-
Let There Be Laughter
- A Treasury of Great Jewish Humor and What It All Means
- Narrated by: Michael Krasny
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $19.79
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
From the host of NPR affiliate’s Forum with Michael Krasny, a compendium of Jewish jokes that packs the punches with hilarious riff after riff and also offers a window into Jewish culture.
Michael Krasny has been telling Jewish jokes since his bar mitzvah, and it’s been said that he knows more of them than anyone on the planet. He certainly states his case in this wise, enlightening, and hilarious book that not only collects the best of Jewish humor passed down from generation to generation, but explains the cultural expressions and anxieties behind the laughs.
"What’s Jewish Alzheimer’s?"
"You forget everything but the grudges."
"You must be so proud. Your daughter is the President of the United States!"
"Yes. But her brother is a doctor!"
"Isn’t Jewish humor masochistic?"
"No. And if I hear that one more time I am going to kill myself."
With his background as a scholar and public-radio host, Krasny delves deeply into the themes, topics, and form of Jewish humor: chauvinism undercut by irony and self-mockery, the fear of losing cultural identity through assimilation, the importance of vocal inflection in joke-telling, and calls to communal memory, including the use of Yiddish.
Borrowing from traditional humor and such Jewish comedy legends as Jackie Mason, Mel Brooks, and Joan Rivers, Larry David, Sarah Silverman, Jerry Seinfeld and Amy Schumer, Let There Be Laughter is an absolute pleasure for the chosen and goyim alike.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The New Joys of Yiddish
- Completely Updated
- By: Leo Rosten, Lawrence Bush - editor
- Narrated by: Ron Rifkin, Peter Riegert, Harry Goz, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
More than a quarter of a century ago, Leo Rosten presented the first comprehensive and hilariously entertaining lexicon of the colorful and deeply expressive language of Yiddish. Said to "give body and soul to the Yiddish language," The Joys of Yiddish went on to become an indispensable tool for writers, journalists, politicians and students, as well as a perennial best seller for three decades.
-
-
A must-read for anyone interested in Jewish culture and/or linguistics!
- By Kim on 01-26-23
By: Leo Rosten, and others
-
The Netanyahus
- An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family
- By: Joshua Cohen
- Narrated by: Joshua Cohen, David Duchovny, Ethan Herschenfeld
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive comedy of blending, identity, and politics.
-
-
Phillip Roth would certainly listen!
- By Martin on 01-17-22
By: Joshua Cohen
-
All About Me!
- My Remarkable Life in Show Business
- By: Mel Brooks
- Narrated by: Mel Brooks
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 95, the legendary Mel Brooks continues to set the standard for comedy across television, film, and the stage. Now, for the first time, this EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner shares his story in his own words.
-
-
Wonderful and nostalgic
- By GAT on 12-07-21
By: Mel Brooks
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
Is This Anything?
- By: Jerry Seinfeld
- Narrated by: Jerry Seinfeld
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub “Catch a Rising Star” as a 21-year-old college student in fall of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything. “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from 45 years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.”
-
-
Joke, joke, joke. Boring, boring, boring.
- By ECMILLER on 10-11-20
By: Jerry Seinfeld
-
King: A Life
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.
-
-
My Time
- By Susan on 06-18-23
By: Jonathan Eig
-
The New Joys of Yiddish
- Completely Updated
- By: Leo Rosten, Lawrence Bush - editor
- Narrated by: Ron Rifkin, Peter Riegert, Harry Goz, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
More than a quarter of a century ago, Leo Rosten presented the first comprehensive and hilariously entertaining lexicon of the colorful and deeply expressive language of Yiddish. Said to "give body and soul to the Yiddish language," The Joys of Yiddish went on to become an indispensable tool for writers, journalists, politicians and students, as well as a perennial best seller for three decades.
-
-
A must-read for anyone interested in Jewish culture and/or linguistics!
- By Kim on 01-26-23
By: Leo Rosten, and others
-
The Netanyahus
- An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family
- By: Joshua Cohen
- Narrated by: Joshua Cohen, David Duchovny, Ethan Herschenfeld
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Corbin College, not quite upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian—but not an historian of the Jews—is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with nonfiction, the campus novel with the lecture, The Netanyahus is a wildly inventive comedy of blending, identity, and politics.
-
-
Phillip Roth would certainly listen!
- By Martin on 01-17-22
By: Joshua Cohen
-
All About Me!
- My Remarkable Life in Show Business
- By: Mel Brooks
- Narrated by: Mel Brooks
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 95, the legendary Mel Brooks continues to set the standard for comedy across television, film, and the stage. Now, for the first time, this EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner shares his story in his own words.
-
-
Wonderful and nostalgic
- By GAT on 12-07-21
By: Mel Brooks
-
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
- A Novel
- By: James McBride
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.
-
-
Multiple Stories Obfuscate Narrative
- By Stephnsea on 08-12-23
By: James McBride
-
Is This Anything?
- By: Jerry Seinfeld
- Narrated by: Jerry Seinfeld
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since his first performance at the legendary New York nightclub “Catch a Rising Star” as a 21-year-old college student in fall of 1975, Jerry Seinfeld has written his own material and saved everything. “Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation, or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old school accordion folders,” Seinfeld writes. “So I have everything I thought was worth saving from 45 years of hacking away at this for all I was worth.”
-
-
Joke, joke, joke. Boring, boring, boring.
- By ECMILLER on 10-11-20
By: Jerry Seinfeld
-
King: A Life
- By: Jonathan Eig
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 20 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.
-
-
My Time
- By Susan on 06-18-23
By: Jonathan Eig
-
Lies My Mother Told Me
- The World According to Joan
- By: Melissa Rivers
- Narrated by: Melissa Rivers
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If you think Joan Rivers said funny, outrageous, and ridiculous things onstage, wait 'til you hear the funny, outrageous, and ridiculous things she said offstage...things that will make you laugh out loud...and keep Melissa in therapy for the foreseeable future. The only thing my mother loved more than making people laugh was lying...or as she'd say, "embellishing." Her motto was: "Why let the truth ruin a good story?" This book contains some of those stories.
-
-
Could not finish this audio book
- By Fla on 05-10-22
By: Melissa Rivers
-
Committed
- A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of her best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who'd been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. But providence intervened one day in the form of the United States government....
-
-
Perfect timing
- By Nancy on 01-15-10
-
Funny in Farsi
- A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America
- By: Firoozeh Dumas
- Narrated by: Firoozeh Dumas
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here.
-
-
The melting pot, next generation
- By Jerry on 02-15-08
By: Firoozeh Dumas
-
My Life to Live
- How I Became the Queen of Soaps When Men Ruled the Airwaves
- By: Agnes Nixon, Carol Burnett - foreword
- Narrated by: Judith Ivey, Carol Burnett
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the Emmy-winning writer and creator of All My Children, One Life to Live, and Loving, a memoir of her trailblazing rise to the top of the television industry, including behind-the-scenes stories from some of the most beloved soaps of all time.
-
-
Fascinating autobiography with a tinge of disappointment.
- By Buddy on 04-05-17
By: Agnes Nixon, and others
-
The Lost
- A Search for Six of Six Million
- By: Daniel Mendelsohn
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust - an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates.
-
-
Exquisite Narration, Breathtakingly Heartfelt Book
- By Gillian on 08-14-16
-
The Year of Living Biblically
- One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
- By: A. J. Jacobs
- Narrated by: A. J. Jacobs
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our fearless author, A. J. Jacobs, tackles a new intellectual adventure, an exploration of the most influential book in the world: the Bible. He determined that the best way to explore the Bible was to live it, as literally as possible. For one year.
-
-
Excellent... But tongue in cheek
- By Jonathan on 12-04-07
By: A. J. Jacobs
-
Shanda
- A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy
- By: Letty Cottin Pogrebin
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The word "shanda" is defined as shame or disgrace in Yiddish. This book, Shanda, tells the story of three generations of complicated, intense twentieth-century Jews for whom the desire to fit in and the fear of public humiliation either drove their aspirations or crushed their spirit. In her deeply engaging, astonishingly candid memoir, author and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin exposes the fiercely-guarded lies and intricate cover-ups woven by dozens of members of her extended family.
-
-
Beautifully Written!
- By Adele Aron Greenspun on 01-12-23
-
The Opposite of Fate
- Memories of a Writing Life
- By: Amy Tan
- Narrated by: Amy Tan
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amy Tan has touched millions of people with haunting and sympathetic novels of cultural complexity and profound empathy. With the same spirit and humor that characterize her acclaimed novels, she now shares her insight into her own life and how she escaped the curses of her past to make a future of her own. She takes us on a journey from her childhood of tragedy and comedy to the present day and her arrival as one of the world's best-loved novelists.
-
-
My first Tan Book
- By JRT on 03-16-16
By: Amy Tan
-
The Heirs
- A Novel
- By: Susan Rieger
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Six months after Rupert Falkes dies, leaving a grieving widow and five adult sons, an unknown woman sues his estate, claiming she had two sons by him. The Falkes brothers are pitched into turmoil, at once missing their father and feeling betrayed by him. In disconcerting contrast, their mother, Eleanor, is cool and calm, showing preternatural composure. Eleanor and Rupert had made an admirable life together - Eleanor with her sly wit and generosity, Rupert with his ambition and English charm.
-
-
Rich, complex, and charming
- By kwdayboise (Kim Day) on 06-01-17
By: Susan Rieger
-
Go Back to Where You Came From
- And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become an American
- By: Wajahat Ali
- Narrated by: Wajahat Ali
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Now a middle-aged dad, Ali has become one of the foremost and funniest public intellectuals in America. In Go Back to Where You Came From, he tackles the dangers of Islamophobia, white supremacy, and chocolate hummus, peppering personal stories with astute insights into national security, immigration, and pop culture. In this refreshingly bold, hopeful, and uproarious memoir, Ali offers indispensable lessons for cultivating a more compassionate, inclusive, and delicious America.
-
-
Must read (or in this case, listen)!!
- By Jessica S. on 01-26-22
By: Wajahat Ali
-
The Counterlife
- By: Philip Roth
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Counterlife is about people enacting their dreams of renewal and escape, some of them going so far as to risk their lives to alter seemingly irreversible destinies. Wherever they may find themselves, the characters of The Counterlife are tempted unceasingly by the prospect of an alternative existence that can reverse their fate. Illuminating these lives in transition and guiding us through the book's evocative landscapes, familiar and foreign, is the mind of the novelist Nathan Zuckerman.
-
-
Eros, Thanatos, and the Male Yenta
- By G. Benett on 10-03-19
By: Philip Roth
-
Roseannearchy
- Dispatches from the Nut Farm
- By: Roseanne Barr
- Narrated by: Roseanne Barr
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Roseanne Barr is a force of nature. Whether taking the sitcom world by storm, challenging accepted social norms, or battling the wild pigs inhabiting her nut farm in Hawaii, she is not to be trifled with. In this audiobook, Roseanne unleashes her razor-sharp observations on hypocrisy, hubris, and self-perpetuating institutions of questionable value - as well as menopause, pharmaceuticals, and her grandkids. And she's as controversial, original, and funny as ever.
-
-
If "My Lives" left you wanting more......
- By Amethyst on 01-12-11
By: Roseanne Barr
Related to this topic
-
Shanda
- A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy
- By: Letty Cottin Pogrebin
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The word "shanda" is defined as shame or disgrace in Yiddish. This book, Shanda, tells the story of three generations of complicated, intense twentieth-century Jews for whom the desire to fit in and the fear of public humiliation either drove their aspirations or crushed their spirit. In her deeply engaging, astonishingly candid memoir, author and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin exposes the fiercely-guarded lies and intricate cover-ups woven by dozens of members of her extended family.
-
-
Beautifully Written!
- By Adele Aron Greenspun on 01-12-23
-
Where the Past Begins
- A Writer's Memoir
- By: Amy Tan
- Narrated by: Amy Tan
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moving from her childhood in Oakland and growing up with her Chinese parents through her success as a novelist, Amy Tan delves into her creative interests in music, the paralysis of beginning a new project, journal writing, and travelling. Where the Past Begins chronicles the making of a writer. With characteristic humor and poignant observation, Tan weaves a nontraditional introspective narrative that is as complex and vibrant as this beloved American novelist's fiction.
-
-
Narration Issues
- By Sara on 12-14-17
By: Amy Tan
-
Things I've Been Silent About
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Naila Azad
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.
-
-
Family portrait in the frame of history
- By Galina COS on 07-02-16
By: Azar Nafisi
-
Committed
- A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of her best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who'd been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. But providence intervened one day in the form of the United States government....
-
-
Perfect timing
- By Nancy on 01-15-10
-
Crazy for God
- By: Frank Schaeffer
- Narrated by: Frank Schaeffer
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the time he was 19, Frank Schaeffer’s parents had achieved global fame as best-selling evangelical authors and speakers, and Frank had joined his father on the evangelical circuit. He would go on to speak before thousands and publish his own best seller. But while coming of age as a rising evangelical star, Schaeffer felt increasingly alienated, and as a result, he experienced a crisis of faith that would ultimately lead to his journey out of the fold - even if it meant losing everything.
-
-
Recommended!
- By Catherine Heard on 10-29-10
By: Frank Schaeffer
-
Funny in Farsi
- A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America
- By: Firoozeh Dumas
- Narrated by: Firoozeh Dumas
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here.
-
-
The melting pot, next generation
- By Jerry on 02-15-08
By: Firoozeh Dumas
-
Shanda
- A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy
- By: Letty Cottin Pogrebin
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The word "shanda" is defined as shame or disgrace in Yiddish. This book, Shanda, tells the story of three generations of complicated, intense twentieth-century Jews for whom the desire to fit in and the fear of public humiliation either drove their aspirations or crushed their spirit. In her deeply engaging, astonishingly candid memoir, author and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin exposes the fiercely-guarded lies and intricate cover-ups woven by dozens of members of her extended family.
-
-
Beautifully Written!
- By Adele Aron Greenspun on 01-12-23
-
Where the Past Begins
- A Writer's Memoir
- By: Amy Tan
- Narrated by: Amy Tan
- Length: 14 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moving from her childhood in Oakland and growing up with her Chinese parents through her success as a novelist, Amy Tan delves into her creative interests in music, the paralysis of beginning a new project, journal writing, and travelling. Where the Past Begins chronicles the making of a writer. With characteristic humor and poignant observation, Tan weaves a nontraditional introspective narrative that is as complex and vibrant as this beloved American novelist's fiction.
-
-
Narration Issues
- By Sara on 12-14-17
By: Amy Tan
-
Things I've Been Silent About
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Naila Azad
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.
-
-
Family portrait in the frame of history
- By Galina COS on 07-02-16
By: Azar Nafisi
-
Committed
- A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the end of her best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who'd been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. But providence intervened one day in the form of the United States government....
-
-
Perfect timing
- By Nancy on 01-15-10
-
Crazy for God
- By: Frank Schaeffer
- Narrated by: Frank Schaeffer
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the time he was 19, Frank Schaeffer’s parents had achieved global fame as best-selling evangelical authors and speakers, and Frank had joined his father on the evangelical circuit. He would go on to speak before thousands and publish his own best seller. But while coming of age as a rising evangelical star, Schaeffer felt increasingly alienated, and as a result, he experienced a crisis of faith that would ultimately lead to his journey out of the fold - even if it meant losing everything.
-
-
Recommended!
- By Catherine Heard on 10-29-10
By: Frank Schaeffer
-
Funny in Farsi
- A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America
- By: Firoozeh Dumas
- Narrated by: Firoozeh Dumas
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here.
-
-
The melting pot, next generation
- By Jerry on 02-15-08
By: Firoozeh Dumas
-
If the Oceans Were Ink
- An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran
- By: Carla Power
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If the Oceans Were Ink is Carla Power's eye-opening story of how she and her longtime friend, Sheikh Mohammad Akram Nadwi, found a way to confront ugly stereotypes and persistent misperceptions that were cleaving their communities. Their friendship - between a secular American and a madrasa-trained sheikh - had always seemed unlikely, but now they were frustrated and bewildered by the battles being fought in their names.
-
-
WAY TOO LONG-but good material
- By teri_novabern on 07-30-16
By: Carla Power
-
Laughing Without an Accent
- Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad
- By: Firoozeh Dumas
- Narrated by: Firoozeh Dumas
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the best-selling memoir Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas recounted her adventures growing up Iranian American in Southern California. Now she again mines her rich Persian heritage in Laughing Without an Accent, sharing stories both tender and humorous on being a citizen of the world, on her well-meaning family, and on amusing cultural conundrums, all told with insights into the universality of the human condition. (Hint: It may have to do with brushing and flossing daily.)
-
-
Sigh
- By Sara on 01-29-14
By: Firoozeh Dumas
-
Normal Gets You Nowhere
- By: Kelly Cutrone
- Narrated by: Kelly Cutrone
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With Normal Gets You Nowhere, Kelly Cutrone invites us to get our freak on. History is full of successful, world-changing people who did not fit in. Think Nelson Mandela, Joan of Arc, Eleanor Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, John Lennon, and Rosa Parks. Instead of changing themselves to accommodate the status quo or what others thought they should be, these people hung a light on their differences - and changed humanity in the process. “I know you don’t feel normal, so why are you trying to act it and prove to everyone you are?” Cutrone says.
-
-
For open minds and hearts.
- By Kelly on 01-06-12
By: Kelly Cutrone
-
The Unspeakable
- And Other Subjects of Discussion
- By: Meghan Daum
- Narrated by: Meghan Daum
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's a report tempered by hard times. In "Matricide", Daum unflinchingly describes a parent's death and the uncomfortable emotions it provokes; and in "Diary of a Coma" she relates her own journey to the twilight of the mind. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the marriage-industrial complex, of the New Age dating market, and of the peculiar habits of the young and digital.
-
-
Complaining about her dead mom.
- By Erik Hermansen on 11-23-14
By: Meghan Daum
-
I Can't Complain
- (All Too) Personal Essays
- By: Elinor Lipman
- Narrated by: Elinor Lipman
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Elinor Lipman has populated her fictional universe with characters so utterly real that we feel like they're old friends. Now she shares an even more intimate world with us - her own - in essays that offer a candid, charming take on modern life. Looking back and forging ahead, she considers the subjects that matter most: childhood and condiments, long marriage and solo living, career and politics. Here you'll find the lighthearted: a celebration of four decades of All My Children, a reflection on being Jewish in heavily Irish-Catholic Lowell on St. Patrick's Day, a hilariously unflinching account of her tiptoe into online dating.
-
-
Fabulous!
- By Louise on 09-15-19
By: Elinor Lipman
-
Because I Come from a Crazy Family
- The Making of a Psychiatrist
- By: Edward M. Hallowell
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Edward M. Hallowell was 11, a voice out of nowhere told him he should become a psychiatrist. A mental health professional of the time would have called this psychosis. But young Edward (Ned) took it in stride, despite not quite knowing what "psychiatrist" meant. With a psychotic father, an alcoholic mother, an abusive stepfather, and two so-called learning disabilities of his own, Ned was accustomed to unpredictable behaviour from those around him and to a mind he felt he couldn't always control.
-
-
Love and connection permeates through this book!
- By Steve Steinmetz on 06-29-18
-
The Lost
- A Search for Six of Six Million
- By: Daniel Mendelsohn
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust - an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates.
-
-
Exquisite Narration, Breathtakingly Heartfelt Book
- By Gillian on 08-14-16
-
Between Two Worlds
- Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam
- By: Zainab Salbi, Laurie Becklund
- Narrated by: Josephine Bailey
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Zainab Salbi was 11-years-old when her father was chosen to serve as Saddam Hussein's personal pilot, her family often forced to spend weekends with Saddam where he watched their every move. As a palace insider, Zainab offers a singular glimpse of what it is like to come of age under a dictator and provides an intimate portrait of the man she was taught to call "uncle". She watched as Saddam pitted friends, spouses, and even children against each other to compete for his approval.
-
-
An excellent history lesson
- By Ella on 12-01-09
By: Zainab Salbi, and others
-
Flesh Wounds
- By: Richard Glover
- Narrated by: Richard Glover
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A mother who invented her past, a father who was often absent, a son who wondered if this could really be his family...Richard Glover's favourite dinner-party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?' It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed toy collector.
-
-
Such a Meaningful Reflection
- By Awarenessing on 11-28-15
By: Richard Glover
-
Sex, Mom, and God
- How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics - and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway
- By: Frank Schaeffer
- Narrated by: Frank Schaeffer
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alternating between laugh-out-loud scenes from his childhood and acidic ruminations on the present state of an America he and his famous fundamentalist parents helped create, best-selling author Frank Schaeffer asks what the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs and the paranoid fantasies of the “right-wing echo chamber” are really all about. Here’s a hint: sex.
-
-
Entertaining and enlightening
- By Listens-a-lot on 11-16-11
By: Frank Schaeffer
-
More Die of Heartbreak
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kenneth Trachtenberg, an eccentric and witty native of Paris, travels to the Midwest to spend time with his famous American uncle, a world-renowned botanist and self-described "plant visionary". After numerous affairs and failed relationships, the restless Uncle Benn seeks a settled existence in the form of marriage - but tying the knot again opens the door to a host of new torments.
-
-
A great book
- By John A. on 03-16-22
By: Saul Bellow
-
She Made Me Laugh
- My Friend Nora Ephron
- By: Richard Cohen
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Loved it!
- By Leigh Lerro on 10-27-17
By: Richard Cohen