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Reflections of Alan Turing
- A Relative Story
- Narrated by: Colin Mace
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
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Reflections of Alan Turing
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Publisher's summary
Everyone knows the story of the codebreaker and computer science pioneer Alan Turing. Except.... When Dermot Turing is asked about his famous uncle, people want to know more than the bullet points of his life. They want to know everything—was Alan Turing actually a codebreaker? What did he make of artificial intelligence? What is the significance of Alan Turing's trial, his suicide, the Royal Pardon, the 50 note and the film The Imitation Game? In Reflections of Alan Turing, Dermot strips off the layers to uncover the real story. It's time to discover a fresh legacy of Alan Turing for the twenty-first century.
Critic reviews
"A timely and important book...[an] exploration of the possibilities of AI and beyond." (Sir Adrian Smith, PRS)
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Parfit
- A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality
- By: David Edmonds
- Narrated by: Zeb Soanes
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story5 out of 5 stars 32
Derek Parfit (1942–2017) is the most famous philosopher most people have never heard of. Widely regarded as one of the greatest moral thinkers of the past hundred years, Parfit was anything but a public intellectual. Yet his ideas have shaped the way philosophers think about things that affect us all: equality, altruism, what we owe to future generations, and even what it means to be a person. In Parfit, David Edmonds presents the first biography of an intriguing, obsessive, and eccentric genius.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved it
- By Anna Karenina on 07-05-23
By: David Edmonds
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Frank Ramsey
- A Sheer Excess of Powers
- By: Cheryl Misak
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 19 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
When he died in 1930 aged 26, Frank Ramsey had already invented one branch of mathematics and two branches of economics, laying the foundations for decision theory and game theory. Keynes deferred to him; he was the only philosopher whom Wittgenstein treated as an equal. Had he lived he might have been recognized as the most brilliant thinker of the century. This amiable shambling bear of a man was an ardent socialist, a believer in free love, and an intimate of the Bloomsbury set. For the first time Cheryl Misak tells the full story of his extraordinary life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Lovely Story of Lesser Known Master
- By Amazon Customer on 10-30-23
By: Cheryl Misak
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Geniuses at War
- Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital Age
- By: David A. Price
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
Planning the invasion of Normandy, the Allies knew that decoding the communications of the Nazi high command was imperative for its success. But standing in their way was an encryption machine they called Tunny (British English for “tuna”), which was vastly more difficult to crack than the infamous Enigma cipher.
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3 out of 5 stars
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ok not great
- By JTA98 on 12-09-21
By: David A. Price
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The Hidden Habits of Genius
- Beyond Talent, IQ, and Grit - Unlocking the Secrets of Greatness
- By: Craig Wright
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 335
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 293
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 290
What is genius? The word evokes iconic figures like Einstein, Beethoven, Picasso, and Steve Jobs, whose cultural contributions have irreversibly shaped society. Yet Beethoven could not multiply. Picasso couldn’t pass a fourth grade math test. And Jobs left high school with a 2.65 GPA. The Hidden Habits of Genius explores the meaning of this contested term, and the unexpected motivations of those we have dubbed "genius" throughout history, from Charles Darwin and Marie Curie to Leonardo Da Vinci and Andy Warhol to Toni Morrison and Elon Musk.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Click-bait title, minimal substance inside
- By James S. on 11-27-20
By: Craig Wright
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Humankind
- A Hopeful History
- By: Rutger Bregman, Erica Moore, Elizabeth Manton
- Narrated by: Rutger Bregman, Thomas Judd
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,028
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,755
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1,747
If there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. It's a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed primarily by self-interest.
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2 out of 5 stars
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He’s correct but he misrepresented the data
- By Andrea Allen on 02-09-21
By: Rutger Bregman, and others
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Brief Candle in the Dark
- My Life in Science
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 343
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 308
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 304
In this hugely entertaining sequel to the New York Times best-selling memoir An Appetite for Wonder, Richard Dawkins delves deeply into his intellectual life spent kick-starting new conversations about science, culture, and religion and writing yet another of the most audacious and widely read books of the 20th century - The God Delusion.
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4 out of 5 stars
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I'm a Dawkins Groupie but...
- By Anne on 10-18-15
By: Richard Dawkins
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When Einstein Walked with Gödel
- Excursions to the Edge of Thought
- By: Jim Holt
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 626
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 531
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 533
Does time exist? What is infinity? Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? In this scintillating collection, Holt explores the human mind, the cosmos, and the thinkers who’ve tried to encompass the latter with the former. With his trademark clarity and humor, Holt probes the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the quest for the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of logic and truth. Along the way, he offers intimate biographical sketches of celebrated and neglected thinkers, from the physicist Emmy Noether to the computing pioneer Alan Turing and the discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A good overview of scientific theory
- By MJ Walters on 09-11-18
By: Jim Holt
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American Sketches
- Great Leaders, Creative Thinkers, and Heroes of a Hurricane
- By: Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Cotter Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 221
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 177
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Story4 out of 5 stars 180
In this collection of essays, Walter Isaacson reflects on the lessons to be learned from Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and various other interesting characters he has chronicled as a biographer and journalist. The people he writes about have an awesome intelligence, in most cases, but that is not the secret of their success.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Not Really Sketches
- By DAVID on 11-04-11
By: Walter Isaacson
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Significant Figures
- The Lives and Work of Great Mathematicians
- By: Ian Stewart
- Narrated by: Roger Clark
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 248
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 207
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 207
In Significant Figures, acclaimed mathematician Ian Stewart introduces the visionaries of mathematics throughout history. Delving into the lives of twenty-five great mathematicians, Stewart examines the roles they played in creating, inventing, and discovering the mathematics we use today. Through these short biographies, we get acquainted with the history of mathematics.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Beware
- By Anton Kurtz on 12-08-18
By: Ian Stewart
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His Master's Voice
- By: Stanislaw Lem
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 173
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 143
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 143
A witty and inventive satire of "men of science" and their thinking, as a team of scientists races to decode a mysterious message from space. "I had the feeling that I was standing at the cradle of a new mythology. A last will and testament...we as the posthumous heirs of Them...."
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excelent and entertaining
- By Jakub on 01-10-12
By: Stanislaw Lem
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Thinking Machines
- The Quest for Artificial Intelligence - and Where It's Taking Us Next
- By: Luke Dormehl
- Narrated by: Gus Brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4 out of 5 stars 51
When most of us think about artificial intelligence, our minds go straight to cyborgs, robots, and sci-fi thrillers where machines take over the world. But the truth is that artificial intelligence is already among us. It exists in our smartphones, fitness trackers, and refrigerators that tell us when the milk will expire. In some ways the future people dreamed of at the World's Fair in the 1960s is already here. We're teaching our machines how to think like humans, and they're learning at an incredible rate.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Mostly platitudes with no depth
- By Gary on 03-24-17
By: Luke Dormehl
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Gods of the Upper Air
- How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century
- By: Charles King
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 295
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 254
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 252
A century ago, everyone knew that people were fated by their race, sex, and nationality to be more or less intelligent, nurturing, or warlike. But Columbia University professor Franz Boas looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong. Racial categories, he insisted, were biological fictions. Cultures did not come in neat packages labeled "primitive" or "advanced". What counted as a family, a good meal, or even common sense was a product of history and circumstance, not of nature.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book, Much Needed despite poor performance
- By J. Kahn on 08-21-19
By: Charles King
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Einstein's War
- How Relativity Triumphed Amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I
- By: Matthew Stanley
- Narrated by: Matthew Stanley
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
Few recognize how the Great War, the industrialized slaughter that bled Europe from 1914 to 1918, shaped Einstein’s life and work. While Einstein never held a rifle, he formulated general relativity blockaded in Berlin, literally starving. He lost 50 pounds in three months, unable to communicate with his most important colleagues. Some of those colleagues fought against rabid nationalism; others were busy inventing chemical warfare - scientists trapped in the power plays of empire. Meanwhile, Einstein struggled to craft relativity and persuade the world that it was correct.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great story but they should have hired a pro to read it
- By Richard Rozier on 06-18-19
By: Matthew Stanley
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Would You Kill the Fat Man?
- By: David Edmonds
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4 out of 5 stars 93
A train is racing toward five men, tied to the track. Unless the train is stopped, it will inevitably kill all five men. If a fat man is pushed onto the line, although he will die, his body will stop the train, saving five lives. Would you kill the fat man? As David Edmonds shows, answering the question is far more complex, and important, than it first appears. In fact, how we answer it tells us a great deal about right and wrong.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderfully Rendered Book...
- By Douglas on 01-25-14
By: David Edmonds
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The Metaphysical Club
- By: Louis Menand
- Narrated by: Henry Leyva
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 303
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 166
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Story4 out of 5 stars 162
Hardly a club in the conventional sense, the organization referred to in the title of this superb literary hybrid (part history, part biography, part philosophy) consisted of four members and probably existed for less than nine months.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Great American Experiment
- By Victoria on 12-08-03
By: Louis Menand