The Book
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 198
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The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world’s most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based thousands of miles overseas in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious and riveting audiobook to date, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A History of the Bible
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In A History of the Bible, John Barton argues that the Bible is not a prescription to a complete, fixed religious system, but rather a product of a long and intriguing process, which has inspired Judaism and Christianity, but still does not describe the whole of either religion. Barton shows how the Bible is indeed an important source of religious insight for Jews and Christians alike, yet argues that it must be listened to in its historical context - from its beginnings in myth and folklore to its many interpretations throughout the centuries....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Engaging and comprehensive
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The Meaning of Everything
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Writing with marvelous brio, Simon Winchester first serves up a lightning history of the English language and pays homage to the great dictionary makers from Samuel Johnson to Noah Webster before turning his unmatched talent for storytelling to the making of the most venerable of dictionaries: The Oxford English Dictionary.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A New Appreciation
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Possessed by Memory
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 14
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 13
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In arguably his most personal and lasting work, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than 80 texts by canonical authors - texts he has had by heart since childhood.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Too much information
- By Elliott on 05-07-19
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The Perfectionists
- How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,096
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The New York Times best-selling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement - precision - in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Somewhat less than perfect
- By enya keshet on 06-19-18
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The Professor and the Madman
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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.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Perfect example of a quality audible book.
- By Jerry on 07-07-03
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The Anarchy
- The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
- By: William Dalrymple
- Narrated by: Sid Sagar
- Length: 15 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 198
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 179
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 179
The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world’s most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based thousands of miles overseas in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious and riveting audiobook to date, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.
-
5 out of 5 stars
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A magnificent history and cautionary tale
- By Venetia on 12-05-19
-
A History of the Bible
- The Story of the World's Most Influential Book
- By: John Barton
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 21 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
In A History of the Bible, John Barton argues that the Bible is not a prescription to a complete, fixed religious system, but rather a product of a long and intriguing process, which has inspired Judaism and Christianity, but still does not describe the whole of either religion. Barton shows how the Bible is indeed an important source of religious insight for Jews and Christians alike, yet argues that it must be listened to in its historical context - from its beginnings in myth and folklore to its many interpretations throughout the centuries....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Engaging and comprehensive
- By Tad Davis on 07-29-19
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The Meaning of Everything
- The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 346
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 201
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 201
Writing with marvelous brio, Simon Winchester first serves up a lightning history of the English language and pays homage to the great dictionary makers from Samuel Johnson to Noah Webster before turning his unmatched talent for storytelling to the making of the most venerable of dictionaries: The Oxford English Dictionary.
-
4 out of 5 stars
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A New Appreciation
- By Donald on 11-01-04
-
Possessed by Memory
- The Inward Light of Criticism
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 14
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 13
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 14
In arguably his most personal and lasting work, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than 80 texts by canonical authors - texts he has had by heart since childhood.
-
3 out of 5 stars
-
Too much information
- By Elliott on 05-07-19
-
The Perfectionists
- How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,096
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,001
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 989
The New York Times best-selling author traces the development of technology from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age to explore the single component crucial to advancement - precision - in a superb history that is both an homage and a warning for our future.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Somewhat less than perfect
- By enya keshet on 06-19-18
-
The Professor and the Madman
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 4,636
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,583
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 3,600
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.
-
5 out of 5 stars
-
Perfect example of a quality audible book.
- By Jerry on 07-07-03
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London in the Eighteenth Century
- A Great and Monstrous Thing
- By: Jerry White
- Narrated by: Neil Gardner
- Length: 24 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 11
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 10
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 10
London in the eighteenth century had risen from the ashes. The city and its people had been brought to the brink by the Great Fire of 1666. But the century that followed was a period of vigorous expansion, of scientific and artistic genius, of blossoming reason, civility, elegance and manners. It was also an age of extremes: of starving poverty and exquisite fashion, of joy and despair, of sentiment and cruelty.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Extremely detailed. Best for someone interested in the minutiae of 1700s London
- By Bosco on 10-27-19
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How To
- Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems
- By: Randall Munroe
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 699
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 649
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 644
For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bad Ideas So BAD They Are NEARLY Irresistable! 🤓
- By C. White on 09-03-19
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Underland
- A Deep Time Journey
- By: Robert Macfarlane
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 473
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 435
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 434
Hailed as "the great nature writer of this generation" (Wall Street Journal), Robert Macfarlane is the celebrated author of books about the intersections of the human and the natural realms. In Underland, he delivers his masterpiece: an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful book, disappointing narrator
- By Clare Woods on 07-05-19
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Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric
- By: Ward Farnsworth
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot, Jim Meskimen
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
Masters of language can turn unassuming words into phrases that are beautiful, effective, and memorable. What are the secrets of this alchemy? Part of the answer lies in rhetorical figures: practical ways of applying great aesthetic principles to a simple sentence or paragraph. Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric recovers this knowledge for our times. It amounts to a tutorial on eloquence conducted by Churchill and Lincoln, Dickens and Melville, Burke and Paine, and more than a hundred others.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A little unwieldy for audio
- By Coral on 05-26-14
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Riding the Elephant
- A Memoir of Altercations, Humiliations, Hallucinations, and Observations
- By: Craig Ferguson
- Narrated by: Craig Ferguson
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 644
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 599
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 597
Craig Ferguson has defied the odds his entire life. He has failed when he should have succeeded and succeeded when he should have failed. The fact that he is neither dead nor in a locked facility (at the time of printing) is something of a miracle in itself. In Craig’s candid and revealing memoir, listeners will get a look into the mind and recollections of the unique and twisted Scottish American who became a national hero for pioneering the world’s first TV robot skeleton sidekick and reviving two dudes in a horse suit dancing as a form of entertainment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Other drivers think I'm nuts...
- By LA Rider on 05-15-19
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Gene Machine
- The Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome
- By: Venki Ramakrishnan
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 478
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 435
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Story4 out of 5 stars 436
Everyone has heard of DNA. But by itself, DNA is just an inert blueprint for life. It is the ribosome - an enormous molecular machine made up of a million atoms - that makes DNA come to life, turning our genetic code into proteins and therefore into us. Gene Machine is an insider account of the race for the structure of the ribosome, a fundamental discovery that both advances our knowledge of all life and could lead to the development of better antibiotics against life-threatening diseases.
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5 out of 5 stars
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biochemistry+autobiography+science politics
- By Irina Bataeva on 02-15-19
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The Book
- MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
- By: Amaranth Borsuk
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 4
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4
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Story4 out of 5 stars 4
In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Amaranth Borsuk considers the history of the book, the future of the book, and the idea of the book. Tracing the interrelationship of form and content in the book's development, she bridges book history, book arts, and electronic literature to expand our definition of an object we thought we knew intimately. Contrary to the many reports of its death (which has been blamed at various times on newspapers, television, and e-readers), the book is alive.
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The Regency Years
- During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern
- By: Robert Morrison
- Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
The Victorians are often credited with ushering in our current era, yet the seeds of change were planted in the years before. The Regency (1811-1820) began when the profligate Prince of Wales - the future King George IV - replaced his insane father, George III, as Britain's ruler. Around the regent surged a society steeped in contrasts: evangelicalism and hedonism, elegance and brutality, exuberance and despair. The arts flourished at this time with a showcase of extraordinary writers and painters such as Jane Austen, Lord Byron, the Shelleys, John Constable, and J. M. W. Turner.
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3 out of 5 stars
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What a time!
- By BK on 06-18-19
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Tocqueville and the American Experiment
- By: William R. Cook, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: William R. Cook
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Original Recording
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 117
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 102
Participate in a spirited exploration of Alexis de Tocqueville and his unique observations of this young nation that resulted in the two volumes of Democracy in America. How is it possible that perhaps the greatest book about U.S. democracy ever written was penned by a Frenchman visiting this country 175 years ago? Why is it still relevant in today's ever-changing political landscape?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great introduction to Tocqueville
- By Lance on 11-14-13
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The Swerve
- How the World Became Modern
- By: Stephen Greenblatt
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,755
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,414
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Story4 out of 5 stars 2,407
Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late 30s took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic by Lucretius—a beautiful poem containing the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Too many swerves
- By A reader on 05-20-12
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The Horse, the Wheel, and Language
- How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
- By: David W. Anthony
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 18 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 188
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 168
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 167
Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? The Horse, the Wheel, and Language solves a puzzle that has vexed scholars for two centuries and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization from the past.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating Stuff, and then...Pots of the Steppes
- By L. Green on 02-10-19
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The Age of Living Machines
- How the Convergence of Biology and Engineering Will Build the Next Technology Revolution
- By: Susan Hockfield
- Narrated by: Andrea Gallo
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 256
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 234
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Story4 out of 5 stars 229
The Age of Living Machines describes some of the most exciting new developments and the scientists and engineers who helped create them. Virus-built batteries. Protein-based water filters. Cancer-detecting nanoparticles. Mind-reading bionic limbs. Computer-engineered crops. Together they highlight the promise of the technology revolution of the 21st century to overcome some of the greatest humanitarian, medical, and environmental challenges of our time.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Interesting content, but...
- By David on 05-19-19
Publisher's Summary
We may love books, but do we know what lies behind them? In The Book, Keith Houston reveals that the paper, ink, thread, glue, and board from which a book is made tell as rich a story as the words on its pages - of civilizations, empires, human ingenuity, and madness. In an invitingly tactile history of this 2,000-year-old medium, Houston follows the development of writing, printing, the art of illustrations, and binding to show how we have moved from cuneiform tablets and papyrus scrolls to the hardcovers and paperbacks of today. The Book gives us the momentous and surprising history behind humanity's most important-and universal-information technology.
Critic Reviews
“Erudite, playful, and illuminating . . . Houston is both witty and intensely detailed . . . A splendid, challenging mixture of information and fun.” (Kirkus Reviews)
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