D. Smith

Fantastic

Revisado: 07-21-22

The narration is a little fuzzy but once you get into the story, it doesn’t matter. It’s doubtless a lot clearer than the voice quality over an ARVN field radio. This is a fantastic story of heroism against the odds, and frankly brought tears to my eyes on several occasions. If you ever think your day is going badly, take a moment to thank God that you are not sitting in a foxhole in Dong Ha facing a column of Soviet T54s.

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I found myself drawn in...

Revisado: 02-06-17

Ok, it's a book written by a businessman, about GM. Sounds about as much fun as reviewing spreadsheets of quarterly earnings, subdivided by sales region... Right?

Actually this book was fascinating. Bob tells us why the biggest car company in the world, that used to create glorious things like the '57 Chevy, declined to the point where in the 90s it was producing the Cavalier and Pontiac Aztek, instead. He offers a very good lesson in common sense, which anyone can apply. Focus on the goal, in the real world. Don't paralyze yourself into mediocrity with statistical navel-gazing.

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Magnificent!

Revisado: 12-02-13

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Do yourself a favor and get this, right now. The reading is superb, and the author handles the beautiful 19th century English and the pronunciation of French names superbly. The story is simply enthralling, as well. I have listened to this audiobook in its lengthy entirety probably a half-dozen times, and each time I still pick up on new, subtle nuances. This is simply a delight to the mind and the ears, and you will not want to press the pause button.

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Neither deep nor impartial!

Revisado: 12-02-13

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I was led to believe that this course was going to be an unbiased look at how commoners lived in various ancient societies. It does give a lot of interesting historical information, but I found the professor giving the lecture to be very narrow-minded, in practice. He applies all sorts of 20th/21st century biases to his talk -all sorts of condescending little remarks about how "unenlightened" or "misogynistic" a society was, for example. He seems to take it for granted that our modern attitudes and morals are unquestionably correct, and evaluates and judges the past based on them, which I find unacceptable in an academic historian, though it is sadly very common. There is more to ancient Greece or Egypt than "OMG, they had slaves!!!" Part of being a historian is to recognize our own biases, and attempt to minimize them in our evaluation of history, rather than embracing them. Education is about broadening horizons and thinking critically, rather than smugly judging everything based on our own prejudices -right or wrong though they may objectively be. This is an interesting set of lectures, make no mistake, but it is definitely geared toward popular taste, rather than academic.

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