Audacity
How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail
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Narrated by:
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Mike Chamberlain
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By:
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Jonathan Chait
About this listen
An unassailable case that, in the eyes of history, Barack Obama will be viewed as one of America's best and most accomplished presidents.
Over the course of eight years, Barack Obama has amassed an array of outstanding achievements. His administration saved the American economy from collapse, expanded health insurance to millions who previously could not afford it, negotiated an historic nuclear deal with Iran, helped craft a groundbreaking international climate accord, reined in Wall Street, and crafted a new vision of racial progress. He has done all of this despite a Left that frequently disdained him as a sellout and a hysterical Right that did everything possible to destroy his agenda even when they agreed with what he was doing.
Now, as the page turns to our next commander in chief, Jonathan Chait - acclaimed as one of the most incisive and meticulous political commentators in America - digs deep into Obama's record on major policy fronts - economics, the environment, domestic reform, health care, race, foreign policy, and civil rights - to demonstrate why history will judge our 44th president as among the greatest in history.
Audacity does not shy away from Obama's failures, most notably in foreign policy. Yet Chait convincingly shows that President Obama has accomplished what candidate Obama said he would, despite overwhelming opposition - and that the hopes of those who voted for him have not been dashed despite the smokescreen of extremist propaganda and the limits of short-term perspective.
©2017 Jonathan Chait (P)2017 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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To be sure, neoliberalism has contributed to a number of alarming trends, not least of which has been a massive growth in income inequality. Yet as the eminent historian Gary Gerstle argues in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, these indictments fail to reckon with the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview had such persuasive hold on both the right and the left for three decades.
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Cursory, unoriginal, class-blind
- By A Reviewer on 10-24-22
By: Gary Gerstle
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Hostile Takeover
- Resisting Centralized Government's Stranglehold on America
- By: Matt Kibbe
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Hostile Takeover is a rebellious challenge to the "upper management" of government, who are choking American prosperity and liberty. Matt Kibbe exposes the privileged collusion of Washington insiders - and maps out a proven plan for how to return power from the self-appointed "experts" back to the people. Dubbed "one of the Tea Party's masterminds" by Newsweek, Kibbe reveals how grassroots citizens can and will check the federal behemoth and restore the American enterprise.
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An amazing book from an interesting perspective
- By Aaron on 12-28-12
By: Matt Kibbe
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JFK and the Reagan Revolution
- A Secret History of American Prosperity
- By: Lawrence Kudlow, Brian Domitrovic
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Who invented supply-side economics - the idea that cutting tax rates can result in more growth, more prosperity at all income levels, and even more tax revenue flowing into the IRS? Most people would credit the economic team that advised Ronald Reagan in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But in fact supply-side economics came of age two decades earlier. And the first president who embraced it was one of the biggest icons of the Democratic Party - John F. Kennedy.
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Turn the speed up to 1 1/2 to 2 times
- By B. MIDDLETON on 09-15-16
By: Lawrence Kudlow, and others
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The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
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Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By John on 10-06-11
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To Make Men Free
- A History of the Republican Party
- By: Heather Cox Richardson
- Narrated by: Heather Cox Richardson
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Republican Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession. While progressive Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower revived Lincoln’s vision and expanded the government, their opponents appealed to Americans’ latent racism and xenophobia to regain political power, linking taxation and regulation to redistribution and socialism. In the modern era, the schism within the Republican Party has grown wider, pulling the GOP ever further from its founding principles.
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Fascinating read!
- By Marsha on 12-27-21
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Fault Lines
- A History of the United States Since 1974
- By: Kevin M. Kruse, Julian E. Zelizer
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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If you were asked when America became polarized, your answer would likely depend on your age: You might say during Barack Obama’s presidency, or with the post-9/11 war on terror, or the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, or the “Reagan Revolution” and the the rise of the New Right. How did the US become so divided? Fault Lines offers a richly told, wide-angle history view toward an answer.
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Good overview of the past 45 years
- By Adam Shields on 02-26-19
By: Kevin M. Kruse, and others
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New Deal or Raw Deal?
- How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America
- By: Burton Folsom Jr.
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In this shocking and groundbreaking new book, economic historian Burton Folsom, Jr., exposes the idyllic legend of Franklin D. Roosevelt as a myth of epic proportions. With questionable moral character and a vendetta against the business elite, Roosevelt created New Deal programs marked by inconsistent planning, wasteful spending, and opportunity for political gain---ultimately elevating public opinion of his administration but falling flat in achieving the economic revitalization that America needed.
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A must listen!
- By Book and Movie Lover on 06-14-09
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The Centrist Manifesto
- By: Charles Wheelan
- Narrated by: Charles Wheelan
- Length: 3 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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From debt ceiling standoffs to single-digit Congress approval ratings, America’s political system has never been more polarized - or paralyzed - than it is today. As best-selling author and public policy expert Charles Wheelan writes, now is the time for a pragmatic Centrist party that will identify and embrace the best Democratic and Republican ideals, moving us forward on the most urgent issues for our nation.
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Must read for all rational americans
- By CM on 09-15-15
By: Charles Wheelan
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents
- From Wilson to Obama
- By: Steven F. Hayward
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Academics, journalists, and popular historians agree: our greatest presidents are the ones who confronted a national crisis and mobilized the entire nation to face it. That’s the conventional wisdom. The chief executives who are celebrated in textbooks and placed in the top echelon of presidents in surveys of experts are the bold leaders - the Woodrow Wilsons and Franklin Roosevelts - who reshaped the United States in line with their grand “vision” for America. Unfortunately, along the way, these “great” presidents inevitably expanded government - and shrank our liberties.
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Really enjoyed it
- By Jkc-007 on 02-15-17
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The People vs. Democracy
- Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
- By: Yascha Mounk
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The world is in turmoil. From India to Turkey and from Poland to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result democracy itself may now be at risk. Two core components of liberal democracy - individual rights and the popular will - are at war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of "rights without democracy" took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create a system of "democracy without rights."
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Not worth it
- By DailyShopper on 06-07-18
By: Yascha Mounk
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Broke
- The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure
- By: Glenn Beck, Kevin Balfe
- Narrated by: Glenn Beck, Brian Sack
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In the words of Harvard economist Niall Ferguson, the United States is “an empire on the edge of chaos.” Why? Glenn Beck thinks the answer is pretty simple: Because we’ve turned our backs on the Constitution. Yes, our country is financially broke, but that’s just a side effect of our broken spirit, our broken faith in government, the broken promises by our leaders, and a broken political system that has centralized power at the expense of individual rights.
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Finally book that has done the reasearch...
- By dah551 on 10-31-10
By: Glenn Beck, and others
What listeners say about Audacity
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ant.../Upstate NY
- 04-22-17
Great Book
Chait does a great job of providing a great of facts which the lesser could further investigate if he/she chooses.
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- sop
- 01-27-17
Insightful & "Unbelievable" ;)
Great account of how partisan politics and messaging holds back the great American potential and how Barack Obama succeeded in changing the country nonetheless.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Paul
- 02-01-17
Good and balanced view of the Obama years
I think the Obama years will be judged very favorably by history, particularly compared to what came before and after. This book breaks down some of the complexity during that time and makes it easy to understand the motives of the actors involved - on both sides.
Mike Chamberlain narrated E.J.Dionne's book. In a review of that book I said that he sounds like Bob Costas to me. That struck me again this time. I usually will give no more than 4 stars for performance if a non-fiction contemporary work is not narrated by the author but I relented this time. The narration is very clear and I haven't heard Chait speak more than once or twice.
If you have a negative view of President Obama then you might think the author should have taken a harsher stance but I think this book is fairly balanced and maybe just a bit too critical. It is not a hagiography.
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10 people found this helpful
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- C. M. H.
- 01-25-17
Perspective of the Obama Era
This is an engrossing book; it helps put in perspective the 8 years of the Obama presidency. It starts with the premise that the election of the country's first African American president was a remarkable event which has had a significant and ongoing impact on our culture.
This book and its story of the Obama phenomenon genuinely helps one understand the Trump election as a natural result of the course of a nation still in denial about race.
The only complaint is the narrator -- his flat and deadpan delivery makes for hard listening.
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10 people found this helpful
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- Craig Schorling
- 02-16-17
Solid Book With a Tendancy to Become a Tad Verbose
Where does Audacity rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
As far as content is concerned, it was a solid book with many facts and ideas to reflect upon. The narration was dry and felt flat even for a factual heavy book. All in all I would say it could have been better but it could have been worse. In the first chapter the book tells the reader that it is not a book that will detail the administration. Even with that being put out in the open there were times I felt that the book missed the mark or failed to deliver.
What aspect of Mike Chamberlain’s performance would you have changed?
During non-fiction books I don't mind the narrator being on the dry side but there was something about this performance that felt difference. It was almost as if you could tell it was a recording. Some of the immersion effect was lost.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
There were some very good comparisons made that I had not thought of or were aware of. those were the moments that most captivated my interest. Other than that it was a very to the point book that did not get overly carried away with emotion.
Any additional comments?
Once I got past the premise of the book not really being an outline of his time as president I enjoyed the book for what it is. It did a good job of showing many of the ways that Obama was able to accomplish tasks with the obstacles that were placed before him. If you are looking for a detailed look at his accomplishments this might not be the book for you.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Drummer Boy
- 02-09-17
Just Drink the Kool-Aid
What disappointed you about Audacity?
The author is preoccupied with the justification of the progressive movement. If one likes the idea of being treated like livestock, enjoy the book; drink the kool-aid.
What could Jonathan Chait have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
Get past his agenda... Real life (at least where I live and work) is very different from the much of the pigeon holed "analysis" offered. Is it too much to ask government personnel to properly amend the US Constitution or honor their duty to uphold the law as written? Apparently it is. Thanks to the delusional thinking of people like Jonathan Chait, we now have President Trump.
How did the narrator detract from the book?
Narrator did a great job.
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4 people found this helpful