James

Strong characters

Revisado: 05-04-24

Excellent story was well sequenced across the books. I recommend this trilogy to all science fiction enthusiasts.

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Incomplete

Revisado: 09-08-23

This story seems to be incomplete. It was well done, but it needs some follow up.

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Another hoot one!

Revisado: 11-29-22

This literary duo has knocked another one out of the park. is it a mindblower, but it has a happy ending. Seriously, it’s breathtaking.

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Superb SiFi!

Revisado: 06-19-18

This book and the two earlier episodes are first rate science fiction. The action is almost nonstop. The humor evokes out loud laughter at times. The personalities are interesting and appealing. If you like first contact and military science fiction, pick up the entire series. The reader is perfect and simply could not be better for a series and a story like the one carried across “Expeditionary Force.”

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Starlings Hammer: the latest in the axis of time series by John Birmingham.

Revisado: 03-22-18

John Birmingham right incredible science fiction, especially alternate timeline science-fiction. This is a gripping story, as were all the others in the series. The only problem I have is waiting for the next one in the series! Keep them coming John. We only have so long to live!

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Wow!

Revisado: 08-14-16

I have read or listen to most of John Sanford's mysteries, both the Davenport and Virgil Flowers series. This is an unbelievable science-fiction story that surprised and pleased me. Highly recommended. Maybe Sanford's best book.

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Anti-Russian propaganda

Revisado: 04-20-15

I wonder of Clancy was a Tyson pro, given the way he always predicted the very next American bloody adventure.

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Psychology 101 for the 1%

Revisado: 06-07-14

What did you like best about The Blank Slate? What did you like least?

At times the rhetoric soared. I winced at all the self-promotion—he made most sense in his arguments when he reviewed others’ work and quoted some of the outrageous statements of postmodernists. He made a very strong case in this book for materialist realism.

Would you ever listen to anything by Steven Pinker again?

Possibly.

What does Victor Bevine bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Excellent delivery, although I played it at 1.25x.

Was The Blank Slate worth the listening time?

It was.

Any additional comments?

This is Pinker’s attempt to raise himself up by setting up straw men adapted from the writings of some of the great minds of the 20th Century in psychology and biology and by aligning himself with important intellectuals of a Nativist bent. He is not, however, a strong Nativist, which would be silly (as silly as his favorite linguist, Noam Chompsky, who thinks language grammar emerges from a genetically structured biological gizmo he calls, The LAD [Language Acquisition Devoce]). He praises E.O. Wilsom and Dan Dennett and and Richard Dawkins, who deserve his obescience, and who stand far above him in their translation of biology, cognition, and evolution as is possible. Nevertheless, the book contains, as I said, soaring rhetoric that is musical at times and makes as strong a case for a scientific approach to evaluating public policy as I have ever seen.

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The New Cold War

Revisado: 11-12-13

If you could sum up The English Girl in three words, what would they be?

This book was written to the same high standards of tension, motivation and geopolitical inseight as all the other novels in the series. The twist on modern Russia as an ruthless player in economic warfare was intriguing and plausible. Well worth your credit!

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Biology as the Door to Knowing Our Destiny

Revisado: 08-13-12

What did you love best about The Social Conquest of Earth?

Wilson redeemed himself for me with this book. As a psychological scientist, I always have been a bit rattled by his glib use of the word instinct, because it has never been an explanation of behavior or adaptive adjustment to the changing world. He clarified what he sees as the constant interplay of the gene enabling machinery of life in the adaptation of individuals and social groups. His explanation of epigenesis in adaption, the regultion of gene expression, put it all into proper comprehensible perspective. I will still avoid the word instinct, but he has correction outlined the limits of adaptation in the continuous interplay of coding gene expression during development and adjustment to the environment. For me, he made me see with great clarity that learning, differing as it does in different organisms and at different point in development and aging, is just another gene -expression enabled mechanism of adaptation. Inherited biological processes set limits on individual learning, as do diseases that are partly related to inhereted (or mutation produce) processes. This is a wonderful, lyrical at times, book of science that conveys profound insights into issues of existential and practical concern for all people.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No, it took a bit more than a weekend of walking in parks and doing chores.

Any additional comments?

I think people with a bit better than average knowledge of modern biology will get the most from this book. The reader, however, is superb, and does justice to Wilson's sometimes beautiful prose. This is a book to ponder in full again after some additional reflection.

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