American Bloomsbury
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Narrated by:
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Kate Reading
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By:
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Susan Cheever
About this listen
It was an eclectic cast of characters. At various times in Concord, Massachusetts, three houses on the same road were home to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry and John Thoreau, Bronson Alcott and his daughter Louisa May, Nathanial Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller. Among their friends and neighbors were Henry James, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, and others - men and women are at the heart of American idealism.
We may think of them as static daguerreotypes, but in fact, these men and women fell desperately in and out of love with each other, edited each other's work, discussed and debated ideas and theories all night long, and walked arm in arm under Concord's great elms - all of which creates a thrilling story.
It was America's equivalent to England's Bloomsbury. American Bloomsbury explores how, exactly, Concord developed into the first American community devoted to literature and original ideas - ideas that, to this day, define our beliefs about environmentalism and conservation, and about the glorious importance of the individual self.
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Biographers have consistently credited her father, Bronson Alcott, for Louisa May Alcott's professional success, assuming that this outspoken idealist was the source of her progressive thinking and remarkable independence. But in this riveting dual biography, Eve LaPlante explodes those myths, drawing on unknown and unexplored letters and journals to show that Louisa's "Marmee", Abigail May Alcott, was in fact the intellectual and emotional center of her daughter's world. It was Abigail who urged Louisa to write, who inspired many of her stories, and who gave her the support and courage she needed to pursue her path.
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Hardworking women and the man they supported
- By Chris on 04-26-13
By: Eve LaPlante
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In the Great Green Room
- The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown
- By: Amy Gary
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The extraordinary life of the woman behind the beloved children's classics Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny comes alive in this fascinating biography of Margaret Wise Brown. Margaret's books have sold millions of copies all over the world, but few people know that she was at the center of a children's book publishing revolution.
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Excruciatingly boring
- By Melissa S. on 01-31-19
By: Amy Gary
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Mark Twain
- A Life
- By: Ron Powers
- Narrated by: Ron Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
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Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. His awestruck contemporaries saw him as the representative figure of his times, and his influence has deeply flavored the 20th and 21st centuries.
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Buy the Book
- By W.Denis on 10-22-05
By: Ron Powers
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Labyrinths
- Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl, and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis
- By: Catrine Clay
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Clever and ambitious, Emma Jung yearned to study the natural sciences at the University of Zurich. But the strict rules of proper Swiss society at the beginning of the 20th century dictated that a woman of Emma's stature - one of the richest heiresses in Switzerland - travel to Paris to "finish" her education, to prepare for marriage to a suitable man. Engaged to the son of one of her father's wealthy business colleagues, Emma's conventional and predictable life was upended when she met Carl Jung.
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Carl plays center stage
- By Sparrowhawk on 12-23-16
By: Catrine Clay
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Melville in Love
- The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick
- By: Michael Shelden
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Herman Melville's epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. Because he was neglected by academics for so long, and because he made little effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about Melville, and even less about what he called his "wicked book". Scholars still puzzle over what drove Melville to invent Captain Ahab's mad pursuit of the great white whale.
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intriguing
- By Jean on 06-18-16
By: Michael Shelden
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A Warrior of the People
- How Susan La Flesche Overcame Racial and Gender Inequality to Become America’s First Indian Doctor
- By: Joe Starita
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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On March 14, 1889, Susan La Flesche received her medical degree - becoming the first Native American doctor in US history. She earned her degree 31 years before women could vote and 35 years before Indians could become citizens in their own country. This is the story of an Indian woman who effectively became the chief of an entrenched patriarchal tribe, the story of a woman who crashed through thick walls of ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice and then spent the rest of her life using a unique bicultural identity to improve the lot of her people.
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A Remarkable Woman
- By Jean on 11-27-16
By: Joe Starita
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American Ghost
- A Family's Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest
- By: Hannah Nordhaus
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The dark-eyed woman in the long, black gown was first seen in the 1970s, standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events.
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A true American tale
- By Cleo Colorado on 05-29-15
By: Hannah Nordhaus
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The Road from Coorain
- By: Jill Ker Conway
- Narrated by: Barbara Caruso
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1930s, Jill Ker's parents bought a sheep farm on the western plains of New South Wales. In 1944, they lost nearly everything when a drought hit. Forced to leave Coorain, 11-year-old Jill and her mother settled in Sydney where Jill struggled to find a place for herself among Sydney's elite. Her story, both a chronicle of life in the Australian outback and the odyssey of a brilliant woman fighting the constraints of her time, offers a loving view of Australia.
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So glad I (finally) listened to my aunt
- By T. on 07-12-13
By: Jill Ker Conway
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Reading My Father
- A Memoir
- By: Alexandra Styron
- Narrated by: Alexandra Styron
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written with humor, compassion, and grace.
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William Styron Ranks...
- By Douglas on 12-22-13
By: Alexandra Styron
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Magnificent Rebels
- The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self
- By: Andrea Wulf
- Narrated by: Julie Teal
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, how can I be free? It all began in the 1790s in a quiet university town in Germany when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, writing, and their lives.
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fascinating overall, too much drama
- By soup cook on 11-27-22
By: Andrea Wulf
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The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson - coauthor of the classic memoir Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac - brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac's French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider's vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road.
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
What listeners say about American Bloomsbury
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Barbara Richards
- 05-19-24
Where the classics came from
I enjoyed taking a trip, back, in time, to read about the authors that I read, as a kid, as a teenager, and as an adult. For example, I read Little Women, in fourth grade, The Scarlet Letter, in high school, and some, of Thoreau, and Emerson's essays, this year.
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- Kenneth
- 03-06-09
A good overview, but with some problems
I was forewarned by the other reviewers that this book contains some factual errors, but as I knew little about the lives of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Alcott, and was unaware of Margaret Fuller until I listened to this book, I found this audiobook was a good introduction and overview of these writers and their stories. There are some very good passages in this book, for example where Cheever looks at the significance and resonance of Thoreau's Walden, but there are also some passages that seemed out of place. For some reason, Cheever wanted to introduce a memoir-style element into the text by occasionally discussing her own experiences with the places where the Transcendentalists traveled and wrote. Yet these interjections didn't add anything to the understanding of the writers, and often were banal or even bathetic. When Cheever complains that Concord doesn't look like she pictured it from reading about it as it was 150 years ago, I felt like shouting, "Well, what did you expect?!!" The closing passage, in which she imagines still meeting Emerson or Thoreau on the streets of Concord, was trite and self-indulgent. Even so, these digressions were relatively brief and don't prevent the book from being a good overview of its subject matter.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Sandra Z. Keith
- 06-25-18
How a town spawned an American philosophy
We listened to this on one long drive. We’re familiar with the Transcendentlaists, but enjoyed how the author shows how a town, Concord, came together as a community to spawn this very
American way of thought. I particularly enjoyed how the author could continuously seam together a patchwork quilt of lives and ideas. The characters come alive, and unlike other biographies, notice is paid to the women and, children. I had read this before we listened to the audio, but we also enjoyed the fine reading of the narrator. My husband might have liked more reference to the dialogue with the science developing at Harvard, but agrees this was not in the scope of the book, and as a transcendentlaist scholar himself, he was impressed by the book and cheever’s telling. And sue, if you’re reading this, we were housemates at 87 prospect st!
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- WXP
- 07-07-23
A good number of factual errors
So, on the good side- you get the full cast of these Concord writers. On the downside there are a good number of factual errors, and some untruths or exaggerations
I don’t doubt the author might have had the replica Thoreau cabin to themselves for a few minutes- but Walden in the Summer is extremely busy and the cabin is steps from the parking lot. It’s not “empty” or “not often visited” in anyway shape or form. It’s not large, and is easy to take in in a minute or two- but thousands upon thousands visit each year.
In another section, it’s said Thoreau could not find a publisher for “A Week on the Merrimack” which is certainly not true. It didn’t sell well, and Thoreau did buy back the remainders- but it was never “self published”. The author seems to know the whole story and how the extra copies lived in Thoreau’s basement so I’m not sure why this easily checked fact was written or made it by an editor.
It’s gossipy in parts- suggesting relationships, crushes, and possible affairs left an right. Perhaps there was a lot of mutual attraction in this small knit group but I wonder how much is factual and how much is speculation.
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- D. Bissonnette
- 07-30-23
Good background and kind of gossipy
If you are interested in the Concord Transcendentalists, this book brings them to life.
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- Paula
- 02-20-07
Decent intro to 1840's Concord
This is a well-publicized work by a well-known author (daughter of John Cheever); I picked it up after hearing a few interviews with the author on various NPR shows. It coincided with the interest I already had in the Transcendentalists.
I would recommend this title with some BIG caveats. As many have pointed out, there are several quite glaring factual errors in the book. (Please see the Amazon.com reviews for this title if you'd like more details about this)
The overall tone is light, chatty, even dishy and gossippy, and much more time is spent on the love lives and intrigues among the Hawthornes, Emersons, Thoreau brothers, Alcotts, Margaret Fuller, et al, than their lives of thought and literary output that was so profoundly influential to everything that followed in American culture.
OK, that having been said, I do think Cheever gets right a very superficial overview of the Concord group. It's a decent introduction for the absolute beginner. It's also appreciated that she gives equal weight to the women of the circle (which some other even contemporary books on this subject do not).
I hope the listener will use this selection as an intro in that way, then move on to other more scholarly works (Robert Richardson's bios of Emerson and Thoreau, Geldard's books on the spiritual teachings of Emerson) and then the works of the residents of Concord themselves, an amazing cluster of authors and thinkers.
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18 people found this helpful
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- connie
- 02-09-09
imaginative landscape for history narrative
As noted other reviews, this may not be interesting to those who already know much about the Concord writers, but since I was mostly ignorant, this narrative fascinated me and helped flesh out my outline knowledge of American literary, cultural and political history. As also noted in other reviews, the book's style is chatty, but I wasn't looking for a heavy read and enjoyed this aspect, too. Kate Reading is perfect for such narration. This is also the kind of history in which the author sometimes inserts herself or contemporary re-evaluations; she also spirals outward from her central narrative to touch on lives of others who intersected with her main characters, so she covers much ground in less than 7 hours. Depth suffers consequently and the cyclical storyline style necessarily leads to some repetition. Cheever did seem to get at the complicated soul of Thoreau, though, and really motivated me to read more about him. To me, this made a great companion read to Geraldine Brooks' novel, "March."
One discordant note that is struck a couple of times: Cheever often rightly underlines the oppression of women, even within the progressive Transcendentalists; however, in a couple of places she draws parallels to African American slavery, and there is no comparison in the degree of human bondage between the two. Cheever probably did not mean to imply this.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Denise
- 09-17-11
could be better, but not wasted time
I wanted more than just a soap opera about the Transcendentalists, and this was a bit more, but not a lot more. I enjoyed learning about these renowned figures as people, but would have liked to hear more about their philosophical and literary contributions as well. Still, it's the only book about the Transcendentalist community that is available on audiobook, so I suppose I should be grateful. And I'm not sorry I listened, I'm just left wanting more than I got.
A couple specific comments:
The portrayal of Louisa May Alcott is the most compelling part of the book. Cheever has written a biography of Alcott, and I suspect it is worth the read.
The chronological oddnesses mentioned by other reviewers are real. I wish Cheever had found a better way to address the problems of the interconnecting and overlapping lives. It would probably be less of an issue in a paper book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Aaron Elliott
- 04-30-07
Skips Nimbly Gathering Suspense
Ms. Cheever writes with much love for her material. She skips nimbly from person to person. I never lost track and all the stories tie together in a manner which was sometimes dramatic and suspenseful. I learned much and have now downloaded other books from the authors mentioned here. I can't wait to read this book again.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Greg
- 12-05-11
Excellent portrait
Highly recommended. Paints a detailed and entralling picture of a vital period in American thought and literature.
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