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Going After Cacciato
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
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Publisher's summary
"To call Going After Cacciato a novel about war is like calling Moby-Dick a novel about whales."
So wrote The New York Times of Tim O'Brien's now classic novel of Vietnam. Winner of the 1979 National Book Award, Going After Cacciato captures the peculiar mixture of horror and hallucination that marked this strangest of wars. In a blend of reality and fantasy, this novel tells the story of a young soldier who one day lays down his rifle and sets off on a quixotic journey from the jungles of Indochina to the streets of Paris.
In its memorable evocation of men both fleeing from and meeting the demands of battle, Going After Cacciato stands as much more than just a great war novel. Ultimately, it's about the forces of fear and heroism that do battle in the hearts of us all.
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The profoundly original and wildly entertaining short stories of a legendary Twilight Zone writer. It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone - for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont's finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.
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Contents
- By Ralph Freaster on 06-22-16
By: Charles Beaumont
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Way of the Wolf
- The Vampire Earth, Book 1
- By: E. E. Knight
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel, E. E. Knight (Introduction)
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Louisiana, 2065. A lot has changed in the 43rd year of the Kurian Order. Possessed of an unnatural and legendary hunger, the bloodthirsty Reapers have come to Earth to establish a New Order built on the harvesting of enslaved human souls. They rule the planet. They thrive on the scent of fear. And if it is night, as sure as darkness, they will come.
On this pitiless world, the indomitable spirit of mankind still breathes in Lieutenant David Valentine.
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Its what you expect, and thats not a bad thing.
- By Kevin McLaughlin on 11-26-08
By: E. E. Knight
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Heart of the Assassin
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- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Time is running out for the two nations that once made up the former USA. Weakened by their division, both the Islamic republic and the Bible Belt are threatened by the expansionist dreams of the Atzlan Empire to the south, and their own intellectual decay engendered by their fundamentalist beliefs. The only solution is to reunite the two nations and regain its former glory, and there's only one way to do it, and only one man, Rakkim Epps, who can.
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Utterly engaging and enjoyable
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Velva Jean Learns to Drive
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Set in Appalachia in the years before World War II, Velva Jean Learns to Drive is a poignant story of a spirited young girl growing up in the gold-mining and moonshining South. Before she dies, Velva Jean's mother urges her to "live out there in the great wide world." Velva Jean dreams of becoming a big-time singer in Nashville until she falls in love with Harley Bright, a handsome juvenile delinquent turned revival preacher.
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If Jenna Lamia reads it, I'll listen to it!
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Pashtun
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The Company has a special secret operation planned for one of their top agents: the leaders of the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorist groups are hiding out in Pashtun country, and they must be eliminated. The job falls to a man they have named Frank Morganan agent who stood out as a recruit at Quantico and whose skills resemble those of the legendary Vietnam assassin. The other soldiers claim Frank’s abilities as a sniper and a tracker border on the supernatural and are more than willing to complete this mission with him.
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Anti-American Leftist Propaganda.
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The Last King of Scotland
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Shortly after his arrival in Uganda, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan is called to the scene of a bizarre accident: Idi Amin, careening down a dirt road in his Maserati, has hit a cow. When Garrigan tends to Amin, the dictator, obsessed with all things Scottish, appoints him as his personal physician. So begins a fateful dalliance with the African leader whose Emperor Jones-style autocracy would transform into a reign of terror.
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Worst Production Ever
- By James on 01-24-07
By: Giles Foden
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The Warriors
- By: Sol Yurick
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The basis for the cult-classic film The Warriors chronicles one New York City gang's nocturnal journey through the seedy, dangerous subways and city streets of the 1960s. Every gang in the city meets on a sweltering July 4 night in a Bronx park for a peace rally. The crowd of miscreants turns violent after a prominent gang leader is killed and chaos prevails over the attempt at order. The Warriors follows the Dominators trying to make their way back to their home territory without being killed.
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BEWARE: NOTHING like the movie!
- By Tony L on 03-31-20
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SilverFin
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What does it take to become the greatest secret agent the world has ever known? In this thrilling prequel to the James Bond series, readers meet a 13-year-old schoolboy whose inquisitive mind and determination set him on a path that will one day take him all over the world, in pursuit of the most dangerous criminals known to man.
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A Pleasant Surprise
- By Troy on 09-17-15
By: Charlie Higson
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Declare
- By: Tim Powers
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As a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, a coded message draws Professor Andrew Hale back into Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Elements from his past are gathering in Beirut, including ex-British counterespionage chief and Soviet mole Kim Philby, and a beautiful former Spanish Civil War soldier-turned-intelligence operative.
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Oh Fish. Art Thou Constant???
- By art on 03-11-11
By: Tim Powers
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A Special Providence
- By: Richard Yates
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- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
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Robert Prentice has spent all his life attempting to escape his mother's stifling presence. His mother, Alice, for her part, struggles with her own demons as she attempts to realize her dreams of prosperity and success as a sculptor. As Robert goes off to fight in Europe, hoping to become his own man, Richard Yates portrays a soldier in the depths of war striving to live up to his heroic ideals.
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Dark
- By Barbara or Jerold Gendler on 11-30-22
By: Richard Yates
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When it first appeared, A Rumor of War brought home to American readers, with terrifying vividness and honesty, the devastating effects of the Vietnam War on the soldiers who fought there. And while it is a memoir of one young man's experiences and therefore deeply personal, it is also a book that speaks powerfully to today's students about the larger themes of human conscience, good and evil, and the desperate extremes men are forced to confront in any war.
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What listeners say about Going After Cacciato
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joe
- 03-12-21
Story of a Story
Not a fan of a book that tells a fictional tale inside its own fictional universe. It was hard to follow and very confusing at times.
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- Colette F
- 05-05-17
Great Story, annoying narration
Any additional comments?
Very dramatically captures the chaos and insanity of being in Vietnam. You never know exactly what is happening, which is probably how most of the soldiers felt. However, the narrator had this urgency in his voice that was exhausting. The individual voices were good, but the voice over just never let up
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- Carol
- 11-21-12
Vietnam as Fiction
Would you listen to Going After Cacciato again? Why?
Absolutely, because, despite its being a war story, the style is lyrical and the plot is intriguing..
What did you like best about this story?
This is a clever twist on a basic situation--desertion. What happens if the pursuers desert too? Plus it distorts reality just enough to drape the story in a gauze of magic.
What didn’t you like about Kevin T. Collins’s performance?
His voice became so emotional that it was drippy.
If you could take any character from Going After Cacciato out to dinner, who would it be and why?
I'd like to talk with Cacciato's Vietnamese girlfriend-wife. Maybe hearing her relaity would help to untangle the story of the actual desertion.
Any additional comments?
Tim O'Brien is a wonderful writer about war and soldiers trying to make sense of a particular morass.He adds magic to what must have been the grimest of realities.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Jon Verzilli
- 02-09-15
A soldier's own story.
Where does Going After Cacciato rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
As a story, it's near the top, though the production lets it down a bit.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Going After Cacciato?
There's a poignant level of mindfulness about what happened in Vietnam in this book, an attention to detail and character. O'Brien, like in his other books, has more questions than answers, questions both provoking and haunting. There are a few stories going on at once in "Going After Cacciato" and each of the layers is appealing and interesting. The narrative asks about war, "duty" and mission, finding good in awful circumstances, and why soldier's don't run.
Would you be willing to try another one of Kevin T. Collins’s performances?
I felt as if the voice performance brought a level of cartoonishness to the reading that was uneccesary and didn't match up with the subject matter. The voices Collins chooses for the characters, for example, are pretty poor. He just doesn't give the prose much flow, it's almost read as if it has the density of a poem - and while the writing is quite poetic at times, the reading is too choppy and "sing-song" for my liking.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Both reactions will happen, simultaneously and endlessly.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Dundas I. Flaherty
- 10-08-12
Topnotch
Complex, richly imagined war story with real characters, action, wrestling with the moral issues of the Vietnam war. O'Brien has read Heller, Voltaire, Bierce ("An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" ), and maybe Chaucer, but Cacciato is original work.
It's also one of those books that I believe is better heard than read, like Mrs. Dalloway.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Dan I.
- 02-13-21
An incredible piece, performed with far too much melodrama
I’ve listen to Tim O’Brien speak at a public event, I’ve read several other of his books before trying this one out on Audible. I’ve been to war and I deeply connect with his writing. I almost returned this title multiple times.
The performance is infuriatingly melodramatic. It was like listening to a passionate high school student trying too hard on stage. He’s doing his best to interpret the material but seems to have absolutely no real connection with it. Disappointing.
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- Darwin8u
- 05-16-14
Shadow Sculpture Built out of War's Debris
"These were hard lessons, true, but they were lessons of ignorance: ignorant men, trite truths. What remained was a simple event. The facts, the physical things. A war like any war. No new messages. Stories that began and ended without transition. No developing drama or tension or direction. No order."
At the level of the grunt, the soldier, the dirt and the blood, who wouldn't want to run? Who wouldn't fantasize about just dropping everything and leaving the madness of war, the insanity of the Army, the brutality of killing and instead take an 8500+ mile trip to Gay Paree?
It seems a rational choice: to choose freedom, happiness, liberty. To say cut it, cork it and just run. Leave the swamps of uncertainty, death, and fear behind you. Become a refugee from the carnage of Vietnam. Seek to relocate your tired ass to a place where dumb muthers aren't trying to shoot you. Find some piece of Earth where you aren't sleeping in holes, crawling into tunnels, worrying about whether the bullet that gets you will be audible. Get the hell out of Dodge.
If that was the extent of this novel's vision, it would be a pretty damn good book, but O'Brien tweaks it. He doesn't go for the easy answers. For every tick he gives you a tock. He finds ambiguity everywhere, conflict over each hill. It isn't a simple moral point to stay or go, to fight or to run. War has its own reality. It will exhaust you and then follow up. This confrontation with fear, death, loyalty, morality, friendship, leading, following, is key. The key to this novel is conflict. The conflict is key.
With lyrical beauty, flashbacks, and a magical realism that I've never experienced in a novel about the Vietnam War, O'Brien spins a story that is just that: a yarn, a spin, a giant fantasy race, a road movie, a Moby-Dick, a Danse Macabre, a metaphysical and very modern dance. It is a story of the good, the bad; those who run and those who follow. It is a literary shadow sculpture built out of the debris of war, the stories and cast-offs (the living and the dead).
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21 people found this helpful
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- Grits
- 04-20-12
Implausible but Fun
Would you consider the audio edition of Going After Cacciato to be better than the print version?
I did not read the print version of this book.
Would you be willing to try another book from Tim O'Brien? Why or why not?
I would try another book by Tim O'Brien because he paints a good verbal picture.
What about Kevin T. Collins’s performance did you like?
Collin's performance was very good. I particularly liked his ability to emphasize the dramatic.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
I want to listen to all books in one sitting.
Any additional comments?
The depiction of Vietnam was very good. I know. I was there. The story is a stretch. Still, it is a good read.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Dave Tapson
- 06-18-12
Dated
I love Vietnam books. I've been there, and I love Vietnam. I liked Apocalypse Now. This book, I just couldn't get in to.
There may have been a time when introspection regarding Vietnam and the was was fresh and novel, but that time has passed and we live in a new and different world.
I couldn't even finish listening to this, it was too drawn out and dreary.
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- Paul
- 11-09-20
Totally ridiculous and unbelievable!!
This story is so improbable and ridiculous that I’m surprised I spent the time to finish it. Perhaps I was hoping for some tidbit of reality to give the story some credibility. Save your money and give this one a pass!!!
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