able to use his talents to get prisoners better rations, better housing, etc., at least in the cases he described. However, his focus is as a career Soviet government employee, and his goal throughout it all is that *he* can be free (!) of the Gulag system (since he cannot quit working there without Party permission).

I was also annoyed that the apparently chaste, dedicated Party employee in his 20s was so taken in by the story of a former Mosfilm producer (?) and ex-Gulag-prisoner sexual predator that he suddenly felt the need to include his stories of exploitation at the end of the book. These stories had nothing to do with Mochulsky himself (except that, perhaps, Mochulsky's Gulag work prevented him from developing normal sexual/romantic relationships himself, so he was dazzled by stories from an older, more experienced man who was all too eager to have a listening ear). However, his stories of the Mosfilm character seem more like name-dropping or sensationalism than a part of the rest of his Gulag story.

Mochulsky also mentions that he was disgusted by the treatment of women in the USSR, which was supposed to promote equality. He also is disgusted by the treatment of prisoners, but this only comes out at the end, in a series of "Questions" for the Soviet system. Only at the end of the book does he show anger at the system that betrayed his youthful idealism (after showing throughout the book that he was a devoted and favored Soviet employee throughout his life).

For readers/listeners looking for a dramatic confession of what a "Gulag boss" did or saw done to prisoners, this is not it. The book has some self-congratulation and, at the end, betrayed anger at a system that proclaimed ideals of humanity, yet fed humans into the gears of a massive industrialization machine.

Mochulsky is a "true believer" Communist who is disillusioned by the system he worked for all his life, but most of the book is simply a description of his many Gulag construction projects. Perhaps he is pleading that he is one of the "good ones," that he did nothing wrong personally. Perhaps he is right. It just isn't the most interesting reading after a few chapters or so.

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3 people found this helpful

Great folksy intro...but extremely graphic

Reviewed: 02-04-18

I had been curious about reading this book since I'd seen it in a bookstore ten years ago. I'm a fan of biomedical science for popular audiences, and had read several (audio)books on various plagues and diseases, etc. Therefore, I didn't believe I would be too squeamish. However...

This author has an interesting, folksy intro to the uses of human cadavers in science, but after about 90 minutes I could not stomach the graphic descriptions of decomposition in unburied corpses. I was surprised that after reading those other books with gruesome descriptions of symptoms, I still couldn't handle this book.

If you can handle extremely gruesome descriptions of what other lifeforms do to the dead, feel free to read this. Like I said, I didn't know I was squeamish until I attempted to read this.

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Story of intrigue and gambling addiction

Reviewed: 10-08-17

It's hard not to read some of the main character's experiences as autobiographical, since Dostoyevsky had a gambling addiction, wrote the book to pay off his own gambling debts, etc. Dostoyevsky writes about the process of gambling for high stakes at the roulette table in such a way that it conveys some of the physical sensations of adrenaline. As a story, I feel like most of the "action" of the plot was front-loaded into the first half of the book, with the rest given to complex character development and motivations. That said, it's a good audio-read. Check it out!

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3 people found this helpful