Customer Reviews

Perspectives

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I just finished listening to this book on tape, and I did not particularly enjoy it. Hugh Downs seems like a really nice guy, but I would not recommend this book to anyone.

Here are some of the topics in the book:
- hear about some "interesting" things Hugh Downs has done, such as ballooning
- long discussion on the myriad wonders of Hemp
- discussion on why vampires may have really existed
- the South Pole
- whale extinction
- the surprising properties of gold
- saving the environment
- history of underwear enhancements

Warning: The topics and perspectives skew very liberal. Also, the tapes are a sub-set of the book. Assuming he chose the "best" topics to put on the tapes, one can only guess what topics in the book were deemed to be of a lower quality than what was included on the tapes.

Mr. Downs seems fascinated with etymology of words. This come up again and again. If this is a topic of interest to you, then you might enjoy this book. He also sprinkles in odd historical facts, if you like that sort of thing. For example, the Roman numeral V comes from the shape of holding up a hand with 5 fingers.

Because this book was a series of short topics, each time a new topic started I was filled with renewed hope that it would be an interesting one. Several times I thought about giving up and throwing the remaining cassettes in the trash, but then I thought the next topic could be the winning perspective I had been waiting for. Then he would say the title of the next topic (example: "We The Iroquois"), and my hope would be dashed for another 12 minutes.