Jason Close

This is a great historical book.

Reviewed: 08-16-18

Lots of anecdotes and readings from diaries. The perfect amount of history peppered with words from humans who lived at the time.

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This was a decent history book.

Reviewed: 05-21-18

This book was done well. It has a good ratio of data-to-anecdote. Your won't get lost in the weeds too much with repetitive listing of dates and people, but that info is included where relevant.

It will give you a good grounding on how the stage was set for the Communist regime of early 20th century.

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A great book of history

Reviewed: 05-04-18

This is how you relay history. Provide the facts, first hand accounts, sprinkle in some anecdotal information, and then give analysis.

This book does it well. You'll learn a lot. And while it can be a little dry at times, you'll never be bored to tears.

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1 person found this helpful

Like listening to an encyclopedia

Reviewed: 01-22-18

This book contains a lot of useful info. But it's not suitable for listening, as it's too dry. There's nothing anecdotal in it. Just dry facts that go on for hours and hours.

This is a book someone should buy as a reference. It's not lacking for information. But the audiobook is not the proper medium for relaying it to the world.

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4 people found this helpful

He gets it completely wrong.

Reviewed: 12-18-17

If you can remember the day after Donald Trump won the Presidency, all of the late night hosts (Kimmel, Fallon, Colbert...) all sat, stunned, and tried to make heads or tails of the guilt that America should feel.

This book is the best attempt to try to explain the dumbfounded attitude of the those talk show hosts, as well as the rest of the Left, on the day after the 2016 Presidential election.

The book is intellectually sound (in that there are a lot of true facts and true history). But this book is not intellectually honest. Moreover, it fails at accomplishing its true goal: to explain the main characteristic of what makes a person an American.

The book tries to pin Americans as, in a sense, gullible. And the true source of that gullibility is religion. The author completely misses the point. The true characteristic (the most successful characteristic) is the characteristic of mistrust; notably, a mistrust of the government.

This book attacks religion, gun laws, television, technology, the Internet... all of it exists purely either as a product or source of American gullibility, with the election of Donald Trump as the pinnacle of the sum of these existent 'creations'.

According to the book, television's biggest impact was Ronald Regan. It wasn't the altering of the American family lifestyle, or as a marketing and news delivery medium. The sixties' "free love" experiments with sex and drugs were all innocent and harmless, with the religious American extremism being the most important byproduct. Of course, there's no mention of what birth control, welfare, and the embracing of drugs all did to American culture. Loose gun laws are to blame for the tens of deaths a year in mass shootings, and it should not be mentioned that the places in the U.S. with the strictest gun laws are the places where crime and shootings of individuals (totaling in the thousands annually) are the most rampant.

The Great Depression, WWI & WWII, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the Cold War... none were important in the last 100 years according to this book.

While I stated this book has some good history in it, and even makes a few good philosophical points, it doesn't "get it". America isn't the product of the embracing of religion. America is the product of a distrust in government, from the initial European powers to it's own central government. And that mistrust of the government, as well as the desire to keep it at arms length, that has served America the best. This guy doesn't get it.

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5 people found this helpful

A great review on actual history

Reviewed: 09-25-17

I enjoyed the book. It is an actual history book. There's not much of any political narrative; only the display of facts. You get taken through a lot of very early history of marriage (in early Biblical times), through the Middle Ages, Enlightenment, and then in recent times.

If you want a good understanding on how marriage has changed throughout history (not necessarily a whole lot of 'why'), then this is your book.

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An interesting view

Reviewed: 09-25-17

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

This book was very enlightening at times, and also very infuriating at time. If you are trying to look at it as a piece from a time-capsul, it's tolerable. Some of it is great knowledge into the lives of women before today's time. But the political leaning of the book, and some of the statements are just false, or are ideologically misguided.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

I could not finish this book, as around 2/3 of the way through it, it just became unbearable (from a content POV).

What does Parker Posey bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

She has a great, soothing voice. She did a good job.

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1 person found this helpful

Great narrative of the American Universities

Reviewed: 03-31-17

This book has a great narrative on the decline in volte of the American University. It's amazing to hear his descriptions of victimhood, especially considering this was written 30 years ago.

But I feel this could be two separate books: one on the culture of the American University, and the other as a description of philosophy. Unless you are a great student of the common philosophers, you will be lost in the latter half of this book.

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Be prepared to become grounded

Reviewed: 01-13-17

All of the things you take for granted, and all of the hardships you think you've experienced will be torn away by this book. Yes, perception is reality, but some realities are more real than others.

Add an American, the British accent is a little hard to listen to for long periods of time. But in terms of content, there's not a lot that will do to your emotions than what this book can do.

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A lot of words for 6 steps.

Reviewed: 05-28-16

Would you try another book from Donald Sull and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt and/or Jeff Cummings?

I would really skim another book by them before I bought it. My reasoning is that the anecdotal information is just too much, and isn't necessary. The first chapter was useless, and often I thought chapters were twice as long as they needed to be. There was also a lot of "we will explain this later in chapter X".

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Jeff Cummings?

I did not like this narrator, mostly because he took long pauses. I listened to the book on 1.50x speed, and I still felt like there were too many long pauses.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Simple Rules?

The first chapter needs to go. And the anecdotes and examples should be business related. I don't care much about the simple rules followed by bees and birds and dragonflies.

Any additional comments?

I'm glad I bought this eBook on sale, because I would've been upset had I spent $20 on it.

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