TofuGirlSF

The details!

Revisado: 01-09-24

This book gave me a bit of insight into what it really feels like for the soldier on the front lines, and I very much appreciate that.

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Just plain wonderful

Revisado: 08-28-22

I loved this more than expected. I'm especially glad they found people of color with lovely stories -- a Black young man singing "I'm a Loser" out loud on the way home from school and the women whose parents would whistle "Yellow Submarine" in a crowd to be able to locate each other.

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Exceptionally charming

Revisado: 08-28-22

I expected to lightly enjoy this book, but instead I found it unexpectedly compelling. Several times listening to this while driving I found myself with tears rolling down my cheeks.

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Terribly disappointing and Euro-centric

Revisado: 08-28-22

I love the idea of the book -- about the middle ages but around the world, not just the overly familiar histories of medieval Italy, France, and England. The author has a good grasp of these areas, and brings a bit of freshness to them. But everywhere else it seems as if she just read a few entries on Wikipedia and summarized them.
She also suffers from unacknowledged racial and cultural bias. For example, she calls people "native" when she's talking about people living in India or Africa, but when referring to people living in, say, France, she calls them "French."
Skip this one, folks.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas

Undisciplined work -- needs an editor!

Revisado: 05-21-21

Many, many times too often the author tells about Europeans and what they thought of Polynesia, not about Polynesia. In some cases she might even say someone had extraordinary observations, but then doesn't tell us what those observations were!

At times she just goes off on random streams of consciousness about, for example literacy. Somewhat interesting, but it feels as if it was stuck in to make the book longer. The only section that is not thoroughly European-dominated is the last chapters on voyaging.

I learned quite a bit, but it was a major effort to withstand the author's self-centered worldview and her inability to tell the story of the sea people. Instead she tells the story of what white people have thought about the sea people and how that thinking has evolved.

Would be more accurately titled "The evolution of how Westerners have viewed people of the south Pacific."

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esto le resultó útil a 20 personas

Never use one word when 200 will do

Revisado: 09-20-18

I'm so interested in this topic, and so disappointed in this book. Rather than a history, it's the professor musing on things like identity and kinship, talking about the emergence of agriculture, and so forth -- occasionally using African examples. But it's really his thoughts on anthropology (and his hyper-careful tiptoe-ing around race) rather than a history of Africa.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

Deeply felt, mesmerizing

Revisado: 09-01-18

I know nothing about everyday life in Afghanistan and this book introduced me to so many people and how their lives wind around world events. I fell in love with the characters and can only wish the book would never end.

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Brilliant

Revisado: 09-01-18

A clever idea brilliantly executed -- a poetic interpretation of the Iliad. The glimpses of the characters are so sharply drawn I could not have felt closer to them.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Time machine to Neanderthal days

Revisado: 09-01-18

So compelling a story and the era is so vividly portrayed. I thoroughly enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek "archaeology" and faux scholarly disputes as well.

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Good way to spend 18 minutes

Revisado: 09-01-18

No doubt more enjoyable if told by Joan Rivers herself, but this was still fun.

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