Nick
- 26
- reviews
- 7
- helpful votes
- 83
- ratings
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A Brief History of Intelligence
- Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains
- By: Max S. Bennett
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Equal parts Sapiens, Behave, and Superintelligence, but wholly original in scope, A Brief History of Intelligence offers a paradigm shift for how we understand neuroscience and AI. Artificial intelligence entrepreneur Max Bennett chronicles the five “breakthroughs” in the evolution of human intelligence and reveals what brains of the past can tell us about the AI of tomorrow.
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Flawed fundamental assumptions, good function rvw
- By Duane Leet on 06-01-24
- A Brief History of Intelligence
- Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains
- By: Max S. Bennett
- Narrated by: George Newbern
Well explained
Reviewed: 03-10-25
This was an exceptionally well written piece on the evolution of mammalian intelligence over a huge span of time; while also using that survey to illuminate how artificial intelligence works. The author really has a gift for writing clearly about this subject.
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Inventor of the Future
- The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller
- By: Alec Nevala-Lee
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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During his lifetime, Buckminster Fuller was hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century. As the architectural designer and futurist best known for the geodesic dome, he enthralled a vast popular audience, inspired devotion from both the counterculture and the establishment, and was praised as a modern Leonardo da Vinci. To his admirers, he exemplified what one man could accomplish by approaching urgent design problems using a radically unconventional set of strategies, which he based on a mystical conception of the universe’s geometry.
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I learned much about Buckminster Fuller!
- By Richard J. Chandler on 09-12-22
- Inventor of the Future
- The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller
- By: Alec Nevala-Lee
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
A man who deserves to be remembered
Reviewed: 12-20-24
An even handed and thorough retelling of the life of R Buckminster Fuller. His story needs to be told to demonstrate that even such a singular man existed. We are in need of more people like this, who possess singular and obstinate visions of the future.
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Hidden Valley Road
- Inside the Mind of an American Family
- By: Robert Kolker
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their 12 children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the 10 Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic.
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A story you've never heard before
- By Kelley Cox on 04-19-20
- Hidden Valley Road
- Inside the Mind of an American Family
- By: Robert Kolker
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
Pretty great book
Reviewed: 11-19-24
An amazing human story. Wrenching and tragic but illuminating. You will look at mental illness differently.
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Power Failure
- The Rise and Fall of an American Icon
- By: William D. Cohan
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 28 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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No company embodied American ingenuity, innovation, and industrial power more spectacularly and more consistently than the General Electric Company. GE once developed and manufactured many of the inventions we take for granted today, nearly everything from the lightbulb to the jet engine. GE also built a cult of financial and leadership success envied across the globe and became the world’s most valuable and most admired company. But even at the height of its prestige and influence, cracks were forming in its formidable foundation.
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Much better than other GE books
- By Brannon Crawford on 12-26-22
- Power Failure
- The Rise and Fall of an American Icon
- By: William D. Cohan
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
Good deep dive into GE’s implosion
Reviewed: 10-14-24
Cowan is one of the best writers on financial corporate history out there. if you are interested in what happened to General Electric after the very hyped jack Welch years this is the book for you. The book is a wonderful cautionary tale about how Black Swan events and financial crises and other exogenous events can take a franchise held up as one of the models of the business world and then show how it becomes completely incompatible with a new era. it also raises the fundamental question, was the GE that Jack Welch built an enterprise that only he could run, with his special combination of skills and talents.
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Imperial Twilight
- The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age
- By: Stephen R. Platt
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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As one of the most potent turning points in the country's modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today's China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to "open" China even as China's imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country's decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China's advantage.
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Balanced readable narrative about the Opium Wars
- By Carl A. Gallozzi on 09-05-18
- Imperial Twilight
- The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age
- By: Stephen R. Platt
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
Very good
Reviewed: 06-25-24
This is a very clearly written, and seamless history that keeps you engaged and has a lot of insights.
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The Sassoons
- The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire
- By: Joseph Sassoon
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A spectacular generational saga of the making (and undoing) of a family dynasty: the riveting untold story of the gilded Jewish Bagdadi Sassoons, who built a vast empire through global finance and trade—cotton, opium, shipping, banking—that reached across three continents and ultimately changed the destinies of nations. With full access to rare family photographs and archives.
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A telling history
- By Nick on 05-21-24
- The Sassoons
- The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire
- By: Joseph Sassoon
- Narrated by: James Lurie
A telling history
Reviewed: 05-21-24
You learn so much about the complex functioning of world history through the story of one exceptional family.
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1 person found this helpful
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The Half Has Never Been Told
- Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
- By: Edward E Baptist
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 19 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution - the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States.
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A must read for everyone.
- By S. P. Cooper on 03-18-22
- The Half Has Never Been Told
- Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
- By: Edward E Baptist
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
An epiphany
Reviewed: 04-19-24
It makes you understand the political moment of Trump so much better. The recursive waves of hate and ignorance that move through American history.
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Chip War
- The Quest to Dominate the World's Most Critical Technology
- By: Chris Miller
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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You may be surprised to learn that microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Today, military, economic, and geopolitical power are built on a foundation of computer chips. Virtually everything—from missiles to microwaves—runs on chips, including cars, smartphones, the stock market, even the electric grid. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower, but America’s edge is in danger of slipping, undermined by players in Taiwan, Korea, and Europe taking over manufacturing.
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Great history, but could poor narration
- By Lily Wong on 10-26-22
- Chip War
- The Quest to Dominate the World's Most Critical Technology
- By: Chris Miller
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
Must read book
Reviewed: 01-31-24
Very cogent history of a critical industry, that seamlessly ties together the business, technological, and geopolitical elements.
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The Coming Wave
- AI, Power, and Our Future
- By: Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar - contributor
- Narrated by: Mustafa Suleyman
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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We are approaching a critical threshold in the history of our species. Everything is about to change. Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organize your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.
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Click bait
- By Buyer on 09-11-23
- The Coming Wave
- AI, Power, and Our Future
- By: Mustafa Suleyman, Michael Bhaskar - contributor
- Narrated by: Mustafa Suleyman
Thoughtful
Reviewed: 01-20-24
This is a must read if you want to put the current artificial intelligence revolution into context, given that developments are coming now so fast and furiously.
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These Truths
- A History of the United States
- By: Jill Lepore
- Narrated by: Jill Lepore
- Length: 29 hrs
- Unabridged
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In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. In riveting prose, These Truths tells the story of America, beginning in 1492, to ask whether the course of events has proven the nation's founding truths or belied them.
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Good Story but distracting sound engineering
- By MindSpiker on 11-21-18
- These Truths
- A History of the United States
- By: Jill Lepore
- Narrated by: Jill Lepore
Ambition
Reviewed: 12-22-23
Showed that civil rights are integral to understanding the country’s division and a pathway to its revival.
The sound engineering was abysmal. Hard to hear.
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