Men, Machines, and Modern Times
50th Anniversary Edition
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Men, Machines, and Modern Times
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Narrated by:
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Sean Pratt
About this listen
This 50th anniversary edition of Men, Machines, and Modern Times, though ultimately concerned with a positive alternative to an Orwellian 1984, offers an entertaining series of historical accounts taken from the 19th century to highlight a main theme: the nature of technological change, the fission brought about in society by such change, and society's reaction to that change. Beginning with a remarkable illustration of resistance to innovation in the US Navy following an officer's discovery of a more accurate way to fire a gun at sea, Elting Morison goes on to narrate the strange history of the new model steamship, the Wapanoag, in the 1860s. He then continues with the difficulties confronting the introduction of the pasteurization process for milk; he traces the development of the Bessemer process; and finally he considers the computer. While the discussions are liberally sprinkled with amusing examples and anecdotes, all are related to the more profound and current problem of how to organize and manage system of ideas, energies, and machinery so that it will conform to the human dimension.
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3
In 1776 Thomas Jefferson, a future president, authored the most explosive document in the history of America: "The Declaration of Independence", formally severing the link between America and the British state. Michael Hardt, co-author of the groundbreaking "Empire and Multitude", examines this and other texts by Jefferson, arguing that his powerful concept of democracy is, seen through contemporary eyes, a biting critique of the current American administration's tyranny.
By: Thomas Jefferson, and others
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Future Shock
- By: Alvin Toffler
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 16 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
Future Shock is about the present. Future Shock is about what is happening today to people and groups who are overwhelmed by change. Change affects our products, communities, organizations - even our patterns of friendship and love. Future Shock vividly describes the emerging global civilization: tomorrow's family life, the rise of new businesses, subcultures, lifestyles, and human relationships - all of them temporary. It illuminates the world of tomorrow by exploding countless cliches about today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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So Accurate
- By Peter Gracia on 03-31-19
By: Alvin Toffler
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Principles of Scientific Management
- By: Frederick Winslow Taylor
- Narrated by: Trevor Bond
- Length: 3 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) is a monograph published by Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), a manufacturing manager, mechanical engineer, and management consultant. This work laid out Taylor's views on the principles of scientific management, or industrial-era organization and decision theory. The term scientific management refers to coordinating the enterprise for everyone's benefit including increased wages for laborers, often referred to as Taylor's Principles, or Taylorism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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So this is what the old guys talk about.
- By Raymond Bing on 02-14-24
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The Most Powerful Idea in the World
- A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention
- By: William Rosen
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 193
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 145
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 144
Award-winning author William Rosen tells the story of the men responsible for the Industrial Revolution and the machine that drove it: the steam engine.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Revelation about a Revolution
- By Roy on 08-01-10
By: William Rosen
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His Master's Voice
- By: Stanislaw Lem
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 181
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Story4 out of 5 stars 148
A witty and inventive satire of "men of science" and their thinking, as a team of scientists races to decode a mysterious message from space. "I had the feeling that I was standing at the cradle of a new mythology. A last will and testament...we as the posthumous heirs of Them...."
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excelent and entertaining
- By Jakub on 01-10-12
By: Stanislaw Lem
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You Belong to the Universe
- Buckminster Fuller and the Future
- By: Jonathon Keats
- Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 347
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 292
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Story4 out of 5 stars 289
A self-professed "comprehensive anticipatory design scientist", the inventor Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was undoubtedly a visionary. Fuller's creations often bordered on the realm of science fiction, ranging from the freestanding geodesic dome to the three-wheel Dymaxion car to a bathroom requiring neither plumbing nor sewage. Yet in spite of his brilliant mind and lifelong devotion to serving mankind, Fuller's expansive ideas were often dismissed, and have faded from public memory since his death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bucky, Bucky, Bucky
- By Amazon Customer on 08-25-18
By: Jonathon Keats
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The Landscape of History
- How Historians Map the Past
- By: John Lewis Gaddis
- Narrated by: Jack Chekijian
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 104
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 89
What is history, and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Book!
- By Billy on 09-15-18
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On Anarchism
- By: Noam Chomsky, Nathan Schneider - introduction
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 712
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 607
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 597
On Anarchism provides the reasoning behind Noam Chomsky's fearless lifelong questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. In these essays, Chomsky redeems one of the most maligned ideologies, anarchism, and places it at the foundation of his political thinking. Chomsky's anarchism is distinctly optimistic and egalitarian. Moreover, it is a living, evolving tradition that is situated in a historical lineage; Chomsky's anarchism emphasizes the power of collective, rather than individualist, action.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Hit and Miss
- By Jacob King on 06-18-14
By: Noam Chomsky, and others
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The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
- Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor
- By: David S. Landes
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 21 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is David S. Landes' acclaimed, best-selling exploration of one of the most contentious and hotly debated questions of our time: Why do some nations achieve economic success while others remain mired in poverty? The answer, as Landes definitively illustrates, is a complex interplay of cultural mores and historical circumstance.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A detailed explanation
- By Kaarlis on 12-07-21
By: David S. Landes
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Complexity
- The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
- By: M. Mitchell Waldrop
- Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 298
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 257
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 256
In a rarified world of scientific research, a revolution has been brewing. Its activists are not anarchists, but rather Nobel Laureates in physics and economics and pony-tailed graduates, mathematicians, and computer scientists from all over the world. They have formed an iconoclastic think-tank and their radical idea is to create a new science: complexity. They want to know how a primordial soup of simple molecules managed to turn itself into the first living cell--and what the origin of life some four billion years ago can tell us about the process of technological innovation today.
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1 out of 5 stars
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You won't learn anything you didn't know
- By Dennis E. Alwine on 12-26-20
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Practicing History
- Selected Essays
- By: Barbara W. Tuchman
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 121
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 104
Master historian Barbara W. Tuchman looks at history in a unique way and draws lessons from what she sees. This accessible introduction to the subject of history offers striking insights into America's past and present, trenchant observations on the international scene, and thoughtful pieces on the historian's role. Here is a splendid body of work, the story of a lifetime spent "practicing history".
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2 out of 5 stars
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Barbara Tuchman fan faced with reality
- By J. Whittle on 09-27-18
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Experience and Education
- By: John Dewey
- Narrated by: Gary L Willprecht
- Length: 2 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 137
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 106
Experience and Education is the best concise statement on education ever published by John Dewey, the man acknowledged to be the pre-eminent educational theorist of the twentieth century. Written more than two decades after Democracy and Education (Dewey's most comprehensive statement of his position in educational philosophy), this book demonstrates how Dewey reformulated his ideas....
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great book, but too dense for audio version.
- By Jonathan Homrighausen on 08-06-13
By: John Dewey
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Knowing What We Know
- The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 142
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 111
From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?
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3 out of 5 stars
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Colorful anecdotes but tiring after a while.
- By reader on 05-03-23
By: Simon Winchester
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Losing Military Supremacy
- The Myopia of American Strategic Planning
- By: Andrei Martyanov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 213
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 190
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Story4 out of 5 stars 190
This book explores the dramatic difference between the Russian and US approach to warfare, which manifests itself across the whole spectrum of activities from art and the economy to the respective national cultures; illustrates the fact that Russian economic, military, and cultural realities and power are no longer what American "elites" think they are by addressing Russia's new and elevated capacities in the areas of traditional warfare, as well as cyberwarfare and space; and studies several ways in-depth in which the US can simply stumble into conflict with Russia and what must be done to avoid it.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Mixes Truth with Propoganda
- By Gavin on 02-08-21
By: Andrei Martyanov
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The Metaphysical Club
- By: Louis Menand
- Narrated by: Henry Leyva
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 304
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 167
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Story4 out of 5 stars 163
Hardly a club in the conventional sense, the organization referred to in the title of this superb literary hybrid (part history, part biography, part philosophy) consisted of four members and probably existed for less than nine months.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Great American Experiment
- By Victoria on 12-08-03
By: Louis Menand
What listeners say about Men, Machines, and Modern Times
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Firepigeon69
- 10-08-24
Relevance
Regardless of the passage of time the true inner elements that make us all human will speak to all generations forever.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jordan Schneider
- 03-06-21
What a masterwork
10/10 beautiful writing perfect length fantastic examples from history would recommend to anyone interested in history of innovation/ military
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