THE CASE FOR BOOKS Past, Present, and Future

Each chapter of this work comes from an essay the author wrote for the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS. Every section introduces loads of information, but the resultant lack of continuity from one to another and the many redundancies prove annoying. The largest ax Darnton grinds is the monopoly Google has gained to digitize all the world's written information. Aside from the pitfalls of digitization the author enumerates, Google pays nothing and plans to sell the access for a profit. Narrator David Henry brings little to the reading. He struggles painfully with the French and German and seems to run an unnecessary race to the finish. His rendition of the occasional poetry ineptly conceals that it is just that. Can we forgive this essayist for never mentioning audiobooks? J.A.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: AUGUST 2010]