reball01
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Code Girls
- The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II
- By: Liza Mundy
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Recruited by the US Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than 10,000 women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of codebreaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them.
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Just released, about 80% through this story
- By Roobah on 10-11-17
- Code Girls
- The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II
- By: Liza Mundy
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
Great book! Well done!
Reviewed: 11-26-24
Good writing and great reading! Interesting stories that prompt me, as an amateur radio operator participating in emergency communications, to want to learn more! Thanks for this!
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Project Hail Mary
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
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Bazinga
- By Davidgonzalezsr on 05-04-21
- Project Hail Mary
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
Excellent Performance Reading
Reviewed: 09-20-24
Great work! Great story made better with a well-produced performance. Very entertaining and enjoyable! Ray Porter did a great job!
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Ways and Means
- Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War
- By: Roger Lowenstein
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Upon his election to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln inherited a country in crisis. Even before the Confederacy’s secession, the United States Treasury had run out of money. The government had no authority to raise taxes, no federal bank, no currency. But amid unprecedented troubles Lincoln saw opportunity—the chance to legislate in the centralizing spirit of the “more perfect union” that had first drawn him to politics.
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Perspective that matters - financing the Civil War
- By Edgewater on 07-04-22
- Ways and Means
- Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War
- By: Roger Lowenstein
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
Well....I liked it!
Reviewed: 02-25-24
There are better critique's than mine but I really enjoyed the book. Well written and researched, thanks! I'd really like to see this kind of analysis done on other wars involving the United States. My best to the author.
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The Great Post Office Scandal
- The Story of the Fight to Expose a Multimillion Pound IT Disaster Which Put Innocent People in Jail
- By: Nick Wallis
- Narrated by: Nick Wallis
- Length: 18 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Nick Wallis, an acclaimed freelance journalist and broadcaster, has been following the story since 2010 when he met a taxi driver who told him his pregnant wife had been sent to prison for a crime she did not commit. Since then, he has recorded interviews with dozens of victims, insiders and experts, uncovering hundreds of documents to build up an unparalleled understanding of the story. Using these sources, he has been instrumental in bringing the scandal into the public eye.
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“The Machine Says So.”
- By reball01 on 02-04-24
- The Great Post Office Scandal
- The Story of the Fight to Expose a Multimillion Pound IT Disaster Which Put Innocent People in Jail
- By: Nick Wallis
- Narrated by: Nick Wallis
“The Machine Says So.”
Reviewed: 02-04-24
Awful story that must be told, Wallis got it right all around. Great journalism! Brought the UK legal system down an understandable level for this American.
You might be tempted to think this book a polemic against the UK Post Office until you discover that the facts were worse than originally thought and verified in numerous legal trials. Great listen.
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1 person found this helpful
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Dead Lions
- Slough House, Book 2
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 11 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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London’s Slough House is where the washed-up MI5 spies go to while away what’s left of their careers. The “Slow Horses,” as they’re called, have all disgraced themselves in some way to get relegated here. Maybe they messed up an op badly, or got in the way of an ambitious colleague. Maybe they just got too dependent on the bottle—not unusual in this line of work. One thing these failed spies have in common, though, is they all want to be back in the action. Now the Slow Horses have a chance at redemption.
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Jackson Lamb continues
- By Michael Montgomery on 06-30-22
- Dead Lions
- Slough House, Book 2
- By: Mick Herron
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
Perhaps Better Seen And Not Heard
Reviewed: 12-19-23
I’ll let others critique the story. For me, it works well. As with the first book, “Slow Horses”, narration is satisfactory but suffers from the authors insistence on trying to maintain the various storylines simultaneously (as though writing a teleplay). It would work better had the narrator paused longer between each shift of the story but, then again, such pauses might well have added 15 or 20 minutes to the runtime.
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War Lord
- The Last Kingdom Series, Book 13
- By: Bernard Cornwell
- Narrated by: Matt Bates
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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After years fighting to reclaim his rightful home, Uhtred of Bebbanburg has returned to Northumbria. With his loyal band of warriors and a new woman by his side, his household is secure – yet Uhtred is far from safe. Beyond the walls of his impregnable fortress, a battle for power rages. To the south, King Æthelstan has unified the three kingdoms of Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia – and now eyes a bigger prize.
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One of the best in the series
- By Nicole on 10-17-20
- War Lord
- The Last Kingdom Series, Book 13
- By: Bernard Cornwell
- Narrated by: Matt Bates
Great Series, One Minor Complaint
Reviewed: 11-25-22
I loved the entire series, but I have one minor complaint regarding the production. For whatever reason, the audio producers at Harper-Collins did not include the authors note from the end of every book. Cormwell always includes a page or two of explanation about his book and how he fits it into the historical narrative, where he takes liberties and makes things up or has to kill off a character. This does not detract from the stories, but his explanations were every bit as interesting, and I found myself having to go to my local library (no complaint there) just to read those parts in the book. To me, this makes all of the performances "abridged".
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I Got a Monster
- The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad
- By: Baynard Woods, Brandon Soderberg
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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When Baltimore Police Sergeant Wayne Jenkins said he had a monster, he meant he had found a big-time drug dealer - one who he wanted to rob. This is the story of Jenkins and the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), a super group of dirty detectives who exploited some of America’s greatest problems: guns, drugs, toxic masculinity, and hypersegregation. In the upside-down world of the GTTF, cops were robbers and drug dealers were the perfect victims, because no one believed them.
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A bit one sided...
- By Hvelte on 09-03-20
- I Got a Monster
- The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad
- By: Baynard Woods, Brandon Soderberg
- Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson
Great book, good read but with mispronunciations
Reviewed: 03-01-21
I'll leave it to you to find better critiques of the book. I enjoyed it and the reader did ok up to a point. I score low for mispronunciations. I could understand if this was the year 2000 and we were all just getting used to getting audiobooks online but I'm writing this in 2021 about a book published and recorded in 2020.
Examples:
1. Anne Arundel County is pronounced "Ann Ah-RUN-dil County", not "Anne AYR-run-DELL".
2. Catonsville (as in the Catonsville Nine) is pronounced "CAY-tuns-ville", not "CAHT-uns-vill".
3. Ellicott City is pronounced "EL-lih-kit" city, not "El-li-COTT" City.
We've got the internet today much more so than before, right?! A simple pronunciation guide provided by the author, forwarded by the publisher to both the producer and the talent should NOT be an issue anymore, I would think.
But, again, it was a great book!
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Rage
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Woodward, the number-one international bestselling author of Fear: Trump in the White House, has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. In dramatic detail, Woodward takes readers into the Oval Office as Trump’s head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 675,000 Americans.
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Knock-down, drag-out
- By LEE on 09-15-20
- Rage
- By: Bob Woodward
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
The Subject Is Worth Reading
Reviewed: 10-30-20
Regardless of your politics, you want to know about The Prez (as I call him) and this book (along with "Fear") will get you there. I found the Kushner portion of the story unexpectedly compelling, especially about the books he references (including Scott Adams' "Win Bigly"). The most unexpected part of this book was that I sped up the playback to 1.5x while not realizing that Woodward would include verbatim interviews with The Prez. This means you hear the false starts, sudden stops and switches in the conversation similar to how we all talk if we're not involving prepared remarks but, in this case, it made The Prez sound like he was on every stimulant legally available (and perhaps not-so-legal). I had to stop the recording and reset my listening mind. Good work, good reading and thanks, again, Audible for the speed control on the app.
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The Three Musketeers
- By: Alexandre Dumas
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 23 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Mixing a bit of seventeenth-century French history with a great deal of invention, Alexandre Dumas tells the tale of young D'Artagnan and his musketeer comrades, Porthos, Athos, and Aramis. Together they fight to foil the schemes of the brilliant, dangerous Cardinal Richelieu, who pretends to support the king while plotting to advance his own power. Bursting with swirling swordplay, swooning romance, and unforgettable figures.
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Only a Narration Review
- By S, on 09-20-10
- The Three Musketeers
- By: Alexandre Dumas
- Narrated by: John Lee
Not what I expected (which was a good thing)
Reviewed: 10-30-20
Much better than any movie adaptation I've seen (isn't the book always better?!). There are better reviews out there than mine. I will say I enjoyed the momentary comparison of D'Artagnan to Don Quixote (the influence of Cervantes is felt in many parts of the book). While I was surprised that so much of the book was given to Milady and her escape, I found that story to be perhaps the most compelling part of the book.
My only complaint on this book is the recording. The reader is fine but the audio is overmodulated at some spots, especially when John Lee raises his voice. That's not on Mr. Lee but on the sound engineer. Other than that, I can recommend this book to anyone. Enjoy!
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The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
- BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: full cast, Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 18 hrs and 59 mins
- Original Recording
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The complete collection of acclaimed BBC Radio dramas based on John le Carré's best-selling novels, starring Simon Russell Beale as George Smiley. With a star cast including Kenneth Cranham, Eleanor Bron, Brian Cox, Ian MacDiarmid, Anna Chancellor, Hugh Bonneville and Lindsay Duncan, these enthralling dramatisations perfectly capture the atmosphere of le Carré's taut, thrilling spy novels.
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good reading but can't navigate
- By RB Vancouver on 01-07-17
- The Complete George Smiley Radio Dramas
- BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisation
- By: John le Carré
- Narrated by: full cast, Simon Russell Beale
You have to listen without distraction
Reviewed: 02-10-20
These are radio dramas. Great stories and best enjoyed with headphones without distractions. The 4-star rating of the stories reflects the dramatized productions, not the books themselves. le Carre's books are fantastic but since I already knew the stories, the radio dramas seemed rich. Best if you read the books also.
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