-
Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
- And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Categories: Education & Learning, Words, Language & Grammar
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Audible Premium Plus
$14.95 a month
Buy for $24.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Falcon Thief
- A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Search for the Perfect Bird
- By: Joshua Hammer
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain’s Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were 14 rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. So begins a tale almost too bizarre to believe, following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions - and Detective Andy McWilliam, who’s hell bent on protecting the world’s birds of prey.
-
-
Nearly Interesting
- By Miami Lou on 02-28-20
By: Joshua Hammer
-
Mansa Musa and Timbuktu
- The History of the West African Emperor and Medieval Africa's Most Fabled City
- By: Charles River Editors
- Narrated by: Dan Gallagher
- Length: 1 hr and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Recent research has revealed that the richest person of all time lived in the 14th century in West Africa and went by many names, including Kankan Musa Keita, Emir of Melle, Lord of the Mines of Wangara, Conqueror of Ghanata, and the Lion of Mali II, but today he is usually referred to as Mansa Musa. Adjusting his wealth to modern values, he was worth about an estimated $400 billion as the Sultan of ancient Mali, which controlled the trade routes across the Sahara Desert.
-
-
Black people did that ...
- By Olumide S. Wilkey on 03-22-20
-
African Dominion
- A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa
- By: Michael Gomez
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history.
By: Michael Gomez
-
The Storied City
- The Quest for Timbuktu and the Fantastic Mission to Save Its Past
- By: Charlie English
- Narrated by: Enn Reitel
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To Westerners, the name Timbuktu long conjured a tantalizing paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late 18th century, a series of explorers gripped by the fever for "discovery" tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city. But one expedition after another went disastrously awry, succumbing to attack, the climate, and disease. Timbuktu was rich in another way, too. A medieval center of learning, it was home to tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts.
-
-
Notes are a waste of time
- By drewdpeabody on 12-31-17
By: Charlie English
-
African Origin of Civilization - The Myth or Reality
- By: Cheikh Anta Diop
- Narrated by: Frank Block
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This classic presents historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence to support the theory that ancient Egypt was a black civilization.
-
-
love it
- By Jessica Powell on 07-14-20
By: Cheikh Anta Diop
-
Caste (Oprah's Book Club)
- The Origins of Our Discontents
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
-
-
Brilliant, articulate, highly listenable.
- By GM on 08-05-20
By: Isabel Wilkerson
-
The Falcon Thief
- A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Search for the Perfect Bird
- By: Joshua Hammer
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain’s Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were 14 rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. So begins a tale almost too bizarre to believe, following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions - and Detective Andy McWilliam, who’s hell bent on protecting the world’s birds of prey.
-
-
Nearly Interesting
- By Miami Lou on 02-28-20
By: Joshua Hammer
-
Mansa Musa and Timbuktu
- The History of the West African Emperor and Medieval Africa's Most Fabled City
- By: Charles River Editors
- Narrated by: Dan Gallagher
- Length: 1 hr and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Recent research has revealed that the richest person of all time lived in the 14th century in West Africa and went by many names, including Kankan Musa Keita, Emir of Melle, Lord of the Mines of Wangara, Conqueror of Ghanata, and the Lion of Mali II, but today he is usually referred to as Mansa Musa. Adjusting his wealth to modern values, he was worth about an estimated $400 billion as the Sultan of ancient Mali, which controlled the trade routes across the Sahara Desert.
-
-
Black people did that ...
- By Olumide S. Wilkey on 03-22-20
-
African Dominion
- A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa
- By: Michael Gomez
- Narrated by: David Sadzin
- Length: 19 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pick up almost any book on early and medieval world history and empire, and where do you find West Africa? On the periphery. This pioneering book tells a different story. Interweaving political and social history and drawing on a rich array of sources, Michael Gomez unveils a new vision of how categories of ethnicity, race, gender, and caste emerged in Africa and in global history.
By: Michael Gomez
-
The Storied City
- The Quest for Timbuktu and the Fantastic Mission to Save Its Past
- By: Charlie English
- Narrated by: Enn Reitel
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To Westerners, the name Timbuktu long conjured a tantalizing paradise, an African El Dorado where even the slaves wore gold. Beginning in the late 18th century, a series of explorers gripped by the fever for "discovery" tried repeatedly to reach the fabled city. But one expedition after another went disastrously awry, succumbing to attack, the climate, and disease. Timbuktu was rich in another way, too. A medieval center of learning, it was home to tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts.
-
-
Notes are a waste of time
- By drewdpeabody on 12-31-17
By: Charlie English
-
African Origin of Civilization - The Myth or Reality
- By: Cheikh Anta Diop
- Narrated by: Frank Block
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This classic presents historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence to support the theory that ancient Egypt was a black civilization.
-
-
love it
- By Jessica Powell on 07-14-20
By: Cheikh Anta Diop
-
Caste (Oprah's Book Club)
- The Origins of Our Discontents
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 14 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
-
-
Brilliant, articulate, highly listenable.
- By GM on 08-05-20
By: Isabel Wilkerson
-
A Promised Land
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 29 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency - a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.
-
-
Soothing, Oratorical and Insightful
- By Constance on 11-17-20
By: Barack Obama
-
The Splendid and the Vile
- A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
- By: Erik Larson
- Narrated by: John Lee, Erik Larson
- Length: 17 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next 12 months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally - and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless."
-
-
Great story; narrator terrible
- By TCB on 02-27-20
By: Erik Larson
-
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much
- The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
- By: Allison Hoover Bartlett
- Narrated by: Judith Brackley
- Length: 6 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Charles Gilkey is an obsessed, unrepentant book thief who has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of rare books from book fairs, stores, and libraries around the country. Ken Sanders is the self-appointed "bibliodick" (book dealer with a penchant for detective work) driven to catch him. Journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett befriended both eccentric characters and found herself caught in the middle of efforts to recover hidden treasure.
-
-
A good story ruined by a narcissistic author
- By Amazon Customer on 09-24-10
-
A Curious Man
- The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert 'Believe It or Not!' Ripley
- By: Neal Thompson
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Curious Man is the marvelously compelling biography of Robert “Believe It or Not” Ripley, the enigmatic cartoonist turned globetrotting millionaire who won international fame by celebrating the world's strangest oddities, and whose outrageous showmanship taught us to believe in the unbelievable. As portrayed by acclaimed biographer Neal Thompson, Ripley’s life is the stuff of a classic American fairy tale. Buck-toothed and cursed by shyness, Ripley turned his sense of being an outsider into an appreciation for the strangeness of the world.
-
-
Fun and easy book
- By John Campbell on 05-31-13
By: Neal Thompson
-
Hamnet
- By: Maggie O'Farrell
- Narrated by: Ell Potter
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.
-
-
A masterpiece
- By Molly-o on 08-03-20
By: Maggie O'Farrell
-
We Keep the Dead Close
- A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence
- By: Becky Cooper
- Narrated by: Becky Cooper
- Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A true-crime narrative of an unsolved 1969 murder at Harvard and an "exhilarating and seductive" (Ariel Levy) narrative of obsession and love for a girl who dreamt of rising among men.
-
-
Needs a great editor
- By Leslie G. on 11-13-20
By: Becky Cooper
-
The Dutch House
- A Novel
- By: Ann Patchett
- Narrated by: Tom Hanks
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother.
-
-
Not my favorite Patchett
- By Regina on 12-07-19
By: Ann Patchett
-
The Map Thief
- The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps
- By: Michael Blanding
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maps have long exerted a special fascination on viewers - both as beautiful works of art and as practical tools to navigate the world. But to those who collect them, the map trade can be a cutthroat business, inhabited by quirky and sometimes disreputable characters in search of a finite number of extremely rare objects.
Once considered a respectable antiquarian map dealer, E. Forbes Smiley spent years doubling as a map thief - until he was finally arrested slipping maps out of books in the Yale University library.
-
-
A Study of the Strangeness of People
- By Carole T. on 12-10-14
By: Michael Blanding
-
The Library Book
- By: Susan Orlean
- Narrated by: Susan Orlean
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm. As one fireman recounted later, “Once that first stack got going, it was good-bye, Charlie.” The fire was disastrous: It reached 2,000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed 400,000 books and damaged 700,000 more.
-
-
Stick to the physical book
- By David McKenzie on 02-13-19
By: Susan Orlean
-
All the Devils Are Here: A Novel
- Chief Inspector Gamache Novel, Book 16
- By: Louise Penny
- Narrated by: Robert Bathurst
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand’s godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. But an attempt on the elderly man’s life sends Armand, his wife, Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the Sûreté, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d’Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded works of art. It sends them deep into the secrets Armand’s godfather has kept for decades.
-
-
One of her best
- By Georgia gardener on 09-06-20
By: Louise Penny
-
The Professor and the Madman
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Part history, part true-crime, and entirely entertaining, listen to the story of how the behemoth Oxford English Dictionary was made. You'll hang on every word as you discover that the dictionary's greatest contributor was also an insane murderer working from the confines of an asylum.
-
-
Perfect example of a quality audible book.
- By Jerry on 07-07-03
By: Simon Winchester
-
Metropolis
- A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention
- By: Ben Wilson
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 17 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 200 millennia of our existence, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city. Historian Ben Wilson, author of best-selling and award-winning books on British history, now tells the grand, glorious story of how city living has allowed human culture to flourish. Beginning with Uruk, the world's first city, dating to 5000 BC and memorably portrayed in the Epic of Gilgamesh, he shows us that cities were never a necessity but that once they existed their density created such a blossoming of human endeavor - producing new professions, forms of art, worship, and trade.
-
-
A beautiful audio book
- By Edward on 12-28-20
By: Ben Wilson
Publisher's Summary
In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that had fallen into obscurity. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu tells the incredible story of how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist and historian from the legendary city of Timbuktu, later became one of the world's greatest and most brazen smugglers.
In 2012, thousands of Al Qaeda militants from northwest Africa seized control of most of Mali, including Timbuktu. They imposed Sharia law, chopped off the hands of accused thieves, stoned to death unmarried couples, and threatened to destroy the great manuscripts. As the militants tightened their control over Timbuktu, Haidara organized a dangerous operation to sneak all 350,000 volumes out of the city to the safety of southern Mali.
Over the past 20 years, journalist Joshua Hammer visited Timbuktu numerous times and is uniquely qualified to tell the story of Haidara's heroic and ultimately successful effort to outwit Al Qaeda and preserve Mali's - and the world's - literary patrimony. Hammer explores the city's manuscript heritage and offers never-before-reported details about the militants' march into northwest Africa. But above all, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu is an inspiring account of the victory of art and literature over extremism.
More from the same
What listeners say about Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jan
- 05-09-16
Extraordinary archivist
I missed this book on a Goodreads Giveaway, but I caught up with it as Whispersync on the cheap courtesy of BookGorilla. It combines histories of North Africa (especially Mali), Islam, religious scrolls and the people who have been protecting them, and so much more. The title's catchy, but it ought to be Bad-a$$ Archivists, I think. One man made it his life's work to gather and protect scrolls from everywhere he could, despite extremists and other crazies. It is a very involved and often tense tale, but also written with a detail and sensitivity that makes it riveting. There is much to be learned here, and we all hope for positive change.
Paul Boehmer is a fine audio performer and brings so much to life with his talents.
15 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jennifer A Greenhalgh
- 08-10-16
It seemed like a good idea at the time
I couldn't stand the narrator. He put a strong emphasis on vowel sounds that quickly became grating. The book itself might have been good, I can't say. I really struggled to keep listening, but realized that my brain was only paying attention to the pronunciation, and gave up.
13 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Terri
- 06-09-16
Great Story told laboriously.
I was familiar with the events surrounding this story and eager to learn more. Even as a fan of nonfiction and history, I almost abandoned this book several times. This story is better suited to a long magazine feature. The writing is dry and fails to capture the nuanced characters who collaborated to save the manuscripts of Timbuktu.
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Henry
- 08-02-18
Bad-Ass Librarians Do Exist
Some time ago a friend of mine shared her upcoming reading list for her book club with me. As I looked through the list, one title jumped out at me from the page: The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer. The title intrigued me. I’ve been shushed by more than one librarian as I made my way through school. However, I cannot think of any silent stair or waggling of the finger that would’ve led me to think of them as bad-ass librarians. The next thing that intrigued me was Timbuktu. I knew that it was in Mali in West Africa and I that it had been linked with the salt trade throughout West Africa for millennia. However, I would never in a million years have associated it with a library. Perhaps this was something new. Maybe a bold plan to create a lending library using camel caravans to circulate the bestselling books in Lagos or Cairo to senior living villages deep in the Saharan desert. In any event, I needed to read this book. The second part of the title was: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts. I clearly didn’t know anything about the manuscripts, precious or not. However I’ve been in the desert and it’s hard to imagine racing to do anything. When it’s hot you slow down and take it easy. So, what would cause a librarian to race? Now let’s think about precious. When I think of the world’s most precious manuscripts I think of Johann Gutenberg’s Bible or John James Audubon's Birds of America. I do not think of West African manuscripts. If we were talking Egypt or Nubia that would be different. Over time we have discovered troves of early Egyptian and Christian writings hidden away in the desert. Such findings are rare, and the manuscripts are often in danger of becoming dust before they could even be digitized. What sort of manuscripts could one find if one traveled halfway across the world to Timbuktu? The book starts with the passing of the duties of the family librarian from Mamma Haidara to his son Abdel Kader Haidara. That’s fascinating, a family library. Perhaps they were a family of scholars and they had collected some manuscripts over time. While that turns out to be true, the even more amazing truth is that they were just one family out of thousands who had amassed a sizeable library. Where did the manuscripts come from? The book reveals that they were often the creation of West African scholars, poets, and philosophers. Some were copies of prized works like the Koran. Some were 500 years old. Now let that origin and the age of these manuscript sink in. I can remember reading books about Africa that depicted most of the continent outside of Egypt as backward, ignorant, without sophistication, and of little to show for millennia of existence. Abdel Kader Haidara’s family library alone shatters this myth with in your face evidence of nuanced, imaginative, critical thinking set down on manuscripts that in many cases were equal parts art and scholarly thought. The existence of even a few of these works is cause for literary joy, the reality that there are hundreds of thousands of such manuscripts shatters the European myth of African inferiority. Conceding that the manuscripts are precious, it’s clear that Haidara’s efforts to preserve them is laudable. But with a change in the political winds in Mali these manuscripts were about to need protection not from termites but from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). The MNLA took control of Timbuktu in 2012 and immediately imposed a very strict version of Sharia law. Now the very presence of the manuscripts placed Haidara and every other family librarian in grave personal danger. The MNLA leadership had beheaded tourists simply because their governments hadn’t paid their ransom. The manuscripts were far more dangerous. What makes a manuscript dangerous? Certainly, age and rarity can make any book valuable, but only its content can make it dangerous. Consider Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. Not long after it was published in 1988 he had to go into hiding to save his life. Why, because some Muslims accused Rushdie of blasphemy or unbelief. Then in 1989 the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. As we learn from the book, the MNLA had their own Imams and could issue similarly fatal fatwas. Therefore, content matters, and religious manuscripts that contained wrong thinking could get you killed. The book tells how this became a life and death matter to Abdel Kader Haidara who publicly displays his families works and is entrusted with the safe keeping of thousands of other family’s treasures. If the danger doesn’t jump right out at you consider the events in Palmyra Syria in 2015. After the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) occupied Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, they set about destroying priceless antiquities with brazen hostility for worldwide condemnation of their actions. When they summoned Khaled al-Asaad the Syrian archaeologist and the head of antiquities for the ancient city of Palmyra and demanded that he reveal the hiding place of the antiquities he was protecting he refused their demands. For his bravery and service to the world ISIS publicly beheaded him. While these horrid events were still a few years into the future at the time of the Jihadi occupation of Timbuktu, this book reveals that Haidara and those who helped him move and hide the manuscripts were hyper aware that they could each suffer the same fate. So, let’s wrap up this review with the race. The MNLA occupation of Northern Mali was settling in on Timbuktu like a heavy wooden yoke. With each passing day the Jihadi occupiers imposed ever greater controls and extracted ever more sever punishments from their captive population. Then after a falling out with their Tuareg allies the Jihadi quickly removed all constraints on their imposition of sharia law as they defined it. The manuscripts would certainly not pass critical review with this brand of Jihadi. Haidara and those like him who were committed to their preservation had to act fast, had to race against death itself to preserve these precious manuscripts. It’s a race worth reading about. I recommend this book.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Beckie
- 11-07-16
Narration is monotonous - like Google navigation
Would you try another book from Joshua Hammer and/or Paul Boehmer?
I am only on Chapter 2, but I will have to listen to it again because I have no idea what I just heard. The staccato narration makes it hard to focus on the meaning of the words spoken. This could be the most fascinating book...but I'll probably not be able to stick through it long enough to know!
How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?
different narrator
Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Paul Boehmer?
anyone
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu?
idk
Any additional comments?
not so far
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sigrid Kuster
- 08-25-16
Good book - bad speaker
I think this is an important book to read because it gives a preview of what it would be like to live under Sharia law...my main criticism of this audio version is the speaker. He has an energetic voice but it is maddening to hear him put the wrong emphasis on certain syllables or hear him pause in the wrong places. It does not sound professional and is very maddening.
I also criticize the writers simplistic sentence structure. The subject matter of the book is very informative and should be read widely in spite of the simplistic writing style.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 06-29-16
Fascinating
A wonderful Rick weaving of the cultural history of the Timbuktu region, a chilling view of the rise and subsiding of Al Qaeda in the area, and the courageous work of saving the ancient folios containing Timbuktu's history.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- JR
- 04-16-18
Read it with a map and Google satellite imagery.
The French and Arabic names were well narrated in the audiobook. I needed the context of the geographic relationships, so read the book with a map of Africa and Google satellite maps at hand. An amazing story of people committed to their history and legacy.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Elisabeth Carey
- 02-18-17
Truly bad-ass librarians, and a great adventure
Timbuktu is a city with a storied history, and one lesser-known piece of that history is that twice during the Middle Ages it was the center of a flowering of education and scholarship. In the 1980s, a young man named Abdel Kader Haidara, a collector for a government library, traveled the Sahara Desert and the Niger River, collecting ancient Arabic manuscripts, both religious and secular, rescuing them from decay and destruction, and bringing them back for preservation. This part of the story include some amazing adventures in itself. But there's more.
Haidara over the years matured into a mild-mannered archivist and historian, along with marrying and raising a family. Then in 2012, Al Qaeda militants seized control of Mali, including Timbuktu, and the marvelous collection and the scholarship around it was in danger of being destroyed.
At first Al Qaeda leaders were outwardly respectful of the collection and its value, but as their grip tightened, that didn't last. Priceless manuscripts representing an important part of Mali and the world's literary heritage, was in danger of being destroyed.
Haidara, thirty years after his original adventures, organized a massive smuggling operation, to get that amazing collection of priceless manuscripts out of the country, right under the noses of the Al Qaeda occupiers. No short review can capture how thrilling this story is, or how well Hammer recounts it. Haidara and his crew of scholarly librarians risked their lives and smuggled crates of manuscripts downriver to safety at risk of horrible punishments Al Qaeda imposed on those who violated their version of Sharia law. It's an exciting, amazing, thrilling story, and an exceptional example of the devotion of dedicated librarians to preservation of and access to knowledge.
Highly recommended.
I bought this book.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kathom86
- 10-26-16
Chaotic explosion of story lines and characters
Any additional comments?
You can tell that the author put an incredible amount of research into the book but in the process lost sight of the real story. I had an incredibly hard time following the characters and story line because it was all over the place and I wasn't clear on how it all tied together. Overall, the narration and story line were a mess making it pretty unbearable.
2 people found this helpful