Mountain K9iner

Silly narrator & sloppy historian

Revisado: 05-04-24

The narrator tries to be funny, but it just comes across as silly.

When he tries to give historical context, especially for the Medieval period, he obviously has never taken the time to do research on Medieval ecclesiology or theology. He seems to think he can just get by trading in stereotypes instead of actually doing scholarship.

I was optimistic for this title, but it was a huge disappointment.

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powerful novel, mediocre narration

Revisado: 04-10-23

A story that is worth multiple readings, and may require more than one reading to fully appreciate. Unfortunately this narrator does not do the novel justice. His voices are not believable, and in many cases are lifeless. The afterword states that the novel has yet to be transformed into a compelling stage or film production. I would say this narration needs to be added to the list of disappointing performances.

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Compelling story, convincingly narrated

Revisado: 01-15-23

Intricate, spies, jinn, redemption and damnation, romance and suspense. Great storytelling and narration. Loved it.

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Insightful but an overreach.

Revisado: 12-11-22

Girard's insight about mimetic rivalries and contagion is helpful and has a lot of explanatory power but to try and explain everything by it is an overreach. It also pushes him to explain things that can only be understood by an appeal to transcendent realities as if they were completely understandable on materialist and human terms.

Probably was not a good idea to have his son be the narrator. The narration left a lot to be desired.

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Boring, melodramatic, predictable

Revisado: 09-19-21

Don't waste your time. There was a great story here to be told but this one was stillborn.

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The book that could have been...

Revisado: 01-08-21

...and someday may be. I suspect after a few years maturity and reflection, the authors will look back and wish they had written this differently, or even better, give it a second go. I am definitely ambivalent about this book.


POSITIVE First, I applaud the Gordon brothers for their fire-in-the-belly commitment to take the fight to the enemy. I share their Catholic faith, their frustration and their social critique (at least the ones in this book). I am greatly encouraged to see younger Catholics so zealous for their faith and for calling out the abominations of our day. I hope they are the tip of the iceberg, and that they have a following they are motivating to action. This gives me hope for the future of the Church in America, and for our culture.


Second, even though I found this book wanting in significant ways, I encourage you to read it (or listen to it.) It is short enough that its shortcomings are tolerable for the few hours it will take, and you will likely walk away with a little less film over your eyes, as I did.


NEGATIVE The book should simply have been an essay or article in an online Catholic magazine, in something like "The Catholic Gentleman." Beyond the bullet points of the "rules," it reads like the rant of a couple of fired-up college students who all too often digress into cliches and sweeping ad hominems. The only words to describe it I can think of are shallow and intellectually immature.


Perhaps this style appeals to a less informed, 20-something reader, and perhaps that was their target audience. I, however, was disappointed and would have benefitted from a more seasoned understanding and presentation.


I suspect the authors would respond that those who are seasoned are not writing these kinds of books, have dropped the ball, and so it falls on them to do their best. Fair enough, and again, I am in their corner as far as that goes and am fighting alongside them.


A final comment on the audio narrator. I have enjoyed Kevin O'Brien's narrations in the past, but those have always been fictional works where he is so good at using voice to bring out the characters in the story. Mr. O'Brien did a fine job in his narration of the prose sections. However, it was simply a bad decision (on whoever's part) to use different voices for the many quotations embedded in the book. That was very distracting and at times just silly.

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A Modern Allegory of the Cave

Revisado: 10-11-20

This book enfolds two stories into one. One story is an explanation and defense of TDT — “truth-default theory” — whose starting point is that in everyday discourse we assume our fellow interlocutors are telling the truth. It is only under the pressure of evidence to the contrary that we suspect we are being told a lie. Research into lie detection based on this premise has led Levine to a number of corollaries, including that the prevailing sociological approach to lie-detection, “cue-theory,” has been barking up the wrong tree for a very long time. In short, as Levine puts it, lie detection is less like Freud (trying to read hidden thoughts off of involuntary cues) and more like Sherlock Holmes (collecting evidence from a variety of sources, including well-framed questions).

The second story is just as, if not more, interesting. It is a modern day re-telling of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The sociological sub-discipline of deception theory has for decades been trapped in a cave of its own making: that we are awash in a sea of liars, that lie-detection is a matter of interpreting cues, and that at best we can achieve accuracy in lie detection at a rate only slightly higher than chance. In spite of, or because of, the discipline’s inability to reach anything of a consensus, researchers only dug the cave deeper trying to justify their own shadows. Levine, assisted in great part by a once student now fellow scholar, plays the role of the philosopher who discovers the light and now wants to free his fellow scholars from their self-imposed imprisonment.

What I find most intriguing, and disconcerting, about the book is how much time, dedication and sheer intellectual effort it took to make what in the end turns out to be rather common-sensical observations: we have to assume truth-telling to function as a society, and humans are not mind-readers — we need to exercise our rational powers in light of evidence to detect deception. It is rather unsettling to see how an entire field of scholarship so enveloped itself in a labyrinthian set of false assumptions that it requires this amount of research and effort to escape.

I am not a sociologist, and never even knew that this sub-discipline existed until I listened to this book, but Levine’s conclusions by and large resonate with lived experience. I think I disagree, however, with his argument that most people are truth-tellers most of time. I also don’t think that proposition is necessary for his theory. However, I want to purchase the print edition to review his arguments more carefully before committing myself to this objection. My sense is that Levine’s anthropology (his understanding of human nature) is too superficial to give a full account of how, when and why people lie. He is correct though, and students of Thomas Aquinas have known this for centuries, that when people lie they do so because they believe it will achieve something they perceive as good.

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A Modern Allegory of the Cave

Revisado: 10-11-20

This book enfolds two stories into one. One story is an explanation and defense of TDT — “truth-default theory” — whose starting point is that in everyday discourse we assume our fellow interlocutors are telling the truth. It is only under the pressure of evidence to the contrary that we suspect we are being told a lie. Research into lie detection based on this premise has led Levine to a number of corollaries, including that the prevailing sociological approach to lie-detection, “cue-theory,” has been barking up the wrong tree for a very long time. In short, as Levine puts it, lie detection is less like Freud (trying to read hidden thoughts off of involuntary cues) and more like Sherlock Holmes (collecting evidence from a variety of sources, including well-framed questions).

The second story is just as, if not more, interesting. It is a modern day re-telling of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The sociological sub-discipline of deception theory has for decades been trapped in a cave of its own making: that we are awash in a sea of liars, that lie-detection is a matter of interpreting cues, and that at best we can achieve accuracy in lie detection at a rate only slightly higher than chance. In spite of, or because of, the discipline’s inability to reach anything of a consensus, researchers only dug the cave deeper trying to justify their own shadows. Levine, assisted in great part by a once student now fellow scholar, plays the role of the philosopher who discovers the light and now wants to free his fellow scholars from their self-imposed imprisonment.

What I find most intriguing, and disconcerting, about the book is how much time, dedication and sheer intellectual effort it took to make what in the end turns out to be rather common-sensical observations: we have to assume truth-telling to function as a society, and humans are not mind-readers — we need to exercise our rational powers in light of evidence to detect deception. It is rather unsettling to see how an entire field of scholarship so enveloped itself in a labyrinthian set of false assumptions that it requires this amount of research and effort to escape.

I am not a sociologist, and never even knew that this sub-discipline existed until I listened to this book, but Levine’s conclusions by and large resonate with lived experience. I think I disagree, however, with his argument that most people are truth-tellers most of time. I also don’t think that proposition is necessary for his theory. However, I want to purchase the print edition to review his arguments more carefully before committing myself to this objection. My sense is that Levine’s anthropology (his understanding of human nature) is too superficial to give a full account of how, when and why people lie. He is correct though, and students of Thomas Aquinas have known this for centuries, that when people lie they do so because they believe it will achieve something they perceive as good.

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Can never rate another performance a 5 after this

Revisado: 08-16-20

because no audiobook performance will ever be this good.

I was in law enforcement for a decade, and have been saying for years that the primary problem is not racism (at least not in my experience), but training. Gladwell nails it when he identifies the distortion of the KC model as at the root of LE excessive use of force incidents. We are taught that every car stop and every encounter is a potential deadly threat. I don't know how he figured it out, but he did, and it seems embarrassingly obvious once he lays it all out. This audiobook should be required listening for every LE administrator, officer and officer candidate in America.

You don't have to be in LE to appreciate this book. It applies to every stranger we meet, and even the friends we think we know.

Thank you Mr. Gladwell.

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Should be required reading

Revisado: 08-07-20

in every high school and college econ and environmental science course. Common sensical risk analysis without hype or political parrtisanship.

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