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Riveting content, grade school class report read

Revisado: 01-09-23

We should all be in awe of the missions run by SOG in Laos, Cambodia and NVN. Meyer tells the stories as related to him by SOG teem members and when they are in action you can't stop listening. Much of this overlaps with other books I have listened to and read, such as John Plaster's.

However, although it is always nice to hear the voice of the author, this is a case where it is such a distraction that if the book were not short (10 hours) I would have stopped listening after the first chapter. Meyer cannot read aloud. It is exactly like a grade schooler reading their report in front of the class. It is halting in one or two or three word bursts with pauses in between, in the middle of sentences. The pauses break up the flow of information. In addition he mispronounces so many words, some times it obscures the meaning. Sometimes he simply reads a wrong word (example saying "designed" when the word was clearly intended to be "designated" from context. There are many such errors. It is as though he had never seen the words that he wrote. He credits his editor in the introduction and I'm sure that credit was well earned. It's too bad that editing could not be applied to the performance. I recommend buying his fascinating book and skipping the Audible. It will a good read.

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Focused story of Sherman and outstanding narrator

Revisado: 12-11-20

Although written in another era, nearly 100 years ago, in language that we don't use today, I found this portrayal of Sherman to be riveting. I have read several books about Grant and the battles in the west in which he and Sherman were engaged. I have a natural interest since I have a g-g grandfather who served in Sherman's armies from Corinth through Missionary Ridge. Hart's narrative is lucid and clear. He cites Sherman's correspondence extensively and places the campaigns and battles in the context of the wider war. It helped me that I already had more detailed background on the course of events since this is not a detailed battle book. Liddell Hart is unabashed in his respect for Sherman. As such, Sherman's vilifiers will not find this book as engaging and rewarding as I did. If half of it is accurate, which is certainly an understatement, Sherman was a remarkable individual.

As always, Derek Perkins is simply the best. He can narrate every audio book I listen to and I will be happy. I recently listened to a book about Tesla that could have used his voice.

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Robotic narrator, high level story

Revisado: 11-30-20

This book is an OK listen. The story is pretty high level with more time spent on the background than Tesla himself. Of course it is impossible to separate a treatment of Tesla from one of electrification of the world. Just be aware, this is not a detailed biography of the man. The narrator is a cross between Gerald Rainey and Paul Harvey with a robotic, jerky delivery that takes a while to get used to. It is not overly dramatic, but is almost like an old newsreel. I think he improves as the reading proceeds, but in the beginning it is annoying.

The book is not technical. I noted one point in a discussion of the adoption of the units "watt" and "joule" are confused as being for "work and power respectively". That's a pretty basic mistake on the part of the author and editors. I learned that in junior high science and it is probably now being taught in grade school.

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OK, Dumbed Down, but worth a listen

Revisado: 05-31-19

I found the book to be a good introduction to the story of gravitational waves. It is not particularly deep or technical. I needed an introduction and this served the purpose.

Again, the narrator performed pretty well except for pronouncing Einstein as eye-un-stein throughout the entire book. And as you might imagine, in a book about gravitation, the man's name comes up more than a few times. Who ever pronounces Einstein's name that way? If eye-un is right for ein, why not eye-un-steye-un? Is German for "one" = ein = eye-un? This drove me crazy.

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High level chronology, poor audio

Revisado: 03-29-19

This is not a battle book. It is almost a newsreel presentation, close to daily and chronological but from the entire world at war. Obviously much of what is presented was not public knowledge at the time, but if a news reader could have had access to the information in real time, this is kind of what they would have experienced. I listen to and read a lot of detailed battle books, this gives the framework within which to place them. It helps appreciate what was going on in the various theatres contemporaneously. There are details, but it is mostly high level. I like that it is taken from records, correspondence, diaries, etc. I read one review that got tired of the daily documentation of the murders of Jews, Poles and others in occupied Europe, but I think that is precisely the point. After 43 hours of listening, you are down and you cannot forget the monstrosities committed.

The narrator Bernard Mayes has a great voice, perfect for this grave subject. The tone of the audio, especially early in the recording sounded like it was done in an echo chamber. I had to turn the sound down low to moderate the harshly unpleasant, sharp, almost metallic tone of his voice. I hesitate to mention something personal, but Mr Mayes has a strange speech tic. He cannot pronounce certain sounds or combinations of sounds reliably. It took me a while to pin down what was happening. The first few times I thought the audio had cut out, but then it became a pattern. It shows up mostly on numbers like "fifteenth" or "fifty", often on other numbers ending in -teenth. Occasionally it occurs on non-number words with a similar sound, such as "teeth". It sounds like he swallows those sounds. It is noticeable on dates and numbers, say of troops or casualties. Once you notice this is it annoying and distracting. Sometimes it totally obscures a date or number that you wanted to know.

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Science subject - Non-Science Narrator

Revisado: 12-31-18

I thoroughly enjoyed the content of this book as Rhodes weaves together the lives of the physicists involved in in nuclear physics in the first half of the 20th century. While not a physicist myself, it is a hobby to read such books and this is quite approachable.

I was put off several times in each chapter by the narrator, Graham's mispronunciation of terms and names. It's not egregious but is close. Examples would be reading Greek letter gamma as the English letter "y". Also reading exponents as numbers such as x to the third power as "x two". these are just a few of the many. Most are less technical and are simply mispronounced words and names. I would prefer someone with a science background reading these versus a performer who apparently gets little technical supervision, although in the early part of the book he mispronounced the physicist I. I. Rabi as though it were rabbi, a religious leader. Then later in the book, someone obviously corrected him. John Von Neuman became John Von Newman. Lise Meitner was, throughout, missing the ending schwa. This is just a sample.

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Book was good. Performance was distracting.

Revisado: 07-15-18

Hickox voice is good, but he needs a trainer to listen to his pronunciations and coach him.
Interesting and distracting pronunciations – Computing the Cosmos
Pierre-Simon Laplace = pronounces it as le “place” (long a)
Hans Albrecht Bethe = pronounces it beeth like teeth
John von Neuman = pronounces it von Newman
Bernard Riemann = pronounces it Rye-mun like pie-mun
Henrietta Leavitt = pronounces it leave-it
Yakov Zel’dovich = pronounces it zel-DO'-vitch – long “o” – may be OK? Just always heard it more like ZEL-du-vitch
Alan Guth = pronounces it Guth with the “u as in gus. should be gooth as in tooth
Radii = he pronounced raid-eye (multiple times)
Barred (as in a barred spiral galaxy) = he pronounced bared as in bare naked. Said several times then figured it out when the text mentioned the “bar” in a galactic arm
Axis –he pronounced as “access” throughout the entire book
Parabolic = he pronounced it par-a-BOW'-lik (might be OK, I just never heard it this way in math classes.)
Spectroscopy = pronounces it spectra-SCOPE'-y
Copernican = pronounces it cop(e)-er-KNEE'-can (long “o”, wrong syllable emphasized)
Argon = pronounces it ar-gun
Meson = pronounces it may-sun
Higg’s Boson = pronounces it boss-un
Let’s see we have proton, neutron, electron, photon then we have mesun and argun?
Analagous = pronounces it analojous – soft g
Causal = Misread it as "casual" throughout the entire book which does not quite convey the same meaning in physics
Precession (as the precession of the perihelion of Mercury = he read it as “precision”. Also does somewhat alter the meaning!
Condensate = he pronounced it con-DENSE'-ate
Magellanic = he pronounced it ma-GELL'-u-nik
Topology = he pronounced it tope-ology (long “o”) (not bad, I just never hear it this way)
Dodecahedron = he pronounced it dode-ka-HAY'-drun (long “o”)– missed the doe-decca part all together
Icosohedral = he pronounced it eye-CO'-so-drul, leaving out the “he” altogether
Cepheid = he pronounced it sef-ide (long “i”)
Chirality = he pronounced it chur-ality (“ch” as in church) should be ki-rality hard “k” and long “i”
Fermilab = he pronounced it fur-mu-lab
Fermi Gamma-ray Telescope= he pronounced it fur-my
Fullerene (as in Buckminsterfullerene) he pronounced it fuller-un (short u or schwa)

He left the “-“ sign off the exponent when reading about an extremely tiny value. Said “10 to the 36” instead it should have been “10 to the minus 36”. It might make a difference!

This was a case of an actor with no scientific knowledge reading something he had never heard of. Where are the directors on such a performance?

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Book is fine. Reader is annoyiing

Revisado: 05-21-18

I was really distracted from the story of Claude Shannon, which I wanted to enjoy, by the overly dramatic narration. The reader is an annoying combination of Mason Adams and Casey Kasem and reads like it is aimed at third graders. It is suitable for voice over a TV program or radio drama but not for a non-fiction book. Just read it! I will avoid this narrator in the future. The style is fine for fiction, not non-fiction.

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