All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days
The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler
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Narrated by:
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Rebecca Donner
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By:
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Rebecca Donner
About this listen
The INSTANT New York Times Bestseller
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award
Winner of the Chautauqua Prize
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award
Finalist for the Plutarch Award
A New York Times Notable Book of 2021
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A New York Times Critics' Top Pick of 2021
Wall Street Journal 10 Best Books of 2021
Time Magazine 100 Must-Read Books of 2021
Publishers Weekly Top Ten Books of 2021
An Economist Best Book of the Year
A New York Post Best Book of the Year
A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Book of the Year
Oprah Daily Best New Books of August
A New York Public Library Book of the Week
In this “stunning literary achievement,” Donner chronicles the extraordinary life and brutal death of her great-great-aunt Mildred Harnack, the American leader of one of the largest underground resistance groups in Germany during WWII—“a page-turner story of espionage, love and betrayal” (Kai Bird, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography)
Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution. Her coconspirators circulated through Berlin under the cover of night, slipping the leaflets into mailboxes, public restrooms, phone booths. When the first shots of the Second World War were fired, she became a spy, couriering top-secret intelligence to the Allies. On the eve of her escape to Sweden, she was ambushed by the Gestapo. At a Nazi military court, a panel of five judges sentenced her to six years at a prison camp, but Hitler overruled the decision and ordered her execution. On February 16, 1943, she was strapped to a guillotine and beheaded.
Historians identify Mildred Harnack as the only American in the leadership of the German resistance, yet her remarkable story has remained almost unknown until now.
Harnack’s great-great-niece Rebecca Donner draws on her extensive archival research in Germany, Russia, England, and the U.S. as well as newly uncovered documents in her family archive to produce this astonishing work of narrative nonfiction. Fusing elements of biography, real-life political thriller, and scholarly detective story, Donner brilliantly interweaves letters, diary entries, notes smuggled out of a Berlin prison, survivors’ testimony, and a trove of declassified intelligence documents into a powerful, epic story, reconstructing the moral courage of an enigmatic woman nearly erased by history.
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Critic reviews
"Extraordinarily intimate.... Wilder and more expansive than a standard-issue biography…a real-life thriller with a cruel ending - not to mention an account of Hitler’s ascent from attention-seeking buffoon to genocidal Führer.” (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times)
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"A tour de force of investigation…. The story unfolds in fragments…but as the pieces cohere, the couple’s story becomes gripping…. The abiding impression is of virtuous, extraordinarily brave people caught up in tragic horror.” (The Economist)
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In this true-life thriller, Kati Marton draws on her skill as an investigative reporter to discover who her journalist parents really were---and how they survived the Nazis in Budapest and imprisonment by the Soviets during the Cold War.
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Couldn't stop listening
- By Jane on 04-09-10
By: Kati Marton
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Citizen 865
- The Hunt for Hitler's Hidden Soldiers in America
- By: Debbie Cenziper
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In a story spanning seven decades, Citizen 865 chronicles the harrowing wartime journeys of two Jewish orphans from occupied Poland who outran the men of Trawniki and settled in the United States, only to learn that some of their one-time captors had followed. A tenacious team of prosecutors and historians pursued these men and, up against the forces of time and political opposition, battled to the present day to remove them from US soil.
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Educational historical story
- By Amazon Customer on 01-03-20
By: Debbie Cenziper
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Hanns and Rudolf
- The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz
- By: Thomas Harding
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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May 1945: In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. One of the lead investigators is Lieutenant Hanns Alexander, a German Jew who is now serving in the British Army. Rudolf Höss is his most elusive target. Hanns and Rudolf reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Höss' capture, an encounter with repercussions that echo to this day.
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I Read This Marvelous Book...
- By Douglas on 01-04-14
By: Thomas Harding
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Defying Hitler
- The Germans Who Resisted Nazi Rule
- By: Gordon Thomas, Greg Lewis
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 22 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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An enthralling story that vividly resurrects the web of everyday Germans who resisted Nazi rule.
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The Righteous Few
- By Linda on 05-19-19
By: Gordon Thomas, and others
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Americans in Paris
- Life and Death under Nazi Occupation
- By: Charles Glass
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In Americans in Paris, tales of adventure, intrigue, passion, deceit, and survival unfold season by season as renowned journalist Charles Glass tells the story of a remarkable cast of expatriates and their struggles in Nazi Paris. Before the Second World War began, approximately thirty thousand Americans lived in Paris, and when war broke out in 1939 almost five thousand remained.
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Informative, but average engagement
- By Leann on 05-09-17
By: Charles Glass
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Lenin's Tomb
- The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
- By: David Remnick
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 29 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World, this best-selling account of the collapse of the Soviet Union combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism.
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The moral complexity of a comic book
- By Tot on 02-22-19
By: David Remnick
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The Watchmaker's Daughter
- The True Story of World War II Heroine Corrie ten Boom
- By: Larry Loftis
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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The Watchmaker’s Daughter is one of the greatest stories of World War II that listeners haven’t heard: the remarkable and inspiring life story of Corrie ten Boom—a groundbreaking, female Dutch watchmaker, whose family unselfishly transformed their house into a hiding place straight out of a spy novel to shelter Jews and refugees from the Nazis during Gestapo raids. Even though the Nazis knew what the ten Booms were up to, they were never able to find those sheltered within the house when they raided it.
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Good effort!
- By Michele on 03-07-23
By: Larry Loftis
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Tunnel 29
- The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall
- By: Helena Merriman
- Narrated by: Helena Merriman
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1962, a young student named Joachim Rudolph dug a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Waiting on the other side in East Berlin were dozens of men, women, and children - all willing to risk everything to escape.
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Gripping
- By Matthew on 09-09-21
By: Helena Merriman
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The Train to Crystal City
- FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II
- By: Jan Jarboe Russell
- Narrated by: Andrea Gallo
- Length: 14 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War II, where thousands of families - many US citizens - were incarcerated.
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I didn't know...
- By Graham Emslie on 02-27-17
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D-Day Girls
- The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II
- By: Sarah Rose
- Narrated by: Sarah Rose
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To "set Europe ablaze," in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France.
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an excellent story ruined by horrible narration
- By Joshua on 04-23-19
By: Sarah Rose
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Avenue of Spies
- A True Story of Terror, Espionage, and One American Family's Heroic Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Paris
- By: Alex Kershaw
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The leafy Avenue de Foch, one of the most exclusive residential streets in Nazi-occupied France, was Paris' hotbed of daring spies, murderous secret police, amoral informers, and Vichy collaborators. So when American physician Sumner Jackson, who lived with his wife and young son, Phillip, at Number 11, found himself drawn into the Liberation network of the French resistance, he knew the stakes were impossibly high.
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Gripping, inspirational, and informative!!
- By Constance M. Specht on 09-26-15
By: Alex Kershaw
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Witness to Nuremberg
- The Many Lives of the Man Who Translated at the Nazi War Trials
- By: W. Richard Sonnenfeldt
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In this gripping memoir by the chief American interpreter at the Nuremberg trials, Richard Sonnenfeldt recounts a remarkable life. By age 22 he had fought in the Battle of the Bulge and helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp, when he was appointed chief interpreter for the American prosecution of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials.
During his service, he spent pretrial time with Hermann Göering as well as other top Nazi leaders.
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So much more than expected
- By Kathy on 03-23-12
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Crucible
- The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917-1924
- By: Charles Emmerson
- Narrated by: Charles Emmerson
- Length: 25 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In Petrograd, a fire is lit. The Tsar is packed off to Siberia. A rancorous Russian exile returns to proclaim a workers' revolution. In America, black soldiers who have served their country in Europe demand their rights at home. An Austrian war veteran trained by the German army to give rousing speeches against the Bolshevik peril begins to rail against the Jews. A solar eclipse turns a former patent clerk into a celebrity. An American reporter living the high life in Paris searches out a new literary style.
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Splendid in all respects
- By Paul Custer on 02-11-20
By: Charles Emmerson
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Say Nothing
- A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
- By: Patrick Radden Keefe
- Narrated by: Matthew Blaney
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.
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On a par with I'll Be Gone in the Dark, plus...
- By Grace O'Malley on 03-01-19
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In this grand and thrilling narrative, the acclaimed biographer of Magellan, Columbus, and Marco Polo brings alive the singular life and adventures of Sir Francis Drake, the pirate/explorer/admiral whose mastery of the seas during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I changed the course of history.
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Good book by Millard, narrator ruined it
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Except for the author, this book is good!
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In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and - despite her prosthetic leg - helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it.
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Maybe it’s the narrator?
- By Andrea on 09-18-19
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The Splendid and the Vile
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On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next 12 months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally - and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless."
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In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and - despite her prosthetic leg - helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it.
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What listeners say about All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Teresa S. Gulyas
- 02-20-22
Stunning, brilliant!
Donner has done a superb job as an author and narrator of this excellent book. Going beyond the life of Mildred Harnock and her coconspirators, the events leading up to the Nazi regime are relayed in chilling detail.
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- Jack Ruskin
- 06-19-24
The insight into life and feelings during this time
An incredible book. I found myself gripped by its description of life and the mood during Germany at this time. I was so impressed by the writing (and performance by the author, Rebecca Donnie). She brings a n
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- Charles
- 06-21-24
Interesting. Authors should not read books.
This is more of an "historical novel" than it is non-fiction. Author took great liberties with assumed settings and behaviors.
Perfect example of why an author should NOT read his/her own book. Often very over-dramatic in her reading.
Still a very interesting story.
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- Bente Strong
- 08-10-21
Well researched and fascinating story
The performance, for my taste, is too breathless and emphatic, which is totally unnecessary as the story speaks for itself.
It was, in my opinion, a poor choice and I almost turned it off within the first few minutes but then got used to it and tolerated it. Her German pronunciation was, on the other hand, excellent.
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28 people found this helpful
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- Cib
- 12-27-21
One of the best books I’ve read
This book is unbelievably good. So captivating and well researched, with a genuine and exhaustive picture of Nazi Germany. Learning about Mildred’s life was inspiring and important—it feels like a way to connect and honor a hero both lost and disregarded until this point. All I can say is, thank you, Rebecca, for sharing this story with us.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 08-10-21
wonderful
This is a wonderful book. it is thoroughly researched and well written. it is a captivating story that is nonfiction but interesting than many novels.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-31-22
heartbreaking...
I have read and listened to many World War II biographies, autobiographies, history books and novels. I had never heard this or any of what the German underground people were trying to do.
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- Kelly
- 11-04-21
A Bit Breathy!
The author is such a good JA re-writer that I was surprised this was somewhat shallow. I did not appreciate or relate to the reader’s imitation of the different voices. Either have guys read the make parts or just read them. The female version of the male voices was silly. Sorry! Spoiled it for me!!
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5 people found this helpful
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- Vasco
- 08-22-21
Worth the credit
Some odd stylistic writing tics which might read better then they do as narration. Last 1/3 the best. Certainly an interesting story but not the swashbuckling story that A Woman of No Importance was but another contribution to WWII historiography. Overall I would recommend.
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- Ted
- 07-05-22
A highly effective reading by the author herself
i’m glad I listened to this on audiobook rather than reading it in print, as I think the author (unlike most authors who attempt to read their own work) added a powerful sense of urgency, even suspense, to the narrative. (Well, she does repeatedly mispronounce William Shirer’s name, but in every other respect she is a brilliant reader; I think she sounded best at 1.1 speed.) She's also an extraordinarily good writer, telling her complicated, harrowing tale with great concision, always seeming to choose exactly the right word.
It is, as some here have noted, a complicated, fragmentary tale with lots of gaps, often relying on rather scanty evidence and often focusing on people other than the central figure, Mildred Harnack, or on major historical events. And — also as noted — one doesn’t come away with much sense of what Mildred herself was like, as we frequently glimpse her only through other people’s memories.
It’s even somewhat hard to say just what good she actually did, aside from recruiting people to her circle of resisters. Sometimes those in the circle printed and distributed anti-Nazi leaflets, often via random mailings, or engaged in “poster action,” pasting anti-Nazi posters over Nazi ones. These were brave, highly dangerous activities that could — and perhaps ultimately did — get one killed, yet in hindsight they seem as useless and futile as the things resisters in other nations risked their lives doing. (The daring deeds of the French resistance, for example, accomplished little, compared to all the innocent lives the Germans took in reprisal.) In retrospect I suppose the most useful service Mildred rendered, really, was to aid her husband, a government employee, in his spying for Moscow. How ironic that all the evidence he, and many others, gathered of Hitler’s secret plans to invade the USSR went for naught because Stalin — a monster as great as Hitler — chose not to believe it.
P.S. This book somewhat complements another excellent audiobook, Erik Larson’s “In the Garden of Beasts,” with which it has considerable overlap. (Clearly some of the same sources were used, and even a few of the same quotes.) However, here Mildred’s friend Martha Dodd emerges as a frivolous, self-centered ninny, whereas she’s a touch more sympathetic in Larson’s book. In Donner’s account, Martha never learns that her Russian lover is married; in Larson’s version, Boris tells Martha the truth and even introduces her to his daughter. Larson has Thomas Wolfe reflect — at least briefly — on the pervasive fear he noticed in Germany; Donner’s book suggests that he was supremely self-interested and oblivious to what was going on. (It also quotes a cruelly dismissive journal entry Wolfe wrote about Martha, something Larson leaves out.) Finally, Larson’s book adds gruesome details to the death by hanging of Mildred’s husband — though perhaps Donner’s account is distressing enough without it.
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