Tag: Random House Audio

This audiobook is not exactly new, in fact it was released with the same narrator back in 2000. It is still totally post worthy. I was incredibly impressed by Diamond’s 2005 audiobook Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed (Books On Tape).

Guns, Germs And Steel: The Fates Of Human Societies
By Jared Diamond; Read by Doug Ordunio
13 CDs – Approx. 16 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 9780307932426
Sample |MP3|
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs And Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. Until around 11,000 BC, all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved. In Eurasia, parts of the Americas , and Africa , farming became the prevailing mode of existence when indigenous wild plants and animals were domesticated by prehistoric planters and herders. As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world through conquest, displacement, and genocide. The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren’t native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe ? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences. He assembles convincing evidence linking germs to domestication of animals, germs that Eurasians then spread in epidemic proportions in their voyages of discovery. In its sweep, Guns, Germs And Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing a unifying theory of human history as intriguing as the histories of dinosaurs and glaciers.

This audiobook is getting a pretty good buzz itself, but I have a strong feeling that even an android version of Isaac Asimov would have some serious problems with its premise. Doesn’t Wilson realize that a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm? Come on … that law was passed back in 1942! We’re safe.

Robopocalypse
By Daniel H. Wilson; Read by Mike Chamberlain
10 CDs – Approx. 12 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 9780307913906
Sample |MP3|
Roughly twenty years from now, an unprecedented high-level artificial intelligence known as Archos comes on-line and kills its creator. This first act of betrayal leads Archos to gain control over the global network of computers, machines, and technology that regulate everything from transportation, utilities, defense, and communication. In the early months, sporadic glitches are noticed by a handful of unconnected humans, but most of us are unaware of the growing rebellion until it is far too late. In the span of fifteen minutes, at a moment known later in history as Zero Hour, every mechanical device in our world rebels against us, setting off the Robot War that both decimates and–for the first time in history–unites humankind. Through a series of interconnected narratives, video feeds, interrogations and reports, Daniel Wilson vividly creates the complex and unforgettable epic struggle of civilization’s battle against the machines, beginning with the first eruption of robot rebellion to five years later, with humans on the very brink of extinction.

Posted by Jesse Willis