interesting material, poorly prepared and narrated

After 2 hours I could not stand the stuttering narrator and put out the 25-hour audiobook. Very disappointing!

If the book had been portrayed by a good narrator, you might have picked something useful.
But my impression is that an insecure speaker from an unstructured work causes even more chaos. Sad.
Especially disturbing I found the frequent pauses with "um", throat clearing, "Yo know .." and the occasional stutter.

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Poor editing ruins this lecture series

I returned this book because it was a rather rambling lecture series with Shermer spending a lot of time answering inaudible student questions. I imagine following it could have been a valuable experience, but insufficient time was spent preparing it for publication.

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2 people found this helpful

Not Dr. Shermers best.

Poorly presented, poorly recorded, conversations take place that cannot be heard. Dr. Shermer has not practiced with this material he loses his place in his notes, he side tracks from the theme and shows a lack of practice at delivery. The price is much too high for the poor content of this audible. Despite all the drawbacks it raised some thought provoking ideas but not enough to rescue it or make it worthy of listening to twice.

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1 person found this helpful

Good content, good presenter, needs to be edited

I really enjoyed the subject - I learned so much.

The presenter has a pleasant, humour onus self-deprecating style.

But the recording is full of dead space, usually when someone in the audience is speaking, for the most part, I audibly. Pity. It would be so much more enjoyable if the bits we can't hear clearly were just cut out.

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A Dubious Offering

The audiobook (selling at nearly £39) says it is a sweeping visage of science and it's history. It is most certainly that taking on issues such as religion and ideology as well as scientific method and discovery. However the lectures on which this audiobook is based comes from the 1990s. The production is poor, the questions from the audience are often inaudible, so in so e chapters you are presented with what appears to be up to 15 minutes of silence. A lot of the content is subjective and although often entertaining, is the kind of discussion I would expect at a dinner party. The views are American - calling Iraqis as only capable of growing food for camels is borderline racism. I was expecting much more and I am glad I did not pay full price. It is probably worth the single credit I have begrudgingly lost. Audible, you really need to reconsider whether this audiobook comes up to acceptable standards.

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3 people found this helpful

Dreadful ! A real let-down...

When buying this book I expected something akin to Bill Bryson's "Short History of Everything" - perhaps more detail and less humourous but, given the length and cost, something well-researched and well-presented. In fact this is a series of lectures given by Schermer, the structure, clarity and editing of which is significantly inferior to the standards set by the "Modern Scholar" series. Structurally the lectures are full of digressions and, at times, Schermer shows he has little grasp of some of the topics being discussed. The clarity of the recordings is awful and I lost count of the times when discussions were taking place with the audience and it was impossible to hear the questions being asked or the contributions being made. However, it is perhaps in the editing that this series is at it's weakest. "Chapter" breaks are often made when Schermer is in full flow, digressions and barely decipherable audience discussions - completely off-topic - could, and should, have been edit out.

Finally the title of the book is misleading as, given it's poor structure, it tries to span philosophy and religion as well as science and does poor justice to all three subjects. As an alternative I would recommend any potential purchaser to buy the following:
"A Short History of Everything" - Bill Bryson
"The Story of Philosophy" - Will Durrant
"The God Delusion" - Richard Dawkins

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10 people found this helpful

A very long listen

This is in 3 parts and spans about 24 hours. These are Shermer's lectures recorded in the classroom (it does not seem to be a lecture theater as there is an intimacy with the class. He sometimes makes mistakes (due to the virtue of a live recording) on values and data but these are just verbal trips and are not intended. They are however enjoyable, but the listener will not have access to his pictoral material which he uses. I e-mailed Shermer about this and he does not have the images to give, he also said I was the first reviewer to get in touch as the lectures had only been just released. If anything you will learn the inter-connectedness between known and unknown scientists throughout the last few centuries. His lectures on Einstein are very revealing. I would strongly recommend this title to those interested in science and how it works.

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28 people found this helpful

Unstructured and self important

These are lectures given some 20 years ago, apparently recorded live and completely unedited. The result is a disappointingly disjointed and unstructured series, falling far short of the standards set by the Modern Scholars series. Even the sound quality is poor.

I would strongly discourage anyone from wasting a credit or, worse, money, on these lectures. Go for something where the speaker/author has a minimal amount of respect for his audience, and rather less sense of his own importance.

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1 person found this helpful

A plea to modern scholars and audible

I have been struggling to extract some satisfaction and value from this for a year now. As others have said the editing and sound quality are poor - the lecturing style is just about ok but not fluent. There is almost continual use of overheads and references to material which is not supplied or available. The scope is immense and in parts I find the material and delivery pretentiousand misleading if not incorrect. Without some help as to the structure being followed and the material being covered, I challenge anybody to feel other than irritated after a listening session.

Purchasers beware! This recording is an exercise in futility and does not reflect well on the good standards seen previously from both audible and modern scholar. I would recommend removing this from your catalogue.

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1 person found this helpful