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Heartland
- A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
- Narrated by: Sarah Smarsh
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
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Publisher's summary
Finalist for the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize
Instant New York Times best seller
Named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, The New York Post, Buzzfeed (nonfiction), Shelf Awareness (nonfiction), Bustle, and Publishers Weekly (nonfiction).
An essential audiobook for our times: an eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in America that will deepen our understanding of the ways in which class shapes our country.
Sarah Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through her experiences growing up on a farm 30 miles west of Wichita, we are given a unique and essential look into the lives of poor and working class Americans living in the heartland.
During Sarah’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, she enjoyed the freedom of a country childhood, but observed the painful challenges of the poverty around her; untreated medical conditions for lack of insurance or consistent care, unsafe job conditions, abusive relationships, and limited resources and information that would provide for the upward mobility that is the American Dream. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves with clarity and precision but without judgement, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country.
A beautifully written memoir that combines personal narrative with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, Heartland examines the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less.
“A deeply humane memoir that crackles with clarifying insight, Heartland is one of a growing number of important works - including Matthew Desmond’s Evicted and Amy Goldstein’s Janesville - that together merit their own section in nonfiction aisles across the country: America’s postindustrial decline...Smarsh shows how the false promise of the ‘American dream’ was used to subjugate the poor. It’s a powerful mantra” (The New York Times Book Review)
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Like thousands of Aboriginal children in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the colonized world, Xatsu'll chief Bev Sellars spent part of her childhood as a student in a church-run residential school. These institutions endeavored to "civilize" Native children through Christian teachings; forced separation from family, language, and culture; and strict discipline. In this frank and poignant memoir of her years at St. Joseph's Mission, Sellars breaks her silence about the residential school's lasting effects on her and her family and eloquently articulates her own path to healing.
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Shame on Church and State
- By Susie on 08-22-17
By: Bev Sellars
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Humboldt
- Life on America's Marijuana Frontier
- By: Emily Brady
- Narrated by: Dan Woren, Sonny Warner, Erin Bennett, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the vein of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief and Deborah Feldman's Unorthodox, journalist Emily Brady journeys into a secretive subculture - one that marijuana built. Say the words "Humboldt County" to a stranger and you might receive a knowing grin. The name is infamous, and yet the place, and its inhabitants, have been nearly impenetrable. Until now. Humboldt is a narrative exploration of an insular community in Northern California, which for nearly 40 years has existed primarily on the cultivation and sale of marijuana.
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Great book!
- By David on 02-26-15
By: Emily Brady
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All but Normal
- Life on Victory Road: A Memoir
- By: Shawn Thornton
- Narrated by: Shawn Thornton
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After waking from a coma following a car crash, Beverly Thornton's once sweet and gentle disposition had been replaced by violent mood swings, profanity-laced tirades, and uncontrollable fits of rage. Inside the Thornton house, floors and countertops were piled high with dirty laundry and garbage because Bev was unable to move well enough to clean. Dinners were a Russian roulette of half-cooked meat, spoiled milk, and foods well past their expiration dates.
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Should be in the religous category
- By Shreridan on 10-24-16
By: Shawn Thornton
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Under Red Skies
- Three Generations of Life, Loss, and Hope in China
- By: Karoline Kan
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is coming to terms with its conflicted past as it emerges into a modern, cutting-edge superpower.
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An intimate view of real life in China
- By Lonnie G. Hardy, Jr. on 08-15-19
By: Karoline Kan
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The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
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excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
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Methland
- The Death and Life of an American Small Town
- By: Nick Reding
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Crystal methamphetamine is widely considered to be the most dangerous drug in the world, and nowhere is that more true than in the small towns of the American heartland. Methland tells the story of Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), which, like thousands of other small towns across the country, has been left in the dust by the consolidation of the agricultural industry, a depressed local economy, and an out-migration of people.
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Beautifully written, but insubstantial
- By Flavius Krakdaddius on 02-10-10
By: Nick Reding
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Street of Eternal Happiness
- Big City Dreams Along a Shanghai Road
- By: Rob Schmitz
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Modern Shanghai: a global city in the midst of a renaissance, where dreamers arrive each day to partake in a mad torrent of capital, ideas, and opportunity. Marketplace's Rob Schmitz is one of them. He immerses himself in his neighborhood, forging deep relationships with ordinary people who see in the city's sleek skyline a brighter future, and a chance to rewrite their destinies.
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Deserving of better audio
- By Rachael on 02-19-18
By: Rob Schmitz
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The Turner House
- By: Angela Flournoy
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over 50 years. Their house has seen 13 children grown and gone - and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit's East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a 10th of its mortgage.
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The narrator's performance made the difference.
- By KT on 06-11-15
By: Angela Flournoy
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Apocalypse Child
- A Life in End Times - a Memoir
- By: Flor Edwards
- Narrated by: Flor Edwards
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For the first 13 years of her life, Flor Edwards grew up in the Children of God. The group's nomadic existence was based on the belief that, as God's chosen people, they would be saved in the impending apocalypse that would envelop the rest of the world in 1993. Flor would be 13 years old. The group's charismatic leader, Father David, kept the family on the move, from Los Angeles to Bangkok to Chicago, where they would eventually disband, leaving Flor to make sense of the foreign world of mainstream society around her.
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A truly unique background and story
- By Asaph on 04-13-18
By: Flor Edwards
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The World's Largest Man
- A Memoir
- By: Harrison Scott Key
- Narrated by: Harrison Scott Key
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Harrison Scott Key was born in Memphis, but he grew up in Mississippi, among pious, Bible-reading women and men who either shot things or got women pregnant. At the center of his world was his larger-than-life father - a hunter, a fighter, and a football coach. Harrison, with his love of books and excessive interest in hugging, couldn't have been less like Pop, and when it became clear that he was not able to kill anything very well or otherwise make his father happy, he resolved to become everything his father was not.
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I laughed every day to and from work. Loved it!
- By KufRN on 06-06-18
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The Pursuit of Happyness (Abridged)
- By: Chris Gardner
- Narrated by: Andre Blake
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At the age of 20, Chris Gardner arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. However, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm, Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him part of the city's working homeless with his toddler son.
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Very Good Story!
- By Lito Da Critic on 06-02-06
By: Chris Gardner
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The Unwinding
- An Inner History of the New America
- By: George Packer
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 18 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In The Unwinding, George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, tells the story of the United States over the past three decades in an utterly original way, with his characteristically sharp eye for detail and gift for weaving together complex narratives. The Unwinding portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation.
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Can't understand the low ratings!
- By Janet Pittman Henley on 05-27-13
By: George Packer
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Compiling Smarsh’s reportage and more poetic reflections, Bone of the Bone is a singular work covering one of the most tumultuous decades in civic life. Timely, filled with perspective-shifting observations, and a pleasure to read, Sarah Smarsh’s essays—on topics as varied as the socioeconomic significance of dentistry, laws criminalizing poverty, fallacies of the “red vs. blue” political framework, working as a Hooters Girl, and much more—are an important addition to any discussion on contemporary America.
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Renowned investor and climate champion Tom Steyer has been on the forefront of the climate war for well over a decade, leveraging his investment expertise, business knowledge, and community-organizing skills to support sustainable climate solutions. In this accessible book, he explains how capitalism is an effective tool for scaling climate progress, offers his candid take on fossil fuel enablers, and explains why immediate action on the climate front will be an investment in our economy and our key to a healthy and viable future.
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Hope at last!
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Nickel and Dimed
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This engrossing piece of undercover reportage has been a fixture on the New York Times best seller list since its publication. With nearly a million copies in print, Nickel and Dimed is a modern classic that deftly portrays the plight of America's working-class poor.
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Good concept, but poor execution.
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Evicted
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Overall
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In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.
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Former Property Manager
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White Rural Rage
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Overall
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White rural voters hold the greatest electoral sway of any demographic group in the United States, yet rural communities suffer from poor healthcare access, failing infrastructure, and severe manufacturing and farming job losses. Rural voters believe our nation has betrayed them, and to some degree, they’re right. In White Rural Rage, Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman explore why rural Whites have failed to reap the benefits from their outsize political power and why, as a result, they are the most likely group to abandon democratic norms and traditions.
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Preaching to the choir
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$2.00 a Day
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There are, in the United States, a significant and growing number of families who live on less than $2.00 per person, per day. That figure, the World Bank measure of poverty, is hard to imagine in this country - most of us spend more than that before we get to work or school in the morning.
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I'm a conservative and this isn't bad
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By: Kathryn Edin, and others
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Stolen Pride
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel "stolen"? Hochschild's research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation.
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Most Important Book Today
- By David Hume Lindsay on 11-05-24
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Poverty, by America
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Overall
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Performance
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The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
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A testimonial based on facts and witness
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Absolution
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American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands with their own, inchoate impulse to “do good” for the people of Vietnam.
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Hung in there for 2 1/2 hours but had to return it
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The Glass Castle
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination. Rose Mary painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family; she called herself an "excitement addict."
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What's normal?
- By Kmrsy on 11-30-13
By: Jeannette Walls
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The Worst Hard Time
- The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: Jacob York
- Length: 12 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, he does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes.
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Excellent history ruined by Egan's bias & cynicism
- By Nathan on 03-21-23
By: Timothy Egan
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Educated
- A Memoir
- By: Tara Westover
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University.
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The Other Side of Idaho's Mountains
- By Darwin8u on 03-28-18
By: Tara Westover
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Tell Me Everything
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Strout
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”
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Very disappointed
- By Cheri on 09-11-24
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What listeners say about Heartland
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 07-13-19
Changes your perspective
This is one of the most profound books I have ever “read.” It made me think, deeply, about myself, about my views, about my judgements, about my stereotypes, and most importantly, about others, specifically those who live in the fly over states. I hope it has changed me, or has started a process of changes, towards more humility, kindness, and tolerance. Time will tell. I bought Heartland in hard copy form, as a reminder of my experience while listening to it. Hoping that helps.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Angela N. Gist-Mackey
- 11-08-18
Poetic and Historical Narrative
This was a poetic interweaving of family narrative and historical-political culture that thoughtfully tells a story of poverty is that familiar yet unknown. Smarsh is a brilliant writer who writes artfully and honestly. Everyone will be better for having read this book because of its authenticity, honesty, and compelling insight into life, work, struggle, and family.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Kim M
- 06-12-19
Powerful & Eloquent. Much needed perspective!
I liked the unvarnished perspective of the Author and a voice for the reality of the socioeconomic class of our society.
I have never written a review before, this book so deeply resonated with me, that I want to share what a great read it is.
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- Rachael
- 03-18-19
Understanding the Poor, WoWorking class, white girl - from rural America
In my opinion, everyone should read this book. But, this is especially true for anyone who has gone from rural America - to the city, in order to become college educated. Sarah Smarsh eloquently, yet realistically recounts the plight of the poor, working class, white - girl from rural America.
Further, the impacts of poverty on rural America are written about in a down-to-earth style. The imagery depicts the depth of social and economic struggles experienced among the working-class poor; a group often ignored in social scientific work.
For example, Sarah Smarsh explains the phenomena of “moving frequently” among rural, poor women in an illuminating way ....“we had moved 61 times by high school.”
Likewise, the author explains ‘the art of getting married’ among poor women, while simultaneously illuminating how poor children adapt by learning to distinguish a home (internal sense of security - permanent) versus a house (structure - temporary).
And finally, Smarsh was spot on in her observations and descriptions of the chronic health issues plaguing the poor. Of particular accuracy, was the prevalence of back/feet problems among poor women. I literally laughed out-loud at the relatableness - even the names seemed similar!
There was another major part of Sarah Smarsh’s Heartland story that I truly enjoyed - the part about “I’m a professor now.”
Here, two compelling scenes include one in which the author describes driving down a dirt road, during weekends returning home from college. And the other impressionable scene had to do with the intense experience the author goes through in coming to understand what being in a new class means after completing college. In my opinion, anyone who has experienced this profound transformation, will feel a sense of unity and comradeship in hearing this story.
I highly recommend this book and thank the author for “telling it like it is!”
Rachael Smith
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- Michael Sheffield
- 07-05-19
Poor in America? You still have value.
Loved it because it is a variation on the common story of life as a poor American
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- NMwritergal
- 11-25-18
My favorite memoir of 2018
I've read a massive amount of nonfiction this year, including memoir, and this is my favorite memoir of 2018.
Unlike many memoirs, there is some political and cultural context here. Also, unlike many memoirs, this is not just the author's story but the story of both sides of her family (going back a couple of generations), the story of a place, a time, class, the politics of the time, farming, etc. So it doesn't suffer from the self-absorption that memoir can. In fact, she leaves so much out of her own story that there are a few lines near the end of the book that are so strange and jarring that I felt like Smarsh had probably written about that particular subject, edited it out of the story, and all that remained were these few lines as an accidental artifact. There are another few lines she tosses in that were kind of shock because it completely changed the way I thought about her and they weren't mentioned till the end. I Googled after reading the book to see if there was anything else by her on audio and--another shock--she's very pretty, but that's pretty much left out of the book and it's that would have informed the story a little more, i.e., her two biggest desires: Not be a teenage mom and to get an education. While I pretty much understood from how Smarsh wrote the story that breaking a generational pattern of teenage motherhood would be difficult, I have to imagine it was even more for a very pretty teenager.
Don't let the "you" she occasionally addresses put you off. While it is threaded through the book, it fades as the book goes on. It was a sort of interesting literary device and she claims that it's true--she really did speak to that "you" so go with it!
If you don't read a zillion books a year and are choosing between popular ones this year (like Educated), choose this one. The writing is far better and the fact that this isn't a story of a childhood that populated by violent, mentally ill religious nuts, a childhood that most people can't imagine like in Educated, but in the end is so much more interesting says a lot about Smarsh's skill as a writer.
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- Laura E. Hobbs
- 11-03-18
Unique perspective
Ms. Smarsh has a unique background and perspective through which to observe big events in our nation. She tells her story with passion, compassion and generosity. Her personal story is a window into many other stories.
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- Barb S---
- 05-11-21
Expand your perspective
Written so beautifully and I feel like I grew up with Sara on her journey. Yet, my eyes were opened in so many ways to the plight of the poor in the middle United States.
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- Garet Bonham
- 01-17-19
Thought provoking and inspiring
This book should be required reading for high school students in their U.S. history classes.
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- Adena Schwartz
- 10-20-18
Just Plain Beautiful
Sarah Smarsh’s courageous narrative of her life, heritage, and country is tender and true. I feel grateful to have listened to the story of this beautiful soul.
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