A High Price

The Triumphs and Failures of Israeli Counterterrorism

De: Daniel Byman

Narrado por: Luke Truan

The product of painstaking research and countless interviews, A High Price offers a nuanced, definitive historical account of Israel's bold but often failed efforts to fight terrorist groups. Beginning with the violent border disputes that emerged after Israel's founding in 1948, Daniel Byman charts the rise of Yasser Arafat's Fatah and leftist groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--organizations that ushered in the era of international terrorism epitomized by the 1972 hostage-taking at the Munich Olympics. Byman reveals how Israel fought these groups and others, such as Hamas, in the decades that follow, with particular attention to the grinding and painful struggle during the second intifada. Israel's debacles in Lebanon against groups like the Lebanese Hizballah are examined in-depth, as is the country's problematic response to Jewish terrorist groups that have struck at Arabs and Israelis seeking peace. In surveying Israel's response to terror, the author points to the coups of shadowy Israeli intelligence services, the much-emulated use of defensive measures such as sky marshals on airplanes, and the role of controversial techniques such as targeted killings and the security barrier that separates Israel from Palestinian areas. Equally instructive are the shortcomings that have undermined Israel's counterterrorism goals, including a disregard for long-term planning and a failure to recognize the long-term political repercussions of counterterrorism tactics.

©2011 Daniel Byman (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Great content, AWFUL narration

The narrator is terrible. Among the terrible things he does are awful attempts at Arab accents, pronounces the word “deter” as “deet-ur”, changes between reading out acronyms by letter and reading them as a word. There are multiple times where a sentence is repeated 2 or 3 times, you can hear long pauses where he loses his place, etc.

Poor auditory performance and sound quality - just read the book, skip this audio book version if you can.

This book is full of great information into the nuance and history of the struggle of people and peace the Middle East. HOWEVER, the performance of the person reading the book was so poor in pronouncing names and places of the important players was so cringe that I could not continue the bland high school like performance as well as production, I can even hear pages turning . I could not go forward listening to this book.
Never, never, ever have I heard such a badly produced and performed book. An AI voiceover would be better than this audiobook.

Hilariously bad pronunciation

What would have made A High Price better?

Getting a narrator who can read big words like "Jordanian" and "Kalashnikov"

Has A High Price turned you off from other books in this genre?

No, though the story was nothing special - basically a simple retelling of the events. It was like reading back issues of Newsweek. Pretty much limited to the Israeli viewpoint too.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrator had a George W accent and consistently said "Jordinian" for "Jordanian", "Israels" for "Israelis" + similarly mangled countless other rather common words. The pronunciation of "coup d'etat" was a high-light!

What character would you cut from A High Price?

The narrator

Poor narration quality

Most chapters narrated quite well. Others not so well. At times the narrators volume also changed significantly.

Worst Narration Ever (I hope!)

Would you try another book from Daniel Byman and/or Luke Truan?

The topic was very interesting, but the narration was the worst I have ever heard on an Audible book. The reader mispronounced almost every non-English word he read, as well as some English ones. I am sure he would have offended Israelis, Arabs, and Palestinians with the pronunciation. I could even hear the pages being turn on some occasions. Scott Brick, et. al. where are you?

How could the performance have been better?

Pronounce the words correctly. Do let us hear the pages being turned.

Could you see A High Price being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

No.

Unprofessional performance, great content

The content of the book is strong, but the person reading and the people editing are doing subpar jobs.

There's a section where you can actually hear the page turn of the person reading the book. on top of this, the reader mispronounces words, like "Israeli" and "onerous".

While I am enjoying the content, the performance of the reader is lacking.

Amateur reader

The reader mispronounces dozens of words aside for names and places. Very unprofessional. You can also hear page turns. Disappointed.

Terrible recording of a great book

Audible generally has high quality recordings. But this one is terrible; replete with mispronunciations (sursupticious? Plassate for placate? And the list goes on), malaproprisms (Nobel surprise?), poor prosody, hesitations, shuffling papers, background clicks, and more. It is painful, which is a shame because the content is so good and timely. I hope that the author takes notice and arranges for a different recording. If so, may I get a copy of this one? I would live to listen to it without all the distractions.

The worst production/narrator ever

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The story is good

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The worst narrator ever. He sounds like a 12 year old, no respect for ponctuation or rhythm. By the way is he reading from the actual book? At home? Cause we can hear him turning pages, drinking water, clearing his throat.. I can't believe anyone at audible listen to this and said it was ok to sell it. The narrator killed it for me. I'm returning the book.

Frequent mispronunciations

The number of mispronunciations is painful. This reader is clearly unfamiliar with even the most basic Israeli/Hebrew and Arabic names and terms. It makes for painful listening. He ought never to have been chosen to read this book.