Sandra L.

Do NOT use this to try to get to sleep!

Reviewed: 12-16-24

The stories and performance were fine. The problem is that the people putting it together apparently had no clue how titles like this are meant to be used. If they’d published the stories separately (and without the loud jump-scare ad at the end) it would have been great. Unfortunately, what they did was string a bunch of stories together, each of which were followed by quiet music, then a short silence, then suddenly another story pops up, startling you awake if you were drifting off, and it starts all over again. This is basically useless as is.

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Perfect for insomniacs - but please make them available in the library again

Reviewed: 05-19-23

I’ve listened to a number of the Audible original “bedtime” stories, but this is my favorite, followed closely by the other stories narrated by Prentice Onayemi (“Meditations of Marcus Aurelius” and “The Fisherman and the Genie”). I’ve listened to this one so many times that I have large sections of the first half memorized. (I start slowly drifting off after that.)

I was frustrated last night to discover that these stories are no longer in my library and it won’t let me recover it. The way it is now, I would have to search for it each time, and worse, I can’t include it in a playlist. My insomnia is pretty severe, and one story just isn’t long enough - I need to have the next story play automatically.

Until this is fixed, I’ll have to turn to something else instead.

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Excellent narration

Reviewed: 11-14-20

I've been very impressed with the narrator's handling of the material. He makes what could have been a very dry listen come alive and gives Pepys an engaging personality (that is difficult for the listener to separate from the historical person).

This is actually a problem for me. I bought these books because I thought they'd be easy to fall asleep to. Instead, they tend to keep me awake!

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4 people found this helpful

Infectious enthusiasm

Reviewed: 12-28-18

It makes such a difference when a lecturer has a passion for a particular topic, as Professor Garland clearly does when speaking about the lives of ordinary people. The course is well-organized, with clear themes which are repeated throughout the series.

Also, unlike certain other historians who have written about daily life in ages past, Garland spends a good deal of time talking about the lives of women as well as men. He's limited by the lack of source material in some cases, but he clearly worked hard to include women as much as possible, and I appreciate that.

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interesting comparison, flawed execution

Reviewed: 10-30-18

While this book is interesting for the comparison between the two competing philosophies, the effort is undermined by a clear bias on the part of the author. He admits his bias in the introduction, but claims he grew to "admire" Hamilton as well as Jefferson while researching the book. Unfortunately, that admiration does not stop him from minimizing Jefferson's faults while exaggerating Hamilton's at every opportunity. One example (of many): he reports as fact Jefferson's yarn about Hamilton being unfamiliar with Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers and declaring that "Julius Caesar was the greatest man who ever lived." Other biographers have already shown why this was very unlikely to be true, and Jefferson was hardly a credible source when it came to his political enemies.

The narration is oddly slow and stilted. Increasing the speed to 1.2x helps, but it's still difficult to listen to.

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The narration problem can be corrected

Reviewed: 09-27-18

I'm only partway through this book, but I wanted to share my solution to the weird slow-speech and pauses. I had listened to another biography read by the same narrator, and that sounded fine, so I decided to try adjusting the playback speed to 1.1 (that's an option in the Audible app) and that did the trick. It seems that for some reason the publisher decided to slow down the narration. It's a shame, because they're doing a disservice to both the narrator and this (so far) excellent book.

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19 people found this helpful

Not a full biography

Reviewed: 08-17-18

"Mornings on Horseback" contains the same quality of research and storytelling as McCullough's "John Adams". It is not, however, a full biography. It ends rather abruptly when the subject is still young and a long way from the White House, with only a brief afterward to cover the rest of TR's life and career. For some inexplicable reason, Audible chose to move the author's note (which explains the reasons for this and adjusts the reader's expectations) to the *end* of the book. I recommend listening to "Chapter 50" (author's note) first, then starting at the beginning.

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32 people found this helpful

White progressives need to read this

Reviewed: 07-21-18

This was not the book that I expected and hoped to read, but it turned out to be exactly the book I *needed* to read.

If concepts like "international emancipatory struggle", "the global South", and the importance of black and LatinX people in the American labor movement are new to you, then this book will rock your world and help you realize the importance of reaching across racial, economic, and national lines to combat the rise of oppression we're seeing today.

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2 people found this helpful

Narrated in a fast monotone

Reviewed: 07-17-18

I couldn't take more than a few minutes - text-to-speech would be a better option.

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Suppressed history - everyone should read this.

Reviewed: 06-22-18

I read a review of this book complaining that it was "mired in the past". Hello? It's a history book.

The angry person who wrote that clearly thinks *some* history should always remain buried. It might have helped if they'd read the last pages, in which the author points out that shame isn't the goal; it's just a necessary step on the way to true reconciliation.

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