Mr. Johnson

Objective history devolves into CCP propaganda

Revisado: 08-31-23

Professor Hammond presents an insightful and objective history of China, right up until the rise of the 20th century. His depiction of the nationalists, the communists, and especially Mao - and most egregiously the great leap forward and the cultural revolution - sounds like it was dictated to him by CCP historians. it is grotesque that professor Hammond effectively stomps on the graves of tens of millions of innocent victims as he soft pedals some of the most vicious evil crimes in human history. He describes the forced collectivization of farms as a successful project that was only stymied by inept bureaucrats! He describes the cultural revolution as being akin to the Solidarity movement in Poland!! Please, if you are not familiar with the history of communist China, look elsewhere for the horrific truth of what was done to the Chinese people by this evil man.

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inaccuracies and falsehoods

Revisado: 02-05-21

Reactionary and fabulous- not a reliable source for those seeking a good understanding of the period.

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brilliant, beautiful, important

Revisado: 02-01-21

Thank you, Dr. Herrin for this exemplary account of a much overlooked period. The grace of your writing style and the depth of your erudition are to be treasured.

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Top notch

Revisado: 01-20-21

So fitting that the most lucid account of Maxian economics should be given by a staunch libertarian! While I disagree with the latter ideology as well, I must thank Sowell for dismantling the edifice of Marx by simply doing justice to the incoherent morass of abstruse ideas that comprise it. No rants necessary here. Should be required material for undergraduates.

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Worst pronunciation ever

Revisado: 12-11-20

Topics include fee-nomenology, Witty-Wittgenstein, the Why-mar Republic, and Heidegger's teacher, Husaboo. I feel bad ragging on the guy, but who narrates a book like this without learning basic pronunciations? It adds to a feeling that you're hearing a book read by someone who didn't even know any of these thinkers or concepts existed before sitting down to narrate.

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Thank you, King Honey Badger!

Revisado: 11-28-20

I read through all the one-star reviews: a lot of invective and ad hominem attack - not to mention atrocious grammar and spelling errors - but not a single specific criticism grounded in the text. I'm a college professor and can attest to the climate of self-censorship that's come to reign over the past few years. It's stifling and deeply joyless, and it constitutes a war on reason and the pursuit of truth. But students ARE thus all the more hungry for serious inquiry, even if they no longer know what it looks like.

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Sifting through jokes for insights

Revisado: 10-21-20

Greenberg's jokey asides are well-known, but he lays them on particularly thickly here, though I cannot imagine what it is about the Quartets that inspires this choice. Were his jokes insightful or in any way pertinent to the music it would be one thing, but they invariably serve only to lower the tenor of his discourse and to distract. My theory is that this is the American mass cultural way of apologizing for loving high art; it is deemed necessary to throw in some irrelevant baseball analogies, some cringy puns, and slang quotations from uncle so-and-so to relieve us of the embarrassment of being high-brow. The reality, I hope, for most people listening this is that we don't care whether it's high- low-brow - this is profound, life-changing music produced by a singular genius, and we want to study it because we already love it and we wish to deepen our understanding and enjoyment. It is an expression of the divine, and muddying it with near-constant goofiness and demotic drivel is frankly insulting to both listener and composer.

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Please . . .

Revisado: 08-31-20

. . . don't pronounce Goethe like it's a condition caused by an iodine deficiency.

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Vitally important

Revisado: 08-05-20

Ms. Trump's account of her family's deep disturbance and sadism and its creation of the man who has done more to destroy civil society in one presidential term than I'd once thought possible is essential reading for anyone interested in unravelling the corruptions of our time. I salute her bravery.

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Excellent history, incompetent narrator

Revisado: 02-01-20

I struggle to understand how a narrator could mispronounce so many words. From "ChrisTendom" to "scholatisism" to the Pope as "Vaicar" of Christ, it was a continuous mess. He has a good reading voice, but that doesn't matter when he calls mendicants "menckens" and so forth.

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