Customer Reviews

Riding the Waves: A Life in Sound, Science, and Industry

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Leo Beranek's book is fascinating and well written. Once I started it I couldn't put it down. From his humble mid west beginning Leo rose to leadership roles in academics, as an inventor, industrialist, acoustical designer, philanthropist and head of major institutions. When one reads "RIDING THE WAVES, A Life in Sound, Science and Industry" they are reading about a true renaissance man who has realized the American dream.

Nancy Sonnabend, Boston, MA Author, Inventor

Leo Beranek had a very interesting life and a fascinating story. It seems this work has been well-reviewed on the basis of his ground-breaking accomplishments. However his self-absorption is overwhelmingly evident. Regrettably, his all-about-me delivery is ultimately tedious, repetitive, and disappointing. My copy will be donated.

This book describes much of Leo Beranek's life (he continutes to contribute in his mid 90s)from his own point of view. It is particularly suggested for young people on the brink of a life in science, engineering or business. Beranek has had a sufficiently rich life in any one of these domains to satisfy most people. But, his crafty mid-western take on all three domains makes his story very special. He and his various activities has contributed to the lives of a great number of people. Most of these people know not his name or even his disciplines.

Later, others will write histories of some of the events about which Leo Beranek has written. Their outlooks will be different. Doubtless some will find some of what he did not to their liking. However, one gets the idea that at each turn in his life Beranek did not only what would be best for society and for his family. This is the sort of story Americans could read more often.

Leo Beranek is one of the most accomplished people I have ever known. His memoir is easy to read and very interesting.

Leo Beranek is an estimable man, really a Renaissance man, as a previous reviewer wrote. And his autobiography is well-written and illustrated with a good collection of photos.

My problem with the book is that I just don't think it's very interesting. I have a way of measuring this: Typically, when I buy a book, I make notes of interesting, amusing, and/or outrageous items and their page numbers as I read, so I can find them again later. For example, with the autobiography "Bird of Passage" by physicist Rudolf Peierls, perhaps 50% longer than the Beranek book, I have a dozen such notes. Similarly, my copy of James Gleick's biography "Genius" of Feynman was the source for many such items. But nothing in Beranek's book struck me as noteworthy in this sense -- there's really nothing in it that I want to read again or share with others. So "Riding the Waves" yielded none of my usual notes.

One topic consumes a fair fraction of the book: Beranek's work with a group of other Bostonians to become the operators of Boston's Channel 5 television station. The book provides a real play-by-play on this excruciating process, which took many years. All the highlights and lowlights of the group's morale are covered. Left out is discussion in any depth of why a bunch of smart, well-off people would go through all this for the privilege of owning a **television station**. Either they wanted to do this for the benefit of the larger public (in which case, Beranek should have written more than a few hand-waving details about what they accomplished with the station, once his group achieved control) or they simply looked at it as a good financial investment (in which case it's not an interesting topic in the slightest).