History

History/biography books (a la Mary Beard's SPQR or Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel or Edmund Morris' The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt):

These books still command the reader's concentration, but, as history is linear, the listener can afford to accidentally stop paying attention for a minute and miss things. Chances are the supremely important events will be talked about for at least a few minutes, and you aren't tired enough yet to zone out for minutes at a time.

In other words, the listening is easier, especially if you happen to be objectively interested in the specific history being narrated. I was more interested in Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel than I was in Mary Beard’s SPQR, so I found that I could listen to Guns, Germs and Steel even if I was tired.

As of now, there are four reviews available in this tier.

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★★★★★
A Short History of Nearly Everything — Bill Bryson
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt — Edmund Morris
Guns, Germs, and Steel — Jared Diamond

★★★★
The Prince — Niccolo Machiavelli
Cadillac Desert — Marc Reisner
The Perfect Storm — Sebastian Junger
Norse Mythology — Neil Gaiman
The Gulag Archipelago — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
SPQR — Mary Beard
William Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies — Peter Saccio

★★★
A Sand County Almanac — Aldo Leopold
The Omnivore’s Dilemma — Michael Pollan

★★
The Divine Comedy — Dante Alighieri

★
N/A 

REVIEWS

REVIEW BY ERIC TRAVIS

PCT Location while listening: The Mojave Desert and the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains

This book gets dry, pun intended.

I was able to get through it somewhat easily because the subject of most of the book, the Owens Valley and the Mojave aqueduct, were within my eyesight or under my feet while I was listening. The Owens Valley is just east of the Sierra Nevada section of the PCT. Unbeknownst to many 21st century Californians, the Owens Valley is also the site of America’s greatest water swindle. The subsistence of the deserts of Southern California is entirely due to Los Angeles stealing water from the Owens Valley and siphoning it down to Southern California via an aqueduct. This is the reason the greater Los Angeles area can exist within a barren desert, and also the reason why I and many millions more grew up in Southern California instead of the sparsely populated Owens Valley. The PCT runs right on top of the aqueduct for a few miles, and I enjoyed listening to its sketchy history while listening to the water flowing below my footsteps.

Beyond the Owens Valley drama, the book goes in depth on the extensive and sometimes scandalous dam building of the early to mid 20th century. It turns out many of the dams commissioned during the Franklin Roosevelt era during the New Deal weren’t hydronically necessary, but were a great way to keep people employed and busy after the Great Depression.

A thought-provoking hypothetical: Had America not built so many dams during this time period we may have lost World War II. Our dams created an enormous amount of harnessable energy, giving us unparalleled manufacturing power which we then used to pump out fighter jets and bombers like nobody’s business.

Why this book received a 4 star rating:

The book is purposeful because it makes you aware of the importance of dams and their proliferation around the USA. I think about this book whenever I see a dam, and I now appreciate dams whenever I see them. It is docked a star because it’s not an easy book to concentrate on.

I had marked this book as 3 stars after I had initially finished it, but a year later I realize how much I actually think about the book— thus making it much more purposeful than I had originally thought. This is the one and only benefit of being way behind on posting these reviews.

REVIEW BY ERIC TRAVIS

PCT Location when listening: Between Seiad Valley, California and Ashland, Oregon

Written in the fourteenth century by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (known simply as Dante),  The Divine Comedy is a walkabout exploring biblical locations as Dante imagined them. The book is divided into three parts—Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise).

This book is probably ancestrally responsible for much of today’s horror genre and also our modern conceptions of Hell—complete with fiery demons and increasingly creative forms of eternal suffering.

Why this audiobook received a 2 star rating:

There are some books that are nigh impossible to enjoy as audiobooks. This production of The Divine Comedy falls into that category.

Because of the text’s reliance upon Italian-translated-into-Early-Modern-English (think “ye olde” or “ye shall therefore”, etc.),  I simply could not focus on what was going on. In certain parts, the production may as well have been in an entirely foreign language. I was repeatedly lost and frustrated. You will need to find a physical version of this book to enjoy it. 

This audiobook would have received only 1 Star if not for some particularly effective and creative imagery provided within the Hell section, and for a hypothetical I found incredibly profound (as discussed in the Ancestral Telephone chapter of Wander Purposefully):

“A man is born on the bank of the Indus, and no one is there who may speak of Christ, nor who may read, nor who may write. And all his wishes and acts are good, so far as human reason sees. Without sin in life or in speech. He dies unbaptized and without faith. Where is this justice which condemns him, where is his sin if he does not believe?”

REVIEW BY ERIC TRAVIS

PCT Location when listening: Oregon

“Since that time, 10 years have past. Then 15. The grass has grown thicker with the grave of my youth.”

In 1945, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was arrested for the crime of “counterrevolutionary activity” against his mother country of Russia. He was subsequently stripped of all legitimacy, taken from his home, and deported to the Gulag forced labor camp system. 

If you did not harbor any previous knowledge of Soviet-era Russia, you might assume his crime was very serious in nature. You may even assume he deserved it. In reality, Solzhenitsyn’s terrible crime was writing jokes at Joseph Stalin’s expense within a personal letter to a friend. Unsurprisingly, The Gulag Archipelago is a scathing indictment of communism and the Soviet Union. This audiobook is an all-out assault on the socialist ideology, written by a first hand witness.  

A constant theme throughout, Solzhenitsyn implores his readers to study independent history. He hates the injustices perpetrated upon him and his countrymen by the Soviet government, but he is also pessimistically aware the same atrocities will happen again and again if real history is altered and/or forgotten. 

“We forget everything. What we remember is not what actually happened, not history. But merely that hackneyed, dotted line they have chosen to drive into our memories by incessant hammering. I do not know whether this is a trait common to all mankind, but it is certainly a trait of our people. And it is a vexing one. It may have its source in goodness, but it is vexing nonetheless. It makes us an easy prey for liars.”

Fun Fact: The term “GULAG” is an acronym for the Soviet bureaucratic institution, Glavnoe Upravlenie ispravitel'no-trudovykh LAGerei (Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps), that operated the Soviet system of forced labor camps during the Stalin era.

Why this audiobook received a 4 star rating:

Sometimes, although an audiobook is actually pretty good, I have an unshakable feeling it would be much better had the author also been the narrator. This is one of those times. The sheer anger Solzhenitsyn harbors towards his Soviet captors is deeply personal and would be much more effective coming from the man himself, were he still alive today.  

The book is purposeful because there is a resurgence of communistic ideals surfacing throughout the world. Should you feel the need to debate political ideologies amongst your peers, it would be a prudent usage of your time to listen to this book and take from it what you will. Depending on your political leanings, you’ll probably leave this book thinking socialism should never be allowed ever again, or Russia’s version of socialism was entirely wrong and isn’t a fair comparison of the socialist ideals of today. 

If you are not particularly interested in politics and history, this book will be long and boring for you. Thus, the audience is more esoteric than others, and the book is docked a star because of it.   

REVIEW BY ERIC TRAVIS

PCT Location when listening: The Northern Cascade Mountains of Washington

For those interested in a crash course on Shakespeare, this is what you seek. Produced by The Great Courses, this audiobook is a series of lectures by Dartmouth Professor Peter Saccio. The lectures proceed through greatest hits of the types of plays Shakespeare produced: comedies, histories, and tragedies. Sprinkled throughout Saccio’s analyses and opinions are classic Shakespeare quotations such as this gem taken from Shylock in The Merchant of Venice:

“He hath disgraced me and hindered me half a million. Laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies. And what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands? Organs? Dimensions? Senses? Affections? Passions? Fed with the same food? Hurt with the same weapons? Subject to the same diseases? Healed by the same means? Warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

As a narrator, Professor Saccio of Dartmouth sounds snobby and sophisticated. Though probably uncomfortable to be around in real life, this style of narration suits the subject material quite well. You, the listener, feel like you are sitting in a lecture hall, perhaps at Oxford or Cambridge.

Why this audiobook received a 4 star rating:

Shakespeare is an important figure in literature history. He’s almost universally admired by those who give an effort, and the cultured person would do well to learn a few things about him. His work is constantly influencing contemporary works, so knowledge of him will be of use.

At least to my feeble brain, Shakespeare is hard enough to understand while concentrating and staring directly at the words on the page. As an audiobook, straight narration of this source material would likely be even more confusing. Thus, a series of lectures on Shakespeare’s greatest hits is an efficient way to get the gist of the time period, the literary works, and the author himself.

The audiobook receives just 4 stars because any Shakespearean shortcut does not do justice to its subject. Giving this audiobook 5 stars would be like giving 5 stars to the Sparknotes version of War and Peace.

REVIEW BY ERIC TRAVIS

PCT Location when Listening: Northern California

“His hunger for knowledge on all subjects, grew to the point that after every Rooseveltian breakfast, hotel waiters had to clear away piles of ravaged newspapers. A reporter that sat nearby recalled that he read these newspapers at a speed that would have excited the jealousy of the most rapid exchange editor. Roosevelt saw everything, grasped the sense of everything, and formed an opinion on anything, which he was eager to maintain at any risk.”

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is an impressively researched biography of the noted American icon affectionately known as Teddy. Fun fact: Roosevelt is actually a Jr., and never publicly endorsed his Teddy nickname likely due to an endearing fondness for his father and role model—Theodore Roosevelt Sr.

The narration of this audiobook may make it better than the physical version. The narrator does an excellent Rooseveltian impression, frequently jumping into Teddy’s distinctive trumpeting voice throughout the reading. One of my favorite Teddy-isms is the exclamation of an excited “Dee-lighted!” whenever he happened to meet someone new.

Particularly entertaining are the insights into Roosevelt’s mostly-disastrous investments in North Dakota, his intrepid hunting exploits, his interests in ornithology and naval warfare, and the political landscape of the late 1800s (of which I knew precisely nothing about prior to this listening).

Why this audiobook received a 5 star rating:

Though it is a little on the longer side (21 hours), The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is a window into the life of one of the most efficient learners of all time. For anyone wishing to include more learning in their life (the goal of Wander Purposefully/the Absorbent Learning lifestyle), this book supplies a shining example of scholarship.

If nothing else, Theodore Roosevelt is to be admired for his adventurous spirit and his voracious appetite for learning. He learns purely for the sake of learning, and that is entirely too uncommon nowadays. If Teddy could find time to read 500+ books in a year, you certainly can shoehorn a couple books into your own schedule.

It should be noted this audiobook covers Teddy’s early life and extends to the point in which he, as Vice President, is informed of President McKinley’s assasination and of his subsequent rise to the Presidency. For those interested in Roosevelt’s exploits thereafter (rough-ridership included), you will need to check out Morris’ sequel: Theodore Rex.