Mutant Daddy

Detailed history of the decades of ante-bellum tensions

Revisado: 09-13-24

The authors astonish with their depiction of the eloquence and maneuvering with which the post-Jacksonian American leaders sought to both preserve the Union and get their disparate ways with respect to Slavery.

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Superb view of the frontier from 1924

Revisado: 08-29-24

A genuine description of the human desires & fears that motivated & accompanied the westward move of the colonists, concentrating on the 1775-1890 era.

Treats the Indians sympathetically despite using language occasionally offensive to modern sensibilities. In so doing, treats the colonists appropriately severely where deserved, especially the tidewater slavery-based expansionists.

Some chapters are too detailed for modern tastes, but many provide succinct descriptions of key social, political, and technological forces driving people to do what they did as they competed for land to live out their dreams.

This book leaves readers with a more clear understanding of how the frontier age of American was unique in modern history.

The narrator for the audiobook was not a professional, but after a bumpy start his labor of love & occasional rough edges turned out to fit the story the book tells just fine.

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Look up mindless Pedantry in dictionary

Revisado: 05-11-23

Was this someone’s Phd thesis? Did they hate — or fear — their advisor?

After awhile the repetitive conversions to metric for each measurement grate on the ears like fingernails on a blackboard. The story was dull beyond tears.

Withnail would have killed himself in despair at the next Black Spot. The hideousness of it all!

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Excellent walk-through the 4 English cultures which shaped Americans

Revisado: 08-14-22

In the 2020s this 1979 comprehensive cultural history of the 4 founding cultures is a great antidote to so much academic and NY Times-style pseudo-intelligentsia nonsense.

Read or listen, and contemplate the varied influences on your immigrant family.

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Does not work as an audiobook

Revisado: 05-07-22

Not sure how helpful this might be as a printed work. It does have a few — too few in my view — illuminating moments as an audiobook.

The accompanying pdf is likewise sparse and appears to have been sort of thrown together.

The narrator has a pleasing delivery.

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Deep dive into Transitional Christianity of late Antiquity

Revisado: 02-15-22

Not for the faint of heart because it is so lengthy and comprehensive, but if you want to investigate how and why Christianity developed the way it did this is the book for you.

Focuses on the 350-550 AD period.

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Good. Pop Sci level intro to microbiome

Revisado: 12-22-21

First portion reviews history of the science; ok.

Bulk of the book is a good and very interesting walk through much of what has been learned recently about bacteria, friend and foe.

Manages to minimize the typical “breathless adventure reporting” style of too much modern science journalism.

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Lively Review of the Rollercoaster of Christianity

Revisado: 05-01-21

Paul Johnson is considered nowadays to be a conservative historian. That reflects on our times more than on him.

He wrote here a remarkably clear-eyed account of how Christianity arose, developed, split asunder numerous times, and in so doing continues to reveal the very human evils, weaknesses, and enormous strengths of its practitioners.

Johnson lays bare the constant tension between the spiritual aspirations of the faith and its believers on the one hand, and the reliability with which, on the other, organized religions reliably bring to the front men intent upon earthly success.

He illuminates the unique history of the faith that built what became Europe, and which led to the development of cultures capable of creating — and of course so often failing to live up to — the aspirations of The Enlightenment.

This reviewer can vouch that one need not be a believer to enjoy this comprehensive history.

I read this book three decades ago; hearing it in 2021 from a crisp presenter was a real treat.

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Textbook

Revisado: 03-01-21

This could be a rather dry college freshman textbook, I suppose.

Has a few good nuggets, but often seems to be droning on about humans as if they were rather one-dimensional, not the richly exasperating animals we know and love.

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From molecular storm to chance and necessity

Revisado: 11-06-19

Fascinating explanation of some of life’s mysteries— for lay readers like me — at the nanometer scale. This gets interwoven with a recap of important discoveries as scientists have groped and grappled along the way to discovery.

Minor quibbles:

1) The author evidently felt compelled to repeat
himself at times to ensure readers stayed with him;

2) For this reader it would have been helpful to hear more about how energy gets transformed to do so many important things at the molecular level. Does ATP, for example, serve as the cell’s energy currency always and everywhere by releasing vibrational energy? Perhaps the author has more to share with us in the future...

All in all, quibbles aside, a rich way to spend eight hours listening!

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