American Pop
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Robert Petkoff
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By:
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Snowden Wright
About this listen
The story of a family. The story of an empire. The story of a nation.
Moving from Mississippi to Paris to New York and back again, a saga of family, ambition, passion, and tragedy that brings to life one unforgettable Southern dynasty - the Forsters, founders of the world’s first major soft-drink company - against the backdrop of more than a century of American cultural history.
The child of immigrants, Houghton Forster has always wanted more - from his time as a young boy in Mississippi, working 12-hour days at his father’s drugstore; to the moment he first laid eyes on his future wife, Annabelle Teague, a true Southern belle of aristocratic lineage; to his invention of the delicious fizzy drink that would transform him from tiller boy into the founder of an empire, the Panola Cola Company, and entice a youthful, enterprising nation entering a hopeful new age.
Now the heads of a preeminent American family spoken about in the same breath as the Hearsts and the Rockefellers, Houghton and Annabelle raise their four children with the expectation they’ll one day become world leaders. The burden of greatness falls early on eldest son Montgomery, a handsome and successful politician who has never recovered from the horrors and heartbreak of the Great War. His younger siblings Ramsey and Lance, known as the “infernal twins”, are rivals not only in wit and beauty, but in their utter carelessness with the lives and hearts of others. Their brother Harold, as gentle and caring as the twins can be cruel, is slowed by a mental disability - and later generations seem equally plagued by misfortune, forcing Houghton to seriously consider who should control the company after he’s gone.
An irresistible tour de force of original storytelling, American Pop blends fact and fiction, the mundane and the mythical, and utilizes techniques of historical reportage to capture how, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s words, “families are always rising and falling in America”, and to explore the many ways in which nostalgia can manipulate cultural memory - and the stories we choose to tell about ourselves.
©2019 Snowden Wright (P)2019 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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It's the end of the roaring twenties, and the exuberant and Honourable Phryne Fisher is dancing and gaming with gay abandon. But she becomes bored with London and the endless round of parties. In search of excitement, she sets her sights on a spot of detective work in Melbourne, Australia. And so mystery and the beautiful Russian dancer, Sasha de Lisse, appear in her life. From then on it's all cocaine and communism until her adventure reaches its steamy end in the Turkish baths of Little Lonsdale Street.
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A series that just gets better
- By Barbara Kindle Customer on 02-01-11
By: Kerry Greenwood
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Fifteen Postcards
- The Old Curiosity Shop, Book 1
- By: Kirsten McKenzie
- Narrated by: Tracey Llewelyn
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Determined to save the antiques store she has inherited from ruin after the unexplained disappearance of her parents, Sarah Lester discovers a jumbled collection of vintage postcards that leads her on a journey through time. Unprepared for the story the postcards weave about their reclusive former owner, Sarah’s life is thrown into disarray as she is transported to Victorian London, colonial New Zealand, and to the British Raj in 19th-century India.
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Disappointing and disorganized
- By Miranda on 03-16-22
By: Kirsten McKenzie
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Pale Horse, Pale Rider
- Three Short Novels
- By: Katherine Anne Porter
- Narrated by: Chelsea Stephens
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The classic 1939 collection of three novellas by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author and journalist, including the famous title story set during the influenza epidemic of 1918.
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Some of the most brilliant prose ever written
- By Anonymous User on 03-21-23
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Pnin
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the best-loved of Nabokov's novels, Pnin features his funniest and most heart-rending character. Professor Timofey Pnin is a haplessly disoriented Russian emigre precariously employed on an American college campus in the 1950s. Pnin struggles to maintain his dignity through a series of comic and sad misunderstandings, all the while falling victim both to subtle academic conspiracies and to the manipulations of a deliberately unreliable narrator.
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Why not leave their private sorrows to people?
- By Darwin8u on 01-13-20
By: Vladimir Nabokov
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The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
- A Novel
- By: Juliet Grames
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella’s childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents - moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella’s own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted. When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and her sister, Tina, must come of age side by side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them.
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Misogyny at its worst
- By brenda on 01-15-20
By: Juliet Grames
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The Moon, the Stars, and Madame Burova
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Hogan
- Narrated by: Nina Wadia
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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After inheriting her mother’s fortune-telling business as a young woman, Imelda Burova has spent her life on the Brighton pier practicing her trade. She and her trusty pack of Tarot cards have seen the lovers and the liars, the angels and the devils, the dreamers and the fools. Now, after a lifetime of keeping other people’s secrets, Madam Burova is ready to have a little piece of life for herself. But she still has one last thing to do—to fulfill a promise made in the 1970s, when she and her girlfriends were carefree, with their whole lives still before them.
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Trigger warning
- By Kristyn Rose on 01-30-23
By: Ruth Hogan
What listeners say about American Pop
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jean
- 10-04-21
Wobbly Timeline
I really wanted to like this book. I found the Forsters interesting and was all in to take the dive into their cola empire. Like others, the rapid time jumping discombobulated me. I don't mind a disjointed time line, but the switches would often feel random. I did listen to the book and often the narrator didn't leave silence between breaks, making it seem like it was all apart of the same thought, when in actuality you were switching perspectives. I wonder if each section focused on a central event, which the time jumps derived from, if that would help the narrative feel more united. Either way, you have to pay attention. Snippets of details are dropped which connect to later stories.
Having just read Malibu Rising this summer, Taylor Jenkins Reid explores a family saga in a similar fashion, but more successfully. I think in part it was due to the main storyline being anchored to the grand Riva party. The reader had a space to ground themselves and gain perspective from the deep dives into the family's past.
American Pop was an ambitious project and you can tell Wright trying to pack the novel with as much detail from the Foresters as he could. With a bit of tweaking it could've been perfect.
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2 people found this helpful
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- M. Ponder
- 08-19-23
Wish I read the reviews before purchasing
The premise of the book is interesting. I simply could not follow the story. The switching back and forth between stories and timelines was just too confusing and not enjoyable. I gave up halfway through the book.
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- Linda Kaye Brodie
- 06-03-19
I hated this book!
The story itself was good . The way it was told got on my last nerve! The way the author kept going back and forth in the time lines and going back and forth in the characters drove me nuts!!!
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4 people found this helpful
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- Happy Customer
- 07-12-23
So bad…save the credit
Save your money and the credit - this story is not worth it (or your time)
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