James

Biased

Revisado: 04-10-21

If you're wondering if two Israelis can do this subject justice, spoiler alert they can't.

Save your money and look elsewhere because this book is unremittingly bad. The facts and the history are twisted in the telling with the book going straight off the rails in the final chapter

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Overdone, overwrought, ham-fisted, and hammy.

Revisado: 09-11-18

There's a good play here but you wouldn't know it. None of the actors have any notions of restraint. Overblown and overdone acting makes a near absurdity of the play. While the short play does not allow for much character development it's no excuse to turn the characters into Caricatures.

I've listened to this more than once, seeing if it would grow on me. It does not get much better either with age nor reappraisal. At less than 50 minutes, it does end before it has totally worn out its welcome, just barely.

In the hands of different actors it may have been a better effort, the bones of good play are there. But in the hands of these particular actors it comes off as silly and unprofessional. Give this one a miss.

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Deception can be deadly

Revisado: 09-11-18

When former teen sensation Olivia Stark decides to be someone else in Sin City she gets a lot more than she bargained for. Her attempt to break the mold of starlet sends her into a dangerous, bizarre world where nothing is what it seems. But Olivia is no Fay Ray, no damsel in distress, she's her own woman, and nobody's patsy.

A taught thriller that moves at the speed of a runaway locomotive. Hard to put down, even harder to forget

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Strangely empty of faith.

Revisado: 02-20-18

When Aslan sticks to the professional side of his story the book shines. I won't quibble too much with the narrative too much as I am no way an expert on the subject. I do wonder how mainstream Aslan's interpretation is. His book on Jesus is clearly a revisionist and alternate take on that subject. This is not to say he has not added to the discussion with that book, it's an interesting take. But with that book in mind I do wonder if Azlan's take on the evolution of God is in the broad steam of scholarly work or is well, idiosyncratic to him and his journey.

Where Aslan fails is in advocacy of his particular faith. The God he proposes is a rather flaccid being, a slightly more rigorous and historically based construction of muddled New Age wool gathering. This is the least fulfilling part of the book.

It's not that The Problem Of Evil, or Theodicy has caused greater scholars fits. It's that Aslan fails so spectacularly to come to grips with the issue. Aslan doesn't even bother to bring the issue up. How a man who as educated in and has had a long personal journey in religion fails to come to task with the issue is beyond me. But because he fails in the regard the book comes up way short, it lacks the depth the subject requires.

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A story that deserves a better narrator.

Revisado: 01-27-18

Pity poor Douglas Smith, he has written a master work of Revisionist History and Revisionist Biography only to have it gainsaid by one of the worst readings ever inflicted on a book.

The actual book is solid, a retelling of the Rasputin narrative using newly found and sometimes ignored sources. Forget the Mad Monk and meet the real man, a symptom of the collapse of the Tsarist Autocracy, but not its cause. Forget the tawdry stories of aristocratic lasciviousness and see the more tawdry exploits with ladies for hire. Explore the rot at the very top of the Russian nation and abject failure of the monarchy to adjust to modernity. It's a great story... ruined.

And the man who ruined it is right between your ears. It's not just the flat, uninspired monotone of the delivery, it's also the actual voice as well. It's high, poorly modulated, yet droning. The pacing is bad, really bad, almost unbearable.

I can not tally the times I had to rewind the performance because my mind drifted off, or worse--fell asleep. Part of the issue here was the complexity of the personalities, and their Russian names, but most of problem is directly related to the presentation.

That presentation rarely rises to level of mediocrity, and mostly plumbs the depths of poor to God-awful. The voice when not grating, is stultifying and sing-song. There is not emotional moment in the narrative, or a heart-rending quote from a participant that is not totally flubbed. It's as if the production was rushed, or telephoned in. The presenter is an alien presence in the narrative. To call it a robotic performance is an insult to both Alexa and Siri would might have done a better job of it.

For the TL;DR crowd, buy the print book, skip the audiobook. Audible needs to pink-slip this particular reader; pronto.

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Passionate, biased, disorganized, and repetitive

Revisado: 02-22-17

As an overview of the history of the ancient herb this is a serviceable enough book. As an indictment of US drug policy it is again good enough, if a little over the top. But overall this is a disappointing narrative. There is a much better book lurking in plain site but the authors decision of a liniare narrative and advocacy position get in the way.

A better approach could have been to take up each of the issues individually, the legal history, the medical history, and the political history each in turn. Turning down the advocacy in the narrative would have helped as well.

As it is we keep meeting the same people and the same issues and the same arguments to the point of saturation and beyond. It's the same drill when the author presents the clinical results of Marajuana research and marajuana treatments. We keep covering the same ground with the same researchers and the same facilities. At times the book descends into pure snake oil salesmanship. It's not enough for the author to disprove the government's bogus claim that there is no benefit in the bud, the author must then go on to prove that the noble weed can cure a rainy day.

The author is on much more solid ground when going over the impact of the herb during the social implosion known as the 1960's. Also informative is how weed impacted the Beat Generation, the precursor to the psychedelic '60's. Before these two seminal events is the coverage of Marajuana prohibition and how racial bias plus more than a bit of beaurecratic preservation and empire building played a part in the process. The author makes painfully clear that government policy about Marajuana was never about rational considerations, but about other, much more cynical and sinister considerations. But even here the author is unwilling to let the fact speak for themselves. The author is not content to point out how corrupt and corrupting drug policy is by a mere presentation of the facts. The author just can not resist a little hyperbably, or to beat a dead horse into the ground.

Despite all this I was left with a more positive view not only of the herb itself but it efficacy as a medicinal. The case is made. The research is provided. The facts and footnotes are provided. It's a solid case that needs to be fast tracked by double-bind studies that fast-track the dispensing of the herb for specific medical maladies and for harm reduction. This is clear and the US government needs to stop being dishonest on this matter. It also needs to end the fear mongering on a weed that has been proven to have zero toxic effects, as the author so well documents. Hemp was widely available in the glory days of patent medicine both as a treatment and for industrial uses. The book gives plenty of good reasons for it to come out of the shadows and rejoin our society as a useful product.

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A excellent narrative.

Revisado: 02-09-17

Holy Guacamole! This audiobook is a blast. Even if you have read more Third Reich books than is good for normal functioning, get this one.

I've rarely have had as much fun learning than I have has listening to this audiobook. The subject is new, it's fascinating, and it keeps you listening. I listened to it almost at one go. While it covers the subjects of drugs in the Third Reich, it's something of a drug itself--very hard to quit.

As a pharmacological history of the Third Reich and a pharmacological biography of Hitler this book can not be beat. It sheds an entirely new light on Hitler and his enabler/pusher Dr. Morel. It also sheds light on how the Wehrmacht can be understood as a Walter White experience gone horribly off the rails.

Thanks to this new understanding we have a understanding on how Hitler was able to power thought the war sustained on junk (both literal and figurative) The number and amount of items Hitler had pushed into his veins by the good Doctor Morel is amply and chillingly documented. The rise and fall of both Hitler and his Reich is plotted with excruciating detail on medical charts and on prescription notes. What a strange, long and ultimately disastrous trip it was.

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A good primer for basic understanding

Revisado: 02-09-17

It's usually never a good idea to let the author to read their own book but in a serviceable book the author gives a serviceable narration.

If you don't know Shia from Shinola this audiobook is good place to learn the basics.
It a quick and breezy enough affair helping one to understand what the debate is all about and why some very bad people are blowing up some very nice mosques.

However if you want a deeper understanding of either the Sia or Sunni movements or the history of the same, look elsewhere. What you get here is a very quick bus tour of the major highlights. There is nothing about the various flavors of either the Sunni or Shia understanding. There are parts where historical whiplash occurs where the author blast from the distant past to the present day in the narration. There are subjects given only the thinnest of glosses, like the Mongol Invasion and it's impact on the Shia heartland. Our friends the Mongols barely make an appearance before charging off screen on their ponies.

As a very significant event in both Muslim history and world history, the paint by numbers presentation does not do much justice to the event. More curious listeners are left wanting much more than this rushed, barn storming introduction to the split.

Still, I can recommend the Audiobook as a quick and dirty primer, as long as you understand that it barely scratches the surface of the subject. A deeper understanding, one based on the ancient antagonisms of Imperial Rome and Imperial Persia is waiting to be fleshed out somewhere else. As for narration, it's a solid C effort, a C+ at times. A bit stolid, a bit pokey, and always with the airs of a elderly British Don, it still delivers a good enough listening experience.

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Now you will know why we are in such a mess.

Revisado: 08-26-16

First things first I am an total fan boy of Andrew J. Bacevich. It's rare that a man so thoroughly inside the military machine will defect from the home team, will provide a counter narrative to out interventionist foreign policy, but Bacevich will. It helps that he was never fully engulfed by the beast, and clocked out as a full colonel, not bad, but not all that great either in the scheme of things.

So what does this undistinguished veteran have to say about "The War for the Greater Middle East"? Well it's safe to say he is not entirely happy about how it's worked out since Jimmy Carter laid out the "Carter Doctrine" that has been our underlying philosophy about how to do business in a rather dangerous corner of the world.

More to the point the old peanut farmer is raked over the coals by the author for his feckless formulations and his even more feckless execution. But it's all good when Ronald Regan, Don Reynaldo the Great, the old Gipper steps to the plate, right? Hardly, Regan does not make the same mistakes Carter does, he makes bigger and better ones. All this is laid out in excruciating details with pride of place given to the double dealing done during Iran-Contra and how that managed to infuriate both the Iranians and the Saudis.

Democrats zero for one, ditto for Republicans. Next up is George H. Bush, can he at least tie up the board for Team Republican? Swing and a miss. Bacevich once more goes into the weeds to show that we very much need to pay attention to the man behind the curtain. Gulf War One was less the spectacular win it was presented and more of the ambiguous no decision that our author presents it as.

Team Republican 0-1-1 Next up the sleazy, morally easy Bill Clinton and once more into the breach dear friends with a policy which seems designed to not only fail, but fail spectacularly, which it did. Team Democrat zero for two, Team USA 0-1-2. Can Bush the younger finally put a win on the board?

We know the answer to that question. We are living in the big, nasty, complete failure of W. Bush's attempt to finish the job in Iraq. 0-1-3 Team USA with the war now metastasizing to the bad lands of the Hindu Kush.

Which leads us to the present day and Team Democrat up at the plate again. The war has further spread to not only the Horn of Africa but to Africa proper. Obama is less a commander in chief and more of a fire fighter in chief attempting to put out flash fires all over the world but never asking how all that kindling got there in the first place.

With the end of the book and the present election before us it really does not look like Obama will chalk up a win for the "War for the Greater Middle East" If Hillary gets to sit in the big desk of 1600 Pennsylvania maybe she might right this battered and sinking ship of state. However, if Bacevich is correct in his interpretations and opinion, it does not look like either Team Hillary nor team USA will pull the win. Team Trump? It's not the personalities as Bacevich makes painfully clear. It is the policy, a policy that Trump seems to have no interest in studying, never mind changing.

Bacevich has not written a happy book, more of a j'accuse, but it should be a requirement of any thoughtful citizen to read or listen to this effort. Only by learning the awful errors of the past do we have any chance of finding a correct path out of our disastrous Carter Doctrine in the Near East and beyond.

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Amazons were real, and kicked ass.

Revisado: 08-26-16

If you are a fan of Adrienne Mayor and have read any of her other books you know the E ticket ride you are in for. While not quite up to "The Poison King" (but what is?) this is a fascinating bit of history done as Sherlock Holmes who done it.

In this detective work Mayor use the results of archeological digs, ancient histories, and other tools to build up a story of the lost Scythian tribe that became to be known as the semi mythical Amazons.

It is quite the bit of sleuthing as the author weaves together tattoos, funerary items, skeletons from long lost graves and the most modern DNA analysis to bring the Amazons out of the mythic mists and the bias of the Greek reportage of the day and create living, breath, if a bit odd to modern eyes, Steppe warriors. And if you know anything about the ancient Steppe warriors of Central to West Asia you know you are dealing with some awesome, if rather frightening people. These people could rip you head off without as much as a "how do you do" if given proper motivation.

But sometime these people made love, not war and that too is, well, different from what you would expect. They were rather liberal and rather egalitarian about who they bedded down with, as long a their paramours were sufficiently willing to crack skulls for the tribe.

These were some larger than life woman with some larger than life stories to tell. It's great that Ms. Myers was able to retell their tales to a modern audience.

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