Dancing on Bones
History and Power in China, Russia and North Korea
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Narrated by:
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Elizabeth Sastre
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By:
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Katie Stallard
About this listen
History didn't end. Democracy didn't triumph. America’s leading role in the world is no longer assured. Instead, authoritarian rule is on the rise, and the global order established after 1945 is under attack. This is the phenomenon Katie Stallard tackles in Dancing on Bones as she examines how the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea manipulate the past to serve the present and secure the future of authoritarian rule.
Russia has annexed Crimea, started a war in eastern Ukraine, and repeatedly massed troops on its borders. China has stepped up war games near Taiwan and militarized the South China Sea, while North Korea has resumed missile testing and blood-curdling threats against the United States. These three states consistently top lists of threats to US and European security, and yet the leaders of all three insist that it is their country that is threatened, rewriting history and exploiting the memory of the wars of the last century to justify their actions and shore up popular support. Since coming to power, Xi Jinping has almost doubled the length of China’s World War II, Vladimir Putin has elevated the memory of the Great Patriotic War to the status of a national religion, and Kim Jong Un has invested vast sums in rebuilding war museums in his impoverished state, while those who try to challenge the official version of history are silenced and jailed. But this didn’t start with Putin, Xi, and Kim, and it won’t end with them.
Drawing on first-hand, on-the-ground reporting, Dancing on Bones argues that if we want to understand where these three nuclear powers are heading, we must understand the stories they are telling their citizens about the past.
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- By shaq on 02-26-19
By: Thomas de Waal
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A Thousand Hills
- Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Paul Kagame grew up as a wretched refugee. He and a group of comrades, determined to force their way back home after a generation of exile, designed one of the most audacious covert operations in the history of clandestine war. Then, after taking power, they amazed the world by stabilizing and reviving their devastated country.
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Best Most Comprehensive Work on Rwanda
- By Greg on 07-30-10
By: Stephen Kinzer
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There Was a Country
- A Personal History of Biafra
- By: Chinua Achebe
- Narrated by: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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The defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967-1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe's people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than 40 years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa's most fateful events.
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The Audible Edition Is a Disaster
- By Olu on 11-28-12
By: Chinua Achebe
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After Fidel
- The Inside Story of Castro's Regime and Cuba's Next Leader
- By: Brian Latell
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In this compelling, behind-the-scenes account, former top CIA officer and Cuba expert Brian Latell examines the extraordinary Castro brothers and the impending dynastic succession of Fidel's younger brother, Raul. Exploring the brothers' remarkable relationship, he reveals how Fidel and Raul have collaborated, divided responsibilities, and resolved disagreements for more than 46 years, a challenge to the notion that the little-known Raul has been an insignificant player.
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Very Informative Read
- By BH FL on 04-09-08
By: Brian Latell
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Enemies and Neighbors
- Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017
- By: Ian Black
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 20 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In Enemies and Neighbors, Ian Black, who has spent over three decades covering events in the Middle East and is currently a fellow at the London School of Economics, offers a major new history of the Arab-Zionist conflict from 1917 to today. Laying the historical groundwork in the final decades of the Ottoman Era, when the first Zionist settlers arrived in the Holy Land, Black draws on a wide range of sources - from declassified documents to oral histories to his own vivid on-the-ground reporting - to recreate the major milestones in the most polarizing conflict of the modern age from both sides.
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Decent historical compilation, poor framing
- By Dan Harris on 07-08-20
By: Ian Black
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Goliath
- Life and Loathing in Greater Israel
- By: Max Blumenthal
- Narrated by: Richard Powers
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Goliath, New York Times best-selling author Max Blumenthal takes us on a journey through the badlands and high roads of Israel-Palestine, painting a startling portrait of Israeli society under the siege of increasingly authoritarian politics as the occupation of the Palestinians deepens. Beginning with the national elections carried out during Israel's war on Gaza in 2008/9, which brought into power the country's most right-wing government to date, Blumenthal tells the story of Israel in the wake of the collapse of the Oslo peace process.
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The truth is rarely pretty
- By William on 10-15-13
By: Max Blumenthal
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Reset
- Iran, Turkey, and America's Future
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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What can the United States do to help realize its dream of a peaceful, democratic Middle East? Stephen Kinzer offers a surprising answer in this paradigm-shifting book. Two countries in the region, he argues, are America's logical partners in the 21st century: Turkey and Iran.
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challenges stereotypes
- By R.S. on 06-14-10
By: Stephen Kinzer
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1946
- The Making of the Modern World
- By: Victor Sebestyen
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1946, Victor Sebestyen creates a taut, panoramic narrative and takes us to meetings that changed the world: to Berlin in July 1945, when Truman tells Stalin that we have successfully tested the bomb; to Ye'nan, China, in January 1946, when General George Marshall tells the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong that Americans won't send troops to China, assuring that the Communists will attain power.
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An education. Somber, detailed, many-faceted
- By Philo on 08-20-16
By: Victor Sebestyen
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Adolf Hitler
- A Captivating Guide to the Life of the Führer of Nazi Germany
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Duke Holm
- Length: 2 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Explore the rise of Adolf Hitler. Was Hitler, as Ian Kershaw asked, a natural consequence of German history, or an aberration? Not that Hitler had been in hiding, waiting to attack. The Führer had actually been following an aggressive and savage foreign policy for almost 10 years, and been named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1938.
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Awesome little book
- By Bryan T. on 02-02-19
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Ben-Gurion
- A Political Life
- By: Shimon Peres, David Landau
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Shimon Peres was in his early 20s when he first met David Ben-Gurion. Although the state that Ben-Gurion would lead through war and peace had not yet declared its precarious independence, the "Old Man", as he was called even then, was already a mythic figure. Peres, who came of age in the cabinets of Ben-Gurion, is uniquely placed to evoke this figure of stirring contradictions - a prophetic visionary and a canny pragmatist who early grasped the necessity of compromise for national survival.
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Great Perfomance, Less than Stellar Story
- By Alexander on 01-02-12
By: Shimon Peres, and others
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The People's Republic of Amnesia
- Tiananmen Revisited
- By: Louisa Lim
- Narrated by: Louisa Lim
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In The People's Republic of Amnesia, NPR correspondent Louisa Lim charts how the events of June 4 changed China, and how China changed the events of June 4 by rewriting its own history. Lim reveals new details about those fateful days, including how one of the country's most senior politicians lost a family member to an army bullet, as well as the inside story of the young soldiers sent to clear Tiananmen Square.
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great book and recording
- By Robert Peters on 06-14-16
By: Louisa Lim
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The Assassins' Gate
- America in Iraq
- By: George Packer
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 19 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The Assassins' Gate, so dubbed by American soldiers, is the entrance to the American zone in the city of Baghdad. In 2003, the United States blazed into Iraq to depose dictator Saddam Hussein. But after three years and unknown thousands killed, that country faces an escalating civil war and an uncertain fate. How did it get to this point?
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Highly Recommended
- By Drapeau on 02-01-07
By: George Packer