Heaven Is a Place on Earth
Searching for an American Utopia
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Narrated by:
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Adrian Shirk
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By:
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Adrian Shirk
About this listen
An exploration of American ideas of utopia through the lens of one millennial's quest to live a more communal life under late-stage capitalism
Told in a series of essays that balance memoir with fieldwork, Heaven Is a Place on Earth is an idiosyncratic study of American utopian experiments—from the Shakers to the radical faerie communes of Short Mountain to the Bronx rebuilding movement—through the lens of one woman’s quest to create a more communal life in a time of unending economic and social precarity.
When Adrian Shirk’s father-in-law has a stroke and loses his ability to speak and walk, she and her husband—both adjuncts in their mid-20s—become his primary caretakers. The stress of these new responsibilities, coupled with navigating America’s broken health-care system and ordinary 21st century financial insecurity, propels Shirk into an odyssey through the history and present of American utopian experiments in the hope that they might offer a way forward.
Along the way, Shirk seeks solace in her own community of friends, artists, and theologians. They try to imagine a different kind of life, examining what might be replicable within the histories of utopia-making, and what might be doomed. Rather than “no place,” Shirk reframes utopia as something that, according to the laws of capital and conquest, shouldn’t be able to exist—but does anyway, if only for a moment.
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An exuberant and insightful work of popular history of how streets got their names, houses their numbers, and what it reveals about class, race, power, and identity. When most people think about street addresses, if they think of them at all, it is in their capacity to ensure that the postman can deliver mail or a traveler won’t get lost. But street addresses were not invented to help you find your way; they were created to find you. In many parts of the world, your address can reveal your race and class.
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Simply OK
- By CJFLA on 07-18-20
By: Deirdre Mask
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Believers
- Making a Life at the End of the World
- By: Lisa Wells
- Narrated by: Lisa Wells
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Like many of us, Lisa Wells has spent years overwhelmed by news of apocalyptic-scale climate change and a coming sixth extinction. She did not need to be convinced of the stakes. But what can be done? Wells embarked on a pilgrimage, seeking answers in dedicated communities - outcasts and visionaries - on the margins of society.
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I believe
- By Amazon Customer on 08-19-21
By: Lisa Wells
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Tomboyland
- Essays
- By: Melissa Faliveno, Joey Soloway - introduction
- Narrated by: Melissa Faliveno
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Flyover country, the middle of nowhere, the space between the coasts. The American Midwest is a place beyond definition, whose very boundaries are a question. It's a place of rolling prairies and towering pines, where guns in bars and trucks on blocks are as much a part of the landscape as rivers and lakes and farms. Where girls are girls and boys are boys, where women are mothers and wives, where one is taught to work hard and live between the lines.
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Embrace the Quirk
- By Lorraine S. on 07-26-22
By: Melissa Faliveno, and others
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The In-Betweens
- The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna
- By: Mira Ptacin
- Narrated by: Chloe Cannon
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
They believed they would live forever. So begins Mira Ptacin's haunting account of the women of Camp Etna - an otherworldly community in the woods of Maine that has, since 1876, played host to generations of Spiritualists and mediums dedicated to preserving the links between the mortal realm and the afterlife. Beginning her narrative in 1848 with two sisters who claimed they could speak to the dead, Ptacin reveals how Spiritualism first blossomed into a national practice during the Civil War, yet continues - even thrives - to this very day.
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No strings attatched
- By Sarah on 09-28-24
By: Mira Ptacin
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The Yellow House
- By: Sarah M. Broom
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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In 1961, Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant - the postwar optimism seemed assured. A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities.
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Great book. I wish the pictures had been included.
- By Lindsay on 02-28-20
By: Sarah M. Broom
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The Book of Pride
- LGBTQ Heroes Who Changed the World
- By: Mason Funk
- Narrated by: Mason Funk, Robin Miles, Eileen Stevens, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Book of Pride captures the true story of the gay rights movement from the 1960s to the present, through richly detailed, stunning interviews with the leaders, activists, and ordinary people who witnessed the movement and made it happen. These individuals fought battles both personal and political, often without the support of family or friends, frequently under the threat of violence and persecution.
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Pure Joy for EVERYONE
- By Micah D on 06-03-19
By: Mason Funk
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Reclamation
- Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant's Search for Her Family's Lasting Legacy
- By: Gayle Jessup White
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
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- Unabridged
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Performance
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A Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ family explores America’s racial reckoning through the prism of her ancestors - both the enslaver and the enslaved.
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Slow start, eventually a worthwhile story
- By ChocolateDweller on 12-17-21
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Secrets and Wives
- The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy
- By: Sanjiv Bhattacharya
- Narrated by: Sanjiv Bhattacharya
- Length: 15 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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What do we really know about modern practicing polygamists - not fictional ones like the Henrickson family on HBO’s Big Love? We’ve seen the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the news, the underage brides in pioneer dresses on a Texas ranch. But the FLDS is just one of many groups that have broken with mainstream Mormonism to follow those parts of Joseph Smith’s doctrine disavowed by the LDS Church. Gaining unprecedented access to these communities, journalist Sanjiv Bhattacharya reveals a shadow country....
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Great stories (+), religious amateur hour (-)
- By Douglas on 09-26-13
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House Lessons
- Renovating a Life
- By: Erica Bauermeister
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
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Performance
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In this mesmerizing memoir-in-essays, New York Times best-selling author Erica Bauermeister renovates a trash-filled house in eccentric Port Townsend, Washington, and in the process takes listeners on a journey to discover the ways our spaces subliminally affect us. A personal, accessible, and literary exploration of the psychology of architecture, this book is designed for homeowners, remodelers, and those who are simply curious about how our built environments shape who we become.
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Wonderful book for anyone home shopping
- By ERICK on 09-04-20
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A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear
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- By: Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road. When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town's thick wilderness.
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Author's Political Biases Shine Through
- By Frank on 12-20-20
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The Shanghai Free Taxi
- Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China
- By: Frank Langfitt
- Narrated by: Frank Langfitt
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In this adventurous, original book, NPR correspondent Frank Langfitt describes how he created a free taxi service - offering rides in exchange for illuminating conversation - to go beyond the headlines and get to know a wide range of colorful, compelling characters representative of the new China. They include folks like "Beer", a slippery salesman who tries to sell Langfitt a used car; Rocky, a farm boy turned Shanghai lawyer; and Chen, who runs an underground Christian church and moves his family to America in search of a better, freer life.
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Too political
- By dah551 on 06-26-19
By: Frank Langfitt
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West of the West
- Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State
- By: Mark Arax
- Narrated by: Mark Arax
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
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Teddy Roosevelt once exclaimed, "When I am in California, I am not in the West. I am west of the West", and in this book, Mark Arax spends four years travelling up and down the Golden State to explore its singular place in the world. This is California beyond the clichés. This is California as only a native son, deep in the dust, could draw it.
By: Mark Arax
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Broken Glass
- Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight Over a Modernist Masterpiece
- By: Alex Beam
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
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In 1945, Edith Farnsworth asked the German architect Mies van der Rohe, already renowned for his avant-garde buildings, to design a weekend home for her outside of Chicago. Edith was a woman ahead of her time—unmarried, she was a distinguished medical researcher, as well as an accomplished violinist, translator, and poet. The two quickly began spending weekends together, talking philosophy, Catholic mysticism, and, of course, architecture over wine-soaked picnic lunches.
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Tedious and disappointing
- By Deborah McGarr Hutchins on 02-03-23
By: Alex Beam
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What listeners say about Heaven Is a Place on Earth
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- MomTheZookeeper
- 11-25-24
Loved the historical review, personal narrative a bit privileged
Good exploration on the history of utopian experiments in America.
Comes from a privileged, white, able bodied perspective,and has some holes in perspective. The author does try to acknowledge some of these privileges. Overall it’s worth the read.
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- Jen
- 03-03-24
Memoir of a book that was never written
I’ll start by saying, I am not a writer and my taste in books leans toward historic narratives. I hate returning books and finish anything I start out of compulsion. I just couldn’t finish this.
The author spends so much time complaining about her life and imagining what could have been. She reflects on times when she was just an entitled white kid that didn’t understand the broader implications of her writing. She hasn’t realized that she is still that kid doing the same thing. Now she has just had some hard times and goes on a self indulgent exercise of imagining the simple life. What’s worse, even in her imaginary life joining a community, she can’t separate from her ego. It is all “if I was a member of this society I would do x,y,z as a role even though this society doesn’t have prescribed roles.
Basically, if you have met someone in college that went abroad and now all they can do is talk about how well they fit in with the culture they visited then you have read this book. Insufferable.
The other reviews said this was part history part memoir. This is fully memoir with the utopia history just used as devise for the author to tell us more about herself. She says it in the first chapter. She wanted to write a history and failed. So, she wrote a memoir.
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