Michael Dowd

The best of the best!

Revisado: 09-13-23

There’s no book that I am highly recommending to more people than this one… specifically with respect to nurturing, a kin-centric, relational, empowering worldview in a time of already underway, accelerating, and unstoppable biospheric and civilizational collapse. - Michael Dowd, postdoom.com

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Superb narration by the author himself

Revisado: 11-08-17

We saw the Canadian documentary about the author soon after it came out. Titled "Griefwalker" it paved the way for our willingness to listen patiently, expectantly throughout this long audiobook. The storytelling is Jenkinson at his best -- and one also thereby learns how he became who he is. Only one other book narrated by its author has impressed us so much. Truly, like sitting around a campfire or a fireplace, enjoying the calm, slow, imagistic way of deftly unravelling our ingrained western antipathy toward death and welcoming another view -- one that our ancestors (perhaps long, long ago) would have known as natural as the the passing of the seasons. We loved this book! And we have listened to the last 4 or 5 hours multiple times, especially the last two -- where all the ideas lurking within the previous stories and passages come clear. Bravo!

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Superb science, storytelling, and narration voice

Revisado: 09-20-14

What made the experience of listening to The Soil Will Save Us the most enjoyable?

Some authors include time-wasting details in order to sound like they are telling a story. The author here includes only those details that help the understanding. Also, I have never heard a better reader-voice. Wow!

What did you like best about this story?

Direct, highly relevant, and superbly well read.

Which character – as performed by Dina Pearlman – was your favorite?

The narrator herself.

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

No.

Any additional comments?

Again, I have never heard a better narrator voice.

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Conservation at the Cusp of Change

Revisado: 01-06-14

What did you love best about Rambunctious Garden?

The storytelling and site-specific descriptions make this scientifically rigorous book unusually memorable and meaningful.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

Marris extracts from the polarized advocates (human manipulation v. hands-off of nature) direct quotes that vividly show the deep emotions and uncertainties in this unusual time of worldviews in collision.

Which character – as performed by Renee Chambliss – was your favorite?

Jessica Hellman

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

no

Any additional comments?

Anyone concerned about climate change will find the science stories in this book deeply disturbing, in that humans will have to get extensively involved in helping plants move north faster than they are capable of doing on their own.

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Bridging the liberal / conservative chasm

Revisado: 09-18-12

Would you consider the audio edition of The Righteous Mind to be better than the print version?

Most "readers" will appreciate the superb delivery of the audio version. Those of us (myself included) who discover that his worldview and ideas reshape our own will either want to listen to the audio twice or also purchase the print version -- to enable note taking and marking up of the most important pages.

What did you like best about this story?

Because the ideas are so unsettling for social and political liberals (like myself!), the author's tone and personal story vignettes are absolutely vital to keep me from becoming defensive (and thus no longer really listening). Yet, by the time he concludes, I feel fully affirmed -- as the need today is not for liberals to go conservative, but for liberals to become morally fuller by maintaining our existing commitments while opening to searching for solutions that are no longer win-lose but win-win. In fact, I recall watching online a spring 2012 interview that Bill Moyers conducted with the author, and Bill's curiosity and open delight in this larger worldview are a treasure to watch. Morality becomes all encompassing.

What about Jonathan Haidt’s performance did you like?

The author is the audio narrator -- and he is superb! Personal stories he tells are especially powerful this way, and his best stories are those that reveal the pivotal experiences in his own life that led him from social/political liberal to a wider embrace of the full spectrum of moral and ethical appreciation.

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

It is way too long to listen to in one setting -- but very compelling to use as bedtime listening on consecutive nights or for a very long road trip.

Any additional comments?

I learn so much these days online via short videos, newsclips, blogs, op-ed pieces, etc. that I tend to become stingy about my time reading a traditional book. Books are often not time-efficient enough for me anymore. But The Righteous Mind exemplifies deep respect for the reader/listener's time via its organization, writing, storytelling, and editing. It actually restores my faith in learning via books. As I reflect on my experience, I see that what took the author a lifetime to achieve in worldview expansion, I actually got in a week of evening listening.

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A must-read for humanists and freethinkers

Revisado: 08-27-12

Would you listen to The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking again? Why?

I highly recommend this book in audio format, as its presentation is engaging and the ideas are embedded in stories at a leisurely pace. Worldview shifting as well as entertaining.

Any additional comments?

What this book helped me realize was that the most rational stance for humanists and freethinkers is not to work towards eliminating magical thinking in themselves and their children, but to knowingly harness these powerful instincts -- instincts that well served our ancestors! Magical thinking will not be eliminated, so let's use it playfully, pragmatically, and in ways that enhance our lives and relationships.

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Audio version is superb for us grown-ups

Revisado: 10-10-11

If you could sum up The Magic of Reality in three words, what would they be?

eye-opening mesmerizing bravo

What other book might you compare The Magic of Reality to and why?

In a class of its own; a master and beloved teacher who is well known for his searing intellect and scorn for those who discount the collective intelligence of evidential science in favor of subjective and ancient woo, disarms himself in order to speak with gentle, unblinking clarity. Ostensibly he does this to honor his own commitment to spare youth from propaganda and unfair use of rhetorical flourish. But that technique is tremendously alluring for us grown-ups too. Here Richard Dawkins plays the wise uncle, mentoring our species to grow up and see the real world for what it really is: amazing

What about Richard Dawkins, and Lalla Ward’s performance did you like?

Their narration is more professional and alluring than that of most of the professionally narrated books I have listened to via Audible. I also loved the refreshing pattern of male and female voices taking turns.

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

No.

Any additional comments?

If any book could give me hope that our species might actually make it through the necessary transitions, it is this one -- provided it is widely read and listened to. I first read the hardcover, gorgeously illustrated, but was surprised I loved it far more as an author-read audiobook by which I create the pictures in my own mind while dear Uncle Richard and Aunt Lalla are reading to me!

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Great content; half again too long

Revisado: 09-03-11

If you could sum up The Moral Lives of Animals in three words, what would they be?

animals are us

What could Dale Peterson have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

have a competent editor cut it in half; have more of his scholarly experience appear near the front, which now reads like an adventure tale of youthful avocational interest and passion, with no assurance that it will actually lead somewhere important (which it eventually does, in fact, do)

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrator reads every sentence as if it was the climax of the paragraph, so it was exhausting to listen to.

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The Next Jared Diamond

Revisado: 08-19-11

"This book is a twin biography of our species and our planet. At its heart lies an investigation of sustainability -- not how we achieve it, but what it is. I've written it at a time when hope that humanity might save itself from a climatic catastrophe seems to be draining away. Yet I'm not without hope. For I believe that as we come to know ourselves and our planet, we'll be moved to act."

Flannery fulfills brilliantly (and poignantly) on his promise. Surely, he is the next Jared Diamond -- but with far more literary flair. My only criticism of the audiobook format is that Flannery (who ably narrates the story himself) keeps a brisk pace that is unmodulated by the kinds of pauses (following climactic ideas or exceptionally artistic passages) that I would enforce were I reading the book in hand.

As with Jared Diamond, Tim Flannery brings to his interdisciplinary, big-picture thinking a full scientific understanding of Earth history. In so doing, he helps the reader see through (what I like to call) "deep-time eyes" -- and what songwriter Peter Mayer calls a "million year mind."

Highlights of the book include: (1) a riveting half-hour walk through the peopling of Earth and the extinction catastrophe that first-wave humans caused when naive megafauna were confronted by spear-and-fire wielders; (2) how indigenous cultures evolved lifeways balanced with the creatures that survived the frontier onslaught; (3) why a big-picture, deep-time understanding is vital for entering the future with realistic hope; and (4) how and why some life forms now depend on continuing human intervention in their behalf -- and would likely perish if our species suddenly vanished from Earth.

Overall, a splendid and transformative listen!

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Twilight of Paul S. Martin

Revisado: 10-04-10

I knew the author, Paul Martin, for many years. He died September 13, 2010. He is a colleague who gave me, what I like to call, "deep-time eyes." Thankfully, he wrote this book at a time when his career had already fully flourished. His detailed reflections of bringing a deep-time, evolutionary understanding to ecology over the course of 50 years of professional work are superbly presented. I was delighted to discover it on Audible right around the time he died, just by searching the new biology books list here. For nonprofessionals, you may want to leap to chapter 5 ("Grand Canyon Suite: Mountain Goats, Condors, Equids, and Mammoths") and onward to first get a sense of the enormous practical significance of Paul's contributions to the fields of Pleistocene ecology and evolutionary ecology. The final chapter, "Kill Sites, Sacred Sites," invests the practical ecological management consequences of Paul's "Pleistocene Rewilding" proposal with the kind of spiritual significance that compels atheists like him and me to declare ourselves among the religious. Listen, and begin to see not only North America but the other continents and major islands of the world re-animated with magnificent megafaunal ghosts of the very recent past -- and weep for our species role in bringing their demise.

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