Philo

Very insightful, top notch writing, listenable

Reviewed: 02-06-23

This work stands head and shoulders above any other I've seen, telling this story with countless revealing details. The writing just crackles, it is so good. The scenes, the characters, the situations, the flow of events, are all masterfully told and narrated. So many dots are connected.

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1 person found this helpful

Full of details, for advanced listeners only

Reviewed: 01-08-23

This is a very fine-grained view. The author is perhaps the top expert on this, and makes his case well that Barbarossa was doomed from an early stage. It really fleshes out the story. I can imagine the disquiet and sinking feelings of the generals as this unfolded.

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My favorite so far on this topic

Reviewed: 01-08-23

Other titles are more flashy (which probably boosts their sales), but this one is systematic in the way it works through the subject. I have read about 5 books on this, and this one captures more useful details (and uses clearer descriptions and terms) than the others put together.

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2 people found this helpful

Quite a tour, far and wide, moves fast

Reviewed: 01-08-23

This author has a conversational sort of style I find listenable, entertaining and enjoyable. It is colorful and moves through stories well. It is not the most disciplined, documented, traditional full-historian style. Some folks don't like the style. Sometimes the tone is a bit wisecrack. I don't mind. This story ranges into all areas (and families) across the USA, over many decades, as it swings in and of Vegas. If you are into this, many stories are familiar, a few not so familiar. But it ties a big picture together, quite well.

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More stiff, stodgy, stuffy than I expected

Reviewed: 01-08-23

I listened to another book, The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli, which (in the fine voice of Benedict Cumberbatch) quoted lines from this, with surpassing beauty, poignance, and depth of thought. How surprised I was to arrive here and discover how much of this full work, relatively, is meandering around, filler. I know I will appear an arrogant barbarian, but that's how I feel. And the narrator isn't the problem. I will revisit this later, because I think there is something here, but for now, life is short, and this is a struggle.

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I just can't get into it

Reviewed: 01-08-23

I am the PERFECT audience for this book. I have been teaching law for 38 years. I have a boundless fascination for this topic I can only call rapturous, incandescent, almost giddy. And going in, I thought, great, tying laws to algorithms and so on.

Then I started listening. I can't deal with this framework. If you define enough things as a "rule," you end up defining nothing, and just muddying the waters. We already have different concepts for ideals, paradigms, models, cultural norms, customs, etc. Something has to be a boundary that sets apart a "rule," and right out of the gate, I find that boundary unsatisfactory here. I have seen other authors try to redefine something already well defined, such as shoehorning in new words for well-established concepts in statistics. An old term, I guess, is "reinventing the wheel." That is the feeling I get here, and it has a sufficient squirm factor to cause me to do something very unusual: abandon a book pretty early. I'm sure I'm missing some good insights, but I'm not willing to sit through this, to get there.

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Incredible for getting one's composure

Reviewed: 12-18-22

If you are the right listener, this is amazing. What do I mean, "right listener"? I mean a person who can handle the particular language used here, without being provoked by it. This is a translation by a Victorian-era translator, slightly modernized by this author. A key thing is relating with reverence and gratitude and joy to the bounty we have, just in ourselves and our destinies, unadorned, and our innate power of sound judgment, as gifted to us by something we might alternately call "nature," "god," or "gods." Each of these words is used here, seemingly interchangeably, but the most common one here is "god." If you can handle that gracefully, I suppose substituting if you like, "nature" in your mind for "god," if that is what it takes to be comfortable and get to the inner deeper points, this will reward you immensely. Or anyway, it did that for me. That said, this works better for managing distraction and anxiety than any other thing I have ever encountered. I find it life-changing. And that is something I utterly, desperately need, right now. It is so vital. I'm pleasantly amazed.

Also, I felt, for now, I would bog down with, say, 13 hours of this stuff. This selection gets to the point!

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Best explanations of founding, several presidents,

Reviewed: 12-18-22

... but the treatment while peppered with insights, is uneven, in a way I will explain.
The explanation of the design of the presidency, the founders' inputs, and Washington's term, is fantastic. This alone is worth the price of admission here, and that is just the start.
Right away, what many listeners will trip over, is the criticism of Trump. I submit this should not be a drop-dead test of the worth of this book. This author has zero esteem for Trump, as appears briefly at the beginning and end of the book. But there is another, somewhat related issue: after several good appraisals of presidencies, their strengths and weaknesses, we arrive at Clinton and Obama. Here, the author goes full fanboy and apologist. The information isn't bad, but any balance decreases, for that segment of the book. It still does have worth, all through. This segment is a bit unfortunate, though, because there is so much good across most of the book. It is very listenable, thoughtful, and informative. The author does a fine job, for example, with Johnson's shortcomings Reagan's virtues. This book has significantly upgraded my understanding of the Constitution and our history, and I put a high bar on saying that, because I've taught it at college level (law classes) for almost 40 years. So, it is a mixed bag, on balance, a very good one.

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A unique view of early Trump, adds perspective

Reviewed: 12-18-22

The author (it is important to say, speaking BEFORE COVID 19 and January 6), did a very good job of staking the position that Trump's presidency, as of then, was (in actual achievements, aside from all the noisemaking, claims and unrealized promises) surprisingly mainstream-conservative. (At least, it represented many not-so-rare threads of existing conservatism.) Trump did a unique job of packaging and marketing a lot of stuff he did not create, that was bound to be expressed anyway. Though we cannot un-see the later events (and our opinions piled atop them), which are still unfolding as I write this, there is value in this viewpoint, at least for me. It shows me a few things I took away here: (1) the hype often overshadows the limits to most presidents' impacts, against the background and flow of history, and (2) Trump's impact was (more than often supposed) a matter of being "the right person at the right time," i.e., a catalyst for lots of forces waiting to unfurl anyway. This helps me detach with greater context from the person and noise surrounding Trump specifically, and gain historical context on the times we are in. This is not the whole story, but it enriches my views of it, and gives some distance from all the hysteria and hand-wringing.

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Has flaws, but is uniquely good

Reviewed: 12-18-22

The good: the day by day approach tells the story in a uniquely good way. If you are a WW2 history fan and want a "you are there" feel, and a fine grain of detail, this is exceptional. It puts in details across the whole canvas of events, and a feel for the pace of events, that I see nowhere else. The narrator has a pretty clear voice (but see "bad" below). I found it easy after a short time to ignore the background noises when I wished to.

The bad: the background noises (in a continuous stream, but not TOO loud) are silly and not much (if any) help. Some may find them annoying. I didn't mind them. The narrator's otherwise good strong voice is countered by his mispronouncing many of the unusual words or names (places and people, foreign names, etc.). I already know all the correct pronunciations, and I know what, and who, he is referring to. It is easy to get it from context, if you know some basics of the story. And those who don't know basics of the story would not spend 60+ hours on this anyway.

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