
Necessary Trouble
Growing Up at Midcentury
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Narrated by:
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Drew Gilpin Faust
About this listen
To grow up in the 1950s was to enter a world of polarized national alliances, nuclear threat, and destabilized social hierarchies. Two world wars and the depression that connected them had unleashed a torrent of expectations and dissatisfactions—not only in global affairs but in American society and Americans’ lives.
To be a privileged white girl in conservative, segregated Virginia was to be expected to adopt a willful blindness to the inequities of race and the constraints of gender. For young Drew Gilpin Faust, the acceptance of both female subordination and racial privilege proved intolerable and galvanizing. Urged to become “well adjusted" and to fill the role of a poised young lady that her upbringing imposed, she found resistance was the necessary price of survival. During the 1960s, through her love of learning and her active engagement in the civil rights, student, and antiwar movements, Faust forged a path of her own—one that would eventually lead her to become a historian of the very conflicts that were instrumental in shaping the world she grew up in.
Culminating in the upheavals of 1968, Necessary Trouble captures a time of rapid change and fierce reaction in one young woman’s life, tracing the transformations and aftershocks that we continue to grapple with today.
©2023 Drew Gilpin Faust (P)2023 Dreamscape MediaListeners also enjoyed...
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Sailing the Graveyard Sea
- The Deathly Voyage of the Somers, the U.S. Navy's Only Mutiny, and the Trial That Gripped the Nation
- By: Richard Snow
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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On December 16, 1842, the US brig-of-war Somers dropped anchor in the New York Harbor at the end of a voyage intended to teach a group of adolescents the rudiments of naval life. But this routine exercise ended in catastrophe. Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie came ashore claiming he had prevented a mutiny that would have left him and his officers dead. Some of the thwarted mutineers were being held under guard, but three had already been hanged at sea.
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the day to day brutality
- By L. Lombard on 01-15-24
By: Richard Snow
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Fieldwork
- A Forager's Memoir
- By: Iliana Regan
- Narrated by: Iliana Regan
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Long based in Chicago, Iliana and her new wife, Anna, decided to create a culinary destination, the Milkweed Inn, located in Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula, where much of the food served to their guests would be foraged by Regan herself in the surrounding forest and nearby river. Part fresh challenge, part escape, Regan’s move to the forest was also a return to her rural roots, in an effort to deepen the intimate connection to nature and the land that she had long expressed as a chef, but experienced most intensely growing up.
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Loved every bit of this
- By Pamela C. Fogg on 03-06-23
By: Iliana Regan
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The Broken Way
- A Daring Path into the Abundant Life
- By: Ann Voskamp
- Narrated by: Jamiee Paul
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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A New York Times best seller! Brokenness doesn't only find us in the big things - things like illness, hardship, or grief. It can find you in the everyday. Learn to walk in a way that glorifies Jesus and receive freedom, not beyond your fear and pain, but within it. We are fragile and we know it. Sometimes, living with Christ in a messed-up world feels less like victory and more like walking uphill. The Broken Way is simple in presentation, written in Ann’s unique style - a new way for desperate Christians in need of a fresh revelation of the grace of God.
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So disappointed
- By Julie Parker on 01-06-17
By: Ann Voskamp
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The Ship of Dreams
- The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era
- By: Mr. Gareth Russell
- Narrated by: Jenny Funnell
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In this original and meticulously researched narrative history, the author of the “stunning” (The Sunday Times) Young and Damned and Fair uses the sinking of the Titanic as a prism through which to examine the end of the Edwardian era and the seismic shift modernity brought to the Anglo-American world.
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One of my favorites
- By M. M. Jones on 04-13-20
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Janis
- Her Life and Music
- By: Holly George-Warren
- Narrated by: Nina Arianda
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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This blazingly intimate biography of Janis Joplin establishes the Queen of Rock & Roll as the rule-breaking musical trailblazer and complicated, gender-bending rebel she was.
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Well framed & Amazing Performance
- By Hannah on 04-09-20
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This Is What It Sounds Like
- What the Music You Love Says About You
- By: Ogi Ogas, Susan Rogers
- Narrated by: Susan Rogers
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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When you listen to music, do you prefer lyrics or melody? Intricate harmonies or driving rhythm? The “real” sounds of acoustic instruments or those of computerized synthesizers? Drawing from her successful career as a music producer (engineering hits like Prince’s “Purple Rain”), professor of cognitive neuroscience Susan Rogers reveals why your favorite songs move you. She explains that we each possess a unique “listener profile” based on our brain’s reaction to seven key dimensions of any record: authenticity, realism, novelty, melody, lyrics, rhythm, and timbre.
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Needed to include the music
- By Sarah on 01-18-23
By: Ogi Ogas, and others
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Etched in Sand
- A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakable Childhood on Long Island
- By: Regina Calcaterra
- Narrated by: Regina Calcaterra
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In this story of perseverance in the face of adversity, Regina Calcaterra recounts her childhood in foster care and on the streets and how she and her savvy crew of homeless siblings managed to survive years of homelessness, abandonment, and abuse. Regina Calcaterra's emotionally powerful memoir reveals how she endured a series of foster homes and intermittent homelessness in the shadow of the Hamptons, and how she rose above her past while fighting to keep her brother and three sisters together.
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Big eye-opener about our Foster Care system
- By Jo L. on 09-14-16
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F--ked at 40
- Life Beyond Suburbia, Monogamy and Stretch Marks
- By: Tova Leigh
- Narrated by: Tova Leigh
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Creator, mother, lover, and social media phenomenon Tova Leigh explores what the hell you are supposed to do when you find yourself living a life you don't remember signing up for. I was bored, angry, tired, and sad. I felt all alone yet I had nothing to complain about. I had a good job, a husband who wasn't shagging his assistant, three children who apart from being the occasional a**holes were pretty good kids; a house, a dog, and everything else we are told as little girls we should aspire to. But inside, I was growing restless.
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awesome
- By Amazon Customer on 10-09-20
By: Tova Leigh
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The Fighters
- By: C. J. Chivers
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Almost 2.5 million Americans have served in Afghanistan or Iraq since September 11, 2001. C.J. Chivers has reported from both fronts from the beginning, walking side by side with combatants for more than a dozen years. He describes the experience of war today as it is endured by those most at risk - the camaraderie and profound sense of purpose, alongside courage, frustration, and moral confusion mixed with technical precision. In these remote places where the reason for their presence is sometimes not clear, these young men kill or are killed, facing palpable and often constant threat of ambush or hidden bombs....
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a very human perspective...
- By dustin on 08-22-18
By: C. J. Chivers
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Deep Kindness
- A Revolutionary Guide for the Way We Think, Talk, and Act in Kindness
- By: Houston Kraft
- Narrated by: Houston Kraft
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Deep Kindness pairs anecdotes with actions that can make real change in our own lives, the lives of others, and throughout the world. Diving into the types of kindness the world needs most today, this book takes an honest look at the gap between our belief in kindness and our ability to practice it well—and shows us how to put intention into action. Exploring everything from the empathy gap to the skill of emotional regulation, Deep Kindness is perfect for anyone who believes in a kinder world and recognizes that there is a lot of work to do before we achieve it.
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So slow
- By Jordan Stclaire on 11-25-20
By: Houston Kraft
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Friendly Fire
- A Fractured Memoir
- By: Paul Rousseau
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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At some point in the course of Paul and Mark’s friendship, Mark acquired—legally and with required permits—five firearms. Those weapons lived with them in their college apartment. It was a non-issue for the two best friends. They were inseparable. They were twenty-two-year-old boys at the height of their college experience, unaware that everything was about to change forever. The bullet ripped through two walls before it struck Paul’s skull.
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Great book, insightful
- By Heidi Claypool on 01-05-25
By: Paul Rousseau
As a highly introspective young woman of the South with a growing awareness of the inequities of black-white racial societal norms, I give her enormous credit for her lifelong determination to help right those wrongs.
Tremendous and valuable, historical perspective!
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A moving memoir that is also an amazing lesson in the fraught American history of the 1960s
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Sometimes we need to learn personal stories of the past to remember how much impact one person can have.
Excellent read! Well done!
Inspiring!
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First hand memory
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Memoirs are so aptly suited to audiobooks, and I love the fact that Ms. Faust narrated her life. She’s not the best narrator, but I know it rings true.
Left Me Wanting More (and Less)
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Her upbringing mirrored mine her stepping out of that small sheltered life was courageous .
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Challenging
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So much truth in history lived and retold.
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struggles and triumphs of mid century women
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Gilpin Faust's early activism showed an empathy that was way beyond her years.
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