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Audiobooks for Postal Employees!
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BOOKS TO READ WHILE WORKING
July 2010 - Audiobooks reviewed by Jonathan Lowe |
 Are experts usually
right? WRONG author David H. Freedman not only
proves that this isn't so, but that even large funded studies tend to
be wrong more than half of the time. An entire industry of traveling
"expert" speakers distribute ideas that under scrutiny (or even common
sense reflection) only seem to work under controlled circumstances,
while providing the experts with a framework with which to advance
their careers or to sell programs to gullible group-think credit card
holders. As for the so-called "wisdom of crowds," it is a myth. Groups
amplify bias, squash minority points of view, and can overcome
skeptics with the force of social pressure. For example, jurors
routinely can be made to come to consensus by a strong personality who
dominates the proceedings, and may end up convicting an innocent
suspect. Or remember when an audience cheered a singer in a reality
show contest, then booed the judge who voted "no"? Maybe they liked
the personality of the singer, but it is the lone judge who was likely
right about the talent involved. Finally, consider the real estate
bubble, and all the "experts" who blew their own bubbles over the
heads of entire crowds of sales people and home buyers before the
bubble burst. People assume that what's popular is best, and that
experts are right, but this is usually NOT the case--a surprising
finding that author Freedman explains, with the help of narrator
George K. Wilson, in this audiobook that would make a great companion
to the book "Bright-Sided."
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go
away." --Philip K. Dick
Don't listen to SUPERSENSE by Bruce Hood unless you're unafraid to
consider the origins of your cherished beliefs. With the subtitle "Why
We Believe in the Unbelievable," this audiobook, narrated by Kerin
McCue, is a careful examination of how we superimpose supernatural
explanations onto the natural world, starting with infancy to age
seven, only to then reinforce those beliefs into adulthood. With
cogent clarity, Hood, a former research fellow at Cambridge, and a
visiting scientist and professor at MIT and Harvard, dissects how
early perceptions and egocentricity play their roles in forming belief
systems, and how these beliefs in supernatural explanations for events
are supported by shared stories within cultures. A child's intuitive
reasoning about the nature of objects and other living things tends to
extend beyond what is actually true, and so it seems naturally logical
to place faith in luck or fate, or to entertain the idea of magic,
even among those who aren't religious. "Would you," asks Hood, "eat a
gourmet fudge if it was shaped as a dog turd, or wear the cardigan of
a known murderer?" If your answer is no, and you experience a sense of
disgust in the idea, you hold the supernatural belief that objects can
contain foul or evil essences just by association, and this belief is
"essentially" no different than mid-20th Century New Guinea tribesmen
who ate their rivals, believing their strength or virility could be
absorbed. And it all started in defenseless childhood, before our
sense of the outside world was established, when we thought the world
was made solely for us, that the sun followed us around with a smiley
face, and that even dolls have feelings. Will we ever get over all our
flawed conceptions of reality? Will radical religions ever stop
bombing non-believers and start reading books like this one? That is
unlikely, says Hood, because a sense of the mutually sacred, while
illogical, is what binds groups together in shared identity.
Unfortunately, it also puts them at war with their "infidel"
neighbors.
Along with the idea of superheroes and the undead, are "The American
Dream" and the "almighty dollar" also supernatural myths? THE BETRAYAL
OF AMERICAN PROSPERITY by Clyde Prestowitz is a chilling examination
of why the American Century is over, and how emerging countries like
China will own the 21st. It unravels the history of our giving up
production while increasing our consumption of imports, and what this
portends for the U.S. unless a radical change of course is undertaken
now, (and Americans get back to work doing what they once did six
decades ago). Ominously, few in America act as if our affluence or
standard of living will ever change, and instead continue to look to
the government for bailouts while watching ball games on TV. Yet when
Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner visited Beijing University in
2009---and told students there that the dollar was safe---their
response was that THEY LAUGHED. Not only are our remaining high tech
jobs moving overseas, along with the plants that make computer chips,
but service jobs are moving to India too. To top it off, even as our
infrastructure fails and our debt increases, our baby boomers are only
now starting to retire in record numbers, expecting the government to
help support them. Narrated by Erik Synnestvedt, the audiobook pulls
no punches in attacking the deregulation of the Clinton
administration, the shrug-away "don't worry" attitude of the Bush
administration, and a universal corporate greed that focused on
quarterly statements while lazily wearing blinders about the future.
Unless we start exporting something other than soda and cigarettes,
Prestowitz reveals, Americans will soon be forced to give up the
"something for nothing" mantra that has characterized our accumulation
of debt on the backs of "third world" producers (including cheap oil
for much longer) as they acquire "first world" status from us by
owning all our industries.
Looking for a specific example of hubris? In HOUSE OF CARDS author
William D. Cohan details the destruction--from the inside out--of the
investment firm Bear Stearns in 2008, including the moment-to-moment
decisions (or lack of them) made by executives, some of whom were
flying off in helicopters to play golf or to participate in bridge
tournaments during the very hours that their hedge funds were
collapsing, costing investors hundreds of millions. Remember the PBS
documentary on the history of Chicago, which chronicled a time when
corruption and exploitation was a way of life, and aldermen bought
votes while condemning rival ethnic groups to vermin-infested hovels
with busted teeth? Well, those times are mostly gone, but as Cohan
reveals, business ethics haven't really improved all that much since
then, either. We're just more subtle and sophisticated about it. Ably
narrated by Alan Sklar, the audiobook is, at times, just as
tension-filled as any novel, and may even have some listeners
recalling the line at the end of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. .
. "the horror. . . the horror." Hence the subtitle to the book: "A
Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street."
Finally, for a touch of levity on all these shakeups, try listening to
the biography of an outsider who intuitively knew a lot of this stuff,
and we laughed at him for it. Comic George Carlin may have been taking
dope at the time, but he was no dope. What he was, he claimed, was an
astute observer who never felt that he fit in, be that to mean the
local country club, neighborhood, church, or whatever. He poked fun at
society's foibles, taboos and inconsistencies. In 7 DIRTY WORDS, THE
LIFE AND CRIMES OF GEORGE CARLIN author James Sullivan presents the
journey that Carlin made through a pop era of more conventional
entertainers and TV shows to become one of the most original of comic
thinkers. Censorship was, to him, a yoke to bear, but it also inspired
him. He won a Grammy award for the audiobook "Brain Droppings."
Narrated by Alan Sklar, this audiobook is also a must for Carlin fans.
Jonathan's satirical novel INSTANT CELEBRITY will be published in the
Fall. To be informed at its release, with a 40% discount on the
paperback, email
instant-celebrity@virtualtales.com |
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Audiobooks are a great way to pass the time during those
long (and often boring) work hours at the postal service. To find the latest audiobooks
of note check out Jonathan Lowe's Audio Books Review (left). Lowe
recently retired from the Postal Service after 22 years.
Geezer
Postal:
Postmarked for Death
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