Audiobooks are a very intimate media, and the wrong voice can really put off the experience. With training I think he could do it, but to just give a public speaker the task of narrating a book he/she wrote without such training is usually a recipe for disaster.
If you don't mind my asking, when people want to do their own reading and are willing to get training, how are they trained?
I ask because (like every geek) I sometimes think about doing a podcast some day, plus I just want to be a better public speaker, and there seems to be a lack of options between free/cheap resources focused on basic skills (like Toastmasters) and intensive training for people who want to do voiceover for a living.
Then I listened to Leonard Mlodinow's "The Upright Thinkers"; Oh god. Euclid's Window by Mlodinow was absolutely fantastic, and it was narrated by the slightly pompous-sounding -- but fitting -- Robert Blumenfield. Leonard had a somewhat slow, drawling voice, and he often stumbled over words. This was pretty disappointing because he seems like such a smart dude. He just shouldn't narrate his own books :)
That's a very interesting aside. I could see how a non-professional narrator would struggle with the demands of the process. Would it not still have made sense for someone like Mr. Reich from a personal branding point of view? He is, after all, a somewhat well-known public figure and paid public speaker.