A Mysterious Country
The Grace and Fragility of American Democracy
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $18.19
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Lloyd Floyd
-
By:
-
Norman Mailer
About this listen
Published on the centenary of Norman Mailer’s birth, a timely and urgent call to preserve our democracy
From his bestselling first novel, The Naked and the Dead, to his last work, American democracy was a lifelong project for Norman Mailer. It was his grand theme. Nearly all of his books touched on the pros and cons, the strengths and weaknesses, the grace (to use his word) and fragility of the American experiment as well as the threats to it—from autocratic leaders and a complacent citizenry, from violent protest and radical conservative assaults on it, from “soft fascism” and the ills of racism and poverty. In the sharp and impassioned language of a political Cassandra and with the eye of a novelist and journalist, he explored the underlying psychological, social, and economic causes of the country’s fragile polity and offered urgent prescriptions for its reinvigoration.
A Mysterious Country is a carefully selected collection of Mailer’s most incisive—and sometimes remarkably prophetic—commentary on American democracy and what must be done to safeguard it. The anthology draws on both published and unpublished sources, from Mailer’s great works of narrative nonfiction and novels as well as essays, interviews, letters, speeches, and talk show appearances. It includes pungent remarks on every president from FDR through George W. Bush, as well as correspondence with several. Throughout, what shines through is Mailer’s passion for our democratic project—as well as the freedom that comes with it—and a keen awareness of its potential for failure, its virtues, and what is required of us to keep it intact.
©2023 Norman Mailer Enterprises, LLC (P)2023 Skyhorse AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Oswald's Tale
- An American Mystery
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 29 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In perhaps his most important literary feat, Norman Mailer fashions an unprecedented portrait of one of the great villains - and enigmas - in United States history. Here is Lee Harvey Oswald - his family background, troubled marriage, controversial journey to Russia, and return to an "America [waiting] for him like an angry relative whose eyes glare in the heat."
-
-
Outstanding
- By night owl on 04-21-17
By: Norman Mailer
-
An American Dream
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Stephen Rojack, a decorated war hero and former congressman who murders his wife in a fashionable New York City high-rise, runs amok through the city in which he was once a privileged citizen, author Norman Mailer peels away the layers of our social norms to reveal a world of pure appetite and relentless cruelty. One part Nietzsche, one part de Sade, and one part Charlie Parker, An American Dream grabs the listener by the throat and refuses to let go.
-
-
Mailers Immodest masterpiece
- By W C Woods on 07-02-20
By: Norman Mailer
-
The Armies of the Night
- History as a Novel, the Novel as History
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Armies of the Night chronicles the famed October 1967 March on the Pentagon, in which all of the old and new Left - hippies, yuppies, Weathermen, Quakers, Christians, feminists, and intellectuals - came together to protest the Vietnam War. Alongside his contemporaries, Mailer went, witnessed, participated, suffered, and then wrote one of the most stark and intelligent appraisals of the 1960s.
-
-
The last tool left to history
- By Darwin8u on 02-06-19
By: Norman Mailer
-
The Executioner's Song
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Maxwell Hamilton
- Length: 42 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning and unforgettable classic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore now in audio. Arguably the greatest book from America's most heroically ambitious writer, The Executioner's Song follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death.
-
-
Pulitzer-winner spoiled by numskulled narration
- By W Perry Hall on 05-21-18
By: Norman Mailer
-
The Naked and the Dead
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: John Buffalo Mailer
- Length: 26 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.
-
-
John Buffalo Mailer narrates his father's book
- By J. Larson on 08-11-16
By: Norman Mailer
-
Harlot's Ghost
- A Novel
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 48 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With unprecedented scope and consummate skill, Norman Mailer unfolds a rich and riveting epic of an American spy. Harry Hubbard is the son and godson of CIA legends. His journey to learn the secrets of his society - and his own past - takes him through the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the "momentous catastrophe" of the Kennedy assassination. All the while, Hubbard is haunted by women who were loved by both his godfather and President Kennedy.
-
-
Timely & Terrific
- By Gingoldj on 05-26-17
By: Norman Mailer
-
Oswald's Tale
- An American Mystery
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 29 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In perhaps his most important literary feat, Norman Mailer fashions an unprecedented portrait of one of the great villains - and enigmas - in United States history. Here is Lee Harvey Oswald - his family background, troubled marriage, controversial journey to Russia, and return to an "America [waiting] for him like an angry relative whose eyes glare in the heat."
-
-
Outstanding
- By night owl on 04-21-17
By: Norman Mailer
-
An American Dream
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Stephen Rojack, a decorated war hero and former congressman who murders his wife in a fashionable New York City high-rise, runs amok through the city in which he was once a privileged citizen, author Norman Mailer peels away the layers of our social norms to reveal a world of pure appetite and relentless cruelty. One part Nietzsche, one part de Sade, and one part Charlie Parker, An American Dream grabs the listener by the throat and refuses to let go.
-
-
Mailers Immodest masterpiece
- By W C Woods on 07-02-20
By: Norman Mailer
-
The Armies of the Night
- History as a Novel, the Novel as History
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Armies of the Night chronicles the famed October 1967 March on the Pentagon, in which all of the old and new Left - hippies, yuppies, Weathermen, Quakers, Christians, feminists, and intellectuals - came together to protest the Vietnam War. Alongside his contemporaries, Mailer went, witnessed, participated, suffered, and then wrote one of the most stark and intelligent appraisals of the 1960s.
-
-
The last tool left to history
- By Darwin8u on 02-06-19
By: Norman Mailer
-
The Executioner's Song
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Maxwell Hamilton
- Length: 42 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning and unforgettable classic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore now in audio. Arguably the greatest book from America's most heroically ambitious writer, The Executioner's Song follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death.
-
-
Pulitzer-winner spoiled by numskulled narration
- By W Perry Hall on 05-21-18
By: Norman Mailer
-
The Naked and the Dead
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: John Buffalo Mailer
- Length: 26 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.
-
-
John Buffalo Mailer narrates his father's book
- By J. Larson on 08-11-16
By: Norman Mailer
-
Harlot's Ghost
- A Novel
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 48 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With unprecedented scope and consummate skill, Norman Mailer unfolds a rich and riveting epic of an American spy. Harry Hubbard is the son and godson of CIA legends. His journey to learn the secrets of his society - and his own past - takes him through the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the "momentous catastrophe" of the Kennedy assassination. All the while, Hubbard is haunted by women who were loved by both his godfather and President Kennedy.
-
-
Timely & Terrific
- By Gingoldj on 05-26-17
By: Norman Mailer
-
Of a Fire on the Moon
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 17 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For many, the moon landing was the defining event of the twentieth century. So it seems only fitting that Norman Mailer - the literary provocateur who altered the landscape of American nonfiction - wrote the most wide-ranging, far-seeing chronicle of the Apollo 11 mission. A classic chronicle of America's reach for greatness in the midst of the Cold War, Of a Fire on the Moon compiles the reportage Mailer published between 1969 and 1970 in Life magazine
-
-
wild view tying themes of gopd and evil
- By Jim Wilder on 06-24-19
By: Norman Mailer
-
1491
- New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus' landing had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago; existed mainly in small nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas were, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last 30 years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.
-
-
Exposes Non-Academic Audience to The Debate Between Ideas of Pre-Colombian America's
- By Christopher on 01-19-17
By: Charles C. Mann
-
Evicted
- Poverty and Profit in the American City
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.
-
-
Former Property Manager
- By Charla on 05-18-16
By: Matthew Desmond
-
The Undertow
- Scenes from a Slow Civil War
- By: Jeff Sharlet
- Narrated by: Jeff Sharlet
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.
-
-
I'm just not feeling this one....
- By J. Richmond on 08-04-23
By: Jeff Sharlet
-
Bleak House
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett, Teresa Gallagher
- Length: 35 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A complex plot of love and inheritance is set against the English legal system of the mid-19th century. As the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce drags on, it becomes an obsession to everyone involved. And the issue on an inheritance ultimately becomes a question of murder.
-
-
WONDERFUL NARRATIONS!
- By KT on 08-25-11
By: Charles Dickens
-
Tracers in the Dark
- The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency
- By: Andy Greenberg
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over the last decade, a single innovation has massively fueled digital black markets: cryptocurrency. Crime lords inhabiting lawless corners of the internet have operated more freely—whether in drug dealing, money laundering, or human trafficking—than their analog counterparts could have ever dreamed of. By transacting not in dollars or pounds but in currencies with anonymous ledgers, overseen by no government, beholden to no bankers, these black marketeers have sought to rob law enforcement of their chief method of cracking down on illicit finance: following the money.
-
-
Could not put this down
- By Mike Reaves on 01-28-23
By: Andy Greenberg
-
Begin Again
- James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
- By: Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
- Narrated by: Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Begin Again is one of the great books on James Baldwin and a powerful reckoning with America’s ongoing failure to confront the lies it tells itself about race. Just as in Baldwin’s “after times,” argues Eddie S. Glaude Jr., when white Americans met the civil rights movement’s call for truth and justice with blind rage and the murders of movement leaders, so in our moment were the Obama presidency and the birth of Black Lives Matter answered with the ascendance of Trump and the violent resurgence of white nationalism.
-
-
I Understand.
- By Carrie Johnson on 07-01-20
-
The Radical King
- By: Cornel West - editor, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- Narrated by: LeVar Burton, Gabourey Sidibe, Cornel West, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wanda Sykes, LeVar Burton, Leslie Odom, Jr., and Gabourey Sidibe head a cast of beloved actors performing 23 selections from the speeches, sermons, and essays of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—many never recorded during his lifetime. For the first time, teachers, students, and thoughtful listeners can hear dramatic interpretations of Dr. King’s words, chosen and introduced by Cornel West.
-
-
Not the best MLK audiobook
- By Nathan White on 02-07-19
By: Cornel West - editor, and others
-
Don't Burn This Book
- Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason
- By: Dave Rubin
- Narrated by: Dave Rubin
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dave Rubin launched his political talk show The Rubin Report in 2015 as a meeting ground for free thinkers who realize that partisan politics is a dead end. He hosts people he both agrees and disagrees with - including those who have been dismissed, deplatformed, and despised - taking on the most controversial issues of our day. As a result, he’s become a voice of reason in a time of madness. Now, Rubin gives you the tools you need to think for yourself in an age when tribal outrage is the only available alternative.
-
-
Poorly written, wrong on facts, poor content.
- By quintus on 05-01-20
By: Dave Rubin
-
American Midnight
- The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis
- By: Adam Hochschild
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From legendary historian Adam Hochschild, a groundbreaking reassessment of the overlooked but startlingly resonant period between World War I and the Roaring Twenties, when the foundations of American democracy were threated by war, pandemic, and violence fueled by battles over race, immigration, and the rights of labor
-
-
Disturbing yet Reassuring
- By Sams95 on 11-18-22
By: Adam Hochschild
-
The Soul of America
- The Battle for Our Better Angels
- By: Jon Meacham
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Jon Meacham
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and LBJ, and illuminating the courage of influential citizen activists and civil rights pioneers, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. Each of these dramatic hours have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back.
-
-
Thanks! I needed this!
- By Kindle Customer on 05-29-18
By: Jon Meacham
-
His Truth Is Marching On
- John Lewis and the Power of Hope
- By: Jon Meacham, John Lewis - afterword
- Narrated by: JD Jackson, Jon Meacham
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime US congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of America.
-
-
Absolutely remarkable!
- By Janie on 08-30-20
By: Jon Meacham, and others
Critic reviews
“This impressive volume comes at a crucial time for the United States where democracy is threatened by a looming fascism fueled by runaway capitalism and ubiquitous digital technologies. A Mysterious Country shows the breadth and nuance of Mailer’s political thought that might even be more timely today than in the twentieth century. Smartly curated and significant, it is not only for students of Mailer but for those who seek a critical and granular understanding of the soul of the United States. A Mysterious Country is a must-read.”—G. R. Lucas, PhD, Professor of English, Middle Georgia State University, coeditor, Norman Mailer: Works and Days
“Norman Mailer’s nearly lifelong preoccupation with the fear that American democracy could be displaced by fascism is on full display in this outstanding book. Anyone who wants to understand the present crisis of America should read this superb collection of his insights.”—Robert S. McElvaine, author of The Times They Were a-Changin’: 1964, the Year the Sixties Arrived and the Battle Lines of Today Were Drawn
"In this anthology, Norman Mailer reminds us of what a great writer he was—and many other things. He was a contrarian historian of our times, endlessly curious, as well as a psychic eye of a cyclops monster, ready to say the most outrageous things to provoke our thinking, a formidable debater and opponent who made even neutral folk want to fight him. Mailer was a conscience for this country, a fearless gunslinger of our national psyche. At the very least, although he may infuriate you and make you angry, at other times, he will enlighten you. His is a new way of seeing. What more can a writer give us?”—Oliver Stone
Related to this topic
-
Rules for Radical Conservatives
- Beating the Left at Its Own Game to Take Back America
- By: David Kahane
- Narrated by: John Allen Nelson
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The vast right wing conspiracy has found its General Patton, and his name is David Kahane. Kahane's pseudonymous, satiric column for National Review Online, lampooning the Left via his Hollywood-radical persona - Stephen Colbert's liberal doppelganger - is must-listening for political aficionados of all stripes. Now, from the inside, Kahane proudly exposes the secret and not-so-secret winning strategies (and vulnerabilities) of the Left.
-
-
Disappointed
- By Henry W. Baker on 05-30-16
By: David Kahane
-
Beautiful Country Burn Again
- Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution
- By: Ben Fountain
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beautiful Country Burn Again narrates a shocking year in American politics, moving from the early days of the Iowa Caucus to the crystalizing moments of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and culminating in the aftershocks of the weeks following election night. Along the way, Fountain probes deeply into history, illuminating the forces and watershed moments of the past that mirror and precipitated the present, from the hollowed-out notion of the American Dream, to Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy, to the cult of celebrity that gave rise to Donald Trump.
-
-
Must read
- By Gerald Moore on 11-01-18
By: Ben Fountain
-
The Soul of America
- The Battle for Our Better Angels
- By: Jon Meacham
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Jon Meacham
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and LBJ, and illuminating the courage of influential citizen activists and civil rights pioneers, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. Each of these dramatic hours have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back.
-
-
Thanks! I needed this!
- By Kindle Customer on 05-29-18
By: Jon Meacham
-
The Armies of the Night
- History as a Novel, the Novel as History
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Armies of the Night chronicles the famed October 1967 March on the Pentagon, in which all of the old and new Left - hippies, yuppies, Weathermen, Quakers, Christians, feminists, and intellectuals - came together to protest the Vietnam War. Alongside his contemporaries, Mailer went, witnessed, participated, suffered, and then wrote one of the most stark and intelligent appraisals of the 1960s.
-
-
The last tool left to history
- By Darwin8u on 02-06-19
By: Norman Mailer
-
The Time of Our Lives
- Collected Writings
- By: Peggy Noonan
- Narrated by: Betsy Foldes Meiman, Rena-Marie Villano, Peggy Noonan
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peggy Noonan is one of the most brilliant and influential political thinkers and writers of our time. The author of five best-selling books ( What I Saw at the Revolution is now a classic), her column in The Wall Street Journal is a must-read for millions of Americans. Witty, incisive, and always original, Peggy Noonan is a conservative intellectual with wide-reaching appeal across the political spectrum. Now, for the first time, the best of Noonan's writing will be collected in one indispensable volume.
-
-
Ronald Reagan is God. Who knew?
- By Rick on 11-20-15
By: Peggy Noonan
-
The Fire Is upon Us
- James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America
- By: Nicholas Buccola
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On February 18, 1965, an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. The topic was "the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro", and no one who has seen the debate can soon forget it. Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is upon Us is the first book to tell the full story of the event.
-
-
Sadly, the story is timeless.
- By Edward P. Cerne on 01-17-20
By: Nicholas Buccola
-
Rules for Radical Conservatives
- Beating the Left at Its Own Game to Take Back America
- By: David Kahane
- Narrated by: John Allen Nelson
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The vast right wing conspiracy has found its General Patton, and his name is David Kahane. Kahane's pseudonymous, satiric column for National Review Online, lampooning the Left via his Hollywood-radical persona - Stephen Colbert's liberal doppelganger - is must-listening for political aficionados of all stripes. Now, from the inside, Kahane proudly exposes the secret and not-so-secret winning strategies (and vulnerabilities) of the Left.
-
-
Disappointed
- By Henry W. Baker on 05-30-16
By: David Kahane
-
Beautiful Country Burn Again
- Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution
- By: Ben Fountain
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beautiful Country Burn Again narrates a shocking year in American politics, moving from the early days of the Iowa Caucus to the crystalizing moments of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and culminating in the aftershocks of the weeks following election night. Along the way, Fountain probes deeply into history, illuminating the forces and watershed moments of the past that mirror and precipitated the present, from the hollowed-out notion of the American Dream, to Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy, to the cult of celebrity that gave rise to Donald Trump.
-
-
Must read
- By Gerald Moore on 11-01-18
By: Ben Fountain
-
The Soul of America
- The Battle for Our Better Angels
- By: Jon Meacham
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Jon Meacham
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and LBJ, and illuminating the courage of influential citizen activists and civil rights pioneers, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. Each of these dramatic hours have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back.
-
-
Thanks! I needed this!
- By Kindle Customer on 05-29-18
By: Jon Meacham
-
The Armies of the Night
- History as a Novel, the Novel as History
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Armies of the Night chronicles the famed October 1967 March on the Pentagon, in which all of the old and new Left - hippies, yuppies, Weathermen, Quakers, Christians, feminists, and intellectuals - came together to protest the Vietnam War. Alongside his contemporaries, Mailer went, witnessed, participated, suffered, and then wrote one of the most stark and intelligent appraisals of the 1960s.
-
-
The last tool left to history
- By Darwin8u on 02-06-19
By: Norman Mailer
-
The Time of Our Lives
- Collected Writings
- By: Peggy Noonan
- Narrated by: Betsy Foldes Meiman, Rena-Marie Villano, Peggy Noonan
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peggy Noonan is one of the most brilliant and influential political thinkers and writers of our time. The author of five best-selling books ( What I Saw at the Revolution is now a classic), her column in The Wall Street Journal is a must-read for millions of Americans. Witty, incisive, and always original, Peggy Noonan is a conservative intellectual with wide-reaching appeal across the political spectrum. Now, for the first time, the best of Noonan's writing will be collected in one indispensable volume.
-
-
Ronald Reagan is God. Who knew?
- By Rick on 11-20-15
By: Peggy Noonan
-
The Fire Is upon Us
- James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America
- By: Nicholas Buccola
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On February 18, 1965, an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. The topic was "the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro", and no one who has seen the debate can soon forget it. Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is upon Us is the first book to tell the full story of the event.
-
-
Sadly, the story is timeless.
- By Edward P. Cerne on 01-17-20
By: Nicholas Buccola
-
Young Radicals
- In the War for American Ideals
- By: Jeremy McCarter
- Narrated by: Jeremy McCarter
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Where do we find our ideals? What does it mean to live for them - and to risk dying for them? For Americans during World War I, these weren't abstract questions. Young Radicals tells the story of five activists, intellectuals, and troublemakers who agitated for freedom and equality in the hopeful years before the war, then fought to defend those values in a country pitching into violence and chaos.
By: Jeremy McCarter
-
Learning from the Germans
- Race and the Memory of Evil
- By: Susan Neiman
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 20 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights-era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin.
-
-
This is an important book.
- By Amazon Customer on 05-29-20
By: Susan Neiman
-
No Name in the Street
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This stunningly personal document and extraordinary history of the turbulent '60s and early '70s displays James Baldwin's fury and despair more deeply than any of his other works. In vivid detail he remembers the Harlem childhood that shaped his early consciousness, the later events that scored his heart with pain - the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his return to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.
-
-
A strange and terrible vehicle
- By Darwin8u on 02-07-20
By: James Baldwin
-
Wake Up
- Why the world has gone nuts
- By: Piers Morgan
- Narrated by: Piers Morgan
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 2020, the world faced its biggest crisis in a generation: a global pandemic. In the UK, it exposed deep divisions within society and laid bare a toxic culture war that had been raging beneath the surface. From the outset, Piers Morgan urged the nation to come to its senses, once and for all, and held the government to often ferocious account over its handling of the crisis. COVID-19 shed shocking light on the problems that plague our country. Stockpilers and lockdown-cheats revealed our grotesque levels of self-interest.
-
-
Another victim of COVID-19
- By Travis M. Erickson on 10-27-20
By: Piers Morgan
-
Notes of a Native Son
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of Black life and Black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era.
-
-
Masterful Essayist
- By Andre on 09-30-16
By: James Baldwin
-
The Republic of Imagination
- America in Three Books
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination.
-
-
Love
- By Rebecca on 05-29-16
By: Azar Nafisi
-
What Truth Sounds Like
- Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America
- By: Michael Eric Dyson
- Narrated by: Michael Eric Dyson
- Length: 6 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook exists at the tense intersection of the conflict between politics and prophecy - of whether we embrace political resolution or moral redemption to fix our fractured racial landscape.
-
-
Riffing on a meeting with RFK and James Baldwin
- By Adam Shields on 06-08-18
-
Stop Mass Hysteria
- America's Insanity from the Salem Witch Trials to the Trump Witch Hunt
- By: Michael Savage
- Narrated by: Barry Baer
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his new audiobook, Stop Mass Hysteria, number one New York Times best-selling author Michael Savage calls out the mass hysteria mongers and their methods and shows Americans that we must look to history to understand the present and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
-
-
Common sense in a country that is trying not to
- By Mike on 10-09-18
By: Michael Savage
-
His Truth Is Marching On
- John Lewis and the Power of Hope
- By: Jon Meacham, John Lewis - afterword
- Narrated by: JD Jackson, Jon Meacham
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime US congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of America.
-
-
Absolutely remarkable!
- By Janie on 08-30-20
By: Jon Meacham, and others
-
Fascism
- A Warning
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of the 1980s, when the Cold War ended, many, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, believed that democracy had triumphed politically once and for all. Yet nearly 30 years later, the direction of history no longer seems certain. A repressive and destructive force has begun to reemerge on the global stage - sweeping across Europe, parts of Asia, and the United States - that to Albright, looks very much like fascism.
-
-
Warning!
- By JAL on 04-19-18
-
The Radical King
- By: Cornel West - editor, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- Narrated by: LeVar Burton, Gabourey Sidibe, Cornel West, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wanda Sykes, LeVar Burton, Leslie Odom, Jr., and Gabourey Sidibe head a cast of beloved actors performing 23 selections from the speeches, sermons, and essays of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—many never recorded during his lifetime. For the first time, teachers, students, and thoughtful listeners can hear dramatic interpretations of Dr. King’s words, chosen and introduced by Cornel West.
-
-
Not the best MLK audiobook
- By Nathan White on 02-07-19
By: Cornel West - editor, and others
-
The Churchill Factor
- How One Man Changed History
- By: Boris Johnson
- Narrated by: Simon Shepherd
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the 50th anniversary of Churchill's death, Boris Johnson celebrates the singular brilliance of one of the most important leaders of the 20th century. Taking on the myths and misconceptions along with the outsized reality, he portrays - with characteristic wit and passion - a man of contagious bravery, breathtaking eloquence, matchless strategizing, and deep humanity.
-
-
Entertaining Biography
- By Jean on 01-29-15
By: Boris Johnson