The story is interesting but the barrage of banal expressions and dime store sentimentality erodes the telling. And there is the modicum of turgid prose thrown in. Even though I did not expect literature, the writing was woeful enough that I found myself yelling "hack" periodically (or other phrases). The usual superman hero is present who appears to not require much sleep, is not fazed by an occasional wound, etc. that's not much different than the flat characters we've become accustomed to on TV. If you want a more reality based portrayal of clandestine operations (CIA), I recommend The Company (Robert Littell). With Hades it is too often difficult to suspend disbelief and get into the tale because of Ludlum's overwrought prose.

This book transports you to Pompeii in the days before the eruption. Even though you know the magma is coming, Harris weaves an intriguing plot around Pompeii's newly arrived Aquarian - a Roman civil servant in charge of aqueduct maintenance and repair who finds himself the man of the hour as trouble brews in the local pipeline. Characters are well-drawn - particularly the overstuffed and overweight Pliny. These are Romans but they are not dissimilar from urbane people in any time or place. And of course there's Vesuvius the power of which is largely unknown to those living beneath it. Occasional quotes from geology books on volcanoes keep the reader informed of what's brewing below the surface about to interrupt the complexity of human life. Throughout the tale Harris provides a fascinating glimpse of what life was like for Roman citizens, slaves, and workers - their social mores, every day and longer term concerns. An excellent book.

The controversy about climate change as presented by Crichton brings in all of the right wing’s bogus scientific claims in an effort to refute the vast majority of the world's scientists. When it comes to scientific certainty about anything, of course, we can't be 100% sure. Crichton was likely in the chorus of industry nay sayers denying there was a problem with the ozone layer. What this reader can be certain about is that Crichton's book is poorly conceived diatribe against rational science and particularly against environmentalists who threaten to disrupt the profit flow to the fossil fuel industry. The nonsense he presents as science force fed to reader in the book is just ranting and pandering. He should have written an essay for a right wing publication instead. This is propaganda at its worst.

Crichton presents the tiny minority view that global warming is at the very least uncertain to the extreme position of the coal industry lobby that it just isn't happening. Around this right wing science (and he does offer selective facts) he constructs a plot in which diabolical environmentalists financed by a thinly disguised George Soros character, attempt to wreak destruction and mayhem. The plot, characters and story are in the service of debunking global warming. Remember, this is the guy who contrived to make sexual harassment an attack of (attractive) liberated women on moral men. They made a movie of that one. Note: the strong arm female characters abound is this show more book as well. Hopefully this distortion of discredited science masquerading as a novel won't go on to become another bit of celluloid right wing propaganda. I got this book as part of a two for package - the other book was considerably better. Vote with your dollars to send this to the trash bin and buy another book. show less

The daughter of parents who should have been neutered before they had their children survives a tough childhood with her 3 siblings, drunken father, bipolar idiot mother to create a life that works. Interesting but I wanted to wring the necks of the parents while the tone of the book and the narrator was non-condemnatory. Just the facts but the facts said it all. Three of the kids make it. You can hear about lives that defy logic (the insane or drunken are not logical). These folks looked up to trailer trash. My rating was 4 stars b/c at points it was unbearable to listen (audible) to the stupidity.

This is a terrific non-fiction book from start to finish. Written from the perspective of a writer about to retrace the 1925 lost expedition of Percy Fawcett, it incorporates Fawcett's obsession with finding a lost city in the Amazon that he has no information about other than having convinced himself it exists. The author smoothly transitions from Fawcett's time to the present and back including historical perspectives of the late 19th, early 20th century. If you've listened to or read 1492, you're familiar with how the New World Indians were considerably more numerous and their culture more advanced until the Europeans arrived with new diseases that decimated their populations. That's wrapped into the interesting conclusion. It's an adventure, an education and provides great insight into the Green Hell of the Amazon.

Since there are no zero star ratings Brown's miserable clone of a gets one star. The formula is beyond threadbare; the emaciated skeleton of a plot has simply changed a few names from prior books, a couple of symbols are tacked together (they $ sign is significant for the author though goes unmentioned) and the "suspense" begins. Good and evil are so boringly caricatured that when evil meets his fate (I wouldn't want to give away that contrived end for those who manage to get that far) I had thought the book was over. Not so. There was more to go. When the bible took center stage I left Dan to wrap this up without me. Only if you can suspend disbelief for this many hours and turn off your brain to avoid knowing what happens next should you waste your time with this bottom feeder.

The book often devolves into a right wing vehicle used to rant about the greater fanatical Islamic conspiracy. The heroic cartoon characters are courageous and extremely well proportioned. Somehow Hawke, our thirty-eight year old hero has been everywhere and done everything even though some of those things are only possible with time travel given his youth. Think James Bond, the author did but Hawke falls short just as the prose would embarrass Ian Fleming. Stoke, a secondary character, was a medic in Vietnam and still in the prime of life circa 2009. In sum, if you can suspend disbelief, get past stock characters, sex scenes that border on comedic bodice rippers and right wing ranting, this book is for you.

Where’s a good editor when you need her? This book is 20th century gothic with a bow to Wuthering Heights, etc. Dickens would understand the economics since his serialized novels were lengthy out of financial necessity. The very complicated plot moves along at a snail’s pace but it managed to come to a complete conclusion tying up all loose ends. There are many dark corners in the story. It’s well written and the narrator captures all the mainly female characters quite well. Still, this cannot make up for the absent editor. If you are patient and like a very slow listen, this will be a rewarding book.

The authors provide an Interesting insight into exclusionary versus inclusionary societies. Plenty of historical and current examples provide support for their thesis that the most successful and sustainable societies are those that include more of their populations in decision making as well as a greater share of the economic pie. It’s an interesting view in light of a presidential election year contrasting a more inclusionary vision with an exclusionary one (albeit masked in propaganda of offering freedom, in exchange for less government). With the US having become less and less a country of class/economic mobility, an educated electorate would do well to catch up on what’s happened historically as well as currently when a small percentage capture more and more of a country’s wealth and income.