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When ossified human institutions meet transformative information technology

Revisado: 11-18-23

This was amazing! My less-than-amateur understanding of the Reformation placed Luther against the Catholic Church, which is an almost meaningless story to my human mind. Place him against the Popes of the time and he MUST seem a hero. The author found the perfect foil for Luther in Erasmus, and we get to see a conflict of individual men: their ideas, the exigencies of their daily existence that channeled those ideas, and the formative circumstances that ground the lenses that were their consciousnesses. At times I thought the author was going far afield in addressing the historical circumstances, but I was ALWAYS WRONG. This looks s an opus. It took two generations after the invention of the printing press for the technology to establish itself ubiquitously and for literacy rates to reach a point of critical mass. Once that happened…
How could I read this and NOT see today reflected in the struggle. Too, how could I miss the recurring Platonic / Aristotelian dialectic clash? Thank you for resolving my cognitive dissonance on Luther’s character and intent. Thank you also for showing so clearly how consequences bear little resemblance to intentions of those most able to shake the foundations of established order. All new thoughts and ideas about the period for me. Thank you, gentle author, for the journey.

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I just don’t know who would benefit from this

Revisado: 10-08-22

If you’re an experienced, literate skeptic, the fundamental incongruity between his core assertion and the majority of the content will be simply too much to bear. His assertion that a worldview that is not based on facts is bad (although his reasoning as to why it’s bad is shallow and poorly argued to the point of inanity - apparently this idea is so obvious it does not merit defense of justification) and that this is the default state of educated people with regards to their perception of global socioeconomic trends and current states. His evidence to support this (minus the “why this is bad part) is interesting, cogent, we’ll argued, well researched, and would take an hour to present in its entirety, and require 50 pages of text (minus charts and graphs). Unfortunately, he spends all the space in what would otherwise be a 50 page paper with dilettante psychology and ‘just-so’ stories about why that misconception exists. He’s the worst kind of intellectual hypocrite, and it’s dull beyond belief. I had to stop 2.5 hours in. The reader was excellent, and I probably lasted longer than was reasonable because of it.

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I was completely blown away

Revisado: 06-03-15

The memoir is fantastic in its own right. Conventionally read, it would have been a fine piece and one I was happy to have in my library. However, Mr Pinchot's performance made this far more than a good audiobook. It is spellbinding. The consistency of character and narrative, hour after hour, is mind blowing. He IS this character, and this character is someone you need to meet and whose story you need to hear.

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This is a Polemic, not scholarship and not journalsm

Revisado: 11-13-14

What would have made Rise of ISIS better?

If the material related to the title.

What could Jay Sekulow have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Be up-front that he is writing a pro-Isreal, anti-UN, right-of-center polemic about the evils of militant fundamentalist Islam in Iraq and the Levant. I'm sure there are people who would buy. Don't sucker me in with a title like "The Rise of Isis," steal my money with such false-advertising, and then subject me to a 3 hour rant of which 2 hours deals EXCLUSIVELY with the evils of HAMAS and the injustice inflicted on Isreal by the leftist global conspiracy.

What didn’t you like about Jay Sekulow’s performance?

The fact is, my political inclinations are not fundamentally divergent from Jay and his institute. I don't NEED him screaming in my ear that our withdrawl from Iraq and Afghanistan was premature. I don't NEED him telling me that HAMAS is a ruthless terrorist organization. I certainly don't need him to spend time listing off, like some macabre series of power point bullets, summaries of the atrocities committed by ISIS. They're bad guys. I know. That's why I'm looking for more information.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Rise of ISIS?

I would have kept the 5 minutes dedicated to the rise of Al-Baghdadi.

Any additional comments?

Save your money. This book bears no relation to its title. Move along.

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esto le resultó útil a 6 personas