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The House of Government
- A Saga of the Russian Revolution
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 45 hrs and 9 mins
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Publisher's summary
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction.
The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman's Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine's gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin's purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children's loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Completed in 1931, The House of Government, later known as The House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building's residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some 800 of them were evicted from the house and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths.
Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.
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Simply Anti- Trump writer
- By Shon Cooke on 07-03-21
By: Samuel M. Katz
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The Big Myth
- How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
- By: Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway
- Narrated by: Liza Seneca
- Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with 'big government' and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor.
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Refuting the Chicago School
- By Todd W. Laveen on 06-01-23
By: Naomi Oreskes, and others
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The Deadline
- Essays
- By: Jill Lepore
- Narrated by: Jill Lepore
- Length: 22 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Few, if any, historians have brought such insight, wisdom, and empathy to public discourse as Jill Lepore. Arriving at The New Yorker in 2005, Lepore, with her panoptical range and razor-sharp style, brought a transporting freshness and a literary vivacity to everything from profiles of long-dead writers to urgent constitutional analysis to an unsparing scrutiny of the woeful affairs of the nation itself. The astonishing essays collected in The Deadline offer a prismatic portrait of Americans’ techno-utopianism, frantic fractiousness, and unprecedented—but armed—aimlessness.
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Setting current problems on a historical and human context
- By Jeanette+Gavin on 11-13-23
By: Jill Lepore
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This Land Is Their Land
- The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving
- By: David J. Silverman
- Narrated by: William Roberts
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In March 1621, when Plymouth’s survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag sachem (or chief), Ousamequin (Massasoit), and Plymouth’s governor, John Carver, declared their people’s friendship for each other and a commitment to mutual defense. Later that autumn, the English gathered their first successful harvest and lifted the specter of starvation. Ousamequin and 90 of his men then visited Plymouth for the 'First Thanksgiving'. The treaty remained operative until King Philip’s War in 1675, when 50 years of uneasy peace between the two parties would come to an end.
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This factual presentation is lasting
- By marwalk on 04-10-20
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Africatown
- America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created
- By: Nick Tabor
- Narrated by: Chris Butler
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1860, a ship called the Clotilda was smuggled through the Alabama Gulf Coast, carrying the last group of enslaved people ever brought to the US from West Africa. Five years later, the shipmates were emancipated, but they had no way of getting back home. Instead they created their own community outside the city of Mobile, where they spoke Yoruba and appointed their own leaders.
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So interesting!!!
- By Jamie McCoy on 07-03-23
By: Nick Tabor
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American Visions
- The United States 1800-1860
- By: Edward L. Ayres
- Narrated by: Brandon Pollock
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The early decades of the nineteenth century saw the expansion of slavery, Native dispossession, and wars with Canada and Mexico. Mass immigration and powerful religious movements sent tremors through American society. But even as the powerful defended the status quo, others defied it. Edward L. Ayers's rich history examines the visions that moved Frederick Douglass, Margaret Fuller, the Native American activist William Apess, and others to challenge entrenched practices and beliefs.
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AI Reader?
- By pitjrw on 06-17-24
By: Edward L. Ayres
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To Make Men Free
- A History of the Republican Party
- By: Heather Cox Richardson
- Narrated by: Heather Cox Richardson
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Republican Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession. While progressive Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower revived Lincoln’s vision and expanded the government, their opponents appealed to Americans’ latent racism and xenophobia to regain political power, linking taxation and regulation to redistribution and socialism. In the modern era, the schism within the Republican Party has grown wider, pulling the GOP ever further from its founding principles.
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Fascinating read!
- By Marsha on 12-27-21
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I Saw Death Coming
- A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction
- By: Kidada E. Williams
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In I Saw Death Coming, Kidada E. Williams offers a breakthrough account of the much-debated Reconstruction period, transporting listeners into the daily existence of formerly enslaved people building hope-filled new lives.
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Underrepresented piece of history
- By James O'Hanlon on 07-05-23
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America: The Last Best Hope (Volume I)
- From the Age of Discovery to a World at War
- By: William J. Bennett
- Narrated by: Wayne Shepherd
- Length: 19 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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With command and wit, William J. Bennett reacquaints Americans with their heritage in an engaging narrative that cuts through the cobwebs of time, memory, and prevailing cynicism. Washington, Franklin, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and others reemerge not as marble icons or dust-dry names in a textbook, but as full-blooded, heroic pioneers whose far-reaching vision forged a nation that attracted - that still attracts - millions yearning to breathe free.
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Would be a great required read for High School & Citizenship
- By Nichole on 01-09-22
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Dead Reckoning
- The Story of How Johnny Mitchell and His Fighter Pilots Took on Admiral Yamamoto and Avenged Pearl Harbor
- By: Dick Lehr
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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“AIR RAID, PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NOT DRILL.” At 7:58 a.m. on December 7, 1941, an officer at the Ford Island Command Center frantically typed what would become one of the most famous radio dispatches in history as the Japanese navy launched a surprise aerial assault on the American navy stationed in Hawaii. In a little over two hours, the Japanese killed more than 2,400 Americans and propelled the US’s entry into World War II. Dead Reckoning is the story of the mission to avenge that devastating strike.
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Half Soap Opera, target audience 20 something male
- By Donald L. Hogan on 03-20-21
By: Dick Lehr
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The Great Halifax Explosion
- A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism
- By: John U. Bacon
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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From best-selling author John U. Bacon, a gripping narrative history of the largest manmade detonation prior to Hiroshima. On Monday, December 3, 1917, the French freighter SS Mont-Blanc set sail from Brooklyn carrying the largest cache of explosives ever loaded onto a ship, including 2,300 tons of picric acid, an unstable, poisonous chemical more powerful than TNT.
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Too much hostility towards Americans
- By bigdaddyKT on 12-14-19
By: John U. Bacon
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The Humanity Archive
- Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth
- By: Jermaine Fowler
- Narrated by: Jermaine Fowler
- Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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This sweeping survey of Black history shows how Black humanity has been erased and how its recovery can save the humanity of us all. Using history as a foundation, The Humanity Archive uses storytelling techniques to make history come alive and uncover the truth behind America's whitewashed history. The Humanity Archive focuses on the overlooked narratives in the pages of the past. Challenging dominant perspectives, author Jermaine Fowler goes outside the textbooks to find recognizably human stories.
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The Narrator's reading is unnerving.
- By Kindle Customer on 08-12-24
By: Jermaine Fowler
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George V
- Never a Dull Moment
- By: Jane Ridley
- Narrated by: Joanna David
- Length: 22 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II, King George V reigned over the British Empire from 1910 to 1936, a period of unprecedented international turbulence. Yet no one could deny that as a young man, George seemed uninspired. As his biographer Harold Nicolson famously put it, "he did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps.” The contrast between him and his flamboyant, hedonistic, playboy father Edward VII could hardly have been greater.
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great but long listen
- By aleks r on 02-23-22
By: Jane Ridley
What listeners say about The House of Government
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Edward V. Blanchard
- 11-05-17
Inside saga of the leaders of Bolshevism & the USSR
What a generous & magisterial book! Basically the story of a wide group of leaders, intellectuals & senior bureaucrats and their families, most of whom lived at one time or other in the House of Govt. From the pre-revolutionary backgrounds thru the Oct Revolution, building the new Communist state, collectivization, the 5 year plans, the Great Terror & then the Great Patriotic War. This is s deep social, cultural & intellectual history of how a Bolshevik sect became the state religion of a great country, but it reads more like Tolstoy of “War & Peace”! Lots of Russian names & families to keep track of. Long, but fascinating, subtle, generous & sympathetic, but never “rose tinted”. Most highly recommended! Reader was easy to listen to, with the right balance of seriousness (& occasionally, irony).
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16 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-06-23
Masterpiece
I replay this book once or twice a year at least. The author pens a compelling history jam packed with intimate details and first person accounts. The subjects jump out of the page, sometimes eerily so. The narration is animated and smooth, though very deep. I have to play it pretty loud sometimes to hear properly
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- Rabeep Grewal
- 07-09-23
For scholars of the revolution
Must read for those intrigued by the Russian revolution and Bolshevism. A needle in a haystack
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- T. Anderson
- 09-15-17
A people's history of the Soviet Union.
I've been reading historical and biographical books on the Soviet Union since I became aware that there was such a thing as history, more than 45 years ago. Nothing I have ever read comes close to painting the day to day struggle of the Soviet people to not only survive but to avoid being exterminated or sent to dissappear in the Gulag.
Disturbingly, the author points out unmistakable simalarities in Western countries that while not as extreme as in the Soviet world, nevertheless destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of "free" and completely innocent people. A tale that should never cease to be told and most importantly, remembered.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 08-03-24
Amazing depth and informative
The author made some excellent points connecting Bolshevism to other religious sects. Also, did a great job showing the world that Stalin et al created and how people did or did not survive it.
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- Marcus Caris
- 11-11-18
A Powerful Argument, mired in minutiae
This is a deeply researched book about the moral and artistic underpinnings of the Russian Revolution. There are however so many long examples and so many people mentioned that it is daunting for the reader to keep it all in their head. However the arguments are so compelling that I’d still recommend the book but with the caution that there will be moments that the explanation of the plots of dozens of soviet era novels may be a slog.
#tagsgiving #sweepstakes
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3 people found this helpful
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- Zeljko Z.
- 08-05-24
clarity and depth of presentation.this is one of the best books I listened so far
the best book I've slidtened in last few years. intelligently presented with historical perspective.It is a must listen
zz
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- Scott Free
- 07-05-18
The fallibility of too much close up.
I wanted to like this book and in many ways I did like this book getting to know the story of the government house and the Bolsheviks involved and the tragedy of the Red Terror both right after the Revolution in the 1920s and then later the Stalin Red Terror which karmically bit the Bolsheviks right in the butt. Many of The Executioner's were themselves executed.
Where the author falls down is in his failure to pull back from the close-ups on the individual Bolsheviks in the government house; the book is filled with diary entries letters a lot of that and that's great except that he never shows the larger forces acting on the Soviet Union and other prominent dissidents and Scholars that have laid out much of this story.
This failure to address the other scholarship around the Soviet Union leads to doubt about some of the central Theses of the book that the Bolshevik Revolution was a millenarian movement In some ways it was a millenarian movement but in other ways maybe not and some of these other authors like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Antony Sutton who wrote The Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution and others too numerous to mention suggest that the Soviet Union was part of a much larger picture and that the Bolsheviks themselves were not in as complete control as one might of thought and it was obvious when Stalin was liquidating the old Bolsheviks that it was a blatant power-play the fact that they all thought it was something else just means that they were extremely deluded.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Elocutus55
- 06-23-19
For the history fan...
Those who are interested in The history of the roots of Soviet Bolshevism, this is an expansive and fascinating look at the dynamics of the Soviet Union’s origins and development. Using the ambitious building of “The House of Government” building in Moscow as a lens, the author weaves social and biographical details into a terrific story.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Peter W. Kalnin
- 09-21-21
Phenomenal history, perfect narration
An amazing collection of stories of the Russian Revolution as told through the lives (and deaths) of the true believers who lived in a huge apartment complex that works as an icon for the regime and its ideology: The House of Government is a deconstructed vision of the cockeyed bolsheviks who inhabited both a building and a government which was guided by atheistical millenarianism that relied equally on revolutionary inspiration and violent terror. This book excites, saddens, elevates and exhausts the reader because we know the disasters that awaits most of the people in these stories in an evermore repressive and cruel Stalinist environment. Orwell's 1984 echoes the stories of these lost humans.
It is helpful to be familiar with Russian history and literature, as well as English literature to get the full effect of Slezkine's expertise. This book is not for the feint of heart, nor the non-reader. Nevertheless, it is a rich experience which I consider a masterpiece, despite its unavoidable disjointed effect in covering such an encyclopedic topic, and from so many different angles.
Stefan Rudnicki is the ideal narrator for this masterpiece. As always, Mr. Rudnicki delivers magnificently.
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1 person found this helpful