-
America Walks into a Bar
- A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim, Jennifer Van Dyck
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $29.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
When George Washington bade farewell to his officers, he did so in New York's Fraunces Tavern. When Andrew Jackson planned his defense of New Orleans against the British in 1815, he met Jean Lafitte in a grog shop. And when John Wilkes Booth plotted with his accomplices to carry out a certain assassination, they gathered in Surratt Tavern. In America Walks into a Bar, Christine Sismondo recounts the rich and fascinating history of an institution often reviled, yet always central to American life. She traces the tavern from England to New England, showing how even the Puritans valued "a good Beere". With fast-paced narration and lively characters, she carries the story through the twentieth century and beyond, from repeated struggles over licensing and Sunday liquor sales, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the temperance movement, from attempts to ban "treating" to Prohibition and repeal. As the cockpit of organized crime, politics, and everyday social life, the bar has remained vital - and controversial - down to the present. In 2006, when the Hurricane Katrina Emergency Tax Relief Act was passed, a rider excluded bars from applying for aid or tax breaks on the grounds that they contributed nothing to the community. Sismondo proves otherwise: the bar has contributed everything to the American story. In this heady cocktail of agile prose and telling anecdotes, Sismondo offers a resounding toast to taprooms, taverns, saloons, speakeasies, and the local hangout where everybody knows your name.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Drunk
- How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization
- By: Edward Slingerland
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place. Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically grounded explanation for our love of alcohol.
-
-
The equivalent of Harvey Weinstein writing a book why male dominated workplaces thrive
- By I Listen on 10-10-21
-
Drink
- A Cultural History of Alcohol
- By: Iain Gately
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 21 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drink investigates the history of this Jekyll and Hyde of fluids, tracing mankind's love/hate relationship with alcohol from ancient Egypt to present day. Drink further documents the contribution of alcohol to the birth and growth of the United States, taking in the War of Independence, Pennsylvania Whiskey revolt, slave trade, and failed experiment of national Prohibition. Finally, it provides a history of the world's most famous drinks - and drinkers. Packed with trivia and colorful characters, Drink amounts to an intoxicating history of the world.
-
-
Amazing!
- By Ben on 02-23-22
By: Iain Gately
-
A People's History of the United States
- By: Howard Zinn
- Narrated by: Jeff Zinn
- Length: 34 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For much of his life, historian Howard Zinn chronicled American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version taught in schools - with its emphasis on great men in high places - to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History of the United States is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of - and in the words of - America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers.
-
-
Amateur hour in the production booth
- By Thomas on 11-09-10
By: Howard Zinn
-
Last Call
- The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
- By: Daniel Okrent
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages. Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces, including the growing political power of the women’s suffrage movement and the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities.
-
-
Very Thorough Historical Review
- By Pierre on 11-12-12
By: Daniel Okrent
-
No More Lies
- By: Dick Gregory
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, during the Black Power Movement, iconoclast Dick Gregory challenged one of the foundations of America itself - its history, which had been written almost exclusively from the white male perspective. In No More Lies, this true trailblazer gave voice to African Americans, speaking their truth about the past and race relations in the United States. No More Lies offers this incomparable satirist’s intellectual, conspiratorial, and humorous spin on the facts.
-
-
My Hertiages
- By n/a on 11-25-22
By: Dick Gregory
-
A History of the American People
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 48 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Johnson's monumental history of the United States, from the first settlers to the Clinton administration, covers every aspect of American culture: politics, business, art, literature, science, society and customs, complex traditions, and religious beliefs. The story is told in terms of the men and women who shaped and led the nation and the ordinary people who collectively created its unique character.
-
-
A British conservative's view of American history.
- By Mike From Mesa on 06-17-09
By: Paul Johnson
-
Drunk
- How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization
- By: Edward Slingerland
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place. Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically grounded explanation for our love of alcohol.
-
-
The equivalent of Harvey Weinstein writing a book why male dominated workplaces thrive
- By I Listen on 10-10-21
-
Drink
- A Cultural History of Alcohol
- By: Iain Gately
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 21 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Drink investigates the history of this Jekyll and Hyde of fluids, tracing mankind's love/hate relationship with alcohol from ancient Egypt to present day. Drink further documents the contribution of alcohol to the birth and growth of the United States, taking in the War of Independence, Pennsylvania Whiskey revolt, slave trade, and failed experiment of national Prohibition. Finally, it provides a history of the world's most famous drinks - and drinkers. Packed with trivia and colorful characters, Drink amounts to an intoxicating history of the world.
-
-
Amazing!
- By Ben on 02-23-22
By: Iain Gately
-
A People's History of the United States
- By: Howard Zinn
- Narrated by: Jeff Zinn
- Length: 34 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For much of his life, historian Howard Zinn chronicled American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version taught in schools - with its emphasis on great men in high places - to focus on the street, the home, and the workplace. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History of the United States is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of - and in the words of - America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers.
-
-
Amateur hour in the production booth
- By Thomas on 11-09-10
By: Howard Zinn
-
Last Call
- The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
- By: Daniel Okrent
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages. Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces, including the growing political power of the women’s suffrage movement and the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities.
-
-
Very Thorough Historical Review
- By Pierre on 11-12-12
By: Daniel Okrent
-
No More Lies
- By: Dick Gregory
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, during the Black Power Movement, iconoclast Dick Gregory challenged one of the foundations of America itself - its history, which had been written almost exclusively from the white male perspective. In No More Lies, this true trailblazer gave voice to African Americans, speaking their truth about the past and race relations in the United States. No More Lies offers this incomparable satirist’s intellectual, conspiratorial, and humorous spin on the facts.
-
-
My Hertiages
- By n/a on 11-25-22
By: Dick Gregory
-
A History of the American People
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 48 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Johnson's monumental history of the United States, from the first settlers to the Clinton administration, covers every aspect of American culture: politics, business, art, literature, science, society and customs, complex traditions, and religious beliefs. The story is told in terms of the men and women who shaped and led the nation and the ordinary people who collectively created its unique character.
-
-
A British conservative's view of American history.
- By Mike From Mesa on 06-17-09
By: Paul Johnson
-
A Renegade History of the United States
- By: Thaddeus Russell
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 16 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American history was driven by clashes between those interested in preserving social order and those more interested in pursuing their own desires---the "respectable" versus the "degenerate", the moral versus the immoral. The more that "bad" people existed, resisted, and won, the greater was our common good. In A Renegade History of the United States, Russell introduces us to the origins of our nation's identity as we have never known them before.
-
-
One of those books...that cause brain freeze!
- By Rory on 07-19-13
By: Thaddeus Russell
-
Unreasonable Hospitality
- The Remarkable Power of Giving People More than They Expect
- By: Will Guidara
- Narrated by: Will Guidara
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Will Guidara was twenty-six when he took the helm of Eleven Madison Park, a struggling two-star brasserie that had never quite lived up to its majestic room. Eleven years later, EMP was named the best restaurant in the world. How did Guidara pull off this unprecedented transformation? Radical reinvention, a true partnership between the kitchen and the dining room—and memorable, over-the-top, bespoke hospitality.
-
-
A Stratification What it Means to Be of Service
- By Amazon Customer on 10-31-22
By: Will Guidara
-
Harlem
- The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America
- By: Jonathan Gill
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harlem is perhaps the most famous, iconic neighborhood in the United States. A bastion of freedom and the capital of black America, Harlem's 20th-century renaissance changed our arts, culture, and politics forever. But this is only one of the many chapters in a wonderfully rich and varied history. In Harlem, historian Jonathan Gill presents the first complete chronicle of this remarkable place.
-
-
Very Interesting.
- By Joyce Mirowski on 06-05-20
By: Jonathan Gill
-
Five Points
- The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum
- By: Tyler Anbinder
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 16 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All but forgotten today, Five Points was once renowned the world over. Its handful of streets in lower Manhattan featured America's most wretched poverty, shared by Irish, Jewish, German, Italian, Chinese, and African Americans. It was the scene of more riots, scams, saloons, brothels, and drunkenness than any other neighborhood in the new world. The story that Anbinder tells is the classic tale of America's immigrant past, as successive waves of new arrivals fought for survival in a land that was as exciting as it was dangerous, as riotous as it was culturally rich.
-
-
Great historical piece
- By Jim Braunstein on 08-19-19
By: Tyler Anbinder
-
New World Coming
- The 1920s and the Making of Modern America
- By: Nathan Miller
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 18 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jazz. Bootleggers. Flappers. Talkies. Model T Fords. Lindbergh's history-making flight over the Atlantic. The 1920s was also the decade of the hard-won vote for women, racial injustice, censorship, social conflict, and the birth of organized crime.
-
-
My High School History Class Never Told
- By Charles Stembridge on 06-29-04
By: Nathan Miller
-
Gotham
- A History of New York City to 1898
- By: Edwin G. Burrows, Mike Wallace
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 67 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. The events and people who crowd this audiobook guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America....
-
-
THANK YOU!!!!!
- By Stephen F (SPFJR) on 09-29-18
By: Edwin G. Burrows, and others
-
Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba
- The Biography of a Cause
- By: Tom Gjelten
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this widely hailed book, NPR correspondent Tom Gjelten fuses the story of the Bacardi family and their famous rum business with Cuba's tumultuous experience over the last 150 years to produce a deeply entertaining historical narrative. The company Facundo Bacardi, launched in Cuba in 1862, brought worldwide fame to the island, and in the decades that followed, his Bacardi descendants participated in every aspect of Cuban life.
-
-
Brilliantly written , amazing performance .
- By RRV on 10-29-17
By: Tom Gjelten
-
Vodka Politics
- Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State
- By: Mark Lawrence Schrad
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 18 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Russia is famous for its vodka, and its culture of extreme intoxication. But just as vodka is central to the lives of many Russians, it is also central to understanding Russian history and politics. In Vodka Politics, Mark Lawrence Schrad argues that debilitating societal alcoholism is not hard-wired into Russians' genetic code, but rather their autocratic political system, which has long wielded vodka as a tool of statecraft. Through a series of historical investigations stretching from Ivan the Terrible through Vladimir Putin, Vodka Politics presents the secret history of the Russian state itself.
-
-
Look Natasha! Moose and Squirrel are drunk!
- By The Crunge on 09-07-16
-
City of Dreams
- The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York
- By: Tyler Anbinder
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 24 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tyler Anbinder's story is one of innovators and artists, revolutionaries and rioters, staggering deprivation and soaring triumphs, all playing out against the powerful backdrop of New York City, at once ever changing and profoundly, permanently itself. City of Dreams provides a vivid sense of what New York looked like, sounded like, smelled like, and felt like over the centuries of its development and maturation into the city we know today.
-
-
Even as a history, not engaging
- By Patrick Kelly on 12-03-16
By: Tyler Anbinder
-
Wicked Portland
- The Wild and Lusty Underworld of a Frontier Seaport Town
- By: Finn J.D. John
- Narrated by: Finn J.D. John
- Length: 4 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In its youth, Portland, Oregon, was a bit like a rough-and-ready logging camp with a gritty, hard-punching deep-water port. Lusty lads dallied with hard-eyed beauties in dark alleys, and captains forked over “blood money” to buy men for their crews from shanghai operators. From the seedy waterfront to the notorious North End, Portland's sin sector offered vices packaged in pint glasses and perfumed corsets.
-
-
Polished & Pleasing
- By James on 07-19-15
By: Finn J.D. John
-
The First Kennedys
- The Humble Roots of an American Dynasty
- By: Neal Thompson
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Their Irish ancestry was a hallmark of the Kennedys’ initial political profile, as JFK leveraged his working-class roots to connect with blue-collar voters. Today, we remember this iconic American family as the vanguard of wealth, power, and style rather than as the descendants of poor immigrants. Here at last, we meet the first American Kennedys, Patrick and Bridget, who arrived as many thousands of others did following the Great Famine—penniless and hungry. Less than a decade after their marriage in Boston, Patrick’s sudden death left Bridget to raise their children single-handedly.
-
-
Fascinating and inspiring
- By tejanomusic on 04-03-22
By: Neal Thompson
-
The Black Russian
- By: Vladimir Alexandrov
- Narrated by: Peter Marinker
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Black Russian is the incredible story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, born in 1872 to former slaves who became prosperous farmers in Mississippi. After leaving the South and working as a waiter and valet in Chicago and Brooklyn, Frederick sought greater freedom in London, then crisscrossed Europe, and - in a highly unusual choice for a black American at the time - went to Russia in 1899. Because he found no color line there, Frederick made Moscow his home. He renamed himself Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas, married twice, acquired a mistress, and took Russian citizenship.
-
-
US Born African Descendant 2 Russian Citizenship
- By Sheila Gibson on 03-14-15
Related to this topic
-
Last Call
- The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
- By: Daniel Okrent
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages. Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces, including the growing political power of the women’s suffrage movement and the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities.
-
-
Very Thorough Historical Review
- By Pierre on 11-12-12
By: Daniel Okrent
-
Drinking in America
- Our Secret History
- By: Susan Cheever
- Narrated by: Barbara Benjamin Creel
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Drinking in America, best-selling author Susan Cheever chronicles our national love affair with liquor, taking a long, thoughtful look at the way alcohol has changed our nation's history. This is the often-overlooked story of how alcohol has shaped American events and the American character from the 17th to the 20th century.
-
-
Revisionist history at its worst
- By Dawson Roy Lewis III on 10-26-15
By: Susan Cheever
-
Harlem
- The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America
- By: Jonathan Gill
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harlem is perhaps the most famous, iconic neighborhood in the United States. A bastion of freedom and the capital of black America, Harlem's 20th-century renaissance changed our arts, culture, and politics forever. But this is only one of the many chapters in a wonderfully rich and varied history. In Harlem, historian Jonathan Gill presents the first complete chronicle of this remarkable place.
-
-
Very Interesting.
- By Joyce Mirowski on 06-05-20
By: Jonathan Gill
-
Five Points
- The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum
- By: Tyler Anbinder
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 16 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All but forgotten today, Five Points was once renowned the world over. Its handful of streets in lower Manhattan featured America's most wretched poverty, shared by Irish, Jewish, German, Italian, Chinese, and African Americans. It was the scene of more riots, scams, saloons, brothels, and drunkenness than any other neighborhood in the new world. The story that Anbinder tells is the classic tale of America's immigrant past, as successive waves of new arrivals fought for survival in a land that was as exciting as it was dangerous, as riotous as it was culturally rich.
-
-
Great historical piece
- By Jim Braunstein on 08-19-19
By: Tyler Anbinder
-
New World Coming
- The 1920s and the Making of Modern America
- By: Nathan Miller
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 18 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jazz. Bootleggers. Flappers. Talkies. Model T Fords. Lindbergh's history-making flight over the Atlantic. The 1920s was also the decade of the hard-won vote for women, racial injustice, censorship, social conflict, and the birth of organized crime.
-
-
My High School History Class Never Told
- By Charles Stembridge on 06-29-04
By: Nathan Miller
-
Whiskey Women
- The Untold Story of How Women Saved Bourbon, Scotch, and Irish Whiskey
- By: Fred Minnick
- Narrated by: James Killavey
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Without women, whiskey may not exist. In Whiskey Women, Wall Street Journal-best-selling author Fred Minnick tells the tales of women who have created this industry, from Mesopotamia's first beer brewers and distillers to America's rough-and-tough bootleggers during Prohibition. Women have long distilled, marketed, and owned spirits companies. These strong women built many iconic brands, including Bushmills, Laphroaig, and Maker's Mark.
-
-
Women should be proud of this.
- By Tracy on 01-29-16
By: Fred Minnick
-
Last Call
- The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
- By: Daniel Okrent
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A brilliant, authoritative, and fascinating history of America’s most puzzling era, the years 1920 to 1933, when the U.S. Constitution was amended to restrict one of America’s favorite pastimes: drinking alcoholic beverages. Okrent reveals how Prohibition marked a confluence of diverse forces, including the growing political power of the women’s suffrage movement and the fear of small-town, native-stock Protestants that they were losing control of their country to the immigrants of the large cities.
-
-
Very Thorough Historical Review
- By Pierre on 11-12-12
By: Daniel Okrent
-
Drinking in America
- Our Secret History
- By: Susan Cheever
- Narrated by: Barbara Benjamin Creel
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Drinking in America, best-selling author Susan Cheever chronicles our national love affair with liquor, taking a long, thoughtful look at the way alcohol has changed our nation's history. This is the often-overlooked story of how alcohol has shaped American events and the American character from the 17th to the 20th century.
-
-
Revisionist history at its worst
- By Dawson Roy Lewis III on 10-26-15
By: Susan Cheever
-
Harlem
- The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to Capital of Black America
- By: Jonathan Gill
- Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harlem is perhaps the most famous, iconic neighborhood in the United States. A bastion of freedom and the capital of black America, Harlem's 20th-century renaissance changed our arts, culture, and politics forever. But this is only one of the many chapters in a wonderfully rich and varied history. In Harlem, historian Jonathan Gill presents the first complete chronicle of this remarkable place.
-
-
Very Interesting.
- By Joyce Mirowski on 06-05-20
By: Jonathan Gill
-
Five Points
- The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum
- By: Tyler Anbinder
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 16 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
All but forgotten today, Five Points was once renowned the world over. Its handful of streets in lower Manhattan featured America's most wretched poverty, shared by Irish, Jewish, German, Italian, Chinese, and African Americans. It was the scene of more riots, scams, saloons, brothels, and drunkenness than any other neighborhood in the new world. The story that Anbinder tells is the classic tale of America's immigrant past, as successive waves of new arrivals fought for survival in a land that was as exciting as it was dangerous, as riotous as it was culturally rich.
-
-
Great historical piece
- By Jim Braunstein on 08-19-19
By: Tyler Anbinder
-
New World Coming
- The 1920s and the Making of Modern America
- By: Nathan Miller
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 18 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jazz. Bootleggers. Flappers. Talkies. Model T Fords. Lindbergh's history-making flight over the Atlantic. The 1920s was also the decade of the hard-won vote for women, racial injustice, censorship, social conflict, and the birth of organized crime.
-
-
My High School History Class Never Told
- By Charles Stembridge on 06-29-04
By: Nathan Miller
-
Whiskey Women
- The Untold Story of How Women Saved Bourbon, Scotch, and Irish Whiskey
- By: Fred Minnick
- Narrated by: James Killavey
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Without women, whiskey may not exist. In Whiskey Women, Wall Street Journal-best-selling author Fred Minnick tells the tales of women who have created this industry, from Mesopotamia's first beer brewers and distillers to America's rough-and-tough bootleggers during Prohibition. Women have long distilled, marketed, and owned spirits companies. These strong women built many iconic brands, including Bushmills, Laphroaig, and Maker's Mark.
-
-
Women should be proud of this.
- By Tracy on 01-29-16
By: Fred Minnick
-
Gotham
- A History of New York City to 1898
- By: Edwin G. Burrows, Mike Wallace
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 67 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. The events and people who crowd this audiobook guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America....
-
-
THANK YOU!!!!!
- By Stephen F (SPFJR) on 09-29-18
By: Edwin G. Burrows, and others
-
A Renegade History of the United States
- By: Thaddeus Russell
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 16 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
American history was driven by clashes between those interested in preserving social order and those more interested in pursuing their own desires---the "respectable" versus the "degenerate", the moral versus the immoral. The more that "bad" people existed, resisted, and won, the greater was our common good. In A Renegade History of the United States, Russell introduces us to the origins of our nation's identity as we have never known them before.
-
-
One of those books...that cause brain freeze!
- By Rory on 07-19-13
By: Thaddeus Russell
-
Vodka Politics
- Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State
- By: Mark Lawrence Schrad
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 18 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Russia is famous for its vodka, and its culture of extreme intoxication. But just as vodka is central to the lives of many Russians, it is also central to understanding Russian history and politics. In Vodka Politics, Mark Lawrence Schrad argues that debilitating societal alcoholism is not hard-wired into Russians' genetic code, but rather their autocratic political system, which has long wielded vodka as a tool of statecraft. Through a series of historical investigations stretching from Ivan the Terrible through Vladimir Putin, Vodka Politics presents the secret history of the Russian state itself.
-
-
Look Natasha! Moose and Squirrel are drunk!
- By The Crunge on 09-07-16
-
City of Dreams
- The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York
- By: Tyler Anbinder
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 24 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tyler Anbinder's story is one of innovators and artists, revolutionaries and rioters, staggering deprivation and soaring triumphs, all playing out against the powerful backdrop of New York City, at once ever changing and profoundly, permanently itself. City of Dreams provides a vivid sense of what New York looked like, sounded like, smelled like, and felt like over the centuries of its development and maturation into the city we know today.
-
-
Even as a history, not engaging
- By Patrick Kelly on 12-03-16
By: Tyler Anbinder
-
Wicked Portland
- The Wild and Lusty Underworld of a Frontier Seaport Town
- By: Finn J.D. John
- Narrated by: Finn J.D. John
- Length: 4 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In its youth, Portland, Oregon, was a bit like a rough-and-ready logging camp with a gritty, hard-punching deep-water port. Lusty lads dallied with hard-eyed beauties in dark alleys, and captains forked over “blood money” to buy men for their crews from shanghai operators. From the seedy waterfront to the notorious North End, Portland's sin sector offered vices packaged in pint glasses and perfumed corsets.
-
-
Polished & Pleasing
- By James on 07-19-15
By: Finn J.D. John
-
A History of the American People
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 48 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Johnson's monumental history of the United States, from the first settlers to the Clinton administration, covers every aspect of American culture: politics, business, art, literature, science, society and customs, complex traditions, and religious beliefs. The story is told in terms of the men and women who shaped and led the nation and the ordinary people who collectively created its unique character.
-
-
A British conservative's view of American history.
- By Mike From Mesa on 06-17-09
By: Paul Johnson
-
Boardwalk Empire
- The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City
- By: Nelson Johnson
- Narrated by: Joe Mantegna, Terence Winter (foreword)
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From its inception, Atlantic City has always been a town dedicated to the fast buck, and this wide-reachinghistory offers a riveting account of its past 100 year, from the city's heyday as a Prohibition-era mecca of lawlessness to its rebirth as a legitimate casino resort in the modern era.
-
-
The Unmasked History of Atlantic City
- By Steven Schuster on 08-07-10
By: Nelson Johnson
-
The First Kennedys
- The Humble Roots of an American Dynasty
- By: Neal Thompson
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Their Irish ancestry was a hallmark of the Kennedys’ initial political profile, as JFK leveraged his working-class roots to connect with blue-collar voters. Today, we remember this iconic American family as the vanguard of wealth, power, and style rather than as the descendants of poor immigrants. Here at last, we meet the first American Kennedys, Patrick and Bridget, who arrived as many thousands of others did following the Great Famine—penniless and hungry. Less than a decade after their marriage in Boston, Patrick’s sudden death left Bridget to raise their children single-handedly.
-
-
Fascinating and inspiring
- By tejanomusic on 04-03-22
By: Neal Thompson
-
The Black Russian
- By: Vladimir Alexandrov
- Narrated by: Peter Marinker
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Black Russian is the incredible story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, born in 1872 to former slaves who became prosperous farmers in Mississippi. After leaving the South and working as a waiter and valet in Chicago and Brooklyn, Frederick sought greater freedom in London, then crisscrossed Europe, and - in a highly unusual choice for a black American at the time - went to Russia in 1899. Because he found no color line there, Frederick made Moscow his home. He renamed himself Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas, married twice, acquired a mistress, and took Russian citizenship.
-
-
US Born African Descendant 2 Russian Citizenship
- By Sheila Gibson on 03-14-15
-
No More Lies
- By: Dick Gregory
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, during the Black Power Movement, iconoclast Dick Gregory challenged one of the foundations of America itself - its history, which had been written almost exclusively from the white male perspective. In No More Lies, this true trailblazer gave voice to African Americans, speaking their truth about the past and race relations in the United States. No More Lies offers this incomparable satirist’s intellectual, conspiratorial, and humorous spin on the facts.
-
-
My Hertiages
- By n/a on 11-25-22
By: Dick Gregory
-
Beale Street Dynasty
- Sex, Song, and the Struggle for the Soul of Memphis
- By: Preston Lauterbach
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following the Civil War, Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, thrived as a cauldron of sex and song, violence and passion. But out of this turmoil emerged a center of black progress, optimism, and cultural ferment. Preston Lauterbach tells this vivid, fascinating story through the multigenerational saga of a family whose ambition, race pride, and moral complexity indelibly shaped the city that would loom so large in American life.
-
-
Narration Speed...It's Half the Battle
- By B. Westman on 03-21-17
-
Machine Made
- Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics
- By: Terry Golway
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, history has considered Tammany Hall, New York's famous political machine, shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft, crime, and patronage personified by notoriously corrupt characters. Infamous crooks like William "Boss" Tweed dominate traditional histories of Tammany, distorting our understanding of a critical chapter of American political history. In Machine Made, historian and New York City journalist Terry Golway convincingly dismantles these stereotypes.
-
-
A missed opportunity
- By Kathy on 05-27-15
By: Terry Golway