Heroes

This latest title from Paul Johnson, the conservative British journalist and historian, is a series of essays about heroic figures through the ages. Listeners would quibble with the choices in any audiobook of this type, but Johnson's idea of a hero reeks of his blue blood: His men are largely warriors and statesmen (including, appallingly, the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet) while his female examples include hostesses and sex symbols. The writing is at times unbearably pompous--he never misses an opportunity to drop names. Narrator James Adams has a formal-sounding British accent that sounds appropriate to the material, and his delivery actually manages to warm up the chilly text he's working with. That in itself is heroic. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine