Ronald A. (rarendt) reviewed on 6/1/2013 + 107 more book reviews

I was very disappointed in this audio book. I bought it expecting a performance by Carlin. Though I find him less and less amusing as the years go by, I thought it might be interesting to see what he had to say at the end of his life. What I got was a sort of biography put together by Tony Hendra using notes, recordings, and recollections collected over several years with which he was supposed to help Carlin write an autobiography. The book is read by Carlin's brother, Patrick.

Summing it all up, Carlin seems to have had a very high opinion of himself, and a very low opinion of nearly everyone else except people who shared his political views 100%.

I was born a year after Carlin, so we shared many of the same experiences, including time in the Air Force - although Carlin goofed off for whatever time the Air Force put up with him, and I made a 21 year career of it.

Since we were about the same age, we were exposed to many of the same events in the history of the last seventy years (WW2, Korea, Vietnam, rock and roll, the sexual revolution, flower children, etc.), and the same political leaders (FDR, HST, Ike, JFK, MLK, RFK, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and the Bushes) we certainly reacted differently to them. Over the years he became a radical liberal, while I became a moderate conservative.

I was so disgusted with the entire presentation that under normal circumstances I would have quit listening after the first cd; as it happens, I was driving from Texas to Wisconsin, and listened to a lot of it on the Kansas Turnpike, not the world's most scenic stretch of highway. I turned it off twice, vowing to listen to some music instead, but got so sleepy I turned it back on. It annoyed me enough to kept me awake for many miles. Thanks, George.

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