Palantir

Great battle detail but unnecessary accents in narration

Revisado: 12-27-24

If you can get past the attempt at accents in the narration, which were very off-putting and simply unnecessary, this is an incredible detailing of all facets of the Korean War. Unfortunately, the author dwells excessively on critical commentary of US society and military culture in the 1950s, over-attributing initial US failures to poor soldiers rather than the obvious lack of tanks and anti-tank weapons to face the Soviet T-34s. This battering of US culture - “going soft” - remains a theme all the way to the end, but is much less relevant to the actual conduct of the war than the author would have you believe. About one-quarter of the book’s content could be cut, mostly this sort of commentary, but the remaining three-quarters is well worth the read.

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Captivating to the last, one of the best

Revisado: 03-13-17

Despite its length, this book remains utterly captivating to the last. Written by an American journalist who lived for a time under The Third Reich, its narrative is engagingly written and brilliantly read. One of the best audiobooks I've ever listened to, genuinely 5-star.

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Impressive albeit flawed world history

Revisado: 11-27-16

World history, as a narrative subject, is still in its relative infancy, with attempts at it few and far between. J. M. Roberts 1976 tome was one of the first broadly published, and it was not until the wildly successful 'Guns, Germs and Steel' decades later that world history became accepted as a genuine literary pursuit (critics always claimed it was impossible to adequately capture world history in a single volume). As such, Roberts' work, although updated many times until 2002 in this recording, is very much a product of its time - a staunch defence of the validity of world history as well as a deliberately provocative narrative replete with snipes that fluctuate between sarcastic humour and outright offense towards just about everyone. Frederick Davidson's reading perfectly matches this tone - it's very entertaining and enjoyable to listen to, but the occasionally troubled pronunciations of now well-known foreign names ('Chernobyl', for example) is telling. This is definitely a world history for a bygone generation.

Roberts greatest flaw (in my opinion) is an attempt to ascribe the enlightenment (i.e., reliance on reason and evidence over intuition and superstition) to European culture and from there spreading as a 'Europeanization' of the world. As a modern reader (and a European to boot), this seems as absurd as attempts in ages past to ascribe the coming of agriculture to a particular civilisation until it was realised that it emerged independently in several places by different cultures. Why the adoption of Arabic mathematics and science wasn't similarly called an 'Arabization' of the world, or the adoption of Mongolian cavalry warfare and Chinese gunpowder wasn't called a 'Sinization' of the world I think illustrates the problem with such phrases which attempt to claim cultural credit.

Fortunately, such cultural attributions are in decline, just as racial attributions were once in vogue as a misuse of Darwinian reasoning and since discredited. I cannot, therefore, recommend this work for new readers of world history. As others have noted, it is too skewed towards prosecuting the case for a European hegemony, labouring far too heavily on this thesis at the expense of far more interesting topics within distinctive cultures. For readers interested in the 'history of world history', though, this is an excellent bookmark in the evolution of the topic - highly illuminating of the mindset and perspective of that time and in that place (Europe). As the author points out, he can only write as a white Anglo-Saxon male (which I am too!). The difference between us, though, is about 60 years in age, and as such, a more recent (and ironically 'enlightened') account of world history would probably suit younger readers ... if only there were some more to choose from!

There are excellent sections within this work, and it is best to approach it by specific chapters of interest (most of which never exceed 90 minutes). In this way, as a series of topics, it is very manageable and the useful knowledge is clearly revealed in between the opening and closing remarks which tend to stray into the provocative style already noted.

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Historiography, not history, of science

Revisado: 01-24-16

To quote the British Society for the History of Science:

"Compellingly written... As an introduction to the historiography of science, this book is superb... a wonderfully rich volume, ideal for the newbie historian or interested layperson."

This is indeed an academic introduction to the historiography of science that seems intended for prospective historians. It is not at all a narrative history suitable for beginners. If you already know what "historiography" means, then maybe this book will interest you. If you're interested in narrative history, though, steer clear!

The performance, while mostly good, struggles with the many foreign pronunciations.

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A little self-indulgent, but still a great listen

Revisado: 06-02-15

For some reason, I hoped that Leonard Nimoy might be a little less self-indulgent than most actors, but maybe I was just unfairly projecting my expectations of Spock onto him. It turns out that, indeed, Leonard Nimoy is just like most actors and does suffer a little self-indulgence when writing about himself after-all. None-the-less, this is still a great listen, although it could have done without the Spock/Nimoy dialogues (one such self-indulgence) and, although I am a Star Trek (& Spock) fan, I really would have preferred a Nimoy-centric biography of the man rather than such a deliberate concoction of the actor's and character's identities.

Why does it have to be all or nothing? Why does Leonard Nimoy feel he is either totally Spock or totally not? Both extremes seem to be rather typical expressions of an actor's perceived self-importance, and it's always interesting to see just how much the actor merges with the character they've created. I'm impressed by those who are able to maintain a clear distinction throughout their career (it seems more ... professional), but it's obviously not easy to maintain such a separation.

At least, through his biography, Leonard Nimoy clearly comes across as typically human, for good and for bad, but I'm not sure he needed to contrast quite so heavily and frequently with Spock to achieve that.

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The Universe doesn't seem elegant at all!

Revisado: 05-21-15

I wish I could say this book was elegantly written and that it did indeed describe an elegant universe. As good as the book is, though (and it is still one of the best none-the-less), I had a hard time seeing elegance anywhere.

I bought this book after seeing Brian Greene present the TV series 'Fabric of the Cosmos'. His explanations were so, well, elegant (and brilliantly visualised) that I thought for sure here is the next Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking combined!

Unfortunately, I can't say the same for the writing in this book, admittedly written many years earlier. Explanations labour tediously on foundation concepts when, suddenly, a crucial sophisticated conclusions flashes by. The 'plain English' prose is similarly punctuated with sudden clusters of esoteric vocabulary. The rhythm, therefore (especially when narrated) can be very unsettling. It's hard to know what the right level of your mind's 'engagement' ought to be at any particular time.

If you persevere, though, this is definitely one of the most comprehensive explanations of String Theory's depths available in popular science. Interestingly, though, the sub-Planck-length Universe seems awfully 'messy' and confused, not at all elegant as the book's title suggests. So, I'm left wondering exactly what the title refers to, but still very satisfied with the book on the whole.

The narrator was suitable for the material and easy to listen to. As other reviewers have noted, some foreign names are awkwardly pronounced, but I've grown used to this after hearing the same physicists' names attempted by many different narrators, all bringing their own regional peculiarities to their accents (UK vs US narrators for instance).

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Reasonable course, occasional music mismatch

Revisado: 04-08-15

The content and presentation of this course is reasonable, although the music underscore sometimes gets a little funky and isn't always well matched to the spoken word. It can become irritating listening over and over, as you need to be able to do for long-term recall.

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Reasonable course, occasional music mismatch

Revisado: 04-08-15

The content and presentation of this course is reasonable, although the music underscore sometimes gets a little funky and isn't always well matched to the spoken word. It can become irritating listening over and over, as you need to be able to do for long-term recall.

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Reasonable course, occasional music mismatch

Revisado: 04-08-15

The content and presentation of this course is reasonable, although the music underscore sometimes gets a little funky and isn't always well matched to the spoken word. It can become irritating listening over and over, as you need to be able to do for long-term recall.

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Good technical exposition for the non-tech

Revisado: 02-16-15

As a fan of Mark Bowden's work, particularly Black Hawk Down, I was looking forward to his tackling of a subject as technical as computer viruses. As a professional software engineer myself, I think he did an excellent job of conveying technical descriptions very accurately while ensuring accessibility to a non-tech audience. Many of his analogies reminded me of similar chestnuts from my own College education, almost as if Bowden was himself very much an industry insider.

Having said that, I'm struggling to understand why Bowden chose the Conficker worm as his subject, as it was not exactly the finest hour of either the "black hats" (hackers) or the "white hats" (anti-virus community), nor was it even close to a "digital world war". It's more the story of floundering efforts on both sides, neither ever really getting on top of the other, which Bowden attempts to link with the similar fate of modern wars to degenerate into stalemates and "exit strategies", as if that is the only outcome we could hope for, an argument which, although insightful, I didn't find ultimately convincing.

There were a lot of mis-steps on both sides of the worm, and unfortunately there was not all that much "genius" on display when it mattered, despite all the self-glorifying hype from both the black hat and white hat communities. If these white hats are really the guys "securing the Internet", they need to spend less time casting themselves as a Cabal of X-Men and more time, well, securing the Internet. If buying up a gazillion domain names on their own credit cards was the best they could come up with to combat Conficker (hardly a breakthrough of technical wizadry), then I'm afraid they fall rather short of "genius" or X-Men. Their personal quarrels on chat-lists, many recounted in full by Bowden, are particularly uninspiring outbursts of immaturity from apparently brilliant software professionals.

Maybe Bowden just loves the story of good guys plunged into chaos (somewhat of their own making) to see how they deal with the fall-out. That might explain his choosing of the Conficker worm as his subject. Unfortunately, as a subject, it is a rather dull one. Bowden writes well, but the story ultimately just isn't a very interesting one. If you are non-tech, you will learn a great deal about Internet technology from this book, but don't expect an exciting "digital world war" to be exposed, despite what the title claims.

The narration was good, and the writing was good. It just wasn't the best story, overall.

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