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China After Mao
- The Rise of a Superpower
- Narrated by: Daniel York Loh
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
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Publisher's summary
“A blow-by-blow account … An important corrective to the conventional view of China’s rise.”—Financial Times
From internationally renowned historian Frank Dikötter, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, a myth-shattering history of China from the death of Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping.
Through decades of direct experience of the People’s Republic combined with extraordinary access to hundreds of hitherto unseen documents in communist party archives, the author of The People’s Trilogy offers a riveting account of China’s rise from the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. He takes us inside the country's unprecedented four-decade economic transformation—from rural villages to industrial metropoles and elite party conclaves—that vaulted the nation from 126th largest economy in the world to second largest. A historian at the pinnacle of his field, Dikötter challenges much of what we think we know about how this happened. Casting aside the image of a society marching unwaveringly toward growth, in lockstep to the beat of the party drum, he recounts instead a fascinating tale of contradictions, illusions, and palace intrigue, of disasters narrowly averted, shadow banking, anti-corruption purges, and extreme state wealth existing alongside everyday poverty. He examines China’s navigation of the 2008 financial crash, its increasing hostility towards perceived Western interference, and its development into a thoroughly entrenched dictatorship with a sprawling security apparatus and the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world. As this magisterial book makes clear, the communist party’s goal was never to join the democratic world, but to resist it—and ultimately defeat it.
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Latin America has often been condemned to failure. Neither poor enough to evoke Africa’s moral crusade nor as explosively booming as India and China, it has largely been overlooked by the West. Yet this vast continent, home to half a billion people, the world’s largest reserves of arable land, and 8.5 percent of global oil, is busily transforming its political and economic landscape.
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Good Reporting / Disorganized Content
- By Steven Schuster on 02-11-12
By: Michael Reid
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This Brave New World
- India, China and the United States
- By: Anja Manuel
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the next decade and a half, China and India will become two of the world's indispensable powers - whether they rise peacefully or not. During that time, Asia will surpass the combined strength of North America and Europe in economic might, population size, and military spending. Both India and China will have vetoes over many international decisions, from climate change to global trade, human rights, and business standards.
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Good book, could be better
- By General on 09-23-16
By: Anja Manuel
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An Extraordinary Time
- The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy
- By: Marc Levinson
- Narrated by: James Foster
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A sweeping reappraisal of the last sixty years of world history, An Extraordinary Time describes how the postwar economic boom dissipated, undermining faith in government, destabilizing the global financial system, and forcing us to come to terms with how tumultuous our economy really is.
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Good review of crucial turning point in history
- By Philo on 11-22-16
By: Marc Levinson
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A History of Modern Britain
- By: Andrew Marr
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 29 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A History of Modern Britain confronts head-on the victory of shopping over politics. It tells the story of how the great political visions of New Jerusalem or a second Elizabethan Age, rival idealisms, came to be defeated by a culture of consumerism, celebrity and self-gratification. In each decade political leaders think they know what they are doing but find themselves confounded. Every time the British people turn out to be stroppier and harder to herd than predicted.
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Masterful in focus, pace, content, performance
- By Philo on 11-10-16
By: Andrew Marr
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When Money Dies
- The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar, Germany
- By: Adam Fergusson
- Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Money Dies is the classic history of what happens when a nations currency depreciates beyond recovery. In 1923, with its currency effectively worthless (the exchange rate in December of that year was one dollar to 4,200,000,000,000 marks), the German republic was all but reduced to a barter economy. Expensive cigars, artworks, and jewels were routinely exchanged for staples such as bread; a cinema ticket could be bought for a lump of coal; and a bottle of paraffin for a silk shirt....
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Useless details, missing the big points
- By Jean Le Lupi on 07-04-12
By: Adam Fergusson
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The Miracle
- The Epic Story of Asia's Quest for Wealth
- By: Michael Schuman
- Narrated by: Fred Stella
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Spanning nine countries, filled with heroic tales of bold decisions and self-sacrifice, and probing vast historical undercurrents, "The Miracle" takes readers inside private boardroom meetings, heated business negotiations, factory floors, and presidential cabinet sessions for a behind-the-scenes look at the events that shaped Asia's economic ascent - and will shape the world in the century to come.
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Packed with stories of both bussinesses and gov
- By Roman on 11-21-12
By: Michael Schuman
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From Silk to Silicon
- The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives
- By: Jeffrey E. Garten
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From Silk to Silicon tells the story of who these men and women were, what they did, how they did it, and how their achievements continue to shape our world today.
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Fantastic Journey
- By Michael on 06-06-16
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The Billionaire Raj
- A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age
- By: James Crabtree
- Narrated by: Shridhar Solanki
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In megacities like Mumbai, where half the population live in slums, the extraordinary riches of India’s new dynasties echo the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers of yesterday. James Crabtree’s The Billionaire Raj takes listeners on a personal journey to meet these reclusive billionaires, fugitive tycoons, and shadowy political power brokers. Crabtree dramatizes the battle between crony capitalists and economic reformers, revealing a tense struggle between equality and privilege playing out against a combustible backdrop of aspiration, class, and caste.
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Engaging, authors politics could be reduced
- By Chris on 06-17-23
By: James Crabtree
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Price Wars
- How the Commodities Markets Made Our Chaotic World
- By: Rupert Russell
- Narrated by: Ben Deery
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For Rupert Russell, the Brexit vote was only the latest shock in a decade full of them: the unstoppable war in Syria, huge migrant flows into Europe, beheadings in Iraq, children placed in cages on the U.S. border. In Price Wars, he sets out on a worldwide journey to investigate what caused the wave of chaos that consumed the world in the 2010s. Russell travels to Tunisia, Iraq, Venezuela, Ukraine, East Africa, and Central America and discovers that unrest in all these places was triggered by dramatic and mysterious swings in the price of essential commodities.
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I really wanted to like it
- By Monte Johnston on 04-09-22
By: Rupert Russell
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The Dragon's Gift
- The Real Story of China in Africa
- By: Deborah Brautigam
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the last few years, China's aid program has leapt out of the shadows. But China's tradition of secrecy about its aid fueled rumors and speculation, making it difficult to gauge the risks and opportunities provided by China's growing embrace. This well-timed book, by one of the world's leading experts, provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities, explaining what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, how much aid they give, and how it all fits into their "going global" strategy.
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The Book Is Too Much To Digest
- By DING MING YING 丁明英 on 05-15-20
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Lords of Finance
- The Bankers Who Broke the World
- By: Liaquat Ahamed
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 18 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.
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interesting insight into interwar period!
- By Toru on 11-27-09
By: Liaquat Ahamed
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The Oligarchs
- Wealth and Power in the New Russia
- By: David Hoffman
- Narrated by: Steve Coulter
- Length: 22 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A brilliant investigative narrative: How six average Soviet men rose to the pinnacle of Russia's battered economy. David Hoffman, former Moscow bureau chief for
The Washington Post, sheds light onto the hidden lives of Russia's most feared power brokers: the oligarchs. Focusing on six of these ruthless men Hoffman reveals how a few players managed to take over Russia's cash-strapped economy and then divvy it up in loans-for-shares deals.
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Supreme Chronicle of Murky Times
- By ivan on 03-01-14
By: David Hoffman
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