NOV 2015
AUDIO BOOK REVIEWS
by Jonathan Lowe
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One of my favorite audiobooks was a now out of print
chronicle of black box voice cockpit recordings. My
attempts to get that audiobook back into print failed
because they’d lost the masters. (Original tapes,
not the Masters golf tournament.) But all is well
now, with the publication of BLACK BOX THINKING,
which is even better than that chilling book because
author Matthew Syed (a former Olympian
and Oxford scholar…what a combo that is!) connects
the dots between failure and success, making the comparison
between what happens in the air and what happens on
ground…between aviation and the medical industry.
Why is it that more people die from misdiagnosis than
from car accidents? Syed, through the deep voice of
the always engaging narrator Simon Slater,
points to the fact that radiologists and doctors do
not have a accessible database of failures in similar
circumstances in the same way that pilots do. Syed
uses examples of actual cockpit decision failures
to illustrate his points, as when United Airlines
173 crashed after it ran out of fuel in a holding
pattern while trying to determine if the landing gear
was down. (It was down, but the indicator light was
faulty, and said it wasn’t.) People died because
the navigator failed to be forceful enough to the
pilot, his superior, with whom he felt deference.
Then the Captain seemed surprised to learn they’d
run out of fuel, and even the engineer wondered if
there was a leak in the fuel tanks. Black box analysis
showed there was no leak. The jet had operated exactly
as it should. The intense focus of the crew on the
non-existent landing gear problem caused them to lose
track of time, which neuroscientists can explain.
The point of telling this (and other air disaster
horror stories like it) is to illustrate what happened
next: the airlines learned from this mistake, and
from all other crashes. So your chances of dying on
a plane is less than one in a million. Under hospital
health care your chance of dying or suffering major
complications due to a preventable accident is one
in less than a hundred. “This is the equivalent
of two jumbo jets falling out of the sky every day,”
says Syed. “The concealment of errors in medicine
is the opposite of the airline industry.” Regarding
golf, Syed’s quote is: “You can’t
learn how to play golf in the dark.” Examples
of medical errors are juxtaposed alongside other airline
examples, but Syed is only getting started. He goes
into Google, discusses Michael Jordan, Beckham, Mercedes,
market forecasters, and others who learned from their
mistakes. (Subtitle: "Why Most People Never Learn
From Their Mistakes---But Some Do.") Combine
Malcolm Gladwell with Steven Pinker, toss a ball or
two into the ring, and you have Matthew Syed, who
is also author of the bestselling BOUNCE.
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Periodic
Tales by Hugh Aldersey-Williams are the fascinating
stories of how the elements were discovered, got their
names, and the uses put to these chemical elements
over the decades or centuries. There are surprises
in this wide-ranging history, including that Plutonium
(the most dangerous element known) was first considered
as a possible rare and valuable coin. Plutonium is
strictly controlled now, and is far more valuable
than platinum, barely exists at all in nature, and
is only made with great difficulty by refining uranium
238. Still, there are enough nuclear weapons in existence
today to turn the Earth into perpetual nuclear winter
100 times over. Past chemical weapons included chlorine
gas, used in WWI, a green toxic haze that attacks
the lungs and causes one to choke on their own fluids.
Phosphorous bombs were used by Allies in WWII, sucking
the air right out of tunnels and basements where Dresden
families hid, believing they were safe from attack.
Marie Curie’s life and death from leukemia after
isolating radium is but one of the stories here. Every
one of the elements is covered, from gold to gallium
(a metal that melts in the hand), helium to einsteinium.
Not only does the listener gain a better knowledge
of chemistry, but also of the history of arts which
use the elements, and the people behind the uses and
dangers involved in using elements whose side effects
were not fully understood at the time of their discovery.
The author also details his own experiences in investigation
and research, and narrator Anthony Ferguson is a good
choice of the publisher to deliver the text since
his accent and timing create an atmospheric element…no
helium voice here for sure. A must hear for listeners
with curiosity for understanding how the world works,
and our relationship to it.
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Next,
back in the early 20th Century a Boston spiritualist
and medium named Margery was all the rage for creating
seances that purportedly resurrected the voices of
dead loved ones. She embraced some who tried to debunk
her, even from Scientific American. None could do
it until Houdini, the legendary escape artist and
magician, took aim at her occult trickery. THE
WITCH OF LIME STREET, by former screenwriter
and astrologer David Jaher, tells the history of the
era, and of Houdini, (including the multiple encounters
that Margery had with those set on disproving her.)
The golden age of the 1920s are the backdrop to this
well told and interesting story, lending authenticity
to the mood of an era which faded after Houdini died
from peritonitis following being punched in the stomach
by a man testing his strength. One of the most ironic
elements is the inclusion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
author of Sherlock Holmes, a skeptic who shouldn’t
have believed in Margery, but did anyway for his own
reasons. (Holmes the detective is known for his observational
skills, but Doyle apparently was fooled by the skilled
charlatan.) One of the prerequisites of the seances
was that the room had to be dark, and Margery could
be retained but pulled off her feats anyway. Only
Houdini, known to slip out of most any restraint put
on him, saw through her. Narrator Simon Vance, with
his artistocratic, accented delivery, is the perfect
reader for this, and I recommend it to anyone familiar
or unfamiliar with magic (including FOOL US magician
Penn Jillette) for its slice of life (so to speak)
unveiling of a momentous time in American history.
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Finally,
”To meat or not to meat, that is the question..."
It's in the news, but the decision is yours. Or is
it? Advertising affects subconscious decision making.
Coke and McDonalds exploit this. Listen to the following
audiobooks and this becomes evident: 1) Meat is much
more costly to the environment. 2) Processed meat
is worse for your health than unprocessed. 3) Low
fat diets are not healthy, and often don't work. 4)
Saturated fat is not bad, and there is no link to
heart disease as was taught for decades. Read: ”The
Big Fat Surprise." Only trans-saturated
(processed or burned) fats are bad. 5) Cheap meat
is anything BUT cheap: hormones and chemicals added,
subsidized by taxpayers, factory farm cruelty, rising
health care costs, etc. Read: ”Meatonomics."
6) 96% of meat sold is in that category. 7) Nitrates
are not the only contributing factor in cancer. Other
additives, and the cooking and curing process too.
Sugar is cancer friendly, too. 8) Vitamins are overused
in America to the tune of billions as a means to supplement
poor nutrition, but they are a poor substitute for
whole, natural #food. Cheap vitamins may be fake,
as they are unregulated. Read: “VItamania.”
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Some
new fiction tities that are out this month that seem
interesting to me, but I’ve not had time to
hear yet are: SLADE HOUSE by David Mitchell
(author of the amazing Cloud Atlas; read
by Thomas Judd and Tania Rodrigues); NIGHT
MUSIC by John Connolly, read by a full cast);
GOLDEN AGE by Jane Smiley, read by
Lorelei King (who narrates Janet Evanovich); THE
BLUNDERER by Patricia Highsmith (new to audio,
read by Robert Fass); A STRANGENESS IN MY
MIND by Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, read
by the always great John Lee); finally, don’t
miss my own WHO MOVED MY TV? read
by Christopher Vournazos, or, if you want to wait
until Nov. 8, it will be included in the ebook TrumpWorld.
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