The Giants of Irish Literature: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and Beckett, by George O'Brien

This audio book was 8 hours and 18 minutes long, and was narrated by the lecturer, George O'Brien. It is part of the Great Scholars series that features renowned professors teaching their specialty. It was obtained for free from NetLibrary.com.

For its biographical sketches of the authors and their times, it was interesting. For the analysis of the writing, it was considerably duller. I recently listened to James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and enjoyed it. Listening to it being picked apart was much less enjoyable.

To his credit, Professor O'Brien did make me put Oscar Wilde on my short list of authors to check out. That pushed this offering into 3 star territory only barely.

Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

This audio book came from the Alachua County Public Library on 6 CDs, was 7 hours long, and was narrated by Stephen J. Dubner.

I was on a long waiting list to get this book from the library. I have been hearing about it for a long time.

It's Steven Levitt's research that is the basis of this book. The sub-title refers to him as a rogue economist, but I think that only means he talks about everyday things instead of the consumer price index and gross domestic product. This book seems to be a mesh of psychology and economics: a study of incentives and how they motivate people in the real world. It seeks to answer questions like: How has legalized abortion affected crime rates? And, If there is so much money in dealing drugs, why do so many drug dealers live at home with their moms?

This book's completely rational, utilitarian approach to human behavior in the marketplace delivers a lot of surprises. It is completely amoral, so it will unsettle people who have the strongest moral compass. But it will be fair in that it disturbs people on both sides of a moral issue. After all, if you just go by the numbers, you can come to some pretty dehumanizing conclusions.

It wasn't a long book, so that means it got to the point. It waded into geek speak only long enough to establish its credentials. It was highly entertaining and thought-provoking, and worth 4 stars any day.

Waiting `Til the Midnight Hour, by Peniel E. Joseph

This audio book was a free download from NetLibrary.com, was 13 hours long, and was narrated by Beresford Bennett.

As a white kid growing up in Upstate NY during the 60s, that names of Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, "Rap" Brown, and Angela Davis were not familiar to me. Even Malcolm X would have drawn a blank in a neighborhood with no unrest and few blacks. And those who did live among us were fully integrated into the neighborhood. I even had an African American history class in the 6th grade, but the aforementioned pioneers of the Black Power movement were not yet history. They were the news. At least they were in other parts of America.

This book was fascinating, enlightening, and disheartening. It was fascinating because it fleshed out the players in America's Civil Rights movement. It was enlightening because it was a very human story anyone could identify with. It was disheartening because every problem is viewed through the lens of the black/white struggle. And not every problem in the black community is the fault of white people.

One of the things that sticks out here is that all the leaders were so incredibly young. By the time he was 29, Stokely Carmichael had met Ho Chi Mihn and Fidel Castro. He had been all over the world, including China, and was a world famous icon of revolutionary struggle. What do you really know by the time you are 29? Consequently, some of the players no longer believe what they did when they were getting everyone else on board.

This is a terrific story of people insisting on being heard. It worked, warts and all. There are characters who will surprise you and impress you and annoy you. This was an engrossing story and worth every one of 4 stars.

The Innocent Man, by John Grisham

This audio book was obtained from the Alachua County Library, and was on 10 CDs.

First, I was surprised that this was not a novel. I hadn't really paid attention when I picked it up, and I was almost done with the first disc when I just had to check. No, this is the true story of how easy it was for several men to get convicted of serious crimes, even getting the death penalty, without being guilty. If you don't believe that anyone really gets convicted who is not guilty, this will disturb your little world. If you are in favor of the death penalty, it might bother you, but only if you cannot disconnect your emotions from your ability to reason.

This is primarily the story of Ron Williamson, a local sports hero who descended into drugs, alcohol, and metal illness after failing to advance his baseball career. This made him an easy target for a maniacally aggressive prosecutor in a small town when a local girl is murdered in her apartment. There was no evidence placing Williamson at the scene, and a much better suspect was completely overlooked, but it seemed that the police and DA went after him for no other reason than their disdain for him.

Williamson was eventually cleared, narrowly missing execution, and won a huge lawsuit for wrongful prosecution. There is not much heroic about Ron Williamson. He is too pathetic to be a hero, but the villainy of the local law enforcement in Ada, Oklahoma is so disturbing that it is little surprise that someone eventually had to speak out about it. Do NOT visit this town or get pulled over for anything there!

4 stars of pure moral outrage.

Night, by Elie Wiesel

This audio book was 4 hours and 17 minutes long, including a reading of Wiesel's speech to the Nobel Prize committee in 1986. It was free from NetLibrary.com.

This book was originally published the year I was born, 1958. That was 13 years after Elie Wiesel's liberation from the German death camps at the age of 17.

When I was growing up, all adults still had a fresh remembrance of the monstrous regime that had terrorized the world, and the Holocaust was already a part of the vocabulary. I saw all the movies about Nazi atrocities, and took seriously my duty as a part of humanity to remember what was done to the Jews and other minorities. How I missed this book is a wonder.

This story sets itself apart from the rest of my personal witness of the media's rendition of the Holocaust. Most books and movies focus on the cruel inhumanity of how the Jews were treated. Wiesel's book spends the first half documenting the denial of the Jews as they saw it coming. Yes, there are a couple of voices in the wilderness, but they are usually scorned and despised for their prescience.

This simple account, unadorned by the gratuitous violence of most Holocaust movies, made it easy for me to believe that the average German citizen could have been in the same state of unbelief while this was happening. It is also a grim warning to all of us that neutrality only benefits the oppressor, as Wiesel states in his speech to the Nobel committee. We must take sides in the resistance to dictators. And we must do it early. At least, that's what I came away with. And this gets 4 stars.