EOS

Common sense approach to relationship building

Revisado: 05-19-23

This program uses plain language to provide some well considered common sense ideas about how to communicate effectively and how to strategize and think about communication. It is decidedly written from a baby boomer / genX perspective, but is also sensitive to generational differences. And the subject matter transcends business communication to apply to conversation in all aspects of life. Strongly recommended

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Masterful

Revisado: 01-07-19

Professor Garland masterfully lectures on a series of significant vignettes from world history, each of which is tied to important modern events in not-so-subtle and profound ways. His chronologically arranged lectures paint a powerful portrait of humanity. The narrative is composed as a series of well-written and satisfyingly self-contained short stories written in the active voice and threaded together by broad historical currents. One of the best in the Great Courses series.

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Powerful Evocative Blend of History & Imagination

Revisado: 08-06-18

Angle of Repose is a term from mining geology which the fictional author of this book within a book uses as a touchstone for the parallel stories' dramatic, often tragic, shifts. Stegner takes on the character of Lyman Ward, a man whose decaying health, estrangement from his wife and from society more generally, and obsession with his grandmother and grandfather's Victorian lives have buttressed his own sense of agedness and failure. Ward's emotional life is lived vicariously through his latest work of biographical fiction - concerning Susan Beecher Ward and Oliver Ward - respectively, the reluctant illustrator and writer of the old American west, and the western engineer and pioneer. if these names sound familiar, they should. Susan and Oliver were real people, and the story Lyman writes, he thinks, to escape his own, is at least ostensibly based on the facts of their own lives.

Stegner's writing is clear and easy, and his characters are very robustly developed. While Angle of Repose could have been hopeless folded, confusing and reflexive, it is none of these things. The author plays Lyman like a seasoned method actor and the reader is rewarded with a deep and often uneasy psychological drama as well as two vivid period pieces (Susan and Oliver in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and Lyman in the late 20th century).

Recommended for fans of intelligent imaginative and humanistic historical fiction. The book has very little action, is carefully written and paced. It is probably too emotionally loaded for a quick and easy read.

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Engaging story, masterful characterization

Revisado: 02-16-07

Gaiman takes an essentially absurd premise, that the old gods of the old world have found their way to the new and are literally dying for a revival movement, and makes you WANT to believe it, by presenting his story from the perspective of a not-entirely sympathetic but nonetheless loveable protagonist - Shadow. Shadow has become Odin's Administrative Assistant, and has become engaged in an elaborate con-game designed to wrest power from the new gods (TV, Money, Town, World, etc), and suffered personal tragedies that make this work seem palatable in comparison with returning to his day-to-day life. As the conflict builds, Shadow becomes aware that his own choices may indeed affect its resolution in ways that he is not certain he can control.

Gaiman's writing is beautifullay paced, clean, and interesting. The book embeds several stories within itself, each as engaging as the overall plot. The characters are not only archtetypical, but believable and enchanting.

The Audible version is very well performed, with the narrator giving each character their own consistent voiced personality.

This is a great piece of post-modern fantasy, and the Audible version is well worth getting.

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Informative but dry and dryly read

Revisado: 10-29-06

The reader unfortunately matches the somber, dry and somewhat tedious and encyclopedic approach to the subject developed by the author. Nevertheless, the interesting and important subject and the scholarship of the author make the book worth listening to, at least until a better introduction to the subject comes along.

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Nice light history of libertarian thought

Revisado: 10-29-06

Jeff Riggenbach does a very nice reading of this encyclopedic history of libertarian thought and the struggle for liberty written by Jim Powell. If you are a libertarian, you will likely enjoy this book, as I did, though the brevity of some of the biographical sketches might leave you wishing for more. Powell also follows the biographical convention of adding details about each subject's family life and upbringing - which is, in my opinion, a convention this book could have done without. The passages focusing on these issues stick out like sore thumbs, especially when they are in no clear way connected to the behavior of the subject. Also, the book is written from an obviously partisan perspective on libertarianism, and though it is clear that the author wanted to present solely positive contributions, his ideological decision to gloss over Ronald Reagan's enormous credibility and ethics problems while leaving out important contributions to liberty from the other side of the political fence (i.e. Harry Truman, Woodrow Wilson, Malcolm X, John Brown) because their methods did not fit within the particular agenda espoused by this author are a little problematic. Still, the book is a very good introduction to libertarian social thought, and should be read by anybody who believes they know what being an American patriot really means.

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Exceptional biography

Revisado: 02-26-06

This is a well written, detailed, and appreciative account of one of America's most underestimated founding fathers. If any criticism can be made, it is that Chernow is not fair to Hamilton's detractors. However, the author is up-front about his biases and, through his very open style, has written one of the most compelling and entertaining biographies I have read.

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Best subscription value on Audible

Revisado: 03-02-05

Perfectly edited, compiled, and nicely read, Science News provides excellent journalist summaries of major and sometimes minor breakthroughs in the sciences. Appropriately, the editors of this series do not editorialize nor do they pass judgment on the stories themselves. Therefore, the hard facts of geology and mathematics are presented right alongside the latest speculations of evolutionary psychology. As a college professor with degrees in both social and natural sciences, teaching in a natural science department, I appreciate and heartily recommend this to anybody with a more than casual interest in research and technology.

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esto le resultó útil a 11 personas