J. Winter

he's no Andrej

Revisado: 12-25-23

What makes the Witcher so brilliant isn't just the characters. it's the incredible detail of his writing! This fan seems like a nice guy, but he has no writing gift!

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Utter butchery of anything close to actual HISTORY

Revisado: 11-09-23

As an ordained rabbi who has been fascinated by and studying 1st-century (Second Temple period) Jewish life in Palestine for a decade now, in particular the emergence of the sect of "Jesus followers" -- I was SO mortified by all the outright FALSEHOODS and inaccuracies in this "historical novel" -- I literally could not listen longer than 30 minutes. It was SO BAD, I outright couldn't even STAND IT any longer!

As a writer, Ben is solidly average; a "C"-level writer.

But the REAL offense is how little effort Ben made to create a FACTUAL PICTURE of what life, religion, and politics of that time and era actually were! If you are going to write a novel placed in one of the single-most important time periods of the history of Western Civilization -- I think you have a MORAL IMPERATIVE to at least create an accurate picture of what that place was like!

But this "author" apparently couldn't be BOTHERED to actually LEARN ANY OF THAT! And not a SINGLE factual point I'm referring to is about ideological or theological belief; they're just plain FACTS that a writer either knows -- or doesn't!

1. Ben has a character refer to his father using the Hebrew word -- but Jews in that time/place spoke ARAMAIC, not HEBREW. Heeeellloooo! {If you aren't face-planting yet, you should be!}

2. Jews didn't gather into synagogues to "pray and hear the Torah read". For starters, what we today call the first 5 books of the Hebrew Bible and read in shuls as "The Torah" had not been placed into a formal cannon yet! They existed as 5 separate scrolls that prophets or other preachers would recite in gathered outdoor areas. Synagogues were mostly used for ceremonies and use of their mikvehs! As far as actual "liturgy" and "prayer"? All of Jewish prayer we do today evolved AFTER the failure of the Bar Kokhba Rebellion in 125 CE. We don't even KNOW what, if anything, made up their "prayers"!

Why? Maybe because only 3% of Jews in that time period were literate! And you ONLY found such people in main population centers. You can find archaelogical mikvehs of that era in every tiny settlement that existed -- no matter how rural, remote, and ILLITERATE!

2) We don't know what "liturgy" they might have used because there are only 2 quasi-reliable PRIMARY SOURCE HISTORIANS whose writings about Jewish life in that time/place survived history! (DO YOU EVEN KNOW THEIR NAMES, BEN? I'LL GUESS NOT.) They are Josephus and Philo. And for all their reems of words, preserving details on what made up "synagogue liturgy" did not appear to matter! (At least not to the Roman authorities who HIRED THEM TO REPORT ON THAT REMOTE, ALWAYS TROUBLE-MAKING OUTPOST IN PALESTINE!)

3. Then Ben's character, a Roman Jew, claims that when she visited Jerusalem months after Pesach -- she had heard all about "those 3 men who had been nailed to crosses -- all within sight of the Holy Temple!" She even professes to have "run into" a man named "Lazarus" who had been brought back to life by one of these men who were killed. "Oh, how disgusting that the Romans left them up there for days -- have they no respect for the holiest holiday of the year? Blah blah blah?"

OMG, that is just SO BEYOND HISTORICALLY WRONG OR IMPLAUSIBLE, this guy should be EMBARRASSED TO EVEN HAVE HIS NAME ON THE COVER. There are THOUSANDS of biblical scholars, with actual PhDs, who have studied this time period AD NAUSEUM by now -- using all the best scholarly practices we have. And there is not a single statement in that picture he painted (and I summarized) that REMOTELY COMES CLOSE TO PLAUSABILITY.

A) We know for a FACT that crucifixion was the MOST COMMON way Romans killed people who represented a political threat. On average, over centuries of occupation, Roman rulers crucified 125 "criminals" or "threats to the state" EVERY year, just in Palestine alone. It was THEIR version of the electric chair. So those particular 3 killings would have been ENTIRELY UNREMARKABLE to nearly ALL the people who may have witnessed it (or even noticed it!) It was the ONLY method of Roman state justice those people had ever seen -- so why would this one have been any different?

B) The fact "Priscilla" would even be emotionally revolted just HEARING about such a "gruesome scene" MADE ME GUFFAW OUT LOUD --- given in ROME at the time, they forced into arenas to fight to the death human slaves who were slaves for NO OTHER REASON than having been captured and forced into being one!

And just like modern-day Spaniards still (inconceivably) PAY MONEY to watch matadors butcher bulls, who have been maimed and damaged before they even entered the arena -- watching HUMAN BUTCHERY was the No. 1 form of entertainment all across Europe in the middle ages. That's just how they did it in Rome, in a big-ass Colosseum!

Ben isn't just IGNORANT about the history of what REAL LIFE was like in Jewish Palestine in the 1st century CE -- he is ignorant, it seems, of even a high-school understanding of just how much everyday brutality, savagery, misery, and suffering that people witnessed and even walked past, without even offering aid, EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THEIR LIVES. The world was a DAMN BRUTAL PLACE, which is why few people EVER made it past age 40!

C) We have records of Jesus having a growing following for only 3 YEARS before he was killed, according to the NT; and nearly all of that was spent in the Galil (Galilee) -- a rural backwater of illiterate peasants. Jesus shows up during the ONE week of the year that for DECADES, riots had broken out, and stampedes and fights between Jews and Roman soldiers had occurred. And if we are to believe these details of NT text, Jesus did something so frankly STUPID as cause a huge scene and ruckus RIGHT AT THE CENTER OF ALL THE CULT ACTIVITIES on the Temple Mount by upending some money-changing tables -- which all the travelling Jews NEEDED so they could buy the goats or whatever for their annual sacrificial offerings!

Scholars doubt the soldiers even waited a week to arrest him (as NT scripture claims). They upped their military presence over Pesach every year because of the growing unrest and acts of rebellion going on in this REMOTE Roman outpost -- and so every single year, they were ready to POUNCE on ANYONE who showed the slightest sign that they were going to cause trouble! [No, Ben doesn't technically mention this detail, but IF these NT passages are accurate, and Jesus really DID do this and not immediately get arrested? It just shows you HOW SMALL WAS HIS FOLLOWINGS in a place HE WAS NOT FROM, and where PEOPLE DIDN'T KNOW HIM -- especially on the biggest pilgrimage holiday of the year!]

Whether you believe in the FAITH of Christianity or not, EVERYONE should care about what the likely true HISTORY of this seminal, foundational period of modern-day Western Civilization was. And go to any university scholar or expert in this period and they will tell you: Nothing about Jesus' execution was surprising, unusual, or unpredictable. The fact he had SO LITTLE TIME to do his miracles and "grow his following" in JERUSALEM itself means that by the time Jesus died -- probably 99% of all Jews who even LIVED IN JERUSALEM had even heard of him!

Surely some people in the Galilee got pretty upset when the pilgrims returned and news spread. But that a Roman pilgrim visiting months later would have heard people talking about it? Oh, and don't forget -- she managed to meet one of the people he had done a miracle on too! BOTH of those statistically likely "winning of the lottery" events -- and his lead character manages to score both just in the first day or two of her visit!

The FACT, Ben, is that Jesus' remaining disciples and small community of followers were just one of about 13 sects of Judaism that existed in that time. They barely made as much noise as a beehive in the middle of Los Angeles in the decades after his death. VERY FEW JEWS ever converted to Christianity. It was only thanks to DECADES of travelling by Barnabas, and of course, Paul, that any conversions began to take place in a significant number -- and nearly all the converts were pagans.

Even after the Emporor Constantine converted in 325 CE -- "officially" making all members of the Roman empire members of the proto-Orthodox church (aka, what would BECOME the "winning" branch of Christianity we know as Catholicism today) -- that hardly means people just stood up, overnight, and stopped following whatever pagan dieties, holidays, and cult practices they had had their whole lives! Just because word got around (eventually) that the Emperor had converted! No -- it would take a good 1000 years before you can truly say that Christianity had "won over' a sizable portion of the European western and eastern continent.

This author is obviously SO DESPERATE to validate his faith (or -- I can't even FATHOM his motivations for writing something so painfully anti-historical), he wants to imagine this all just switched like the flip of a switch! Wah-la! Suddenly the whole continent is Christian! And all the Jews just can't wait to jump on board!

THAT IS PURE FANTASY.

THIS BOOK ISN'T HISTORICAL FICTION; IT'S FANTASY FICTION!

Unless you want to write Sci Fi Ben, you need to at least have characters and situations be REALISTIC about important TRUE HISTORICAL EVENTS. It's all the MORE true when you are daring to write about a period of history that matters a lot to BILLIONS of people! I SHUDDER TO IMAGINE HOW ARROGANT YOU MUST BE TO HAVE EVEN ATTEMPTED TO WRITE A HISTORICAL BOOK BASED IN THIS TIME PERIOD, given your abject IGNORANCE about it all!

What you have published is a literary, a historical, and a religious TRAVESTY. Do the WORLD A FAVOR, withdraw your CLEARLY SELF-PUBLISHED TITLE -- and maybe go find yourself a PhD program and actually LEARN ABOUT THE TIME/PLACE you presumably care so much about. Because you don't even BEGIN to know how little you don't know!

And if you don't have the luxury of that, then how about reading ANY of the 35 national best-selling books published by world-famous biblical scholar Bart Ehrman, who explains, in VERY easy-to-understand terms, ALL of the millions of nuances of the evolution of the early church in its first 400 years. And he does it ALL from a HISTORICAL perspective, giving readers the best, most neutral, MAINSTREAM SCHOLARLY CONSENSUS on every topic under the sun.

It's been by reading books like his -- watching all of his online college courses, hearing this 100s of interviews on Youtube -- that I have self-learned all of the facts I offered just in this one review of the first 30 minutes of your TOTALLY PAINFUL book!

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A paindful compendium of names/d ates w/o context

Revisado: 11-24-21

This is your classic history book that does nothing more than give a list of dry year-by-year chronology of events, with NO personal or compelling antecdotes about one of the world's most brutal and murderous dictators; no theories on what might have made him into the monster he was; and no effort made at even the most superficial psychological analysis of HOW he was able to make SO MANY people complicit to his evil.

It is hundreds of pages (or hours, in the case of the audiobook) of FACTS -- with NO color and nothing to make it feel ALIVE. It appears the author never even interviewed (or found interviews) of people who knew him as a child and young adult, who could have shed light on WHO HE WAS AS A PERSON. Isn't that, after all, the very definition of a "biography"????

There was NOT a single anecdote or story that would add context or texture to a man named "Stalin" and make him seem like the living, breathing person that he was. It is almost as if a severely autistic person (who has no ability to understand or read the variations of human emotions was given a book deal and full blessing to indulge his fascination with lists of FACTS and FIGURES -- and cobble them into a multi-series book!

(To be clear: I am NOT making a Dx of the author NOR am I intending any insult to neuro-diverse persons. I am offering this analogy because it's the best, shorthand way I can explain how emotionally devoid and lacking in human psychological INSIGHT this books offers -- which are all hallmarks of brains that operate "on the spectrum.")

I've returned the audiobook and will give an attempt at another one. IF I find a Stalin biography worth recommending, I will be sure to write a review -- and if it's possible to search for reviews by Audible-users' account names, you should be able to find my recommendation that way.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

4 hours of saying nothing!

Revisado: 08-24-21

I bought this thinking it would actually explain to me the SCIENCE of how they actually DO these ancestral DNA analysis? How reliable is it considered to be? (I know from reading news articles, for example, that is it far more accurate for ppl of Western European ancestry than people from Asia or Africa b/c so many more Caucasians have purchased and submitted their DNA for analysis -- for people in poorly represented groups, the accuracy is not very good yet)...

How do the different companies that offer these tests vary? Do they all use the same process, or how do you pick which one to go with? Are the more accurate ones the ones with a larger database or do they have trademarked processes of doing them?

What are the gaps in our knowledge that are limiting the accuracy of these tests?

What would have been MOST helpful in this so-fractured and hate-filled world is some reminders of just how little differences there actually ARE in the genetics of human beings!! We are only 1% different from gorillas or chimpanzees, if I recall correctly!

IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR ANY INFORMATION OF SUBSTANCE, in other words, for the love of the gods, both old and new, don't buy this book! It's nothing more than patronizing "handholding" and vague platitudes that ask such irrelevant ruminations as: "When you get the results back and look in the mirror, does it change how you think about yourself?"

I would especially have loved to hear how this could potentially help black people in the Americas, Europe and the Caribbean, whose ancestry has usually been utterly unknown to them because their ancestors were brought over on slave ships, How might they eventually, once the databases have enough samples, actually help them isolate which tribes of Africa their ancestors actually came from!

Nope -- no such luck.

It's just ... honestly ... I listened to the whole thing and can't recall one single line beyond the one I already wrote. That's how empty and void of real content this is!

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esto le resultó útil a 15 personas

Endless details, names, dates, w/o interpretation

Revisado: 07-10-21

I was SO excited to find a title that purported to cover the topic this book purports to cover -- not just 9/11 but the decades that created the ingredients to make a catastrophic event occur. What I found instead was 14 hours of names, dates, and cities (which as a Westerner I had no mental map I could refer to -- to keep track of them all as the author whizzed by them and hopped all over the region.) Nor did the writer provide any details of the key players that would help the reader form a mental image of them either.

What did these people look like? What were their unique and memorable quirks or personality traits? The lack of this kind of descriptive detail is what makes story-telling compelling, memorable, GREAT -- sights, sounds, smells, foods, music -- and this book contained NONE of that.

I'm NOT saying the author is on the spectrum, but it READ as if the author WERE on the spectrum, or at a minimum is someone with an excessively right-brained orientation obsessed with facts, figures, names, and dates, and that he created reaps of lists and chronologies of everything related to the topic of his book and then just regurgitated them on a piece of paper!

There wasn't any deep analysis -- summative or interpretive conclusions offered. And worst: It made NO mention of just how catastrophic Russia's role was in the 1970s, igniting the fire in Afghanistan that has now raged 60 years. Why have no international legal bodies ever held them accountable?

Afghan women used to be doctors, university professors! Now they are veritable prisoners in their own homes, unable to leave unless "accompanied" by their sons as young as 8! Yet they are among but the MILLIONS of women stripped of all dignity and basic human rights, and their horrifying, limited lives were not only rarely mentioned in the text -- there wasn't even a CHAPTER dedicated to it (though frankly, weaving it throughout and not relegating it to a "sidebar" would be infinitely preferable!)

I was in Egypt in 1997 and again in 2015, and I barely recognized the place. They had gone from a country where maybe 5% of women wore veils -- to 100%, Why? Social pressure and public taunting/ ostracism if they didn't! I witnessed a similar swing to the right in Jordan. Considering women constitute over half of the region's population, how disappointing to read such a phallocentric-focused book in this day and age.

If anyone who read a book on this topic (especially if it's in audio format) that rectifies these many problems -- do please share it's title here because I feel just as ignorant as when I started. And I listened to it 3 times all the way through!

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Narrator mispronounces EVERY Hebrew & German word!

Revisado: 11-14-20

As a rabbi, I found it genuinely heartbreaking that a publisher comes out with an audiobook narrated by someone who obviously does not know even the most BASIC pronunciation of some of the common words Jews speak all over the world (whether they know Hebrew or not). Every time she said "Kaddish" -- as in the prayer for the dead -- she pronounced it "Kiddush" -- the blessing you say over wine! She doesn't even pronounce the author, Elie Wiesel's name correctly. She says "Weasel" (as in the animal), rather than the correct "Vee-zel."

In German, she pronounces the word "Achtung" (attention!) as "Achtone". And she calls the famous Joseph Mengele as just "Mengel" (missing the final "e").

Then in the epilogue where Weisel offers his thanks for winning literature's highest literary reward, she literally SLAUGHTERS 4 of the 5 words in the "Shehecheyanu" prayer.

I truly cannot understand how, in 2020, a publisher would not hire a rabbi or someone knowledgeable in everyday Jewish nomenclature to tutor their reader so she can at least PRONOUNCE THE WORDS CORRECTLY. It would have taken such minimal extra cost or effort!!!! It honestly feels like an insult, a slight, and a diminishment to such a WORLD FAMOUS piece of literature.

Lastly, the title is entirely misleading. The title says it is a trilogy of "Night, Dawn, Day" but in fact the recording ONLY includes the first book. The entire reason I bought it is b/c I thought it included all three of his works! I probably should have realized this was a hack job b/c even the word "Dawn" is misspelled on the cover!!! (I missed that one!)

I plan to write the publisher directly and complain.

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esto le resultó útil a 50 personas