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Steven Pinker
- Audible Sessions: FREE Exclusive Interview
- Narrated by: Steven Pinker
- Length: 11 mins
- Speech
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, Art & Literature
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Enlightenment Now
- The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 19 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West but worldwide.
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Good information but a ponderous dissertation
- By JDC on 08-28-18
By: Steven Pinker
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The Blank Slate
- The Modern Denial of Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
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In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.
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Excellent, as expected
- By Carolyn on 05-30-14
By: Steven Pinker
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How the Mind Works
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 26 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In this delightful, acclaimed bestseller, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists tackles the workings of the human mind. What makes us rational—and why are we so often irrational? How do we see in three dimensions? What makes us happy, afraid, angry, disgusted, or sexually aroused? Why do we fall in love? And how do we grapple with the imponderables of morality, religion, and consciousness?
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Excellent, but a difficult listen.
- By David Roseberry on 12-11-11
By: Steven Pinker
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The Language Instinct
- How the Mind Creates Language
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 18 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association....
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Absolutely Amazing and Interesting
- By J. C. on 10-28-12
By: Steven Pinker
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The Better Angels of Our Nature
- Why Violence Has Declined
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 36 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.
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A great book but...
- By Kindle Customer on 03-25-19
By: Steven Pinker
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The Stuff of Thought
- Language as a Window into Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Dean Olsher
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. What does swearing reveal about our emotions? Why does innuendo disclose something about relationships? Pinker reveals how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter.
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Pinker is truly a brilliant and lucid explainer...
- By Rudi on 06-17-09
By: Steven Pinker
-
Enlightenment Now
- The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 19 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West but worldwide.
-
-
Good information but a ponderous dissertation
- By JDC on 08-28-18
By: Steven Pinker
-
The Blank Slate
- The Modern Denial of Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.
-
-
Excellent, as expected
- By Carolyn on 05-30-14
By: Steven Pinker
-
How the Mind Works
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 26 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this delightful, acclaimed bestseller, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists tackles the workings of the human mind. What makes us rational—and why are we so often irrational? How do we see in three dimensions? What makes us happy, afraid, angry, disgusted, or sexually aroused? Why do we fall in love? And how do we grapple with the imponderables of morality, religion, and consciousness?
-
-
Excellent, but a difficult listen.
- By David Roseberry on 12-11-11
By: Steven Pinker
-
The Language Instinct
- How the Mind Creates Language
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 18 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association....
-
-
Absolutely Amazing and Interesting
- By J. C. on 10-28-12
By: Steven Pinker
-
The Better Angels of Our Nature
- Why Violence Has Declined
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 36 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.
-
-
A great book but...
- By Kindle Customer on 03-25-19
By: Steven Pinker
-
The Stuff of Thought
- Language as a Window into Human Nature
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Dean Olsher
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. What does swearing reveal about our emotions? Why does innuendo disclose something about relationships? Pinker reveals how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter.
-
-
Pinker is truly a brilliant and lucid explainer...
- By Rudi on 06-17-09
By: Steven Pinker
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The Sense of Style
- The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Sense of Style, the best-selling linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers these questions and more. Rethinking the usage guide for the 21st century, Pinker doesn’t carp about the decline of language or recycle pet peeves from the rulebooks of a century ago. Instead, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose.
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Great even if a bit jargony
- By Neuron on 08-24-16
By: Steven Pinker
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Words and Rules
- The Ingredients of Language
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 2000, Words and Rules remains one of Pinker's most provocative and accessible books, illuminating the fascinating relationship between the brain, the mind, and how language makes us humans.
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Amazing how much irregular verbs can teach.
- By Tristan on 04-10-16
By: Steven Pinker
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Rationality
- What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 21st century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for COVID-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing? Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are an irrational species - cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions.
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Kinda disappointed
- By Trebla on 10-02-21
By: Steven Pinker
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Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot
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- Narrated by: Seth Andrews
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Seth Andrews wasn't an idiot during his 30 years as an evangelical Christian. He wasn't unintelligent, nor did his IQ shift when he ultimately left religion entirely. He considered himself thoughtful, moral, reasonable, and at least as smart as the average person. In other words, he wasn't an idiot. Yet strangely, he often sounded like one.
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good listen
- By Kara on 02-14-22
By: Seth Andrews
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The Space Race
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A century ago very few people dreamed of space travel. Today it is the most daring and technologically sophisticated quest ever undertaken, being driven not just by government agencies such as NASA and ESA, but also by visionaries such as Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic), Elon Musk (SpaceX) and Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin). To mark the 50th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing, this major drama-documentary series charts the definitive story of the past, present and future of humankind’s exploration of space. The Space Race is narrated by Kate Mulgrew and features a full cast.
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All Nonfiction Parts GREAT but Fiction Bad
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Homo Deus
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Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically acclaimed New York Times best seller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity's future and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.
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Good, but...
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The Happiness Hypothesis
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The Happiness Hypothesis is about ten Great Ideas. Each chapter is an attempt to savor one idea that has been discovered by several of the world's civilizations - to question it in light of what we now know from scientific research, and to extract from it the lessons that still apply to our modern lives and illuminate the causes of human flourishing. Award-winning psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Righteous Mind, shows how a deeper understanding of the world's philosophical wisdom and its enduring maxims can enrich and even transform our lives.
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Amazing book, terrible choice in voice.
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Bella Bella
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Four-time Tony Award® winner Harvey Fierstein takes on New York City’s very own political firebrand, Bella Abzug, in his new raucous, heart-rending, and absurdly humorous solo show. Set in 1976, on the eve of her bid to become New York State’s first female senator, Bella Bella finds this larger-than-life, truth-slinging, groundbreaking, hat-wearing icon squirreled away in the bathroom of a midtown hotel awaiting that night’s election results while a coterie of family and celebs await her entrance. Directing is Kimberly Senior (The Niceties).
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loved every minute!
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The Selfish Gene
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Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands to rethink their beliefs about life.
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Interesting, but too many post-scripts
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The Story of Human Language
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Language defines us as a species, placing humans head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators. But it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries, allowing us to ponder why different languages emerged, why there isn't simply a single language, how languages change over time and whether that's good or bad, and how languages die out and become extinct.
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Hanging on every word
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Dan Rather: Stories of a Lifetime
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Emmy Award winner and former CBS News anchor Dan Rather brings his unforgettable staged performance, Stories of a Lifetime, to the Minetta Lane Theatre, where it will be recorded live for Audible Theater. In this deeply personal show, the legendary Peabody Award-winning journalist takes audiences through the most pivotal moments of his life, from surviving a debilitating illness as a child in Depression-era Texas to covering monumental moments in American history such as the Civil Rights movement, the assassination of JFK, and Watergate.
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Too Political
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The Blind Watchmaker
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The Blind Watchmaker, knowledgably narrated by author Richard Dawkins, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the 18th-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte.
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A Book for Specialists
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By: Richard Dawkins
Publisher's Summary
Joining us in the Audible Studios to discuss his latest book, Enlightenment Now, is experimental psychologist, author and Harvard professor Steven Pinker.
One of the world’s leading authorities on language and the mind, Steven Pinker is the author of highly acclaimed books such as The Better Angels of Our Nature and The Language Instinct. Winner of numerous awards for his research and books, the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist published his 10th title, Enlightenment Now, in February 2018.
Steven Pinker talks to us about his latest book, the ideas and philosophy behind Enlightenment Now and what he feels the future holds for us as a society.
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What listeners say about Steven Pinker
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- John Michael Strubhart
- 03-16-20
It's Getting Better All The Time
Pinker gives us compelling reasons to read/listen to both his and his wife's books. People should behave based on how the promotion of their own interests affect other people. First, do no harm.
1 person found this helpful
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- Joseph Mckenna
- 06-03-19
Terrific "Session" great to hear S.P.'s voice.
What a lovely value add. Helped tip me into taping the purchase button - and proved the author's point - things are so much better then we are lead, by the general tenants of journalism, to believe.
1 person found this helpful
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- John
- 05-07-19
insightful
Thank you it's always awesome to hear others perspective and thoughts from a personal view.
1 person found this helpful
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- laboris
- 11-16-18
Too short!
Yet another fantastic and informative interview but too short. One can listen to such great interviews for hours!
1 person found this helpful
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- Siouxeyes
- 09-06-18
Give an audible listen
Steven Pinker is fast becoming one of my favorite authors. He has a great understanding of our world and the people on this planet. He presents facts , ideas and in such a manner that I’m spell bound.
I’ve often found that the voice of narrators can either make or break the attention we pay . My having picked for my very first audible listen ‘Enlightenment Now’ was the best thing I could’ve chosen. I don’t believe it was coincidence but my thirst for knowledge .And something to kickstart my brain again. The interview with Steven Pinker was revealing. I look forward to hearing more from both he and his wife .
1 person found this helpful
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- Craig C.
- 11-14-21
Summary
Succinctly summarizes the book Enlightenment Now. Demonstrates that society has made tremendous progress toward the values espoused during the Enlightenment.
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- Jason
- 07-12-21
Read Pinker Immediately
One of the great minds of our time, Steven Pinker is a treasure. No one can walk away unaffected by his lucid thoughts.
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- Minus 1...
- 04-06-19
An Exercise in Myopia
First I'll cut this guy some slack, we have divergent world views and extraordinarily different life experiences.
The points he fails to make are astounding.
He states that he's a man of graphs and statistics. This interview is an example of a view of the world from atop the ivory tower of intellectualism and higher education. Mr. Pinker has a positive outlook on the world, despite the fact that he admits that a fifth or sixth of the world is at war. He says this almost flippantly as if it is a small thing that this is the case on a planet of seven billion inhabitants. I wonder how much time he's spent in the inner cities of our country, let alone investigating conditions in third world countries.
His big point is that from a humanist perspective, humanity is moving forward and progressing.
Meanwhile, untold numbers starve, are victims of horrendous crimes both in the U.S. and all over the world. Perhaps it has escaped his attention that in the last one hundred years there have been two wars that encompassed nearly the entire world. Some estimates indicate that approximately one hundred million people have been killed by their own governments during that same period of time. Progress?
I can't help but ponder the possible impact on such a perspective on the world, would be powerfully impacted after a few months abroad in several third world countries and in a few inner city environments.
Oh, the massive difference between real life experience and that of an educator, who transitions straight from graduation to college professor. (I'm not saying he did this, because I don't know, yet it is an extremely common practice.)
Come walk a mile in the shoes of others. Come and see the orphan children digging through piles of garbage for their next meal. Come and spend some time with a homicide detective in a major American city. Knock on the door of the FBI and ask to examine some of their crime statistics, especially those of the most despicable nature.
Significant and contrary statistics also exist. Information from Amnesty International alone might be weighty enough to sink this gentleman's happy sailboat.
I presume Mr. Pinker is a very nice man. I'd shake his hand and buy him lunch. No doubt the conversation would be lively. Perhaps he'd have some question marks afterward.
The two-star review was simply being kind.
2 people found this helpful
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- Shana
- 07-28-18
old white man blinders
I really don't see why we're listening to someone who's set up such a regressive task for himself, perhaps only to argue for his own continued relevance? Just because there's "progress" in the world doesn't mean that it all was due to the "enlightenment." There's lots of awful stuff that came out of the enlightenment, which he'd never discuss, of course, and there are lot of gains that we've achieved because we've had to learn to thing outside of those values. Why wouldn't he bring them up? Because they don't usually come from Europe, of course. Destroying civilization and the planet tho--we can thank his people for that.
1 person found this helpful
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- HJP
- 07-28-18
A Sharing of perspectives
Interesting snippets of his take on a range of views about where we are in today’s world, expressed with verve.