August 2011
AUDIO BOOK REVIEWS
by Jonathan Lowe
Rebecca Lowman
reads RULES
OF CIVILITY, a debut novel by Amor Towles, who is an
investment banker with an MA in English from Stanford. His
main character is Katey Kontent, a poor Wall Street secretary
whose ambitions soon eye higher floors in late 1930s New
York society. Suitors with money pursue her, while the compromises
needed to ascend the marble staircases vex her, and at each
step her unfolding life is a canvas for life-altering choices.
Lowman is always believable as Katey, a character who will
resonate with today's ambitious young women as well as anyone
on American Idol. The new rage in music is jazz, though,
and in tone there are only nods of the top hat to Dominick
Dunne and Nicholas Sparks. |
"Think Different" is the motto of Apple computer
and its founder, Steve Jobs. He's an innovator obsessively
focused on creating products that people don't even know
that they'll need yet. Sometimes tyrannical like his early
competitor Bill Gates, Jobs' company finally surpassed Microsoft
in 2010 to head the largest technology company in the world.
Two audiobooks that will help you understand Jobs the man,
and how he thinks, are, first THE
STEVE JOBS WAY by Jay Elliot, former VP at Apple, read
by Christopher Hurt, and THE
INNOVATION SECRETS OF STEVE JOBS by Carmine Gallo, read
by Sean Morgan. Now if only Steve would run for President!
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Could you torture a man? Under what circumstances might it
be right? What is right? These are questions CIA officers
are forced to confront from day one on the job. Now, for the
first time, a former CIA operative named Glenn Carle tells
the story of his involvement in the interrogation of a high
profile Al-Queda captive at a secret black site overseas.
As told by Malcolm Hillgartner, THE
INTERROGATOR is a chilling but true tale, and the listener
is ably carried along to witness events firsthand. THE
TRIPLE AGENT by Pulitzer Prize winner Joby Warrick is
the true story of a once trusted informer with access to al-Qaeda
who suddenly detonates a bomb he's wearing to kill seven CIA
operatives. Read by Sunil Malhotra, the book possesses a driving
narrative, full of surprises, and is certainly one of the
best books ever about American espionage against terrorists,
although the narrator is not as good as is Hillgartner, except
in pronunciation of Arab names. |
Is
formal "fundamentalist"religion on the way out?
Yes, says Dr. Harvey Cox in THE
FUTURE OF FAITH, read by Don Hagen, an ear-opening treatise
on orthodoxy that proposes we are leaving the Age of Belief
for the Age of the Spirit, much like leaving the letter of
the law for the spirit of it. Science plays a role in this,
says Cox, exposing fallacies of belief such as the 6000 year
age of the Earth. As such, the audiobook is a must-hear by
anyone whose "orthodoxy" (unwillingness to listen
or dialogue) prevents them from seeing the separate-and-subjugate
intentions of religious institutions, which are run like multinational
corporations. |
Finally,
Anne Flosnik reads an ear-opening look at the follies of
American finance, and the decline of the West in the face
of a record breaking debt. Can America forestall catastrophe,
or is it already too late? In HOW
THE WEST WAS LOST Dambisa Moyo outlines the breathtaking
ignorance of politicians and regulators in allowing industrial
bases to erode while housing bubbles inflated and Americans
moved from using cash to using credit cards to sustain their
illusions. With pension funds facing collapse, is the dollar
itself next? One thing is certain: America has been falling
for over a decade in its rankings in science and engineering
education compared to the rest of the world. While our culture
encourages competition in sports and non-productive pursuits
such as song and dance, and while we discourage any identification
or progression of the best performing academic students,
emerging countries like China do the exact opposite. There,
students are in intense competition, spending more time
in school, and with science and engineering related careers
and education a more realistic goal than the far less likely
chance of winning game show fame. So the future now favors
emerging markets, while a relative lowering of living standards
is inevitable for the Western world.
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