A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks

De: David Gibbins

Narrado por: Kent Klineman

The Viking warship of King Cnut the Great. Henry VIII's the Mary Rose. Captain John Franklin's doomed HMS Terror. The SS Gairsoppa, destroyed by a Nazi U-boat in the Atlantic during World War II.

Since we first set sail on the open sea, ships and their wrecks have been an inevitable part of human history. Archaeologists have made spectacular discoveries excavating these sunken ships, their protective underwater cocoon keeping evidence of past civilizations preserved. World renowned maritime archeologist David Gibbins ties together the stories of some of the most significant shipwrecks in time to form a single overarching narrative of world history.

A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks is not just the story of those ships, the people who sailed on them, and the cargo and treasure they carried, but also the story of the spread of people, religion, and ideas around the world; it is a story of colonialism, migration, and the indomitable human spirit that continues today.

Drawing on decades of experience, Gibbins reveals the riches beneath the waves and shows us how the treasures found there can be a porthole to the past that tell a new story about the world and its underwater secrets.

©2024 David Gibbins (P)2024 Tantor

Narration makes this tough to finish

I like stories of historic naval conquest and exploration. I was excited to hear stories told from the perspective of discovered wreckage. However the narrator is painful to listen to. Strange pauses and awkward pacing. I wonder if each sentence in the book has fourteen commas, because that’s how it’s read. I made it about 40% through and have to move on.

Narration

I am so interested in this subject-but the narration sound robotic! Disappointing for such a promising book.

Good content, disappointing narration

The narration sounds like AI generation. Did anyone supervise, direct, or even listen to it before publication?

Not recommend

Very difficult narrator to listen to. I had to speed up. Choppy and odd emphasis in sentences. The stories wondered from the boats to wider societal and historical descriptions.

Wish I could get a refund

The narrator was terrible. Gave up after 1 hour. The book had a good review in the Economist. Obviously, they read it rather than listened to it.

Can’t get through because of narration

Hate to pile on but the narration was very peculiar. Sounded like a plodding college professor deliberately attempting to enunciate each word so we could understand him. Anyway I couldn’t get past the third chapter which is a shame because the content seemed worthwhile.

Could not finish

I think the content is good, tends to get lost in the weeds a bit at times but overall could be fairly interesting if well narrated. However, I was not able to go on very long because of the narrator. The weird pauses finally got to me after an hour or so. Will avoid this narrator in the future

The book is ok…the reader is terrible

The reader inserts all sorts of odd pauses into his reading of each sentence. His pronunciation of technical terms and names is even worse than his odd pauses. I had to turn it off in chapter three, when I found myself shouting at the audio in my car.

Awful narration and mediocre writing

I rarely write reviews but the narration of this book was particularly awful. It's hard to imagine the book wouldn't be better served by an AI or computer generated reading than by this audio product. I had to listen at 2x speed to overcome the odd pauses, but even still the narration ruined much of the experience.

That said, the book itself is also mediocre. The writing often jumps around and is poorly structured and organized. One might imagine the shipwrecks could anchor the chapters, but for many the wrecks are tangential to the narrative. The later chapters are a bit better but don't, in my view, salvage the book overall. Save your money, credits, and time and pass on this one. There are far better history books.

Almost unlistenable

Poor narration makes this a slog. If the narrator wasn't identified by name in the title, I'd assume it was done by a mediocre AI. He appears to have only limited understanding of tone, inflection, and the general flow of the English language.