
The Oceans and the Stars
A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story; The Seven Battles and Mutiny of Athena, Patrol Coastal Ship 15
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Narrated by:
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Traber Burns
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By:
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Mark Helprin
About this listen
Mark Helprin, New York Times bestselling author of Winter’s Tale and A Soldier of the Great War, returns with a fast-paced, beautifully written novel about the majesty of the sea; a life dedicated to duty, honor, and country; and the gift of falling in love.
A Navy captain near the end of a decorated career, Stephen Rensselaer is disciplined, intelligent, and determined always to do what’s right. In defending the development of a new variant of warship, he makes an enemy of the president of the United States, who assigns him to command the doomed line’s only prototype—Athena, Patrol Coastal 15—with the intent to humiliate a man who should have been an admiral.
Rather than resign, Rensselaer takes the new assignment in stride, and while supervising Athena’s fitting out in New Orleans, encounters a brilliant lawyer, Katy Farrar, with whom he falls in last-chance love. Soon thereafter, he is deployed on a mission that subjects his integrity, morality, and skill to the ultimate test and which ensures that Athena will live forever in the annals of the Navy.
As in the Odyssey, Katy is the force that keeps him alive and the beacon that lights the way home through seven battles, mutiny, and court martial.
In classic literary form, an enthralling new novel that extolls the virtues of living by the laws of conscience, decency, and sacrifice, The Oceans and the Stars is nothing short of a masterpiece.
©2023 Mark Helprin. Published in 2023 by The Overlook Press, an imprint of ABRAMS, New York. All rights reserved. (P)2023 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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Narrator doesn’t get Backman’s satire or rhythm
- By joey1603 on 12-01-24
By: Fredrik Backman, and others
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Say No More
- By: Caroline Overington
- Narrated by: Anna Skellern
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Original Recording
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Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.
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Seriously, that was the ending?
- By alicia in athens on 02-13-25
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Can't rate it high enough (and I'm a tough grader)
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Great book and narrator - bad technical glitch
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Herman Wouk-ess - Which I Loved
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Before the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military had become the most divisive issue facing the new government. Would a standing army be the thin end of dictatorship? Would a navy protect American commerce against the Mediterranean pirates, or drain the treasury and provoke hostilities with the great powers? The founders, particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adams, debated these questions fiercely and switched sides more than once.
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BE ADVISED THIS BOOK IS ABRIDGED
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The nature of war is constant change. We live in an era of exponential technological acceleration which is transforming how wars are waged. Today, the battlespace is transparent; multi-domain sensors can see anything, and long-range precision fire can target everything that is observed. Autonomous weapons can be unleashed into the battlespace and attack any target from above, hitting the weakest point of tanks and armored vehicles. The velocity of war is hyper-fast.
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Eye opening perspective that every American should read and act
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This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, Royal Navy, and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the road of broadsides as the great ships close in battle.
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Choice of Narrators
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When the CEO of the world’s leading artificial intelligence company is found murdered in his home, former Army CID officer Valerie Marks is thrust into her first case as a homicide detective. Valerie has a gift for reading people, a gift that has never failed her before. But that gift is put to the test when her instincts point her to an impossible suspect—an AI born from a secret venture with the Pentagon known as Project Nomad. To learn the truth, Valerie must team up with two men she doesn’t trust.
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This is a nine-book bundle on the Pacific War, the theatre of World War II that was fought in Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean and Oceania. The Pacific War saw the Allies pitted against Japan, aided by Thailand and its Axis allies, Germany and Italy. Fighting included some of the largest naval battles in history, and the war culminated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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Good collection, great bargain well worth a credit
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Britain's Special Air Service - or SAS - was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young, gadabout aristocrat whose aimlessness in early life belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a battlefield map of World War II's African theater and saw a protracted struggle with Rommel's desert forces, Stirling saw an opportunity: Given a small number of elite, well-trained men, he could parachute behind enemy lines and sabotage their airplanes and war matériel.
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Those Who Dared, Won!
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Beneath a Scarlet Sky
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He's a normal Italian teenager - obsessed with music, food, and girls - but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior. In an attempt to protect him, Pino's parents force him to enlist as a German soldier - a move they think will keep him out of combat.
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The Best Thing? It Really Happened!
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The Wide Wide Sea
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- By: Hampton Sides
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Story
On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment? Hampton Sides’ bravura account of Cook’s last journey both wrestles with Cook’s legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration.
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Detailed story of third voyage
- By Sammi on 04-18-24
By: Hampton Sides
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Table for Two
- Fictions
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, J. Smith-Cameron
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Millions of Amor Towles fans are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories based in New York City and a novella set in Golden Age Hollywood. The New York stories, most of which take place around the year 2000, consider the fateful consequences that can spring from brief encounters and the delicate mechanics of compromise that operate at the heart of modern marriages.
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I wish I could give six stars on all fronts
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What listeners say about The Oceans and the Stars
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- Marsha R. Hammett
- 05-17-24
Great Book / Wonderful Story
What a great book-could not put it down - stop listening. I love the moral compass of Mark Helprin!
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- Fair Lady
- 06-01-24
I have no words…
I have no words to describe the beauty of this at once contemporary yet classic tale of sea, war and love. Just read/listen to it and you will see/hear. Yes, there are some brutal episodes, such as cannot be avoided in a military story. However the valor, decency, and soul of the main character in particular restored my belief that such honorable and truly lovable men do exist!
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- EUGENE R BLOCK
- 07-06-24
Pleasant surprise
Though spending 12 years in the service, I tend to not enjoy military books. This however, was a pleasant surprise and a perfect read for the week of July the 4th. The Narrator was excellent and I will seek other book read by them.
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- Dennis1228
- 05-27-24
Great story. Excellent audiobook.
Was excellent start to finish. Maybe as good as A Soldier of the Great War if not better. Loved it. Loved the audio. Will wait a few months and read it.
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- John Voyer
- 07-11-24
A great yarn
I most liked Rensselaer’s attitude about things: his courage, integrity and ability to innovate and improvise. He was the true embodiment of a leader.
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- explorer
- 11-05-23
A Book That You Won’t Forget
One of the best books I have
read in past 2 years .
I couldn’t wait to ger back to it!
Inspiring story on multiple levels, beautiful writing .
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1 person found this helpful
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- Wesley Barron
- 01-26-24
A story within a story within a story
It is an awesome story within a story within a story. Yes, it's a war story, a love story, and a history of the sea (Navy). As I have no knowledge to base such things on, I will say that the depictions of naval warfare feel authentic. This is the first modern war (ISIS) story I've read. I mostly stick with WWII. Very well written. If you enjoy the sea and naval combat, you will definitely enjoy this read. If you are reading for the love story, you will probably think there isn't enough love and too much sea and war. I still recommend it.
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- Sharon Ahern
- 01-24-24
Great story.
Didn’t care for the narrator; voice too deep and not enough variety. But another Helprin great.
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- Andrew
- 05-26-24
An engaging, important story
I read A Winter's Tale a couple decades ago. A Soldier of the Great War is one of, if not my favorite book of all time. But when it comes to audiobooks, my taste is a little less, um, refined. Not to name names, but for the past couple years I've been enjoying series whose main characters rhyme with "Trippy" and "Moe". Those are also wonderful and entertaining stories with excellent performances, but one cannot compare them to this book, in which every word seems to have been chosen specifically for its contribution to the narrative and every character, event, and story has been meticulously, but seemingly effortlessly, developed.
It's Bach compared to Elvis or pizza and filet mignon.
I wasn't sure about the performance at first, either. But after understanding who Rensselear is, I came to appreciate how the narrator's sparse delivery suits the story perfectly.
This is one of my favorite performances of the last several years. Mr. Helprin's politics, to be crass, or sensibilities and morals, to be more gentille about it, are on full display here, but/and they added to my engagement with the story, which is what I/we want/need in our current climate.
Thank you to the creators for making such and important reminder of the value of exceptional storytelling.
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- Richard Showalter
- 06-19-24
Outstanding, well written, thoughtful, well researched, compelling.
Couldn’t put it down. An interesting mix of story lines. Well read, lots of interesting characters.
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