Books on CD Review

I finally fnished a batch of Books on CD. Let me know if you want to borrow any of them.

Social Intelligence: (A-) This is really good, similar to Stumbling upon Happiness it is more psychology and anatomy than most things I read. It talks a lot about how our brains were made to interact with others (unlike most animals). They discuss the importance of pre communication with babies on their development. The time in which they can't talk or even jesture their needs but can interact with their parents on a brain to brain level. They also discuss how we create tons of connections in our brains as we learn things but as we get older and have many many connections our brain starts to sacrafice certain connections to keep the ones we use more often. They say this explains why it is so hard for an adult to learn a new language and easy for children.
I wish I hadn't gotten the abridged version of this but I wasn't sure if I'd like it.

Status Anxiety: (Book on CD: C+, PBS special: A*) This has been driving me crazy for a while. This is a 120 min BBC special. It was on PBS in september. I watched it and it was really good, it talks about how freedom in america causes the side effect of not being happy. Because no matter how much you achieve, the oppotunity to go from poor to mega rich will always make you feel like you are underachieving. It was a great show w/ even talk of a French man who came to the US in 1815 or so and predicted this side effect.
The main problem is, I said this was a 120 min BBC special, *PBS only played the first hour and it ended with "now I will tell you how this affects our modern life at home and in the work place" and it ended. So I bought the book on CD which was not as good. A lot of great history but the author himself makes the PBS special very interesting. But for the book on CD they hired an award winning BBC voice and he is terrible. It comes out more like dramatic reading than a discussion.

The World is Flat: (First Half: C-, Second Half: B+) I had heard a lot about this so I got the unabridged version. 22 CDs and maybe 6 weeks of commute time to work. The first 12 or 13 CDs are interesting but not very insightful. Surprise, India and China are coming on strong with outsourcing! Who knew, so lets discuss this for 13 CDs. Not really that bad but it feels like it. The second half gets better with a look at the Dell computer supply chain etc. And he has some theories on how interconnected global economies makes the cost of war too great for modern day countries. He has the McDonald's theory from "The Lexus and the Olvie Tree" Dale has been reading. No countries whose middle class is adavcned enough to support having McDonald's has ever been at was with another country who has McDonald's. His Dell theory he says is even stronger. Any Asian county or anyone in the Dell supply chain won't go to war because the risk of being removed from dell's supply chain is too great.
He also looks at how terrorists are created by Islamic radicals. He says a lot of times it is educated people who leave the middle east only to see how much farther advanced the west is beyond the middle east. They feel humiliated because their belief is that they are the chosen ones. They also do not fit into the western values and use the internet to stay connected to the middle east and their beliefs. Terrorist leaders pray on their frustration and convince they they should become terrorists.

Next on the list:
Made to Stick