L. M. Atnip

Vanilla intro to Ibn Khaldun

Revisado: 03-25-25

This provided a moderately helpful overview and background (I am teaching this text for the first time) but sounds like it might have been written as well as read by AI, with lots of generic and not entirely convincing formulations about Ibn Khaldun's ongoing relevance (did we really need the Muqaddimah to tell us that overtaxation could be destabilizing?). There was no critical element whatsoever, or reference to scholarly debates.

The AI reading was surprisingly good, except that it pronounced the title "Muggedy-mah."

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Humane and devastating

Revisado: 05-05-24

Straightforward but deeply moving account of the bombing and its aftermath for the victims. Makes one think that few could have borne it with more dignity than the Japanese.

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Great play, lousy performance.

Revisado: 03-29-23

DO NOT BUY THIS. The actors don't seem to know what they're saying, and, indeed, how could they, when a line containing the subject of a sentence, like "This supernatural soliciting," is left out and they pick up with the verb "cannot be ill, cannot be good?" No, it's ill, all right—you just lost the play! Passages that merely convey information are read with great passion, while the most powerful lines lose all their poetry, not to mention their very sense. Why are you still reading this review? Move on to the next option.

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Irritating and pretentious with a few good insights

Revisado: 02-25-23

Let me start by saying I really liked Gardners novel Grendel and part of my reaction against this book is that it totally lacks the humor and charm of that work. It is a litany of complaints against contemporary literature some of which might be justified but it’s tedious and the impression one gets is of Gardner implicitly carping that his own fiction was not adequately appreciated. The reading doesn’t help; it’s fine but pretty uptight-sounding. (But one might blame the text for inviting this.)

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Fascinating synthesis, exasperating narration

Revisado: 01-04-21

Would. Audible. PLEASE. PLEASE. PLEASE. NOT hire narrators who are incompetent to read the books they're narrating? NARRATORS OF PHILOSOPHY BOOKS SHOULD KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT PHILOSOPHY SO THEY CAN PROPERLY PRONOUNCE NAMES AND TECHNICAL TERMS. NARRATORS OF BOOKS ABOUT GERMANS SHOULD KNOW GERMAN. Surely there are scads of qualified readers out there--who can, for instance, pronounce "Benjamin," "Klee," "es gibt" etc etc...it is outrageous that a recorded books company would have such lousy quality control. It ticks me off.

That said, Eilenberger's interweaving of these four thinkers' lives and theories is a magesterial and highly illuminating synthesis, and worth putting up with the lousy reading. (Barely.)

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Useful treatment, absurdly bad reading

Revisado: 06-26-17

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Ken Maxon?

Someone who had at least a passing familiarity with philosophy, and so could pronounce "idealism," "Kant," "solipsism," "Frege"...or at least someone capable of reading ("casual" instead of "causal," failure to grasp the syntax of sentences...I could go on...).

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Great text, lousy reading

Revisado: 02-15-15

How could the performance have been better?

The reader clearly had little familiarity with the text or Greek--many names were mispronounced--and he also always read out "i.e." or "e.g." instead of saying "that is" or "for instance."

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