Jeff

No, but its a great book for the audio format, the language is fairly casual and the story witty and engaging.

Ben Franklin goes to make treaty with the Indians, who are sober during negotiations but all get drunk out of their minds afterwards. They come the next day to make amends, blaming

Unfortunately Ben never finished his book, only recording events up to 1757. It was interesting to get such a first hand account of life in the colonies, especially the religous atmosphere that so many misinterpret today. This is a great book and its a tragedy he never finished it.

Yes, the research that went into this book and the details provided are astounding. Any history afficianado will want to give this a few listens.

I found the book informative, entertaining and well-researched. Mr Weatherford makes an interesting point in the connections he draws between Mongol policies and modern practices. I plan to listen to it again in the near future. However, while Mr. Weatherford shows an extensive knowledge of Mongolian history language and culture he shows weaknesess in other areas. For example, he makes the bizarre claim that China was not a unified country before the Yuan dynasty, he bases this statement on the fact that China has many dialects. This is true even today! Many spoken languages existing within the borders of one country does not mean that a county isnt unified. Any student of Chinese history knows that China was a unified country over a millenium before the Mongols came. Mr Weatherford also glosses over the racial caste system and mass genocide of Southern Chinese civilians enacted by the Yuan rulers.The author also apparantly has a bone to pick with Christianity and repeatedly fails to distinguish the attrocities comitted by misguided zealots from a relgion that originally promoted love and equality. At the same time, he fails to condemn evils comitted in the name of Islam or Buddhism. in a similar way . No book is perfect.

While sometimes reading more like a rennasance manual on field tactics than a phillosophical treatment on the subject, The Art of War fills in the gaps for those who wish to understand more about the world that sparked Machiavelli's ideas in The Prince. Why did he hate mercenaries so much? What were the historical stories (or antecdotes) that were behind his political policies? What was his view as an experienced millitary man about the rising importance of firearms in battle?
The narrator does a pretty good job on all the characters (the book is arranged as a Socratic dialogue) and also includes two long-winded and somewhat controversial essays before and after the book. I feel listening to the essays helped me understand the book better. However, despite any evidence to support this claim, the writer of these essays tends to go off on sensationlist tangents about how the real enemy Machiavelli was fighting against was Christianity. That and maybe the overly- detailed army camp and formation plans were really my only complaints with the book. In conclusion, read The Prince first, if your still interested, listen to this next.

Augustine's personal accounts of his struggles with desire and his coming to the faith have wonderful lessons for any Christian protestant or catholic.

To tell the truth I've attempted several times to sit down and read The Confessions, but always found myself unable to process the language. Mr Vance actually succeeds in making the language sound natural and easy to follow. I found myself easily comprehending and actually enjoying this archaic language. Fantastic performance!

Augustine isn't shy about sharing his heart with the reader, I found myself sympathizing with him, even crying sometimes as his accounts inspired remembrances of my own failures.

The Confessions, in addition to being an account of Augustine's life and conversion, is also at times a philosophical treatise. Because of this, some parts may be difficult to follow while driving.

Yes, there were so many details about even the most minor characters that The Iliad should probably be listened two at least twice.

The aspect that I liked most about the story is the author's attention to heroes on both sides of the battle and his depiction of the heart wrenching side of war. Instead of just saying that so and so's spear smashed into such and such's head, there is often a good paragraph of information about the victim. For example, Homer tells us how the man is a loving father, the husband of a noble wife, the only son of upstanding parents, or how he always treated travelers well etc. and then ends with an incredibly gruesome description of him clawing in a pool of his own blood. The listener/reader finds himself pitying the fallen men on both sides and getting (I think) a truer picture of how horrible war really is. In addition, the Greek gods as portrayed in The Iliad are absolutely hillarious. While all the mortals below simply assume that the gods have a plan and their best intrests in heart they are woefully mistaken. Apollo is a total jerk, Ares the god of war isn’t that great in battle, Hera is a foolish blabbermouth and Zeus is the most promiscuous male in heaven or earth. Instead of being holy and wise, all the actions of the gods show them to be selfish, arbitrary and fickle, doing more harm them good to both the Greeks and Trojans.

Zeus is letting the Trojans win the war and Hera cant take it, so she seduces him to give the other gods a chance to sneak off and help the Greeks. Poseidon goes off to demolish the Trojans while Zeus and Hera go to bed, but not before Zeus tells her how much more beautiful she is then all the mortal women he cheated on her with, listing off all their qualities.

Stanley Lombardo does an excellent reading of his translation and Susan Sarandon's summaries of events at the beginning of each book (chapter) are helpful.

This recording sounds like its over 20 years old, but the performance is so good that the listener forgets about the sound quality. In my opinion, the Apology part of this recording is actually the most captivating performance of the works of Plato on Audible. However, the dialougues such as Crito are hard to follow if one isn't concentrating, don't try listening to them during your morning drive.

I would have enjoyed this title if it had actually contained at least a few hours of the original text of the book it purports to be. Unfortunately its almost entirely commentary and spends more time refuting Marx than letting the reader hear his thoughts. The voice actors with foreign accents were also in my opinion unnecessary. A shortened version of this title would be great as an introduction to the actual work. Audible really needs to find some better recordings for the works of Marx.

Listening to this work showed me some deep differences between God as portrayed in Judaism and Christianity and God as portrayed in Islam. It was very informative.

Yes, unfortunately it wasn't quite possible though.

Mr. Sand gives a good reading of the text, giving the it the solemnity it deserves most of the time. However, it seems like he gets tired as he reads on, speeding up and losing his composure. The sample of his reading on Audible is representative of him at his best. In any case this is a deal for the price.

Mr. Lombardo's translation isn't poetic, but The Odyssey was originally an oral epic, meant to entertain and instruct the common man, (not the highbrows of the day). This translation is down to earth and easy to understand without losing any of Homer's dignity, so get ready for some swashbucking.

Sound quality is excellent for Audible, Ms. Sarandon gives a summary each chapter at its beginning, while sometimes unnecessary, this makes the story easy to follow. Mr. Lombardo does an excellent job reading his translation and speaks very clearly. Even though I'm a hardcore LOTR fan I still think that Lombardo's reading seems more natural than Sir Ian's reading of Fagles translation. Also the music in between chapters is nice and won't destroy your ears (like the audiobook for the Fagles translation) will.

By far the best dramatized audio bible released in recent years. Unfortunately the sound quality on audible pales in comparison to the actual disks.

One thing I was really dissapointed in was the Psalms. The presentation of the Psalms in this recording is far too dark and serrious, making even psalms of praise and joy leave the listener with a disturbing impression. I'm not sure if it's available on audible, but the Faith Comes by Hearing dramatized NIV presentation of the psalms is much better, providing a full range of emotions rather than the somewhat self righteous and vindictive undertones prevalent throughout this presentation. Outside of the Psalms, I loved almost everything else.

This is an incredible deal, one credit for a few thousand pages worth of inspiration. The background music does get old after 90 hours but I do think it enhances the experience overall. Some would complain about the translation NKJV vs KJV vs NIV VS NLT etc. but just face it, no translation is perfect, even the originals aren't perfect, there are minor differences among the thousands of Greek and Hebrew manuscripts we translate from. The NKJV keeps the grace of the KJV while making the language more accessible to the modern listener, thus it was a good choice for this recording.