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I, Asimov
- A Memoir
- Narrated by: Jon Lindstrom
- Length: 24 hrs and 13 mins
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Publisher's summary
Arguably the greatest science fiction writer who ever lived, Isaac Asimov also possessed one of the most brilliant and original minds of our time. His accessible style and far-reaching interests in subjects ranging from science to humor to history earned him the nickname "the Great Explainer". I. Asimov is his personal story - vivid, open, and honest - as only Asimov himself could tell it.
Here is the story of the paradoxical genius who wrote of travel to the stars yet refused to fly in airplanes; who imagined alien universes and vast galactic civilizations while staying home to write; who compulsively authored more than 470 books yet still found the time to share his ideas with some of the great minds of our century. Here are his wide-ranging thoughts and sharp-eyed observations on everything from religion to politics, love and divorce, friendship and Hollywood, fame and mortality. Here, too, is a riveting behind-the-scenes look at the varied personalities - Campbell, Ellison, Heinlein, Clarke, del Rey, Silverberg, and others - who along with Asimov helped shape science fiction.
As unique and irrepressible as the man himself, I. Asimov is the candid memoir of an incomparable talent who entertained readers and listeners for nearly half a century and whose work will surely endure into the future he so vividly envisioned.
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Ayn Rand is the author of two phenomenally best-selling ideological novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, which have sold over 12 million copies in the United States alone. Through them, she built a right-wing cult following in the late 1950s and became the guiding light of Libertarianism and of White House economic policy in the 1960s and '70s. Her defenses of radical individualism and of selfishness as a "capitalist virtue" have permanently altered the American cultural landscape.
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Great history of both Rand and her era
- By Mark on 08-07-10
By: Anne C. Heller
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She Made Me Laugh
- My Friend Nora Ephron
- By: Richard Cohen
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Richard Cohen, wrote this about his "third-person memoir": "I call this book a third-person memoir. It is about my closest friend, Nora Ephron, and the lives we lived together and how her life got to be bigger until, finally, she wrote her last work, the play, Lucky Guy, about a newspaper columnist dying of cancer while she herself was dying of cancer. I have interviewed many of her other friends - Mike Nichols, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Arianna Huffington.
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Loved it!
- By Leigh Lerro on 10-27-17
By: Richard Cohen
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A Torch Kept Lit
- Great Lives of the Twentieth Century
- By: William F. Buckley
- Narrated by: Tony Pasqualini
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
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In a half century on the national stage, William F. Buckley Jr. achieved unique stature as a polemicist and the undisputed godfather of modern American conservatism. He knew everybody, hosted everybody at his East 73rd Street maisonette, skewered everybody who needed skewering, and in general lived life on a scale, and in a swashbuckling manner, that captivated and inspired countless young conservatives across that half century.
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Excellent...inspiring imagery!
- By Lisa Hill on 10-14-16
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Empire of Self
- A Life of Gore Vidal
- By: Jay Parini
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The product of 30 years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's Empire of Self probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well - a virtual who's who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, and the creme de la creme of Hollywood.
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Well done!
- By Christopher on 03-22-16
By: Jay Parini
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Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
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No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
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Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
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Process
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- By: Sarah Stodola
- Narrated by: Andi Arndt
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Ernest Hemingway, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Franz Kafka, David Foster Wallace, and more. In Process, acclaimed journalist Sarah Stodola examines the creative methods of literature's most transformative figures. Each chapter contains a mini biography of one of the world's most lauded authors, focused solely on his or her writing process.
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Excellent!
- By Davina Rush on 04-10-15
By: Sarah Stodola
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The Man with the Golden Typewriter
- By: Ian Fleming, Fergus Fleming
- Narrated by: Julian Rhind-Tutt
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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On 16 August 1952, Ian Fleming wrote to his wife, Ann, 'My love, This is only a tiny letter to try out my new typewriter and to see if it will write golden words since it is made of gold'. And he did write golden words: 14 best-selling James Bond books, and an equally energetic flow of letters to his wife, publisher, editors, fans, friends and critics, charting 007's progress....
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Ian Fleming revealed through his letters
- By James Litsios on 05-10-18
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So We Read On
- How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures
- By: Maureen Corrigan
- Narrated by: Maureen Corrigan
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, it's now a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know The Great Gatsby? As Maureen Corrigan, Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece may be one of the most popular novels in America, many of us first read it when we were too young to fully comprehend its power.
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Reading Gatsby as an adult reveals its greatness!
- By Mark on 10-06-14
By: Maureen Corrigan
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The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson - coauthor of the classic memoir Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac - brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac's French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider's vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road.
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
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Bookworm
- A Memoir of Childhood Reading
- By: Lucy Mangan
- Narrated by: Lucy Mangan
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up new worlds and cast light on all the complexities she encountered in this one. She was whisked away to Narnia and Kirrin Island and Wonderland. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. She wandered the countryside with Milly-Molly-Mandy and played by the tracks with the Railway Children.
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I love this!
- By M. Ashby on 03-12-20
By: Lucy Mangan
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Engaging read but dubious sentiment
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an enlightening book; very well read
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This book is a thoroughly researched primer on the 108 Upanishads, philosophical treatises that form a part of the Vedas, the revered Hindu texts. These Upanishads contain the most crystallized bits of wisdom gleaned from Hinduism. Roshen Dalal explains the concepts at the core of each Upanishad clearly and lucidly. Moreover, her vast, diverse philosophical and theological readings add priceless scholarly context to this comprehensive and fascinating volume.
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Lucidity whilst Civilization reverts to barbarism
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The best-known prose work by the winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature examines the moral and intellectual conflicts faced by men and women living under totalitarianism of the left or right. Written in the early 1950s, when Eastern Europe was in the grip of Stalinism and many Western intellectuals placed their hopes in the new order of the East, this classic work reveals in fascinating detail the often beguiling allure of totalitarian rule to people of all political beliefs and its frightening effects on the minds of those who embrace it.
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Every U.S. citizen should read this.
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From iconic books like Neuromancer to blockbuster films like The Matrix, virtual reality has long been hailed as the ultimate technology. But outside of a few research labs and military training facilities, this tantalizing vision of the future was nothing but science fiction. Until 2012, when Oculus founder Palmer Luckey - then just a rebellious teenage dreamer living alone in a camper trailer - invents a device that has the potential to change everything.
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Fantastic book
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What listeners say about I, Asimov
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Patricia Ching
- 07-10-24
Fabulous auto-biobraphy
ypu do not have to read his other 2 auto-bographies to enjoybthis one. I did not and enjoyed this one immensely. I only knew Him from his books and now I feel I really know the man
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- Gregor
- 07-14-24
When i finished I felt like I knew him
The best praise for an autobiography is that, when you’ve finished it, you feel like you know the author. That’s the case here.
Tedious at times but many of the chapters are brilliant.
Excellent narration!
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- Mel Beckman
- 09-04-24
A man who loves to write and teach
I grew up reading Isaac Asimov’s science, history, literature, and science fiction prose. Although often extravagantly illustrated by talented artists, his words carried his entire message all on its own.
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- libertarian in recovery
- 01-17-22
Thank you Mr Asimov
You said it all. You are like a father figure to me.
You are someone I aspire to be like.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kamran Bigdely
- 02-18-22
ear-opening book about my childhood favori author
I like the section he explains why he is not a zionist and why nations shouldn't build upon cultures or religions. To my surprise he said he was not a good scientist nor a chess player or any table-top game player!
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2 people found this helpful
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- Jay Lynn Walker
- 06-20-24
Asimov as a dynamic personality was beyond impressive and the book was well worth listening to.
I liked hearing about Asimov’s childhood and formative years; very interesting how he learned to recognize his faults, as well as his own brilliance, and how to navigate in the world and get along with people. I admired him overall, but I was extremely put off by his vitriolic, shallow, small-minded comments about so-called conservatives whom he loved to hate with an irrational passion. The chapter on Al Capp was especially revealing as to how even a brilliant man can form opinions early in life that are allowed to remain unexamined for years until they become sheer prejudice with little basis in actual fact. It was offensive to hear him rant about non-progressives while offering little if any concrete evidence to support his assertions. That said, his work ethic was truly amazing. Odd, that I listened to this whole thing and I’ve never read any of his other works and have no plans to do so.
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- James C. Poland
- 08-09-24
One of the greats of SF
I've always considered Asimov to be my first introduction to serious SF. It was interesting to get his perspective on how writing field developed in conjunction with his own life. He's not shy about tooting his own horn so that's a bit redundant. He also has a penchant for providing a lot of very specific dates which seems to be superfluous. The performance felt almost like Asimov were reading it.
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- S.E.B.
- 12-16-20
The Wrong Reader
The reader of this book, Jon Lindstrom, did a fine job. But I have read the print version of this book several times and I always “heard” it as I was reading, in Asimov’s voice. So, when I heard someone else reading it...without the New York area accent...without the irony and delicious sarcasm that Asimov himself had when he read his own books or talked about himself, I was disappointed. Lindstrom has a serious, gravely voice. Perfect for a contemporary mystery, for example, but wrong for this book...at least in my mind.
Some of the reviews of this book complain that Asimov was too boastful, that he was too self-centered, and conceited. He would, I believe, agree completely. On the other hand, he accepted himself as he was and with perhaps a smidgeon of self-deprecating humor, was happy with who he was. He was good...and he knew it.
Asimov fans who loved the earlier autobiographies or the autobiographical interludes in books like “The Early Asimov” will love this one as well.
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12 people found this helpful
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- O.
- 11-06-23
One Chilling, Interesting Section
The chapter on his son. Ike explains that the younger Asimov liked to keep to himself and watch his video collection. That same son was arrested for running an illegal xrated video processing center out of his house 6 years after Ike's passing. Biggest find of such horror in CA history. The son got a slap on the wrist. Hmm.
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- NM
- 12-16-20
This great book is now an unabridged release!
While this is technically the Third in Dr. Asimov's autobiography series after "In Memory Yet Green (covering 1920-54)" and "In Joy Still Felt (covering 1954-78)", this isn't actually the Third volume as it was originally intended. That book would have been written many years later and called "The Scenes of Life (covering 1978-????)", but with his health being uncertain he began writing this Third volume which became "I, Asimov". Instead of continuing from where the Second book left off in 1978, "I, Asimov" covers all of Dr. Asimov's life, making it a standalone autobiography. One reason for Starting From Scratch was the difficulty for readers of the Third book being able to purchase the (by then) out-of-print first two volumes. Another was the extended length of first two books at 700+ and 800+ pages each, so this all-in-one Third book was trimmed down to just 600 pages - or 550 for the hardcover. A later book was released in 2002 - "It's Been a Good Life" - which like "I, Asimov" is a standalone novel but refined to a mere 300 pages. When deciding which of these four books to narrate, the first two books might have been considered Too Long, the last Too Short, but this Third book would be Just Right. As to the audio release itself. the narration for the autobiography is spot on. Obviously it's for Serious Fans since at 24+ hours it's not exactly a quick listen, but it's certainly worth it. If you enjoyed reading the detailed commentaries he included with some of his short story collections, then you'll enjoy this narration!
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Some Specs: As listed, the complete title is 24 hours and 13 minutes with 170 individual "chapters". If one is downloading from Audible, it can be downloaded as one file (1.3 gigs / 24hrs 13 mins) or in three parts (457 megs/8hrs 15 mins; 452 megs/8hrs 11 mins; 430 megs / 7hrs 47 mins).
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Additional Info for (Audible) Asimov fans: While Audible has YET to release/narrate the 4th book in the Robot Novels ("Robots and Empire" - hint hint!!), there are many Much Older releases which are Unavailable unless one is fortunate enough to own them on legacy cassette or LP. However there is ONE Asimov title here on Audible that is a true gem. Released previously under different names with different lengths, here on Audible this collection goes by it's 1975 name "Science Fiction Favorites" ( B002V8LG52 ). This collection of short stories is unique as they are all narrated by Dr. Asimov himself. Additionally, this release includes some of his famous story commentaries, which even alone would make this something worth listening to.
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