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Coal
- A Human History
- Narrated by: Shelly Frasier
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Yet the mundane mineral that built our global economy, and even today powers our electrical plants, has also caused death, disease, and environmental destruction. As early as 1306, King Edward I tried to ban coal (unsuccessfully) because its smoke became so obnoxious. Its recent identification as a primary cause of global warming has made it a cause celebre of a new kind.
In this remarkable book, Barbara Freese takes us on a rich historical journey that begins three hundred million years ago and spans the globe. From the "Great Stinking Fogs" of London to the rat-infested coal mines of Pennsylvania, from the impoverished slums of Manchester to the toxic city streets of Beijing, Coal is a captivating narrative about an ordinary substance that has done extraordinary things – a simple black rock that could well determine our fate as a species.
Critic Reviews
"Engrossing and sometimes stunning...[a] strongly argued and thoroughly researched book... Coal, to borrow a phrase, is king." (New York Times Book Review)
"Freese's writing is a bit like coal: smooth and glinting, burning with a steady warmth...An intriguing, cautionary tale." (Kirkus Reviews)
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Overall
- Kismet
- 08-22-06
Uses Coal to push her Political Agenda
This is really a book about global warming. The author is a lawyer for a state environmental regulatory body and gets interested in coal because of a case she worked on. She writes very interesting historical summaries of coal use in England, the US, and China. I agree with another reviewer that she lacks expertise on this topic and that her sources are vague and insubstantial.
She also lacks judgement and logic. She early on shows her hand with the statement that climate change is primarily caused by fossil fuels we burn". This is simply not true. The global climate is influenced in part by this, but her simplistic idea that we can stop global warming by dropping fossil fuels is unscientific. The planet has been a lot warmer in the past; solar activity over which we have no control effects climate etc.
She has a childike faith in the Kyoto Protocol, which (she does not mention) Pres. Clinton never even submitted to the Senate, even though his VP negotiated it. Many people object to Kyoto because it exempts China, India, and other nations, which might then attract jobs away from the regulated countries. Her answer is that the treaty does not say these jobs will leave the US. Such logic is staggering.
She also lacks judgment. She complains that the coal industry--unlike high tech--is controlled by large conglomerates, and also that US coal use is increasing. Yet she never stops to ask why these this is the case. Is the answer because of the very kind of environmental regulation she is such an advocate of?
She also seems to have a strange tolerance for Chinese pollution, saying that they are entitled to pollute their way to wealth, just as we did (it's only fair); meanwhile she bemoans global warming. She excitedly cites stats showing their pollution is now 3x over the limit, down from 4x.
In sum, the historical parts are interesting; the narration great; the author's apocalyptic agenda tedious.
19 people found this helpful
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Overall
- miyaker
- 06-10-04
Good, but more than a hint of bias
A fascinating subject, and while not as captivating as "Salt" or "Cod" by Mark Kurlansky, the author still holds your interest while describing the history of coal.
Unfortunately, her bias is clear - coal is and was a force of evil. The book dwells on the negatives from coal. While clearly the fuel has major environmental implications in the present world, even the historical discussion focuses almost solely on pollution, mining danger, etc. References to the historical positives are turned negative (i.e., coal permitted the rise of cities, but the book focuses on slums. Coal permitted improved production, the book talks about it's use in making weapons of war...)
When the author turns to modern times, that bias makes it a little hard to fully trust her claims. Discouraging, because there's a lot of intriguing information here on global warming and particulates.
It's still worth a listen, but I'd have preferred the work of a balanced scientist instead of a lawyer that reached a conclusion before starting her research.
The narration is excellent - clear and well paced.
15 people found this helpful
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Overall
- C. Bailey
- 03-27-09
About 1/2 good, 1/2 not so good
There are some great parts, such as the history of coal in the UK, US, and China and its role in social history. However, I found it lacking in other areas of coal history I've read about in other books. Notably, Daniel Yergin's _The Prize_ discusses how WW1 was shaped by oil and coal use and how Nazi Germany used coal-to-liquids fuels produced in slave factories attached to concentration camps to compensate for oil shortages. These facts and South Africa's history of subsidizing coal fuels seem critical to understanding modern coal economics and lobbying. However, the book instead presents a litany of air pollution and climate problems with coal, which applies to pretty much all fossil fuels -- I've heard similar material before in now-countless newspapers and books. As a result, this large part of the book seems to me more like polemic than erudition. Overall, I'd say I learned something new from about 45-50% of the book, with not much new in the rest of it. Really, the book's more a persuasion piece, and I was looking for a lot more new information when I invested the listening time.
10 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Jerry
- 09-29-03
a history with an agenda
Somehow, I expected this book to do for coal what Mark Kurlansky's excellent book did for salt. However, it fell far short.
To her credit, the author is very up-front about her bias and her political agenda. Her interest in the subject grew out of her involvement in litigation concerning coal, environmental problems and global warming and the book is not disguised in its point of view. If you expect a vivid and detailed history without an agenda, this is not your book. If you don't mind picking through the point of view, it has some nuggets of interest.
Unfortunately, the reviews did not give much of a clue.
10 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Uri
- 03-25-05
Written by a non-expert, and it shows
I should start saying this is an enjoyable and informative book. It covers a variety of aspects of the history of coal concetrating on the human story: those who made relevant discoveries, fortunes, lost their lifes, worked under extreme conditions to get it, etc.
My major concern with the book is that almost every statement in it is supported by sources such as "one observer", "one letter to the newspaper", "one poet once said", "one factory in Pennsylvania was said to"...
If you dig through 500 years of history, I am sure you can find accounts of individuals to tell ANY story. Perhaps I was influenced by having just read "Collapse" (a must read), or by the fact that I am an academic, but the research here was really superficial and doesn't give you the impression the author is letting the facts speak for themselves. My guess, however, is that there isn't a better audiobook outthere about coal, so if the topic interests you, this is it.
I feel, however, that if you spend 8 hours listening about coal, you should feel like you really know what you should know about coal, this book was written by a lawyer, so afer 8 hours you can say "oh, that's intersting", and wish a coal expert wrote a book on the topic...
9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Charles
- 08-14-03
Excellent
Weaves technological, military, medical, political, labor and environmental history into a very cogent story. First rate! The narration and sound quality are excellent too.
7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- scott baxter
- 12-17-03
worth reading
As can be expected, Freese sees coal as the single most important substance humans have ever used. While she does make a cogent argument, she overdoes it at times.
I was a little bored with the description of the formation of coal in human prehistory, but the rest of the book really cooked, at least in my opinion. Some of the hightlights include: a discussion of the UMW (a once mighty union that has lost most of its members) and its history including the Molly McGuires, a discussion of why coal in this country is now increasingly mined in the West rather than in Appalachia, a description of the role of coal in helping the British Empire become supreme, descriptions of the giant Chinese coal industry, the revelation that the United States continues to be one of the heaviest coal using countries on the planet -- far more than other industrialized countries, a description of how British homes were changed as they moved from wood-burning stoves to coal-burning furnaces.
While most would, at first sight, consider petroleum to be a more important fossil fuel, Freese shows that coal has been and continues to be a significant sourese of fuel as we become increasingly dependent on cheap electricity in the United States.
5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- The Louligan
- 03-10-08
Boring
This is a ponderous account about COAL and its effect on the environment - not about the people who were impacted by it. Judging from the cover, I though I would learn about the human beings who worked in the mines - not about a black piece of rock. The cover should have had a piece of coal with a baseball hat on backwards and a heavy gold chain around its neck saying "Coal Rules". If you have a term paper about coal, just coal, and nothing else but coal, this is your resource.
3 people found this helpful
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- Lwos
- 12-24-12
Author shows unnecessary bias against fossil fuel
Was hoping for more history of the Coal, Not a platform for this eco nuts bias .
2 people found this helpful
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- deborah
- 01-06-12
Excellent look at the history of coal
Contrary to some negative reviews, the author doesn't spend too much time dwelling on the politics of coal, but more so on its social and economic impacts. While most of the effect of coal burning was old news to me, the author expanded on the developing world history of coal, all of which was new information. Narration by Shelly Frasier was spot on; golden voice and measured inflection. I would listen again.
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Story
In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies.
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Didactic and preachy... and I agree with her
- By plau on 09-25-16
By: Naomi Klein
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The Wizard and the Prophet
- Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 18 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In 40 years, Earth's population will reach 10 billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups - Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin.
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Fantastic
- By BKATX on 01-26-18
By: Charles C. Mann
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Climate of Hope
- How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet
- By: Michael Bloomberg, Carl Pope
- Narrated by: Michael R. Bloomberg - introduction, Charles Pellett, Carl Pope
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former head of the Sierra Club Carl Pope comes a manifesto on how the benefits of taking action on climate change are concrete, immediate, and immense. They explore climate change solutions that will make the world healthier and more prosperous, aiming to begin a new type of conversation on the issue that will spur bolder action by cities, businesses, and citizens—and even, someday, by Washington.
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INCREDIBLE
- By David Cohn on 06-22-17
By: Michael Bloomberg, and others
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The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated
- The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late
- By: Thom Hartmann, Neale Donald Walsch - associate editor
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
While everything appears to be collapsing around us - ecodamage, genetic engineering, virulent diseases, water shortages, global famine, wars - we can still do something about it and create a world that will work for us and for our children's children. The inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio's feature documentary movie The 11th Hour, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight details what is happening to our planet, the reasons for our culture's blind behavior, and how we can fix the problem.
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One of the Most Important Books of our Time
- By Jana on 04-24-20
By: Thom Hartmann, and others
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Eaarth
- Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
- By: Bill McKibben
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen.
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You'll get by with a lot of help from your friends
- By David on 02-10-11
By: Bill McKibben
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Energy
- A Human History
- By: Richard Rhodes
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Through an unforgettable cast of characters, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes explains how wood gave way to coal and coal made room for oil, as we now turn to natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable energy. Rhodes looks back on five centuries of progress, through such influential figures as Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, Benjamin Franklin, Herman Melville, John D. Rockefeller, and Henry Ford.Â
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No more accents, please!
- By Ned Gulley on 08-30-18
By: Richard Rhodes
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This Changes Everything
- Capitalism vs. the Climate
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 20 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies.
-
-
Didactic and preachy... and I agree with her
- By plau on 09-25-16
By: Naomi Klein
-
The Wizard and the Prophet
- Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 18 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 40 years, Earth's population will reach 10 billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups - Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin.
-
-
Fantastic
- By BKATX on 01-26-18
By: Charles C. Mann
-
Climate of Hope
- How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet
- By: Michael Bloomberg, Carl Pope
- Narrated by: Michael R. Bloomberg - introduction, Charles Pellett, Carl Pope
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former head of the Sierra Club Carl Pope comes a manifesto on how the benefits of taking action on climate change are concrete, immediate, and immense. They explore climate change solutions that will make the world healthier and more prosperous, aiming to begin a new type of conversation on the issue that will spur bolder action by cities, businesses, and citizens—and even, someday, by Washington.
-
-
INCREDIBLE
- By David Cohn on 06-22-17
By: Michael Bloomberg, and others
-
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated
- The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late
- By: Thom Hartmann, Neale Donald Walsch - associate editor
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
While everything appears to be collapsing around us - ecodamage, genetic engineering, virulent diseases, water shortages, global famine, wars - we can still do something about it and create a world that will work for us and for our children's children. The inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio's feature documentary movie The 11th Hour, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight details what is happening to our planet, the reasons for our culture's blind behavior, and how we can fix the problem.
-
-
One of the Most Important Books of our Time
- By Jana on 04-24-20
By: Thom Hartmann, and others
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The Alchemy of Air
- A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler
- By: Thomas Hager
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At the dawn of the 20th century, humanity was facing global disaster. Mass starvation, long predicted for the fast-growing population, was about to become a reality. A call went out to the worlds scientists to find a solution. This is the story of the two enormously gifted, fatally flawed men who found it: the brilliant, self-important Fritz Haber and the reclusive, alcoholic Carl Bosch. Together they discovered a way to make bread out of air, built city-sized factories, controlled world markets, and saved millions of lives.
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Great Book Thoroughly Researched
- By Terry A. Gray on 10-21-11
By: Thomas Hager
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Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper
- How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong
- By: Robert Bryce
- Narrated by: Steven Menasche
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this provocative and optimistic rebuke to the catastrophists, Robert Bryce shows how innovation and the inexorable human desire to make things Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper is providing consumers with Cheaper and more abundant energy, Faster computing, Lighter vehicles, and myriad other goods. That same desire is fostering unprecedented prosperity, greater liberty, and yes, better environmental protection.
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I thought I was getting a book on the future.
- By Grant on 08-02-14
By: Robert Bryce
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Falter
- Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
- By: Bill McKibben
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman, Bill McKibben - foreword
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking book The End of Nature - issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic - was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: Even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of human experience. Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control.
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Disappointing
- By M on 07-18-19
By: Bill McKibben
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The Uninhabitable Earth
- Life After Warming
- By: David Wallace-Wells
- Narrated by: David Wallace-Wells
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
An "epoch-defining book" (The Guardian) and "this generation’s Silent Spring" (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it - the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action.
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Don’t read if you have depressive tendencies.
- By Ricky on 03-17-19
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Field Notes from a Catastrophe
- Man, Nature, and Climate Change
- By: Elizabeth Kolbert
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Taking listeners from the melting Alaskan permafrost to storm-torn New Orleans, acclaimed journalist Elizabeth Kolbert approaches this monumental problem from every angle. She interviews researchers and environmentalists, explains the science, draws frightening parallels to lost civilizations, and presents the moving tales of people who are watching their worlds disappear.
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Very well done!
- By Danny J. Lesandrini on 04-21-06
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The Rational Optimist
- How Prosperity Evolves
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
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Personal
- By Robert F. Jones on 09-15-17
By: Matt Ridley
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Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy
- By: Gwyneth Cravens
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 16 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
With the constant threat of oil shortages facing us and wanting to educate herself about possible alternatives, Gwyneth Cravens skeptically sets out to find for herself the truth about nuclear energy. Her conclusion: It is a totally viable and practical solution to global warming. She enlists the help of Rip Anderson, a leading scientist in the field of risk assessment, and with his tutelage, she travels the country, visiting uranium mines, enrichment centers, reactors, and waste sites.
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Debunking Nuclear Superstition
- By Doug on 09-11-12
By: Gwyneth Cravens
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The World in a Grain
- The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization
- By: Vince Beiser
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other - even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. And, incredibly, we're running out of it. The World in a Grain is the compelling true story of the hugely important and diminishing natural resource that grows more essential every day, and of the people who mine it, sell it, build with it - and sometimes, even kill for it.
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History given is only reason it gets 2 stars.
- By Dennis on 07-23-19
By: Vince Beiser