Kyle P. Dalton

Excellent

Revisado: 03-24-22

I initially expected a fawning hagiography. Instead, Shawcross deftly navigates between sympathy and honesty in this frank and fascinating look at a man who became absorbed in a quixotic fantasy that claimed thousands of lives. A lot of footwork was done on including the Mexican context, an aspect sorely and strangely lacking in other treatments of Maximilian's doomed reign.

Do yourself a favor and pick up this book!

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Fantastic

Revisado: 07-09-21

Do yourself a favor and pick up this immersive and thorough examination of another world. you won't be dissapointed.

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A Worthy Story

Revisado: 11-02-20

Well researched and fascinating, but I wish I had read it instead of listening. The reader is downright languid, and his monotone approach saps the text of too much of the obvious passion of the author.

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Absolutely Loved It

Revisado: 09-08-20

There have been a lot of attempts to tell the story of the Far Western theater by local historians with varied success, but now we have a definitive work by Megan Kate Nelson. This will be my go-to recommendation for exploring the nuanced and under-appreciated story of the Civil War in the Far West.

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A Fun and Disgusting Romp

Revisado: 09-08-20

The strange tales of medical curiosities is really entertaining.

Sometimes Morris brings the book around to larger truths about medical history and connects it to current scholarship, but that doesn't feel like the point. Instead, you get the feeling of a Victorian walking into a cabinet of curiosities off the street. You'll be fascinated and (to paraphrase a review in Popular Science) delightfully horrified.

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Astonishingly bad production

Revisado: 02-26-19

Mahan's classic work may be dense, but it is seminal in maritime history.

This reader clearly couldn't care less about the topic. The preview led me to believe it would be an unexceptional reading, but not as bad as this. Distractingly obvious mispronunciations and slip ups that demonstrated he never actually read through the text before recording are compounded by occasional background noise and repeated lines that weren't edited out (a lot of repeated lines). There were even points where they left in the reader clearing his throat.

The WORST reading I've ever heard on Audible.

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A Decent Introduction

Revisado: 04-10-18

Von Lettow-Vorbeck is a fascinating and little known character, and this is an entertaining but problematic introduction.

Gaudi can be careless with his language (constantly using "primitive" as an ill fitting description of many different people and things) when he's not just outright and offensively wrong ("Shaka Zulu can rightly be called the African Hitler"). He also engages in numerous cul de sacs with the story, giving lengthy histories of questionable relevance.

Worst of all, he avoids the most interesting topic: Von Lettow-Vorbeck's humanity. Despite being raised in an abusive home, inheriting a centuries old familial dedication to war, and thoroughly adhering to a life devoted to violence, he is a likable, charming man with a real empathy for all humanity not strictly restricted to Germans or Europeans alone. It's a fascinating duality, but Gaudi only mentions it a few times and never really explores the seeming contradiction.

Despite these problems, Gaudi's book is still entertaining. If you're totally new to the life of Von Lettow-Vorbeck or Colonial East Africa in the early twentieth century, it's a good place to start. Just listen critically, and be willing to read between the lines.

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Sloppy History

Revisado: 04-06-18

You could play sailor-myth-bingo with this title. Tired and long disproven myths populate Farther Than Any Man so that you feel more like you're on a not particularly interesting guided tour by an ancient volunteer docent that a maritime museum doesn't have the heart to dismiss, rather than embarking on an exciting sea adventure. It's all here: sailors are called Jack Tar because they intentionally coated their hair and clothes with tar, sailors were atheists, sailors were beaten all the time and for no reason. Then there's the silly assertions that come out of nowhere, like when Dugard claims that Cook is the first common sailor in Royal Navy history to become an officer, he bizarrely claims that real sailors didn't occupy the lower decks, and entirely omits the presence of landsmen and ordinary seamen.

It doesn't help that the performance is languid when not needlessly heavy as if imparting the gospel, but the fault really lies with the text. It isn't exciting, nor even interesting.

There are much better books about Cook out there. Skip this one.

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Fantastic Micro-history

Revisado: 03-07-18

Well performed, this book is a nuanced and fascinating look at the slave trade. Broad brush truths (often uncomfortable) are put under a spotlight by Kelley, stripping away the distance of mere statistics with concrete human stories.

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