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Traffic
- Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)
- Narrated by: David Slavin
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
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Publisher's summary
We have always had a passion for cars and driving. Now Traffic offers us an exceptionally rich understanding of that passion. Vanderbilt explains why traffic jams form, outlines the unintended consequences of our attempts to engineer safety, and even identifies the most common mistakes drivers make in parking lots. Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the quotidian activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological and technical factors that explain how traffic works.
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Story
For more than three decades, Dr. John Bargh has been responsible for the revolutionary research into the unconscious mind, research that informed best sellers like Blink and Thinking Fast and Slow. Now, in what Dr. John Gottman said "will be the most important and exciting book in psychology that has been written in the past 20 years", Dr. Bargh takes us on an entertaining and enlightening tour of the forces that affect everyday behavior while transforming our understanding of ourselves in profound ways.
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Political jab
- By Brad on 10-20-17
By: John Bargh PhD
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How to Build a Car
- By: Adrian Newey
- Narrated by: Richard Trinder
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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The world's foremost designer in Formula One, Adrian Newey OBE is arguably one of Britain's greatest engineers and this is his fascinating, powerful memoir. How to Build a Car explores the story of Adrian's unrivalled 35-year career in Formula One through the prism of the cars he has designed, the drivers he has worked alongside and the races in which he's been involved.
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Snooze fest
- By moo on 02-09-20
By: Adrian Newey
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Ingenious
- A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America
- By: Jason Fagone
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2007, the X Prize Foundation announced that it would give $10 million to anyone who could build a safe, mass-producible car that could travel one hundred miles on the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. The challenge attracted more than one hundred teams from all over the world, including dozens of amateurs. Many designed their cars entirely from scratch, rejecting decades of thinking about what a car should look like.
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Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels.
- By Shamu from New York on 12-07-13
By: Jason Fagone
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Mindwise
- Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want
- By: Nicholas Epley
- Narrated by: Nicholas Epley
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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You are a mind reader, born with an extraordinary ability to understand what others think, feel, believe, want, and know. It's a sixth sense you use every day, in every personal and professional relationship you have. At its best, this ability allows you to achieve the most important goal in almost any life: connecting, deeply and intimately and honestly, to other human beings. At its worst, it is a source of misunderstanding and unnecessary conflict, leading to damaged relationships and broken dreams. How good are you at knowing the minds of others?
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Finally gave up - no real point
- By Thomas on 05-12-14
By: Nicholas Epley
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The Ghost in My Brain
- How a Concussion Stole My Life and How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Helped Me Get It Back
- By: Clark Elliott Ph.D.
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1999, Clark Elliott suffered a concussion when his car was rear-ended. Overnight his life changed from that of a rising professor with a research career in artificial intelligence to a humbled man struggling to get through a single day. At times he couldn't walk across a room, or even name his five children. Doctors told him he would never fully recover. After eight years, the cognitive demands of his job, and of being a single parent, finally became more than he could manage.
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Mostly Tedious With Moments of Insight
- By Brent on 01-17-16
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The Plateau Effect
- Getting From Stuck to Success
- By: Bob Sullivan, Hugh Thompson
- Narrated by: Don Hagen
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Plateau Effect is a powerful law of nature that affects everyone. Learn to identify plateaus and break through any stagnancy in your life - from diet and exercise, to work, to relationships. The Plateau Effect shows how athletes, scientists, therapists, companies, and musicians around the world are learning to break through their plateau - to turn off the forces that cause people to “get used to” things - and turn on human potential and happiness in ways that seemed impossible.
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Heath
- By Oliver Nielsen on 07-22-13
By: Bob Sullivan, and others
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Everything All at Once
- How to Unleash Your Inner Nerd, Tap into Radical Curiosity and Solve Any Problem
- By: Bill Nye
- Narrated by: Bill Nye
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Everything All at Once is an exciting, inspiring call to unleash the power of the nerd mindset that exists within us all. Nye believes we'll never be able to tackle our society's biggest, most complex problems if we don't even know how to solve the small ones. Step by step, he shows his listeners the key tools behind his everything-all-at-once approach: radical curiosity, a deep desire for a better future, and a willingness to take the actions needed to make it a reality.
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Bill Nye is awesome, but skip this one
- By Evan on 08-15-17
By: Bill Nye
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Let’s Ride
- Sonny Barger’s Guide to Motorcycling How to Ride the Right Way - for Life
- By: Sonny Barger, Darwin Holmstrom - contributor
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Hailed as the new essential resource for bikers, Let's Ride is today's most entertaining and authoritative guide to mastering the art of motorcycling. From choosing the right bike and keeping it finely maintained to sharpening riding techniques and achieving top performance, legendary biker icon Sonny Barger mines his lifetime of experience to provide advice, wisdom, wit, and never-before-told stories that will help fellow riders - new and veteran alike - survive the challenges of the road.
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Forrest Gump narrator
- By guillermo on 03-09-22
By: Sonny Barger, and others
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The Big Roads
- The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways
- By: Earl Swift
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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From author Earl Swift comes the surprising history of the U.S. interstate system, a fascinating route through the dreams, discoveries, and protests that shaped these mighty roads.
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Lessons from The Big Roads
- By Joshua Kim on 05-06-12
By: Earl Swift
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Bozo Sapiens
- Why to Err Is Human
- By: Michael Kaplan, Ellen Kaplan
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Our species, it appears, is hardwired to get things wrong in myriad different ways. Why did recipients of a loan offer accept a higher rate of interest when a pretty woman's face was printed on the flyer? Why did one poll on immigration find the most despised aliens were ones from a group that did not exist? What made four of the Air Force's best pilots fly their planes, in formation, straight into the ground?
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A tour de force
- By Ivan on 07-05-11
By: Michael Kaplan, and others
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Strange Stones
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of adventure, Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Peter Hessler’s best reportage - a dazzling display of the powerful storytelling, shrewd cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that are the trademarks of his work. Over the last decade, as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of three books, Peter Hessler has lived in Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions.
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funny, entertaining
- By Katherine on 08-02-13
By: Peter Hessler
What listeners say about Traffic
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Craig
- 01-17-09
How's My Driving?
This book takes an analytical look at modern driving and why we do the things we do. It looks how and why roads are planned the way they are, the way that people drive and its effects, and how we are going have to adapt as roads become busier.
I found it an interesting listen. However there were a couple of points that are worth noting. The first is the author's interpretation of some of the data. As an example, his interpretation of the difference between late and early mergers, in my opinion, did not mesh in my mind with the description quoted from the studies that he references. Although, mostly the author does seem to be basing his conclusions on careful analysis.
The second is that, despite stating otherwise in the audio, the book concerns itself mostly with the US. Data and statistics are included for other countries, but the meat of the analysis is often specific to US roads and driving practices (as someone who has driven for over 20 years in over a dozen different countries, I feel that I can comment on this, and road layouts and driver 'norms' do vary significantly from one country to the next), making some of the topics irrelevant for non-US drivers. Examples of this would be accident statistics, models of cars, planning examples, which are almost exclusively from the US.
However, on the whole, the book was informative and entertaining. The quality of the audio and editing was good.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Chantal
- 10-10-08
A must read for everyone on the road
I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up this book. As a recovering driver who now uses almost exclusively mass transit I wasn't sure if this would apply to me. In reality, it was a very balanced look at our roads and all the associated issues and problems from all vantage points: rational drivers and those with road rage, mass transit, parking, engineering, car racing, etc. Even though I consider myself fairly well informed about planning issues, I learned a lot and highly recommend the book. The type of information included in this book can also make our road safer and voters/taxpayers better informed.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Andy
- 10-23-09
filled with interesting facts
Book does a good job of filling us in on a wide range of data points about driving and traffic. Helps us understand the why behind how roads and highways are designed. Be ready for some interesting observations that are counterintuitive. Narration was first rate.
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1 person found this helpful