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Creepy and weird

Revisado: 04-25-24

Alt-history, told through a simplistic modern lens. Good guys are totally good, including correct 21st century values on things like race. Bad guys are cartoonishly bad, enjoyers of rape and torture for their own sake. Characters sound more like dialog in a Tarantino movie than anyone in the 18th century.

But the thing that really sticks out is the constant insertion of sex scenes/references when unneeded and ahistorical. Multiple rapes, described in a moderate amount of detail. A 12 year old girl flees from an atrocity naked, and we get a description of her body. I'm not any kind of a prude, but this kind of thing happens every chapter or two, and after awhile you're very aware that you're reading something someone else is jerking off to. Gross.

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Tedious.

Revisado: 12-21-21

Half-hearted attempts at revisionism ("Gettysburg was not a crucial turning point in the war, because Lee was not fired." That's an actual argument.)

Repeated obsession with judging 19th century people by 21st century mores (Newsflash: every white person was racist. What keen insight!).

This is what has become of the humanities in academia.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Tremendous..

Revisado: 12-01-21

If you are inclined to suspect a book about technology written in a 1990s is no longer relevant... Nothing could be further from the truth. Deeply profound and wise, but still easily accessible.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Brilliant

Revisado: 07-19-21

A tremendous idea, well executed. Not sure if audiobook is the ideal format for it, though, seeing as the narrator is very unreliable and will frequently say things that you want to look up and reference on your own.

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Baloney

Revisado: 06-22-21

As a former long-haul trucker myself, I obviously had a bias to enjoy Finn Murphy. I couldn't.

Number one, he makes up BS for no other reason than to make himself sound more interesting: I hate to break it to you, but no, the waitresses at truck stops do not treat drivers differently based on the type of cargo they haul. They don't know or care. 90% of drivers don't use CB radios anymore; cell phones have made them nearly obsolete. And when he tells you he drove Florida to Connecticut in 2 days ... well, he's either lying or confessing to DOT violations. Which is pretty funny given how he brags on his professionalism.

Stealing an couple old trucker jokes and making them into an "true stories" is a venial error ... but plagarizing a Mark Twain gag and passing it off as a real experience that happened to him (the 202/2002 bit he claims happened on his first day)? That's a mortal sin.

More fundamentally, he just comes off as unlikable, a misanthropic curmudgeon, He doesn't think much of other drivers, what with their belt buckles and cowboy boots. He also makes it plain he doesn't think much of most of his high-end C-suite customers. He casts shade of some sort or another on suburbanites, southerners, and military members. He does go out of his way to describe every African-American he meets as deeply wise, elegant, dignified, etc.

It all came together when he began discussing NPR. And how every driver he knows just loves tuning in Terry Gross on the radio all over the country. Which is just hilarious. Firstly, because nearly every driver has a SiriusXM and/or apps on their phone for podcasts/radio/audiobooks. Nobody is gonna want to keep flipping dials to get a new station every 50 miles, which is the scene he paints. Secondly ... have you met any truckers? They ain't the NPR audience. Rush Limbaugh would be much more like it. Most wouldn't know Terry Gross from Terrycloth. I literally laughed out loud at the absurdity.

But then I thought, and I looked it up ... and sure enough, Ol' Finn's agent scored him an on-air interview with Terry Gross, and probably sold a lot of books as a result. And honestly, those folks probably enjoyed his "stories" more than they would have a more accurate depiction. Got to respect his hustle.

Alas, for me, I couldn't go on, and exited at that point. Will be asking for a refund.

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Amusing story, held back by mediocre reading.

Revisado: 04-24-21

Amusing story, held back by mediocre reading. Worth it, given I only spent $1 on it ...

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Good summary

Revisado: 12-27-20

I'm enjoying the podcast. I do wish he'd spent more time on pre-colonial Philippines, though I suppose that would be more archeology and less history proper. Looking forward to the rest of the story.

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Recommended

Revisado: 12-02-20

Brilliantly insightful, hilariously detailed, and (unfortunately) still very much applicable. Written in 1970, and yet identifies social and racial dynamics still in place 50 years on.

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Myopic

Revisado: 09-22-20

This is not really a history of the philippines, but rather a history of Philippine American relations. everything before 1900 is covered in two chapters everything after 1945 in one. There's a lot about what Americans thought about the philippines, and comparatively little about what Filipinos themselves thought.

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psuedoscience

Revisado: 03-15-20

Not a science based book. Astrology is taken seriously. A complete waste of my money.

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