The Undertow
Scenes from a Slow Civil War
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Narrated by:
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Jeff Sharlet
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By:
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Jeff Sharlet
About this listen
An instant New York Times best seller.
One of America’s finest reporters and essayists explores the powerful currents beneath the roiled waters of a nation coming apart.
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.
Across the country, men “of God” glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war—a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the far right, everything is heightened—love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our 45th president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of White womanhood.
Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all.
Exploring a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our precarious present that brings to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2023 Jeff Sharlet (P)2023 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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On New Year’s Day 2013, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten asked three strangers to, literally, pluck a day, month, and year from a hat. That day - chosen completely at random - was Sunday, December 28, 1986, by any conventional measure a most ordinary day. Weingarten spent the next six years proving that there is no such thing. That Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s turned out to be filled with comedy, tragedy, implausible irony, cosmic comeuppances, kindness, cruelty, heroism, cowardice, genius, idiocy, and much more....
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I'm giving this book more credit for its concept
- By J. F. Boyd on 12-24-19
By: Gene Weingarten
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Sound and Fury
- Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship
- By: Dave Kindred
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Muhammed Ali and Howard Cosell, a legendary athlete and a television icon, were individually interesting, but together they were mesmerizing. They were profoundly different, young and old, black and white, a Muslim and a Jew, Ali barely literate, Cosell an editor of his university's law review. Yet they had in common forces that made them unforgettable: both were unprecedented performers who covered enormous insecurities by demanding, loudly and often, public acclaim.
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Great insight into Ali & Cosell
- By Steve on 05-04-06
By: Dave Kindred
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The Partly Cloudy Patriot
- By: Sarah Vowell
- Narrated by: Sarah Vowell, Conan O'Brien, Seth Green, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Sarah Vowell travels through the American past and investigates the dusty, bumpy roads of her own life. Her essays confront a wide range of subjects, icons, and historical moments: Ike, Teddy Roosevelt, and Bill Clinton; Canadian Mounties and German Filmmakers; Tom Cruise and Buffy the Vampire Slayer; twins and nerds; the Gettysburg Address, the State of the Union, and George W. Bush's inauguration. The result is an engrossing audiobook, capturing Vowell's memorable wit and her keen social commentary.
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One of the best surprises on AUDIBLE.COM!!
- By Doggy Bird on 04-14-04
By: Sarah Vowell
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Blood Done Sign My Name
- A True Story
- By: Timothy B. Tyson
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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On May 11, 1970, Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old Black veteran, walked into a crossroads store owned by Robert Teel and came out running. Teel and two of his sons chased and beat Marrow, then killed him in public as he pleaded for his life. Like many small Southern towns, Oxford had barely been touched by the civil rights movement. But in the wake of the killing, young African Americans took to the streets. While lawyers battled in the courthouse, the Klan raged in the shadows and Black Vietnam veterans torched the town’s tobacco warehouses.
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This Is A Very Good Book
- By Caleb on 03-22-05
By: Timothy B. Tyson
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Fury
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Salman Rushdie
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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The world renowned author of The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Salman Rushdie is a Whitbread Award winner and recipient of the Booker Prize. His first truly American novel, Fury is a metaphorically rich black comedy that reflects the pressure-cooker of modern life. Malik Solanka, irascible doll-maker and retired historian of ideas, suffers the pain of wanting without knowing exactly what it is he wants.
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surprisingly good
- By David on 11-21-07
By: Salman Rushdie
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Secrets and Wives
- The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy
- By: Sanjiv Bhattacharya
- Narrated by: Sanjiv Bhattacharya
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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What do we really know about modern practicing polygamists - not fictional ones like the Henrickson family on HBO’s Big Love? We’ve seen the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the news, the underage brides in pioneer dresses on a Texas ranch. But the FLDS is just one of many groups that have broken with mainstream Mormonism to follow those parts of Joseph Smith’s doctrine disavowed by the LDS Church. Gaining unprecedented access to these communities, journalist Sanjiv Bhattacharya reveals a shadow country....
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Great stories (+), religious amateur hour (-)
- By Douglas on 09-26-13
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The Fire This Time
- A New Generation Speaks About Race
- By: Jesmyn Ward
- Narrated by: Cherise Boothe, Michael Early, Kevin R. Free, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping-off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.
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Delusion shattering
- By Matthew A. Burnett on 06-12-20
By: Jesmyn Ward
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Better than Sex
- By: Hunter S. Thompson
- Narrated by: Scott Sowers
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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A pioneer of the New Journalism movement, Hunter S. Thompson wrote with a fire that captured the attention of millions. Here Thompson delivers a mind-bending view of the 1992 presidential race, packed with all the horror, sacrifice, lust, and glory that made this campaign so utterly fascinating.
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A Classic for One Chapter
- By Michael Friedman on 12-08-12
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Between the World and Me
- By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Narrated by: Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race”, a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of Black women and men - bodies exploited through slavery and segregation and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a Black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’ attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son.
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A Heartfelt Self-aware Literary Masterpiece
- By T Spencer on 07-30-15
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
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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
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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.
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Absolutely remarkable!
- By Janie on 08-30-20
By: Jon Meacham, and others
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The Stonewall Reader
- By: New York Public Library, Edmund White
- Narrated by: full cast
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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June 28, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots.
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A good snapshot of LGBT history
- By Randy A. Wood on 09-28-19
By: New York Public Library, and others
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The Ground Beneath Her Feet
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 27 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Salman Rushdie is widely considered one of a handful of truly great living writers. The internationally acclaimed, Booker Prize-winning author's storytelling shines in this epic love story, a modern retelling of the myth of Orpheus.
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Okay, Salmon, We get that you're a genious already
- By Julie A Quinn on 04-23-09
By: Salman Rushdie
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Death to Deconstruction
- Reclaiming Faithfulness as an Act of Rebellion
- By: Joshua S Porter, John Mark Comer - contributor
- Narrated by: Joshua S Porter
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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This book is more than Porter's own story. It also invites those who may be in the deconstruction process themselves to consider the perspective of someone who was tempted to leave his faith—yet stayed. And it provides theological insight and pastoral support to those who worry that everyone is bailing out on the church.
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Beautiful
- By Anonymous User on 05-10-23
By: Joshua S Porter, and others
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A bold new history of modern conservatism that finds its origins in the populist right-wing politics of the 1990s.
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A decent sequel to "The Family"
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For an entire generation, at home and abroad, the United States has waged an endless conflict known as the War on Terror. In addition to multiple ground wars, the era pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance, weakened the rule of law through indefinite detentions, sanctioned torture, and manipulated the truth about it all. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. Today’s nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era. And that door remains open.
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Insightful and true, but leftist
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What listeners say about The Undertow
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michael D Murphy
- 06-29-23
Brave, Informed, Essential
A brave, informed, essential journey through America’s fractured psyche in the Trumpocene Era. Every good citizen should read this book.
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- Miriam Rosen
- 05-04-23
Brilliant!
The author’s journalistic style is immersive and his writing is visceral. I truly felt that sense of the culture and nuance of the MAGA base. Through his travels and interactions with true believers, the author effectively showed the ‘condition’ afflicting our country. His writing and voice had me feeling the undertow.
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6 people found this helpful
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- R. Ferguson
- 01-07-24
Correction: hang loose, not shocker
It is hilarious that this over-read egg head would bring in so much rich context and make a simple mistake of repeatedly saying the "shocker" hand gesture when I believe he means the hang-loose gesture.
In defense of Ashli Babbet, the gesture with the thumb and pinky is hang-loose. The shocker is like a scouts salute with an added pinky. The latter being a life sexual joke popular with adolescent boys that W was once tricked into flashing without knowing it's significance.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Briboflavin
- 05-07-23
Truth Hurts
A literary travelogue that weaves together tales of frightened, credulous Americans (all armed to the teeth) and the false prophets who manipulate them for profit or power. This has little to do with Trump—he’s an irritant, or perhaps another symptom. The Undertow is about how individual grief and fear become delusion and anger, and how quickly personal delusion and anger give way to mass psychosis in the Information Age.
Sharlet has a sharp-eye and dry delivery that (as has been noted previously) is very reminiscent of Joan Didion. The opening and closing chapters are barely related, but I was grateful for the buffer—what’s between is seriously fucking distressing.
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- Barry S. Graubart
- 01-02-24
Great opening and close
The opening chapter, focused on the life and activism of Harry Belafonte, is alone worth the price of admission.
The core story, following the ghost of Ashli Babbitt, is fascinating, but wanders and meanders at times. But even then, it’s insightful, especially for those of us who struggle to understand how folks can believe obvious conspiracy theories.
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- Will
- 05-29-23
Beautiful work!
The content is wonderful, beautifully brought to life by the narrative performance. A true tale of our current state of affairs seen through historical eyes.
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- DavidK
- 07-16-23
Very well written nonfiction
About a horrifying prospect. I recommend this to anyone and everyone , especially readers of good prose and poetry. One of the most lyrical and disturbing nonfiction audiobooks I’ve heard.
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- Fred
- 07-13-23
A must
In this moment read this. Take it in. Turn it over like a pebble in your mouth until you can name its contours. Timeless, urgent. Stride into this timeline with a large and open heart, do not abandon your trepidation for here you will find its soul, here too you will find hope.
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- William Diggins
- 10-20-23
Lyrical and honest
Jeff Sharlet’s appreciation for unflinching directness and the music of human self-determination permeates this account of what he found when he went to meet Americans who are preparing for civil war. Some seem eager, some wary. And what does civil war even mean to any particular person? As he finds repeadly, the definition depends on who you ask, how they see themselves and how they regard others. Lucky for us, Sharlet made it his business in this book to ask, to respectfully listen, to observe and report, in his reflective and lyrical prose, what people are saying. The people he asked are people who, rightly or wrongly, feel they are not listened to by eider society. You may have heard a lot of what they have to say before, but there is plenty of additional richness of perspective unearthed and pondered here. The shards are wrapped in Sharlet’s own love of music, the kind that fascism always wants to silence, and that makes this road trip with him worth your time.
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- Tom
- 10-13-23
An enthralling Travelogue through The American Hellscape.
One of the most frightening books I have read. I’d like to hope that Sharlet encountered only a very small slice of The American Citizenry and that their influence on the future of our Country will be minimal.
Unfortunately the geographic and demographic diversity of the folks his trip introduces us to cries out otherwise. That they all cling to a Common Worldview so driven by disappointment, anger, resentment, and grief is absolutely terrifying. How did we create a Society that has led them down this Rabbit Hole and what does that bode for America’s Future?!
I’m glad The Undertow was written and I’m glad that I read it. Five Stars but it has shaken me as no other account. *****
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