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Narrated by:
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Wallace Shawn
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By:
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Wallace Shawn
About this listen
Whether writing about the genesis of his plays, such as Aunt Dan and Lemon; discussing how the privileged world of arts and letters takes for granted the work of the “unobtrusives", the people who serve our food and deliver our mail; or describing his upbringing in the sheltered world of Manhattan’s cultural elite, Shawn reveals a unique ability to step back from the appearance of things to explore their deeper social meanings. He grasps contradictions, even when unpleasant, and challenges us to look, as he does, at our own behavior in a more honest light. He also finds the pathos in the political and personal challenges of everyday life.
©2009 Wallace Shawn (P)2010 Wallace ShawnListeners also enjoyed...
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In How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, Roberts examines Smith’s forgotten masterpiece, and finds a treasure trove of timeless, practical wisdom. Smith’s insights into human nature are just as relevant today as they were 300 years ago. What does it take to be truly happy? Should we pursue fame and fortune or the respect of our friends and family? How can we make the world a better place?
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Hard to distinguish Roberts from Smith in reading
- By Amazing Customer on 03-31-15
By: Russ Roberts
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Looking for Lorraine
- The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: LisaGay Hamilton
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now.
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Radiant
- By Rose Brookins on 03-20-19
By: Imani Perry
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Angels and Ages
- A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life
- By: Adam Gopnik
- Narrated by: Adam Gopnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Written 200 years after Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln shared a birthday on February 12, 1809, this insightful account sheds new light on two men who changed the way we think about the meaning of life and death. Award-winning journalist Adam Gopnik's unique perspective, combined with previously unexplored stories and figures, reveals two men planted firmly at the roots of modern views and liberal values.
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Connecting Darwin and Lincoln
- By Joshua Kim on 06-10-12
By: Adam Gopnik
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Cracking the Code
- By: Thom Hartmann
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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According to Air America radio host Thom Hartmann, the apologists of the Right have become masters of the subtle and largely subconscious aspects of political communication. It's not an escalation in Iraq, it's a surge; it's not the inheritance tax, it's the death tax; it's not drilling for oil, it's exploring for energy.
Conservatives didn't intuit the path to persuasive messaging; they learned these techniques.
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User-friendly course on political communication
- By Danee McFarr on 02-06-09
By: Thom Hartmann
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Notes on a Foreign Country
- An American Abroad in a Post-American World
- By: Suzy Hansen
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the US-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.
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A MUST-READ for all Truth-Seeking American wh
- By Parveen Mehdi-Newton on 12-08-17
By: Suzy Hansen
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The Way of the Heathen
- Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life
- By: Greta Christina
- Narrated by: Greta Christina
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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So you're an atheist. Now what? The way we deal with life - with love and sex, pleasure and death, reality and making stuff up - can change dramatically when we stop believing in gods, souls, and afterlives. When we leave religion - or if we never had it in the first place - where do we go? With her unique blend of compassion and humor, thoughtfulness and snark, Greta Christina most emphatically does not propose a single path to a good atheist life. She offers questions to think about, ideas that may be useful, and encouragement to choose your own way.
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Navigating the world outside of church
- By Scott Bresinger on 01-21-17
By: Greta Christina
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Uncommon Gratitude
- Alleluia for All That Is
- By: Joan Chittister, Rowan Williams
- Narrated by: Joan Chittister O.S.B., Dan Havron O.F.M.
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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This series of reflections reveals the importance of gratitude in helping us see beyond the immediate to a broader and deeper reality. The discovery of this perpetual alleluia will help you discover what you are, become who you are, and grow with gratitude into the unknown.
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Spiritual platform for left-wing ideology
- By John Glemby on 06-29-19
By: Joan Chittister, and others
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Men Explain Things to Me
- By: Rebecca Solnit
- Narrated by: Luci Christian Bell
- Length: 2 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In Men Explain Things to Me, Rebecca Solnit takes on the conversations between men who wrongly assume they know things and wrongly assume women don't. The ultimate problem, she shows in her comic, scathing essay, is female self-doubt and the silencing of women. Rebecca Solnit is the author of fourteen books about civil society, popular power, uprisings, art, environment, place, pleasure, politics, hope, and memory, most recently The Faraway Nearby, a book on empathy and storytelling.
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Great read - horrible performance
- By Denise Johnson on 03-26-15
By: Rebecca Solnit
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To Show and to Tell
- The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
- By: Phillip Lopate
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Distinguished author Phillip Lopate, editor of the celebrated anthology The Art of the Personal Essay, is universally acclaimed as “one of our best personal essayists” ( Dallas Morning News). Here, combining more than 40 years of lessons from his storied career as a writer and professor, he brings us this highly anticipated nuts-and-bolts guide to writing literary nonfiction. A phenomenal master class shaped by Lopate’s informative, accessible tone, and immense gift for storytelling.
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Not a guide on writing personal essays
- By A. Yoshida on 08-07-13
By: Phillip Lopate
What listeners say about Essays
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anne McGrath
- 02-13-18
Marvelous Essays, Terrible Sound Quality
What happened? These essays were great but we had to strain to hear them. Sometimes it was like Shawn dropped the mic. Come on. Production seems the easy part of this equation.
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Overall
- David
- 12-18-10
A disappointment on two counts.
Like probably a lot of people, I know Wallace Shawn best from his roles in "My Dinner with André" and "Princess Bride". I've never seen one of his plays, and although I suppose I must have read one or more of the essays that originally appeared in "The Nation" I don't remember them. That should have tipped me off that the essays are, in fact, pretty unmemorable. I was hoping for more wit and play of intellect, but Wallace Shawn is basically a semi-intellectual: he knows his way around the neighborhood of ideas but hasn't built many original ones. This is abundantly clear in the interview with a genuine intellectual, Noam Chomsky, that is included here, the best thing in the book I'd say: even if you loathe Chomsky's politics you have to concede his brilliance in marshalling evidence and putting together an argument. Shawn, in contrast, stays at the level of generalities in most of these pieces.
—Second, even if you're a huge fan of Shawn you might be better off with the printed version of the book. Unless you have excellent hearing, this is not an audiobook for the car or anyplace with much background noise: Shawn's dynamic range goes way up and down, and if you set a volume that won't hurt your ears during his forceful passages you're likely to miss half of a sentence when he drops back to near a whisper.
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- NAT CU
- 07-07-19
Poor recording quality - echo
I like the essays, and Wallace Shawn is a pretty good reader. However, the quality of the recording made it difficult to listen to.
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2 people found this helpful