Mark

As a U.S. reader, I found this very accessible. I suspect those more familiar with Great Britain and its history would like it even better, particularly many of the geographic references that were lost on me.

I generally steer clear of abridged versions, and this book certainly confirms me in that general rule of thumb, because I was disappointed at several points to realize that we were picking up the story a century or more after the period we had just been discussing. On the other hand, I learned a great deal about what was happening in England before the Battle of Hastings (a period I had previously known almost nothing about) and I really enjoyed the discussions of Tudor England, the main outlines of which were already familiar. Thus, while I remain disappointed that the work is only offered in an abridged format, I recommend it anyway and I do plan to buy all three volumes.

This is a genre that Plato has almost entirely to himself. It's not quite drama, not quite short story, and not quite nonfiction. I wasn't sure how it would work on audio, but Dick Hill did an amazing job bringing these classics to life.

There are some books that ought to be required reading. This book ought to be required ANNUAL reading. I just finished my second annual trip through it and I found it repaid careful attention yet again.

This would be a good book even if all it did was invent a coherent dystopian world of the future and tell a plausible story about how it came into being. That would be good fiction. The genius of this book, it seems to me, is to take that good fiction to a whole different level by focusing on the aspects of the human psyche that make the story plausible. Orwell doesn't just tell us a story of some bad men who lead a revolution and then preside over an unprecedentedly cruel reign of terror. Instead, he dwells on the crucial elements -- doublethink, Newspeak, alienation, surveillance, propaganda -- that would make it not just possible but likely for human beings to go along willingly. What I found most arresting, in our post-9/11 world, were his observations about the relationship between fear and power -- namely, that governments enhance their own power by promoting an environment of chronic fear, and it doesn't even matter whether the object of the fear is real or imagined because the power is just as real either way.

"War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength." Quite a program -- and not as foreign or confusing as I wish it were.

This is an extraordinarily admiring biography of da Vinci, but the author's understandable admiration (particuarly for Leonardo's work in human anatomy) gets in the way. The best biographies let us experience the subject's life from his own point of view, so that as we see the various choices he makes we realize that we are actually watching the subject's own creation of self. Unfortunately, this book is not among the best biographies. Instead of presenting Leonardo the Renaissance Man, Nuland gives us Leonardo the 21st century man trapped in 15th century Italy. He seems not to relate to any of his contemporaries, and we get no sense that the burning curiosity within Leonardo was actually quite in keeping with the spirit of his age.

Furthermore, despite occasional references to Leonardo's studies in optics, astronomy, and math, we really only get to know his work in anatomy. Even his art is barely mentioned.

Normally I steer clear of abridgments, but this was an excellent way to spend five hours. I'm not sure how much longer an unabridged version would have been, but I felt the argument of this book proceeded very logically and was adequately developed and supported by the factual examples.

That argument is essentially this: that many social trends and phenomena follow the same basic pattern as epidemics; that they follow the same pattern because they are caused and sustained in much the same way; that the difference between trends that get past the "tipping point" and those that do not may often be one or more very small factors; and that if one wants to create any sort of social trend (whether that be buying a product or committing fewer crimes), it is important to attend to such very small factors.

The book is anecdotal, and for all I know there may be respected social scientists who think Gladwell is a rank amateur who is dabbling beyond his depth. But for my part, I think Gladwell is a perspicacious observer whose insights here are original, interesting, and even useful.

I liked this book before I bought it because I'm familiar with the time and place in which it is set. But to my very pleasant surprise, I found that the real interest that this book holds is the way the author captures the process of discernment -- how we direct our own lives. How do we know what to do with our lives? Which promises do we have to keep and which ones can we break when circumstances change? The portrayal here of the process of moral deliberation really resonated with me, and I'm 42 -- well past the point of wondering what to do with my life. But I think adolescents will really get a lot out of this book. I expect my 9-year-old daughter will enjoy it in five or six years. (My son, not so much -- but maybe I'll change my mind about that as time goes by.)

I was looking for a reasonably comprehensive history not just of the "decline and fall" of Rome, but of its rise as well. I was particularly interested in the final years of the republic, which occurred prior to the zenith of Roman power.

Volume 1 was exactly what I was looking for, but I couldn't stop there; I needed to get the rest of the story in Volume 2. In both books, I found the writing clear and the narration spirited. I found this survey to be just the right level of detail in order to permit the reader to see similarities with events of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Start with Volume 1, though, particularly if you live in the United States. The rise of the Roman republic and its surprisingly incremental transition into its imperial phase is a story that resonated in alarming ways for me.

I was looking for a reasonably comprehensive history not just of the "decline and fall" of Rome, but of its rise as well. I was particularly interested in the final years of the republic, which occurred prior to the zenith of Roman power.

In this book, I hit the jackpot. The writing is clear, the narration spirited. I found this survey to be just the right level of detail in order to permit the reader to see similarities with events of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Don't miss Volume 2, either, which was just as good.

Part 1 of this work was interesting -- not life-altering, but interesting. What I didn't know is that, by long tradition, editions of this book are published with elaborate commentaries in the margins. Thus, after Part 1 finishes presenting Sun Tzu's treatise, Part 2 attempts to present the work all over again with all the marginalia -- and I didn't find the audio format conducive to any integrated consideration of the text and margin notes.

Two stars for Part 1, and none for Part 2.

Sometime in the 1990s, a friend said to me, "Isn't there a political party that wants to get all the children born AND feed them?" Jim Wallis asks essentially the same question, quickly concludes that the answer is no, and then excoriates both major parties for failing to hear and respond to the cry of the poor. Reading this book is like an examination of conscience for political junkies and policy wonks.