A. Hill

Superb science fiction!

Revisado: 01-14-22

One of the hallmarks of good science fiction, in my opinion, is that it begins by raising questions in the reader’s mind: “Where or when is this taking place?”, “Who or what is this character?”, or even “Just what is going on here?” It takes a skillful writer to advance the plot effectively without specifying many crucial elements, while yet keeping the reader involved.
“Children of Time” is just such a book. The intriguing opening segment had me hooked immediately, and, as the story unfolded and my questions were progressively answered, I found myself immersed in an intellectually and emotionally satisfying drama extrapolated from persuasive scientific premises.
Creating characters which are genuinely alien in their mental, as well as physical aspects is one of the most difficult challenges in speculative fiction. Making these aliens emotionally appealing without resorting to human caricature is even more difficult. This novel features believable and sympathetic aliens, who nevertheless remain essentially (sometimes disturbingly) nonhuman throughout.
It's difficult to write a review filled with superlatives without giving away things that the reader should have the pleasure of discovering for herself. Suffice it to say "Children of Time" is chock full of enjoyable surprises. While "masterpiece" is an overused term, which I try to avoid, of all the science fiction I’ve encountered in recent years “Children of Time” deserves it more than any other. Narrator Mel Hudson does a very good job with it too.

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Near fatal flaws

Revisado: 04-23-20

The World Beneath Their Feet is an uncomfortable mixture of good and bad attributes. Impeccably researched and told with dramatic flare, it is nevertheless impaired by bad grammar and monotonously amateurish composition and, as an audio book, by the most inept, often comical narration I've ever encountered.
If you've read some of my reviews already, you know that I'm prudish about English grammar. Writing is a demanding profession requiring a number of skills, among them mastery of the basic rules of the language. Scott Ellsworth evidently doesn't share this conviction, because his narrative is filled with grammatical solecisms such as split infinitives, but the dangling participial phrase is his favorite error, Since this is surely the most common mistake in contemporary speech as well as writing, perhaps he can be forgiven for this, but there's more.
The most striking characteristic of Ellsworth's writing is his affection for nonrestrictive subordinate phrases and clauses, most of them introduced by the relative pronoun, "who". While these constructions are not necessarily incorrect, they should be used sparingly and with care. Ellsworth scatters them indiscriminately throughout his writing. Combined with his idiosyncratic reading style, this tendency becomes irritating rather quickly. You don't have to be as fastidious as I am to begin cringing, whenever Ellsworth interrupts the flow of a perfectly good sentence with a sonorous "and who", followed by a long, convoluted subordinate clause. It's just not good style.
This brings up my next issue.. If Ellsworth weren't the book's author, I might attribute the strange lurching character of the audio version to his misunderstanding of its intent, but he must surely understand what he means to say. So I can't account for the way he pauses at inappropriate places and emphasizes words that need no emphasis. Maybe he speaks this way all the time.
Far more noticeable is the frequency with which Ellsworth mispronounces words. It's astonishing that someone could write a lengthy book like this one, filled with exotic words and terminology, and not take the time to discover how these should be pronounced. Mountaineering has introduced many foreign words to the language, many of German (or Swiss) origin, many others from Tibetan or Nepalese. I would be willing to bet that Ellsworth pronounces more of these incorrectly than he gets right. A prime example is the name of a well known Himalayan city: Darjeeling. One needn't be expert in history, geography, or even English to know that "ee" is always pronounced as a long vowel, as in "see" or "deep". A little more knowledge would reveal that the accent is on the second syllable. (Look it up!) Ellsworth pronounces it "DAR - jell - ing" with the accent on the first syllable and the second sounding like the product, Jello. And he does this over and over again in the scores of times that this name appears in the text. (At least he's consistent.) His German is execrable too, painful to hear! (By the way, he mispronounces "execrable", when this word appears in the text!) Ellsworth doesn't confine himself to technical terms and proper names. He massacres English words by the dozens, including common words and relatively sophisticated ones that don't occur very often. How he manages to know the meanings of these words and use them properly without having a better idea of how they're pronounced is beyond me.
Having pilloried Ellsworth for these aspects of his writing, I should recur to the good things about his book. It really is fascinating. Ellsworth presents a comprehensive and compelling history of Himalayan climbing, along with vivid biographies of the men and women who risked their lives (not to mention their fingers and toes) in order to conquer these daunting summits, His accounts of the climbs themselves are riveting and from time to time frightening, but always interesting. In spite of the flaws which I've mentioned, I never once considered putting the book/ recording down without finishing it. If you have any interest in mountaineering and its history - or, indeed, if you just want to experience vicariously some of the most exotic and challenging adventures ever undertaken, then I recommend The World Beneath Their Feet highly!

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If you like worms ...

Revisado: 04-25-17

... or even if you don't, this book is likely to fascinate you. Centering her account on her own practical experiences cultivating earthworms for her garden and intellectually on Charles Darwin's remarkable experiments with these little creatures, Amy Stewart has written a literate and engaging book. filled with useful information. I listened to it while working in my own garden, which certainly enhanced my appreciation, but one doesn't have to be a gardener to enjoy Ms. Stewart's infectious enthusiasm and to admire her impressive expertise. I recommend the book unreservedly.

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Ausgezeichnet!

Revisado: 01-30-16

Nach langer Forschung habe ich einige Audiobücher in der Deutscher Sprache gefunden. In den meisten Fällen sind diese nur Lehrbücher, zum Beispiel “Lernen Sie Deutsch in Sechs Wochen” oder so ähnlich. Doch unter ihnen sind auch mehrere echten Romanen, die entweder ursprünglich auf Deutsch geschrieben wurden oder auf Englisch entstanden und später in Deutsche übersetzt worden sind.
Ich habe zuerst zwei Versammlungen Kurzegeschichte probiert. (Einer heißt "Ferien in Frankfurt".) Leider sind diese durchaus unbefriedigend. Offengelegt sind die Geschichten dumm, ja dumm. Die Sprache ist uninteressant und das Lesen - lieber Gott das Lesen (zwar von dem Autor!) – war für mich fast unerträglich, unrealistich und mit zinnlosen Pausen gefüllt. Ich habe die Bücher zu vollenden versucht. Doch habe ich die beiden zum Audio.com endlich zurückgeben müssen. So was tue ich selten. Meiner Meinung nach, wenn Sie Deutsch lernen oder üben oder die Sprache einfach geniessen wollen, sollen Sie diese Bücher vermeiden.
Zunächst kaufte ich "Der Zaubercode", ein von Dima Zales geschriebener Roman. Dieses Audiobuch benutzt eine interessante Konzept, das heißt: jedes Kapitel wird zuerst auf Deutsch und zunächst auf Englisch gelesen. Die Deutsche Darstellungen sind ziemlich gut, aber die Englische Lesungen sind jugendlich und ungrammatisch. Warum können diese Herausgeber keinen Schriftsteller finden, der die Englische Sprache fähig ist, statt wie ein ungebildeter Jüngling zu schreiben? Sonst behaupte ich, dieses Buch bloß die Mühe wert sei. Für einen Leser, der die Fantesieliteratur gut weißt, wird es ziemlich naiv wirken, doch reicht es als Deutsche Übung aus.
Endlich habe ich glücklicherweise die Deutsche übersetzung Michael Crichton’s "Jurassic Parks" entdeckt. Die ist ausgezeichnet! Crichton ist vor einigen Jahren leider gestorben, aber am Leben ist er einer der begabtereste und schöpferischeste Autoren gewesen, den die moderne Welt jemals gesehen hat. In der Wissenschaft wohl unterrichtet, specialisierte er in hoch technische und ideenreiche Geschichte, die gewöhnlich sowohl Bestseller wie auch erfolgreiche Filmen wurden. "Jurassic Park" gehört dazu. Die Deutsche Darstellung von Audio.com enttäuscht bestimmt nicht. Von den esten Worten wurde ich entzückt. Interessant reicht nicht aus. Faszinierend beschreibt dieses Audiobuch besser. Das Lesen von Oliver Rohrbeck ist auch sehr lobenswert! Man kann solch ein Buch nicht überschätzen. Kaufen Sie es!

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A very worthwhile read.

Revisado: 11-25-15

Prior to the 20th century pathological micro-organisms were the most frequent cause of death in humans and the source of incalculable suffering and sorrow worldwide. People in those days were resigned to the sudden disappearance of friends, associates, and relatives, who seemed well one day and were gone the next, struck down by invisible killers against which medical science offered no defense. Pasteur’s vaccines were a notable exception, but even they could do little against infections, once these had overcome the body’s natural resistance. Around the turn of the century all this began to change with the development of the first effective antimicrobial medications. The advent of these breakthrough drugs signaled the beginning of a new era in medicine, when antibiotics would save countless millions of lives and transform our civilization.
The Demon Under the Microscope tells the story of a German physician and scientist named Gerhard Domagk and his lifelong struggle to develop a safe and effective chemical cure for microbial infections. Domagk’s quest began in the trenches of World War I, where he served as a medic. Horrified by the agony and death surrounding him, he noticed that soldiers whose injuries were not in themselves fatal, often died anyway, when their wounds became contaminated by bacteria. He set out after the war to find an injectable agent that would kill the bacteria without harming the patient. The path to success was long and convoluted, leading Domagk into the corporate jungle of I.G. Farbin, the German chemical giant, and involving him in intense competition with researchers in other countries, all equally intent on gaining credit for the discovery. It’s a fascinating and inspiring story, well told by Thomas Hager, of a man driven by curiosity, compassion, and personal ambition to change the world. Stephen Hoye’s reading of the text is very good too. Even if you’re not especially interested in medicine or its history, the drama of Domagk’s quest and the intense human interest of the people he was determined to help make for compelling listening.

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A silly and disappointing book!

Revisado: 11-25-15

From the way this book was promoted I expected to learn about the biology of redwood trees and the ecology of the west coast's great redwood forests. Instead I endured a series of Cosmopolitan style reminiscences by the members of a kind of counter-cultural group of tree climbers, who performed various acts of daring high above the ground (including screwing in the treetops!) It seemed obvious that Mr. Preston had done extensive interviews with these folks and then transcribed their accounts as faithfully as possible, including fulsome descriptions of their romantic entanglements and emotional travails in life. His reading did nothing to enhance my experience of the book. I eventually stopped listening. If you want to learn about the redwoods, I suggest you give the book a pass and look the trees up in Wikipedia instead. You'll find some extremely informative articles there, complete with neat photographs.

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Superb and inspiring.

Revisado: 11-25-15

If you're familiar with the history of the First Amendment to the Constitution and how it became one of our country's most powerful legal and moral precepts, you should probably read this book anyway, because it's so well written. If you don't know that history, then you absolutely must read it. Brilliantly researched, evocative and emotional, it will transform the way you look at our history and the evolution of our legal system. It's just that good. Danny Campbell does the book ample justice too with a nuanced and compelling reading. It's one of the best audio books I've experienced.

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Disappointing

Revisado: 11-25-15

Joseph Stiglitz is a brilliant economist and Nobel Laureate, who has many useful things to say about our country and the way it has been managed - or mismanaged - in the years since World War II. I've heard him speak on numerous occasions - he's a frequent guest on news and opinion programs; and I've always been impressed by the cogency of his ideas and the clarity with which he expresses them. So it was disappointing that these characteristics weren't carried over more effectively into this book.
It's not that Stiglitz shows less understanding of our economy in the book or any less concern for the growing effects of inequality between wealth and poverty. If you're not already familiar with what he has to say on these subjects, then you may find the book well worth reading. My objections have to do with the way it was written - or perhaps I should say "assembled". It seemed to me that The Great Divide was put together from articles that Stiglitz had written and published in other venues, without spending much time or effort converting them into a coherent whole for the book. As a result, there's considerable repetition from one part to another and the flow of ideas is erratic to say the least. I gave the book two stars for content on the basis of this slap-dash approach. I gave Mr. Pariseau four stars, not because he overcame the defects with a brilliant performance (which probably wouldn't have been possible in any event), but because he tried.

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Superb history!

Revisado: 10-19-15

Why did people of my grandparents’ generation speak so reverentially of Franklin Roosevelt? Why do contemporary Republicans harbor such resentment of the man, that they continually invent factitious ways discredit him? Why does the phrase “New Deal” evoke such vehemence across the political spectrum nearly a century after it ceased to have direct political relevance? I’m generally not much interested in politics, but these questions, occurring and reoccurring over the years, finally led me to find a concise and reliable history of the New Deal and the tumultuous era that brought it into existence.

There are plenty of books about the New Deal, written by a variety of authors. Unfortunately many of these writers have a political ax to grind. The titles of their books are often revealing. “FDR’S Folly”, for example, leaves little doubt about its author’s viewpoint. A quick glance at its pages confirms that there’s little more to learn inside. Books that focus only on the New Deal’s successes, while ignoring its problems, were equally useless for my purposes.

So, it was a delight to come across Michael Hiltzig’s book. “The New Deal: A Modern History”, now available from Audible.com, as well as in print, offers the kind of honest and objective analysis I was seeking. While it’s clear that Hiltzig admires FDR and approves of many of the New Deal’s innovations, he’s not blind to its flaws, nor does he overlook shortcomings in Roosevelt himself, when these become relevant. For instance he devotes an entire chapter (“Nine Old Men”) to Roosevelt’s rocky relationship with the U.S. Supreme Court, at that time dominated by an ultra-conservative faction of aging justices. FDR’s ill-considered and ultimately disastrous attempt to “pack” the Court with younger, more tractable jurists was one of the worst mistakes of his political career. Hiltzig is unflinching in identifying the characteristics that led Roosevelt to undertake this scheme.

Objectivity isn’t the book’s only virtue. Hiltzig is thorough, describing not just flagship programs like Social Security and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), but also less familiar parts of the New Deal such as Federal One, an arts program that supported an astonishing array of literature, music, and drama, as well as more conventional art works, many by artists, now famous, who might never have made it without the New Deal’s crucial assistance.

More than anything, the New Deal was an institution of people, from the thousands who benefited from its programs to the dedicated individuals, many of them recruited by Roosevelt himself, who made those programs work. Hiltzig weaves their stories into his narrative, giving the book a crucial human dimension and at the same time demonstrating his skill as a writer. I was impressed by the way he composes long, complex sentences, while retaining a flexible flow of ideas. His command of language, including his extensive vocabulary, is sophisticated, but not pretentious.

In this respect the audio version of the book is helped immeasurably by a superb reading from Traber Burns. Urbane and graceful, Burns manages to give characteristic voicing to a wide range of individuals, including Roosevelt himself, without becoming obvious or heavy handed. While I probably wouldn’t buy a book solely on the strength of its narrator, given a choice between readers, I would certainly pick Mr. Burns.

Start to finish, I loved this book. If you’re interested in history or if you just want to know more about the New Deal, I can’t think of a better investment.

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Top-notch!

Revisado: 10-07-15

Brian Green obtained his undergraduate training at Harvard and went on to study physics at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Currently he’s a professor at Columbia University, where he does research in string theory and other esoteric aspects of modern particle physics. His book, The Fabric of the Cosmos, is an exegesis of past and current thinking about the most basic aspects of the world we inhabit. What is space? What is time? What do we mean, when we say that one event causes another? These and similar questions have vexed some of history’s greatest thinkers, from Aristotle to Einstein, and they form the basis for Greene’s approach in this book.

In Section I he describes the ways in which scientific thought and experiment have evolved in attempting to elucidate the nature of space. His discussion centers around the behavior of a pail full of water, suspended by a cord, and set spinning in a variety of circumstances, a model that originated with Isaac Newton. As Greene demonstrates with admirable clarity, this deceptively uncomplicated model has led scientists and philosophers to a series of profound alterations in their conception of reality, culminating in Einstein’s theory of Relativity, the Big Bang, and the origin of the Universe – the realm, that is, of the very large. A similar approach to time in Section II leads to a discussion of Quantum Mechanics, the other great intellectual achievement of 20th century physics, which describes the Universe in the realm of the very small. In subsequent sections Greene extends his analysis to causality, quantum weirdness, the direction of time, and other esoteric topics, leading finally to string theory, cosmology, and the future evolution of physics.

If you haven’t encountered these ideas before, then fasten your intellectual seatbelt. According to a well-known story, when the celebrated physicist, Richard Feynman, was asked who among his colleagues best understood quantum mechanics, he answered with characteristic bluntness, “Nobody does!” Feynman’s answer becomes easier to appreciate the more Greene delves into things like the uncertainty principle and its perplexing ramifications. At one point, before beginning a discussion of an experiment called the “quantum eraser”, he suggests that readers who find the ensuing material too challenging may wish to skip ahead, but he encourages everyone at least to try to stick it out. It’s hard to say, “No.”. Greene’s appreciation for the beauty and mystery of the Cosmos is infectious, and he has a gift with words that enhances his discussions of the extraordinary things that modern physics has unveiled.

My one quibble with the book involves Greene’s use of metaphor – employing simpler ideas to illustrate abstruse concepts. In explaining how special relativity influences our conception of space and time, he employs four separate metaphors: a duel between “Itchy” and “Scratchy”, a map of Springfield drawn by Marge and Lisa, a pictorial “flip book”, and a loaf of bread. Giving readers a visceral feel for an idea is a worthy goal, but in this case, I think, simpler and more direct imagery, like Hermann Minkowski’s “4-space”, would have worked better. Further along, in the section on quantum mechanics, Greene tackles the famous “Einstein, Podalski, Rosen” thought experiment and its surprise resolution by John Bell. To facilitate his explanation, Greene introduces a scenario in which Fox Moulder and Dana Scully (of “X-Files”) receive a high tech “puzzle” made by inscrutable aliens, who design it to behave just like “entangled” particles in the EPR paradox. In order to establish this parallel, however, Greene spends an inordinate amount of time qualifying and circumscribing the workings of the puzzle. In my opinion, he’d have been better off sticking with the unadorned physics.

These are minor caveats, and they certainly don’t change my assessment: The Fabric of the Cosmos is quite simply the finest book about science for the general public that I’ve ever read – and that’s saying a lot. I can’t think of another that offers comparable scope, intellectual sophistication, and charm. Michael Pritchard’s reading is spot on, except for his inexplicable pronunciation of the word “cosmos” which he renders with a kind of British inflection, as if it were spelled “c-o-z/m-u-s-s”. It’s a minor blemish in an otherwise elegant reading. I was struck by the remarks of reviewers, who stated that Pritchard’s voice reminded them of “a 1950s newsreel.” Well, guys, I grew up watching those Movietone newsreels in real time, whenever I went to the movies. (Yes, I am that old!) and Pritchard doesn’t sound at all like them. He does sound cultured and urbane, bringing just the right blend of measured detachment and awe to the subject. (Interestingly a version of one of Greene's books is available read by the author. I listened to the sample provided by Audible.com and decided immediately that I prefer Pritchard’s rendition.)

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