elaine

Unbroken

Revisado: 07-18-11

As she did in Seabiscuit, Hildebrand writes an engaging, gripping account of non-earthshaking events. That is no criticism. It was a revelation to me how prisoners of war were treated by the Japanese during WWII. I had heard of the brutal treatment, but it never hit home the way Hildebrand told it. You feel what the victims feel.

You also feel the emotional impact of being the member of a family--both before, during, and after the war. What happened to at least one man who fought in that war is told candidly, and makes one wonder how, before the days of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, veterans coped with civilian life. They were expected to say, "Great. It's over," and then resume their pre-war lives. But, they had gone through terrible,horrendous experiences and they often couldn't just get on with it, as Hildebrand shows.

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Genghis Khan

Revisado: 07-18-11

I had only the foggiest notion of Genghis Khan before I started listening to this. It's a trip back into time into a place, a culture, a life so different from whar we know from Western history, that it gripped me from the start. Highly recommended

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Cro-Magnon

Revisado: 07-18-11

This is very engaging and interesting, and Fagan's scholaship seems competent, but he keeps lapsing into make-believe scenarios that are fictional accounts of what early man must have felt like or what he was thinking. I find such storytelling out of place in what is a scientific study, even one written for the general public.

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A Serving of Treacle

Revisado: 12-12-10

Dogs are fascinating creatures, the only animal that science knows of who have adapted themselves to living with another species,humans. It is true that without humans, dogs would not survive. Coppinger estimates, as I recall, 3 months after the last human has died, the last dog will die. However, dogs are not parasites. They live off of humans, but they're willing to work for their keep, to the point of facing danger, pain, and death, if need be. In turn, humans would never have evolved culturally as they have had dogs not been willing to herd not only sheep, but cattle and horses. There is no way that humans could have domesticated the horse without herding dogs. There is no way that humans could have spread across the globe without dogs.

This book certainly does no justice to dogs as a species. The anecdotes about the author's dog do not enlighten us in any way about what dogs are capable of. They're not even funny. The author wastes words marveling about how curly his dog's tail is and how the dog chases it.

I don't mind anecdotal accounts of dog behavior. Everything I read doesn't have to be scientifically worthy, but this is just plain boring--and so sweet you might gag on it.

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