A Most Dangerous Book
Tacitus's Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich
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Narrated by:
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Mark Ashby
About this listen
Winner of the 2012 Christian Gauss Book Award
The riveting story of the Germania and its incarnations and exploitations through the ages.
The pope wanted it, Montesquieu used it, and the Nazis pilfered an Italian noble's villa to get it: the Germania, by the Roman historian Tacitus, took on a life of its own as both an object and an ideology. When Tacitus wrote a not-very-flattering little book about the ancient Germans in 98 CE, at the height of the Roman Empire, he could not have foreseen that the Nazis would extol it as "a bible", nor that Heinrich Himmler, the engineer of the Holocaust, would vow to resurrect Germany on its grounds. But the Germania inspired - and polarized - people long before the rise of the Third Reich. In this elegant and captivating history, Christopher B. Krebs, a professor of classics at Harvard University, traces the wide-ranging influence of the Germania over a 500-year span, showing us how an ancient text rose to take its place among the most dangerous books in the world.
©2011 Christopher B. Krebs (P)2013 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Introducing the Ancient Greeks
- From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind
- By: Edith Hall
- Narrated by: Sian Thomas
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall's Introducing the Ancient Greeks is the first book to offer a synthesis of the entire ancient Greek experience, from the rise of the Mycenaean kingdoms of the sixteenth century BC to the final victory of Christianity over paganism in AD 391. Each of the ten chapters visits a different Greek community at a different moment during the twenty centuries of ancient Greek history.
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Surveying the Greeks
- By Jolene on 05-31-18
By: Edith Hall
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The House of Wisdom
- How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization
- By: Jonathan Lyons
- Narrated by: Jay Snyder
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Here is the remarkable story of how medieval Arab scholars made dazzling advances in science and philosophy, and of the itinerant Europeans who brought this knowledge back to the West. For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict. Meanwhile, Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to catch even a glimpse.
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Missing history
- By Robert on 11-26-11
By: Jonathan Lyons
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Bible and Sword
- England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour
- By: Barbara W. Tuchman
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Two-time Pulitzer Prize - winning historian Barbara Tuchman explores the complex relationship of Britain to Palestine that led to the founding of the modern Jewish state - and to many of the problems that plague the Middle East today.
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Excellent book, but not quite objective
- By Kellie on 04-25-11
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Socrates
- A Man for Our Times
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed historian and best-selling author Paul Johnson’s books have been translated into dozens of languages. In Socrates: A Man for Our Times, Johnson draws from little-known resources to construct a fascinating account of one of history’s greatest thinkers. Socrates transcended class limitations in Athens during the fifth century B.C. to develop ideas that still shape the way we think about the human body and soul, including the workings of the human mind.
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Plat-Soc-Paul
- By Megasaurus on 11-17-12
By: Paul Johnson
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Passionate Sage
- The Character and Legacy of John Adams
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of our nation and its second president, spent nearly the last third of his life in retirement, grappling with contradictory views of his place in history and fearing his reputation would not fare well in the generations after his death. And indeed, future generations did slight him, elevating Jefferson and Madison to lofty heights while Adams remained way back in the second tier.
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Stays true to Audible's description
- By Neil on 10-24-09
By: Joseph J. Ellis
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The History of White People
- By: Nell Irvin Painter
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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A mind-expanding and myth-destroying exploration of notions of white race—not merely a skin color but also a signal of power, prestige, and beauty to be withheld and granted selectively. Ever since the Enlightenment, race theory and its inevitable partner, racism, have followed a crooked road, constructed by dominant peoples to justify their domination of others. Filling a huge gap in historical literature that long focused on the non-white, eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter guides us through more than two thousand years of Western civilization, tracing not only the invention of the idea of race but also the frequent worship of “whiteness” for economic, social, scientific, and political ends.
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Destroys the myth that race is about skin color
- By Emily L. on 08-25-14
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Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD
- By: Peter Brown
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 31 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.
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A learned, well-balanced postmodern history
- By Jacobus on 11-21-12
By: Peter Brown
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The Man Who Invented Fiction
- How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World
- By: William Egginton
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In the early 17th century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a novel. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from studying too many novels of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That story, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history.
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Very Interesting and Informative, but Poorly Read
- By LCorSMT on 06-21-23
By: William Egginton
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The Road to Monticello
- The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson
- By: Kevin J. Hayes
- Narrated by: David Baker
- Length: 25 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas Jefferson was an avid book-collector, a voracious reader, and a gifted writer - a man who prided himself on his knowledge of classical and modern languages and whose marginal annotations include quotations from Euripides, Herodotus, and Milton. And yet there has never been a literary life of our most literary president.
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Very Boring Book
- By Greg on 05-13-14
By: Kevin J. Hayes
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Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea
- Why the Greeks Matter
- By: Thomas Cahill
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Best selling history writer Thomas Cahill continues his series on the roots of Western civilization with this volume about the contributions of ancient Greece to the development of contemporary culture. Tracing the origin of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European horsemen into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, he follows their progress into the creation of the Greek city-states, the refinement of their machinery of war, and the flowering of intellectual and artistic culture.
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Super super
- By Richard on 12-28-03
By: Thomas Cahill
What listeners say about A Most Dangerous Book
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- AJC
- 06-02-16
GERMANY FROM ANCIENT ROME TO 1945
A Most Dangerous Book is an interesting academic study on the development of racial thought in Germany. The story of how a pamphlet of observations of ancient Germany, written by the Roman Tacitus, over almost 2 millennia ago was reinterpreted through the ages helped shape Nazi racial policy. The audible version was great. Performance reading clear with great emphasis on the major players.
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- Tom
- 02-09-15
Interpretation mightier than the quill
Fascinating weave through history. The professor delivers depth and details that keep the telling intriguing, it helps to be up on your Roman, European, Judeo-Christian history and some situational subtleties of the Catholic Church and Luther .... or at least I used my tourist level knowledge to fill in a bit and give a picture filled backdrop to the telling.
The takeaway: The power of the pen is shadowed when compared to the liberal interpretation to support ideological narrative.
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- Acteon
- 06-25-15
A wonderful book
Would you consider the audio edition of A Most Dangerous Book to be better than the print version?
For me, yes, as it is so much more tiring for me to read than to listen. But I stopped often to make notes so I can refer back to certain things, and that took time.
What about Mark Ashby’s performance did you like?
I particularly appreciated his correct pronunciation of foreign words (Italian and German in particular). So often in audiobooks, foreign names are mangled. And this book is particularly demanding in that it contains phrases in Latin and German in addition to quite a number of proper names. The reading is generally clear and moves along, which suffices to give it 4 stars; correct pronunciation of foreign words adds a star.
Any additional comments?
The book is a fascinating tour across time that traces the fortunes of one book, shedding light on divers epochs along the way. Highly recommended for those who have a real interest in history.
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- Steele Lux
- 08-14-15
Author cites many sources, but fails to back up his own claims.
I enjoyed Ashby's reading, pronunciation and enunciation.
Krebs does an amazing job of summarizing the history of Tacitus' text as well as the politics of Rome at the time. He quotes many, many sources that discuss Tacitus and the Germanic tribes and tongues- many that claim those Germanen are, or are not, related to the modern Germanic people, languages and nations.
He does a well enough job of describing the language variations and evolutions of this subject, but fails to explain why he says "They are not", "He was wrong", or "This was an error." He accuses a historical figure of "unspoken chagrin" but never hints at who noticed the chagrin. In a nutshell, I cannot tell if he is putting words in other peoples' mouths.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Vlr
- 04-18-15
Excellent book!
Excellent in:
1. Topic is well researched
2. Stylistically impeccable
3. Witty quips pop up unexpectedly but appropriately
4. Narrated beautifully with nary a mispronunciation
5. If you're interested in European history of the 20th century, read this book
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- GH
- 07-01-13
Dry recitation of history -- boring
I had great expectations about this book. This book provides the platform upon which a Nazi Germany constructed. I did find some of the Germanic history interesting -- for example there wasn't really a Germany until the late 1800's. I love history books and have read a great many. This author lacks the flair of a McCullough by an order of magnitude. Only the diehards of historians should brave the seven hour trek -- it is just soo boring and not work the misery.
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8 people found this helpful