Beyond This Harbor
Adventurous Tales of the Heart
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Narrated by:
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Cassandra Campbell
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Rose Styron
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By:
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Rose Styron
About this listen
A memoir of an extraordinary life—poet, international human rights activist, founding member of Amnesty International USA, journalist, hostess, famous beauty, foreign policy advisor; friend to politicians, movie stars, the legendary; discoverer of Philip Roth, longtime wife of Bill Styron and together, America’s literary golden couple at home and abroad
“[Rose Styron] has lived a life in interesting times, among legendary characters, a life well worth telling—and reading about.” —The Washington Post
An intimate portrait of a celebrated magic life and the famous and infamous who dropped in, summered, traveled with, played with, and the decades of friendship with everyone from Truman Capote and Robert Penn Warren to the Kennedys, the Bernsteins, Alexander Calder, John Hersey, and Lillian Hellman.
Here as well are the years of dedication and risk, traveling the world, from Pinochet’s Chile to El Salvador, Belfast, and Sarajevo, as Rose Styron, in search of those hiding from dictators and autocrats, bore witness to atrocities and human rights violations . . .
Styron writes of her childhood, born into a German Jewish, assimilated Baltimore family; a rebel from the start, studying poetry at Wellesley, Harvard, Johns Hopkins; traveling to Rome and her (second) meeting with Bill (the first time, “I can’t remember even shaking hands. I wasn’t thinking about him at all.”); their eventual marriage, and their more than fifty years together—in bucolic Roxbury, Connecticut, and on Martha's Vineyard.
She writes of Bill's writing and of retyping his manuscripts, discussing his writing progress, having babies, with visits from neighbors Arthur Miller; Mike Nichols and various wives; Dustin Hoffman buying the house over the hill; James Baldwin moving in to Styron’s writing studio and writing The Fire Next Time, with Baldwin encouraging Styron to write Nat Turner in first person; Frank Sinatra, sailing into Vineyard Haven Harbor and soon dropping by for dinners chez Styrons; the Kennedys having rowdy sleepovers . . .
And she writes in detail about Bill Styron's full-on breakdowns, his recovery from the first depression; writing Darkness Visible. And fifteen years later, the second much worse crash; Bill Styron’s death; her year of grief, teaching at Harvard; living full time on the Vineyard and making a new full life there . . .
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Critic reviews
“A memoir of an extraordinary life—poet, international human rights activist, founding member of Amnesty International USA, journalist, hostess, famous beauty, foreign policy advisor; friend to politicians, movie stars, the legendary; discoverer of Philip Roth, longtime wife of Bill Styron and together, America’s literary golden couple at home and abroad. [Rose Styron’s is a] life well worth telling—and reading about.” —Marion Winik, The Washington Post
“A riveting chronicle . . . Ms. Styron brings herself out of her husband’s shadow and into the light.” —Malcolm Forbes, The Wall Street Journal
“[A]n intriguing, at times high-flying, well-lived life. . . Styron has a long history of making others feel special, and it’s invigorating to watch someone so seemingly comfortable in her own skin. You want to hang out with her for real.” —Gary Goldstein, LA Times
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Eleanor in the Village
- By: Jan Jarboe Russell
- Narrated by: Samantha Desz
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A captivating blend of personal history detailing Eleanor’s struggle with issues of marriage, motherhood, financial independence, and femininity, and a vibrant portrait of one of the most famous neighborhoods in the world, this unique work examines the ways that the sensibility, mood, and various inhabitants of the neighborhood influenced the First Lady’s perception of herself and shaped her political views over four decades, up to her death in 1962.
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Grabs your attention
- By Amanda Hodges on 05-13-21
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The Last Love Song
- A Biography of Joan Didion
- By: Tracy Daugherty
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 26 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.
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Riveted for 1591 miles
- By Kaysi12 on 04-11-16
By: Tracy Daugherty
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Reclamation
- Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant's Search for Her Family's Lasting Legacy
- By: Gayle Jessup White
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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A Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ family explores America’s racial reckoning through the prism of her ancestors - both the enslaver and the enslaved.
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Slow start, eventually a worthwhile story
- By ChocolateDweller on 12-17-21
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A Wild and Precious Life
- A Memoir
- By: Edie Windsor, Joshua Lyon
- Narrated by: Donna Postel, Joshua Lyon
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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In this memoir, which she began before passing away in 2017 and completed by her co-writer, Edie recounts her childhood in Philadelphia, her realization that she was a lesbian, and her active social life in Greenwich Village's electrifying underground gay scene during the 1950s. Edie was also one of a select group of trailblazing women in computing, working her way up the ladder at IBM and achieving their highest technical ranking while developing software.
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🏳️🌈 Wow! 🏳️🌈
- By Natalia Zimnoch on 10-15-19
By: Edie Windsor, and others
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Lady in Waiting
- My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown
- By: Anne Glenconner
- Narrated by: Anne Glenconner
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Anne Glenconner has been at the center of the royal circle from childhood, when she met and befriended the future Queen Elizabeth II and her sister, the Princess Margaret. Though the firstborn child of the fifth Earl of Leicester, who controlled one of the largest estates in England, as a daughter she was deemed "the greatest disappointment" and unable to inherit. Since then she has needed all her resilience to survive court life with her sense of humor intact.
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Horrible Reading
- By Teddy hall on 03-27-20
By: Anne Glenconner
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1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
- A Memoir
- By: Ai Weiwei, Allan H. Barr - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as “Little Siberia,” where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol and the artworks of Marcel Duchamp.
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This book changed my life
- By Johnny Nopolis on 08-16-22
By: Ai Weiwei, and others
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My Father's Paradise
- A Son's Search For His Family's Past
- By: Ariel Sabar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
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Great story, poorly narrated
- By Oren Kessler on 09-10-24
By: Ariel Sabar
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Fall
- The Mysterious Life and Death of Robert Maxwell, Britain's Most Notorious Media Baron
- By: John Preston
- Narrated by: Simon Bubb
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In February 1991, Robert Maxwell triumphantly sailed into Manhattan harbor on his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, to buy the ailing New York Daily News. Taxi drivers stopped their cabs to shake his hand, children asked for his autograph, and patrons of the hottest restaurant in Manhattan gave him a standing ovation while he dined. Ten months later, Maxwell disappeared off that same yacht in the middle of the night and was later found dead in the water. As John Preston reveals in this revealing biography, Maxwell’s death was as mysterious as his remarkable life.
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Don't make men like this anymore
- By Sylvia on 04-06-21
By: John Preston
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George & Barbara Bush
- A Great American Love Story
- By: Ellie LeBlond Sosa, Kelly Anne Chase, George W. Bush - foreword
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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"To begin with I was in love and I am in love so that's not hard," Barbara Bush told her granddaughter Ellie LeBlond Sosa. Sosa had asked for the secret to her and President George H.W. Bush's 77-year love affair that withstood World War II separation, a leap of faith into the oil fields of West Texas, the painful loss of a child, a political climb to the highest office, and after the White House, the transition back to a "normal" life. Sosa and co-author Kelly Anne Chase paint the portrait of the enduring relationship of George and Barbara Bush.
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A Beautiful, Uplifting Read!
- By Cathi Hughes on 03-18-23
By: Ellie LeBlond Sosa, and others
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America's Queen
- The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
- By: Sarah Bradford
- Narrated by: Sandra Burr
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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Using remarkable new sources, Sarah Bradford has written a timely celebration of a life that was more private than commonly supposed. Revealing new testimony from many of the couple's friends shows the complexities of this apparently very public relationship and of her controversial marriage to Aristotle Onassis. Here is the private Jackie - neglected wife, vigilant mother, and working widow - whose contradictory and fascinating nature is illuminated by all that Bradford has discovered.
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American Royalty
- By Kindle Customer on 06-10-16
By: Sarah Bradford
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The Glossy Years
- Magazines, Museums and Selective Memoirs
- By: Nicholas Coleridge
- Narrated by: Nicholas Coleridge
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Over his 30-year career at Condé Nast, Nicholas Coleridge has witnessed it all. From the anxieties of the Princess of Wales to the blazing fury of Mohamed Al-Fayed, his story is also the story of the people who populate the glamorous world of glossy magazines. With relish and astonishing candour, he offers the inside scoop on Tina Brown and Anna Wintour, David Bowie and Philip Green, Kate Moss and Beyonce and a surreal weekend away with Bob Geldof and William Hague.
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A superfun inside look @ world of magazine editors
- By AminaRuhle on 10-05-20
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Eleanor
- By: David Michaelis
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 19 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In the first single-volume cradle-to-grave portrait in six decades, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis delivers a stunning account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarkable life of transformation. An orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she converted her Gilded Age childhood of denial and secrecy into an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin Franklin. Franklin Roosevelt transformed Eleanor from a settlement house volunteer on New York’s Lower East Side into a matching partner in New York’s most important power couple in a generation.
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Stands apart from other biographies of ER
- By Debra Malone on 11-20-20
By: David Michaelis
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The Sum of Our Days
- By: Isabel Allende
- Narrated by: Blair Brown, Isabel Allende
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Isabel Allende reconstructs the painful reality of her own life in the wake of the tragic death of her daughter, Paula. Narrated with warmth, humor, exceptional candor, and wisdom, this remarkable memoir is as exuberant and as full of life as its creator. Allende bares her soul while sharing her thoughts on love, marriage, motherhood, spirituality and religion, infidelity, addiction, and memory - and recounts stories of the wildly eccentric, strong-minded, and eclectic tribe she gathers around her and lovingly embraces as a new kind of family.
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She does not disappoint
- By ChiChi's Rule on 06-01-22
By: Isabel Allende
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The Princess Spy
- The True Story of World War II Spy Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones
- By: Larry Loftis
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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When Aline Griffith was born in a quiet suburban New York hamlet, no one had any idea that she would go on to live “a life of glamour and danger that Ingrid Bergman only played at in Notorious” (Time). As the United States enters the Second World War, the young college graduate is desperate to aid in the war effort, but no one is interested in a bright-eyed young woman whose only career experience is modeling clothes.
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Repeat of spy wore red
- By Theresa Pease on 02-18-21
By: Larry Loftis
What listeners say about Beyond This Harbor
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kathleen T. Conklin
- 08-15-23
A wonderful memoir of a full life
I loved this memoir as it is full of the adventures of Rose Styron, who I had no idea of her many accomplishments and life. Her courage in her endeavors and in her caregiving are inspiring.
Having grown up in Baltimore and graduated from Wellesley College myself, I identified with so much in her story.
It is very well written and entertained us from Falls Church to NH and back! Many famous names were dropped, but I admit that I knew almost all of those names! The time flew by.
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- Sara Berman
- 07-10-23
Mind numbing
“She flits, she floats…flees”. This is a reminiscence of important names that filled her life and maybe,at her age, that is all she wanted to record. If she gave more personal insight, I might not be thinking Amnesty International was just another social circle with adventure and travel.
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- Susan
- 03-13-24
Not My Politics
In my 20's I read 'Confessions of Nat Turner' and loved it. I wanted to know more about the Styrons, especially Rose! The story of her full and daring life held my interest for the first few chapter but I ultimately put it down because of the ultra liberal politics. It's rare that I don't finish a book, in this case, it was easy!
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