A Rope from the Sky
The Making and Unmaking of the World's Newest State
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Narrated by:
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Chris Andrew Ciulla
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By:
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Zach Vertin
About this listen
The birth of South Sudan was celebrated the world round - a triumph for global justice and the end of one of the world's most devastating wars. The Republic's historic independence was acclaimed not only by its long-oppressed people but also by three US presidents and the legions of Americans who championed their cause. But the celebration would not last: South Sudan's freedom-fighters soon plunged their new nation back into chaos, shattering the promise of liberation and exposing the hubris of their American backers.
Drawing on extraordinary personal stories of identity, liberation, and survival, this narrative tells an epic story of paradise won and then lost. Zach Vertin's firsthand accounts, from deadly war zones to the halls of Washington power, bring listeners on an extraordinary journey into the rise and fall of the world's newest state. South Sudan's untold story is a unique episode in global history - an unprecedented experiment in international state-building - and a cautionary tale.
A Rope from the Sky is propelled by characters both inspired and ordinary‚ their aspirations are matched by insecurities, their sins by courage and kindness. It is first a story of hope, power, greed, compassion, and conscience-shocking violence from the world's most neglected patch of territory. But it is also a story about the best and worst of America: both our big-hearted ideals and our difficult reckoning with the limits of American power amid a world in disarray.
©2019 Zach Vertin (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLCListeners also enjoyed...
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Inspiring memoir; irritating narration
- By Amazon Customer on 09-17-16
By: Emma Sky
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A Thousand Hills
- Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Paul Kagame grew up as a wretched refugee. He and a group of comrades, determined to force their way back home after a generation of exile, designed one of the most audacious covert operations in the history of clandestine war. Then, after taking power, they amazed the world by stabilizing and reviving their devastated country.
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Best Most Comprehensive Work on Rwanda
- By Greg on 07-30-10
By: Stephen Kinzer
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The Year That Changed the World
- The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall
- By: Michael Meyer
- Narrated by: Ed Sala
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! President Ronald Reagan's famous exhortation when visiting Berlin in 1987 has long been widely cited as the clarion call that brought the Cold War to an end. The United States won, so this version of history goes, because Ronald Reagan stood firm against the USSR; American resoluteness brought the evil empire to its knees. Michael Meyer, who was there at the time as a Newsweek bureau chief, begs to differ.
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Great book about a great year for democracy.
- By Susan on 11-24-09
By: Michael Meyer
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Our Last Best Chance
- The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril
- By: King Abdullah II of Jordan
- Narrated by: Nadim Sawalha
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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A news-breaking memoir revealing the secret, high level negotiations that could soon transform the map of the Middle East. Why would a sitting head of state choose to write about the most explosive issues he faces? King Abdullah does so now because he believes we face a moment of truth: a last chance for peace in the Middle East. The prize is enormous; the cost of failure far greater than we dare imagine.
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Meet the fourth King of Jordan ,
- By katie on 06-29-16
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A Force So Swift
- Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949
- By: Kevin Peraino
- Narrated by: Paul Michael
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In the opening months of 1949, US President Harry S. Truman found himself faced with a looming diplomatic catastrophe - "perhaps the greatest that this country has ever suffered", as the journalist Walter Lippmann put it. Throughout the spring and summer, Mao Zedong's Communist armies fanned out across mainland China, annihilating the rival troops of America's onetime ally Chiang Kai-shek and taking control of Beijing, Shanghai, and other major cities.
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360-Degrees of China, Very Good History Book
- By Jose on 06-19-18
By: Kevin Peraino
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Berlin 1961
- Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
- By: Frederick Kempe
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 20 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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A former Wall Street Journal editor and the current president and CEO of the Atlantic Council, Frederick Kempe draws on recently released documents and personal interviews to re-create the powder keg that was 1961 Berlin. In Cold War Berlin, the United States and the Soviet Union stand nose to nose, with the possibility of nuclear war just one misstep away.
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I am scared in retrospect
- By theenglishmajor on 06-26-11
By: Frederick Kempe
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The New Tsar
- The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin
- By: Steven Lee Myers
- Narrated by: René Ruiz
- Length: 22 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The epic tale of the rise to power of Russia's current president—the only complete biography in English–that fully captures his emergence from shrouded obscurity and deprivation to become one of the most consequential and complicated leaders in modern history, by the former New York Times Moscow bureau chief.
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A retelling of facts without much added info
- By A. M. on 03-07-16
By: Steven Lee Myers
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Democracy
- Stories from the Long Road to Freedom
- By: Condoleezza Rice
- Narrated by: Grace Angela Henry
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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From the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the ongoing struggle for human rights in the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice has served on the front lines of history. As a child, she was an eyewitness to a third awakening of freedom, when her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, became the epicenter of the civil rights movement for black Americans. In this book, Rice explains what these epochal events teach us about democracy.
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A Case for Democracy
- By Jean on 05-18-17
By: Condoleezza Rice
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No Room for Small Dreams
- Courage, Imagination, and the Making of Modern Israel
- By: Shimon Peres
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In this, his final work, finished only weeks before his passing, Peres offers a long-awaited examination of the crucial turning points in Israeli history through the prism of having been a decision maker and eyewitness. Told with the frankness of someone aware this would likely be his final statement, No Room for Small Dreams spans decades and events, but as much as it is about what happened, it is about why it happened.
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Great insights
- By Mergen on 05-29-22
By: Shimon Peres
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Thirteen Days in September
- Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David
- By: Lawrence Wright
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall, Lawrence Wright
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A gripping day-by-day account of the 1978 Camp David conference, when President Jimmy Carter persuaded Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to sign the first peace treaty in the modern Middle East, one which endures to this day.
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Lessons in Negotiation
- By David on 06-18-15
By: Lawrence Wright
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Dancing in the Glory of Monsters
- The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa
- By: Jason Stearns
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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At the heart of Africa is Congo, a country the size of Western Europe, bordering nine other nations, that since 1996 has been wracked by a brutal and unstaunchable war in which millions have died. And yet, despite its epic proportions, it has received little sustained media attention. In this deeply reported book, Jason K. Stearns vividly tells the story of this misunderstood conflict through the experiences of those who engineered and perpetrated it.
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First book I've found that explains DRC
- By Amazon Customer on 09-09-17
By: Jason Stearns
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Arik
- The Life of Ariel Sharon
- By: David Landau
- Narrated by: Waler Dixon
- Length: 19 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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From the former editor in chief of Haaretz, the first in-depth, comprehensive biography of Ariel Sharon, the most dramatic and imposing Israeli political and military leader of the last forty years. The life of Ariel Sharon spans much of modern Israel’s history. A commander in the Israeli Army from its inception in 1948, Sharon participated in the 1948 War of Independence, played decisive roles in the 1956 Suez War and the Six-Day War of 1967, and is credited here with the shift in the outcome of the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
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Larger than Life Hero
- By Eugene Choong on 10-07-24
By: David Landau
What listeners say about A Rope from the Sky
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Theo Horesh
- 01-29-22
The Book to Read on South Sudan
This is the only book on South Sudan that I have been able to find after several years of searching that is comprehensive, informative, and entertaining. That makes it an excellent place to begin piecing together what’s been happening in this troubled state for the past few decades. And since South Sudan is one of the most troubled states in the world, even just a small handful more people understanding it can make a big difference to alleviating human suffering. So, please read or listen to this book if you are considering it.
Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and chapter by chapter, it is a well written book. The author clearly spent a lot of time in South Sudan over many years with the International Crisis Group, and he got to know all the major players well. Sometimes it even reads like Washington insider politics as he discusses the way these personalities came together and clashed in the making of history. In this way, it is an unusually interesting book on African politics that might help readers and listeners understand political dynamics in the wider region as well. It also signifies the region by putting the focus on real political leaders instead of unseen structural forces. Meanwhile, it combines a nice mix of anecdotes and overview, which will keep most readers interested.
However, it is a slightly jarring approach to a region with which few will be familiar. A familiarity with insider politics usually comes after a general understanding of the state, history, culture, and socioeconomics, after all. So, the book often feels a little too familiar. The author also jumped around in time just enough to leave me a little uncertain of the year of events he was discussing. All of this would have been pretty normal for a bestseller on American politics, but it is unusual for a book on a state with which most readers will be unfamiliar, and the approach still needs some refinement.
Of course, many readers and listeners will have read about the Lost Boys of Sudan, the Sudanese Civil War, and the Darfur Genocide. I have actually read numerous books on these topics. However, the vast majority of these are autobiographical or novelized depictions of real events, like Dave Eggers extraordinary “What is the What.” But in an unstable region where history moves fast, these have quickly become distant events—in spite of their consequences still playing out. The challenge lies in linking the reader of this book to this wider literature, and that will be left to the reader, who should take on the task with relish, if only because of its importance. Not only can you do a lot of good understanding troubled parts of the world with which almost no one is familiar, but it can be rewarding to know more than the average mix of tens of thousands of people about it just by reading a single book.
~ Theo Horesh, author of The Holocausts We All Deny
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- Robert
- 02-25-19
Fascinating Book
The author transports the reader from the streets of South Sudan to the hallways of Congress with compelling insight. The book is wonderful on many levels but, importantly, helps all of us better understand the value of thoughtful diplomacy and the cost of thoughtless actions on the international stage. To the author one can only say “Oyee” with the hope his good work and great writing continues.
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