Badass: The Birth of a Legend

Spine-Crushing Tales of the Most Merciless Gods, Monsters, Heroes, Villains, and Mythical Creatures Ever Envisioned

By: Ben Thompson

Narrated by: Darren Todd

From sex-crazed gods to ravenous monsters, Ben Thompson brings legendary titans to life in tales of adventure, bloodlust, and unrelenting badassitude.

Since the beginning of human history people have created myths, tall tales, superheroes, and arch-villains - men and women who embarked on insane adventures, performed extraordinary feats of unparalleled awesomeness, and overcame all odds to violently smite their foes into bloody pulp. In Badass: The Birth of a Legend, Ben Thompson compiles these fantastical tales from the beginning of time to today and tells them in the completely over-the-top manner in which they were intended, including:

• Rama: The Indian god-king who led an army of monkeys against the King of All Demons
• Thor: The Viking god of thunder and awesome hair, who crushed the skulls of giants with a ridiculously huge hammer
• Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon hero so hardcore he could arm-wrestle monsters' joints out of their sockets
• Moby-Dick: The hate-filled literary behemoth who obliterated ship hulls with his face
• Skuld: The Norse necromancer queen who summoned a horde of zombie berserkers
• Dirty Harry Callahan: The prototypical modern-day antihero and very embodiment of badass

©2011 HarperCollins (P)2012 Ben Thompson

Awful Narrator!

Maybe the book is good oh, but I can't really tell because the narrator is so awful. Barely made it through chapter 1 and couldn't bring myself to listen to chapter 2. This narrator should be banned from audible.

Entertaining

My review; semi colons are overrated . So that ends this badass review. It was fine background sound .

A break from the classics. Just asskickingly fun.

Five stars for creative writing, cultural education, laughter, a chapter on James T. Kirk, and unfiltered exuberance on the book’s topic. Envisioning the ancient slayers through a contemporary and slang lens, and including subjects of the present for good measure, this book is fluidly badass. Thank you, Ben Thompson, for knowing your shit and having the balls to share it.

Terrible narrator

When I literally read Badass 2, I had the screaming, cool, chill, clever author in my head telling me these stories. With this audiobook version of Badass (one), a robotic, monotone, boring person reads the story like the evidence in a court case. This is what Siri sounds like when she's been asked the same question 600 times by a 5 year old. I have HOURS left of this book and I just can't do it.

You need Samuel L Jackson to read this book.

A gateway book to finer literature.

Because of this book, I have been inspired to read more books about the bad-asses in this book. I will probably be reading Beowulf and learning more about the Egyptians. I like how he gave props to Joseph Campbell who came up with the hero's journey and figured out the recipe for every great story ever written.

This book is very entertaining and is a great way for the average man's man to learn a little about culture.