David Steinsaltz

Novel view, accessible

Revisado: 08-08-15

A bit much detail for a novice, but hugely impressive. The Roman Empire was destroyed by barbarians because of the new strength of the barbarians, rather than new weakness of the empire. It's a new view -- perhaps long accepted among the cognoscenti, for all I know -- but eye-opening to me, where I hadn't even imagined that revision was possible.
The reader does an excellent job of keeping it lively without being obtrusive. I can't judge his pronunciation of obscure germanic names, but he does a reasonably good job of pronouncing foreign and academic words correctly and naturally.

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Fascinating intersection of biology, history and literature

Revisado: 03-22-15

This book deserves to be better known: A sympathetic portrayal of religious fanaticism from a family perspective, played out on the grandest stage of intellectual history. An important text for anyone interested in the reception of Darwinism. The reading is wonderfully engaging.

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Brilliant book badly presented

Revisado: 03-22-15

Gardiner's brilliant investigation of the man through the music is thrilling and moving. Ferguson's reading could be worse, but not much. His intonation is generally passable, but he is clearly not competent to read this book. Technical music terms, but also multisyllabic academic expressions flummox him, receiving weird emphases and pauses that force the reader to guess what is really being said, not to mention disrupting the illusion that the reader is speaking with understanding. That's not even to count the sporadic errors like "Bach finds the means to take the string out of the aggression".

Worst of all is his pronunciation of German, which is crucial to a biography of Bach. One wonders why Ferguson didn't look at the text and just decide that it would be too embarrassing: Either he should pass on the job, or spend an hour or two at least learning some of the basics of German pronunciation. He sounds like a computer programmed to pronounce English written text, fed with German writing and just ploughing through it. It would be barely less comprehensible -- and less disruptive to the reader -- if the German expressions and texts were simply cut out and replaced with silence or white noise..

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A good review; not very competent reader

Revisado: 10-07-14

The book is a fascinating blend of chemistry, biology, and psychology, with some dollops of social history of drugs, and science history.

The reader was problematic. I'm tired of science books being recorded by readers who know how to adopt an authoritative tone, but can't be bothered to find out how even moderately technical words are pronounced. Not the worst I've heard, but it's very disruptive.

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