Joseph

So many words, so few ideas

Revisado: 07-02-23

This is a history written by an insider, an eyewitness to much of the narrative. It could have been great if the author knew how to write. But he didn't.

The writing is self-indulgent, silly, and inflated with comments that give nothing to the story or the reader.

I stuck it out until the sermon about psychedelic philosophy. That was more than I could take. Tendentious, giddy, ill informed. And awfully written.

My advice: Don't waste your time.

PS. I love the Dead and was at several of the earliest Dead shows. I was acquainted with Jerry Garcia and consider him one of the most remarkable and admirable people I have met in a long and eventful life. So I'm not totally ignorant of the subject matter.

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If you care about Auden

Revisado: 11-14-21

If you care about the world and care about language then you probably know that poetry is one of the great joys of life and one of the great sorrows. In that case you should listen to this book.

Tremendous, personal journey through one over quoted, misquoted, abused and disowned poem. Doesn't matter if you're new to Auden or a battered veteran. You'll learn plenty. Plus, Sansom's self-deprecating brit humor is worth the price of admission.

Highly recommended.

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Must read

Revisado: 08-05-21

It was a very valuable experience to follow Clint Smith on his path through history and memory. The history of the United States has been and is being suppressed and revised by people who refuse to come to terms with the role of slavery in that history. They fantasize, rewrite and lie about the background to the Civil War. And they ignore or deny the disgraceful racial abuses and violence that characterize the entire period from 1865 to 2021. Smith's book is a welcome step on the long, long journey to correct the distortions, the deliberate omissions and the willful amnesia.

Highly recommended.

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Masterful historic overview

Revisado: 11-01-19

Professor Harl does a wonderful job of presenting the vast scope of Ottoman history. Not an easy task, to say the least, and not a job that anyone can undertake without infuriating someone.

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Masterpiece

Revisado: 07-28-19

The great Umberto Eco doesn't need any additional praise or commentary. But I have to give a shout out to George Guidall for his phenomenal narration of Baudolino. What a performance! How did he do it? It takes a special talent to keep pace with Eco's milling crowd of characters, wisecracking and yelling at one another. Not to mention the nonstop linguistic pranks in Italian, Greek, Arabic and assorted fantasy languages. Just amazing and hilarious.

Get this audio version and give it a listen. You can thank me later.

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Deadly dull

Revisado: 03-28-19

I love North American prehistory, archaeology and ethnography. Prof. Barnhart is a recognized authority in these fields and I have the highest respect for him as a scientist and theorist.

I could not make it past the discussion of the Hopewell sites in this lecture series. The laundry lists of site survey measurements were just too much for me. Sure, it's important to understand the scale of the sites and their construction features. But the litany of lengths, diameters, depths, areas and heights just goes on and on and on and on. I couldn't get through them. Really unnecessary numeric overkill.

Returned.

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Right wing ignorance

Revisado: 08-24-18

Spencer is a media-freak racist who picks the tribal content out of the Koran and presents this as if it was the whole text. A similar reading of any other religious text would be just as stupid and produce similar results. He knows squat and makes this abundantly clear in his book. Avoid this book: You can get the same message for free by reading YouTube comments on lunatic fundamental Islamic propaganda or on lunatic racist propaganda.

Yes, I did read it. It sucks.

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A modern classic of military history

Revisado: 05-30-17

Beevor's account is the definitive story of the Battle, the Occupation and the immediate aftermath. His account of the Resistance is, of necessity, sporadic and unfocused. The simple fact is that we don't know substance of many of the most famous incidents. People were unsure of what happened a half hour after the fact. Very few participants had any reason to tell the truth and there were always, every single time, fundamentally conflicting narratives. These conflicting stories came into existence immediately after the events and only became more entrenched and more contradictory as time passed. There was heroic resistance and there was accommodation and there was collaboration. The details are lost forever.

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Understanding instead of stereotypes

Revisado: 07-28-16

Get the insider's view rather than a lot of misinformation and foolishness. The United States cherishes the "American dream" but that dreaming comes at a price that most people would prefer to ignore. A large part of all American kids are growing up today with two strikes against them and the third strike on the way. There are public policies that make this situation worse and then there are ways of living and dealing with people within family and among friends that make the situation much worse.

Vance explains how these issues have shaped his life. He's an honest and very capable narrator of his own story.

Recommended.

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Airheads in the desert

Revisado: 07-19-16

The author had a good idea for her novel. Her depiction of a future, drought ruined West is well imagined and well told.

Her characters are simply awful. Shallow, silly, pompous and on the verge of being unbearable. The narration, particularly the parts read by Jorgeana Marie, doesn't help. The extended passages of the main female character's "thinking" almost got me to quit listening, something I almost never do. The real low points, however, are the dialogs. So stereotypical that they are almost funny. But not quite.

Not recommended. At all.

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