-
Out of the Shadows
- Six Visionary Victorian Women in Search of a Public Voice
- Narrated by: Rachael Beresford
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 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 $21.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
Queen Victoria's reign was an era of breathtaking social change, but it did little to create a platform for women to express themselves. But not so within the social sphere of the seance - a mysterious, lamp-lit world on both sides of the Atlantic, in which women who craved a public voice could hold their own.
Out of the Shadows tells the stories of the enterprising women whose supposedly clairvoyant gifts granted them fame, fortune, and, most important, influence, as they crossed rigid boundaries of gender and class as easily as they passed between the realms of the living and the dead. The Fox sisters inspired some of the era's best-known political activists and set off a transatlantic seance craze. While in the throes of a trance, Emma Hardinge Britten delivered powerful speeches to crowds of thousands. Victoria Woodhull claimed guidance from the spirit world as she took on the millionaires of Wall Street before becoming America's first female presidential candidate. And Georgina Weldon narrowly escaped the asylum before becoming a celebrity campaigner against archaic lunacy laws.
Drawing on diaries, letters, and rarely seen memoirs and texts, Emily Midorikawa illuminates a radical history of female influence that has been confined to the dark until now.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Apparitionists
- A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost
- By: Peter Manseau
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America's imagination. A "spirit photographer", William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation.
By: Peter Manseau
-
Vanderbilt
- The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
- By: Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
- Narrated by: Anderson Cooper
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with New York Times best-selling historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty - his mother’s family, the Vanderbilts.
-
-
Interesting Approach to a Well Known History
- By HistoryNerd on 09-24-21
By: Anderson Cooper, and others
-
The Woman They Could Not Silence
- One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear
- By: Kate Moore
- Narrated by: Kate Moore
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil, Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Her husband of 21 years is plotting against her because he feels increasingly threatened - by Elizabeth’s intellect, independence, and unwillingness to stifle her own thoughts. So Theophilus makes a plan to put his wife back in her place. One summer morning, he has her committed to an insane asylum.
-
-
Everyone should read this!
- By Lana S on 12-22-21
By: Kate Moore
-
Eleanor
- By: David Michaelis
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 19 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the first single-volume cradle-to-grave portrait in six decades, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis delivers a stunning account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarkable life of transformation. An orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she converted her Gilded Age childhood of denial and secrecy into an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin Franklin. Franklin Roosevelt transformed Eleanor from a settlement house volunteer on New York’s Lower East Side into a matching partner in New York’s most important power couple in a generation.
-
-
Stands apart from other biographies of ER
- By Debra Malone on 11-20-20
By: David Michaelis
-
The Invisible Woman
- The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens
- By: Claire Tomalin
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan met in 1857; she was 18, a hard-working actress performing in his production of The Frozen Deep, and he was 45, the most lionized writer in England. Out of their meeting came a love affair that lasted 13 years and destroyed Dickens's marriage while effacing Nelly Ternan from the public record.
-
-
Interesting
- By Jean on 01-21-13
By: Claire Tomalin
-
The White Devil's Daughters
- The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown
- By: Julia Flynn Siler
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During the first hundred years of Chinese immigration - from 1848 to 1943 - San Francisco was home to a shockingly extensive underground slave trade in Asian women, who were exploited as prostitutes and indentured servants. In this gripping, necessary book, best-selling author Julia Flynn Siler shines a light on this little-known chapter in our history - and gives us a vivid portrait of the safe house to which enslaved women escaped.
-
-
Well researched
- By Qats reads on 08-05-19
-
The Apparitionists
- A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost
- By: Peter Manseau
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America's imagination. A "spirit photographer", William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation.
By: Peter Manseau
-
Vanderbilt
- The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
- By: Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
- Narrated by: Anderson Cooper
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with New York Times best-selling historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty - his mother’s family, the Vanderbilts.
-
-
Interesting Approach to a Well Known History
- By HistoryNerd on 09-24-21
By: Anderson Cooper, and others
-
The Woman They Could Not Silence
- One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear
- By: Kate Moore
- Narrated by: Kate Moore
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil, Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Her husband of 21 years is plotting against her because he feels increasingly threatened - by Elizabeth’s intellect, independence, and unwillingness to stifle her own thoughts. So Theophilus makes a plan to put his wife back in her place. One summer morning, he has her committed to an insane asylum.
-
-
Everyone should read this!
- By Lana S on 12-22-21
By: Kate Moore
-
Eleanor
- By: David Michaelis
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 19 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the first single-volume cradle-to-grave portrait in six decades, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis delivers a stunning account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarkable life of transformation. An orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she converted her Gilded Age childhood of denial and secrecy into an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin Franklin. Franklin Roosevelt transformed Eleanor from a settlement house volunteer on New York’s Lower East Side into a matching partner in New York’s most important power couple in a generation.
-
-
Stands apart from other biographies of ER
- By Debra Malone on 11-20-20
By: David Michaelis
-
The Invisible Woman
- The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens
- By: Claire Tomalin
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles Dickens and Nelly Ternan met in 1857; she was 18, a hard-working actress performing in his production of The Frozen Deep, and he was 45, the most lionized writer in England. Out of their meeting came a love affair that lasted 13 years and destroyed Dickens's marriage while effacing Nelly Ternan from the public record.
-
-
Interesting
- By Jean on 01-21-13
By: Claire Tomalin
-
The White Devil's Daughters
- The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown
- By: Julia Flynn Siler
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During the first hundred years of Chinese immigration - from 1848 to 1943 - San Francisco was home to a shockingly extensive underground slave trade in Asian women, who were exploited as prostitutes and indentured servants. In this gripping, necessary book, best-selling author Julia Flynn Siler shines a light on this little-known chapter in our history - and gives us a vivid portrait of the safe house to which enslaved women escaped.
-
-
Well researched
- By Qats reads on 08-05-19
-
Madame Restell
- The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist
- By: Jennifer Wright
- Narrated by: Mara Wilson
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Madame Restell is a sharp, witty Gilded Age medical history which introduces us to an iconic, yet tragically overlooked, feminist heroine: a glamorous women’s healthcare provider in Manhattan, known to the world as Madame Restell. A celebrity in her day with a flair for high fashion and public, petty beefs, Restell was a self-made woman and single mother who used her wit, her compassion, and her knowledge of family medicine to become one of the most in-demand medical workers in New York.
-
-
Every woman should listen to this book!
- By Ruth Aston on 06-18-23
By: Jennifer Wright
-
Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World
- By: Simon Callow
- Narrated by: Simon Callow
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dickens was one of the first true celebrity authors. Thousands of fans in Britain and America eagerly awaited each new installment of his stories, and flocked to see him on his legendary speaking tours. Not only did he create an incredible cast of characters on the page, but he was also a dazzling mimic and storyteller, and he wrote, stage-managed, and acted in plays for the public. Throughout his life, from his childhood performances to his legendarily powerful reading tours, Dickens was fanatical about the stage.
-
-
Loved it!
- By Tad Davis on 08-20-12
By: Simon Callow
-
Witness
- By: Whittaker Chambers
- Narrated by: John MacDonald
- Length: 30 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1952, Witness came on the heals of America's trial of the century, in which Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss, a full-standing member of the political establishment, of spying for the Soviet Union. In this penetrating philosophical memoir, Chambers recounts the famous case as well as his own experiences as a Communist agent in the United States, his later renunciation of communism, and his conversion to Christianity.
-
-
Great history about Communism
- By Susan on 03-04-10
-
Master Slave Husband Wife
- An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
- By: Ilyon Woo
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards, Leon Nixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.
-
-
Necessary story well told!
- By Marc W Rhoades on 01-19-23
By: Ilyon Woo
-
Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie
- The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR
- By: Lisa Napoli
- Narrated by: Lisa Napoli
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, women in the workplace still found themselves relegated to secretarial positions or locked out of jobs entirely. This was especially true in the news business, a backwater of male chauvinism in which a woman might be lucky to get a foothold on the “women’s pages”. But when a pioneering nonprofit called National Public Radio came along in the 1970s and the door to serious journalism opened a crack, four remarkable women came along and blew it off the hinges.
-
-
Loved the history. Distracted by errors.
- By Debbie Duncan on 06-11-21
By: Lisa Napoli
-
The Grit in the Pearl
- The Scandalous Life of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll
- By: Lyndsy Spence
- Narrated by: Lucy Rayner
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Margaret, Duchess of Argyll (1912-1993) was an international celebrity in her youth. But in 1963, the year of the Profumo Affair, the 11th Duke of Argyll shocked the country when he alleged that his adulterous wife had slept with over 80 men behind his back. The duke won a divorce, and Margaret was abandoned by most of her friends. Lyndsy Spence tells a tragic story of the life and downfall of this fascinatingly complex woman, and shows how she fell victim to a cruel husband, harsh social mores, and an unforgiving class.
-
-
Delicious from start to finish!
- By Eric Conley on 02-12-20
By: Lyndsy Spence
-
The King of Confidence
- A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch
- By: Miles Harvey
- Narrated by: Rengin Altay
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The "unputdownable" (Dave Eggers, National Book award finalist) story of the most infamous American con man you've never heard of: James Strang, self-proclaimed divine king of earth, heaven, and an island in Lake Michigan, "perfect for fans of The Devil in the White City" (Kirkus).
-
-
Antebellum overload
- By Buretto on 08-10-20
By: Miles Harvey
-
Rebel Cinderella
- From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes
- By: Adam Hochschild
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rose Pastor arrived in New York City in 1903, a Jewish refugee from Russia who had worked in cigar factories since the age of 11. Two years later, she captured headlines across the globe when she married James Graham Phelps Stokes, scion of one of the legendary 400 families of New York high society. Together, this unusual couple joined the burgeoning Socialist Party and, over the next dozen years, moved among the liveliest group of activists and dreamers this country has ever seen.
-
-
terrific
- By Julie A. Joyce on 05-11-20
By: Adam Hochschild
-
Dorothy Day
- Dissenting Voice of the American Century
- By: John Loughery, Blythe Randolph
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After growing up in a conservative middle-class Republican household and working several years as a left-wing journalist, Dorothy Day converted to Catholicism and became an anomaly in American life for the next 50 years. As an orthodox Catholic, political radical, and a rebel who courted controversy, she attracted three generations of admirers. A believer in civil disobedience, Day went to jail several times protesting the nuclear arms race. She was critical of capitalism and US foreign policy, and as skeptical of modern liberalism as political conservatism.
-
-
Well Documented
- By dragonfly on 03-19-22
By: John Loughery, and others
-
Oliver Wendell Holmes
- A Life in War, Law, and Ideas
- By: Stephen Budiansky
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Holmes twice escaped death as a young Union officer in the Civil War when musket balls barely missed his heart and spinal cord. He lived ever after with unwavering moral courage, scorn for dogma, and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. Named to the Supreme Court by Theodore Roosevelt at age 61, he served for nearly three decades, writing a series of famous, eloquent, and often dissenting opinions that would prove prophetic in securing freedom of speech, protecting the rights of criminal defendants, and ending the Court's reactionary resistance to social and economic reforms.
-
-
Top-Notch Biography
- By Jean on 08-01-19
-
Guest of Honor
- Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner that Shocked a Nation
- By: Deborah Davis
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to have dinner at the executive mansion with the First Family. The next morning, news that the president had dined with a Black man-and former slave-sent shock waves through the nation. Although African Americans had helped build the White House and had worked for most of the presidents, not a single one had ever been invited to dine there. Fueled by inflammatory newspaper articles, political cartoons, and even vulgar songs, the scandal escalated.
-
-
Great So
- By Maureen Monahan on 04-11-21
By: Deborah Davis
-
20 Years at Hull House
- By: Jane Addams
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jane Addams's memoir of her experience running a settlement house on Chicago's West Side includes portraits of people in need and is a model for community service. Addams firmly believed that education and social activity were essential aspects of any program to turn lives around.
-
-
Educating
- By AR on 04-03-18
By: Jane Addams
Related to this topic
-
Bringing Down the Colonel
- A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "Powerless" Woman Who Took On Washington
- By: Patricia Miller
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Bringing Down the Colonel, journalist Patricia Miller tells the story of Madeline Pollard, an unlikely 19th-century women’s rights crusader. After an affair with a prominent politician left her “ruined”, Pollard brought the man - and the hypocrisy of America’s control of women’s sexuality - to trial. And, surprisingly, she won.
-
-
Stay with it. It is amazing.
- By Living Downeast on 09-29-19
By: Patricia Miller
-
Passing Strange
- A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
- By: Martha A. Sandweiss
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brilliant scientist and witty conversationalist, best-selling author and architect of the great surveys that mapped the West after the Civil War, Clarence King was named by John Hay "the best and brightest of his generation". But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for 13 years he lived a double life - as the celebrated White explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a Black Pullman porter and steelworker named James Todd.
-
-
Race and Identity
- By Roy on 03-22-10
-
The Woman They Could Not Silence
- One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear
- By: Kate Moore
- Narrated by: Kate Moore
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil, Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Her husband of 21 years is plotting against her because he feels increasingly threatened - by Elizabeth’s intellect, independence, and unwillingness to stifle her own thoughts. So Theophilus makes a plan to put his wife back in her place. One summer morning, he has her committed to an insane asylum.
-
-
Everyone should read this!
- By Lana S on 12-22-21
By: Kate Moore
-
Master Slave Husband Wife
- An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
- By: Ilyon Woo
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards, Leon Nixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.
-
-
Necessary story well told!
- By Marc W Rhoades on 01-19-23
By: Ilyon Woo
-
First Ladies
- The Ever Changing Role, from Martha Washington to Melania Trump
- By: Betty Boyd Caroli
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 20 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Betty Boyd Caroli's engrossing and informative First Ladies is an essential resource for anyone interested in the role of America's First Ladies. Caroli observes the role as it has shifted and evolved from ceremonial backdrop to substantive world figure. This expanded and updated fifth edition presents Caroli's keen political analysis and astute observations of recent developments, including Melania Trump's reluctance to take on the mantle and former First Lady Hilary Clinton's recent run for president. Caroli here contributes a new preface and updated chapters.
-
-
Thorough
- By Kindle Customer on 10-11-20
-
Emily Post
- Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners
- By: Laura Claridge
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 18 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the excesses of the late 19th-century Gilded Age, through the horrors of World War I, to the transformations of the Roaring 20s that gave birth to her magisterial Etiquette, Emily Post unfailingly took the measure of her era. A Baltimore blue blood with a populist heart, she helped the masses live the American dream with her hugely popular book, which has been continuously in print for over 85 years.
-
-
Typical for Emily Post
- By Stephanie on 01-07-19
By: Laura Claridge
-
Bringing Down the Colonel
- A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "Powerless" Woman Who Took On Washington
- By: Patricia Miller
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Bringing Down the Colonel, journalist Patricia Miller tells the story of Madeline Pollard, an unlikely 19th-century women’s rights crusader. After an affair with a prominent politician left her “ruined”, Pollard brought the man - and the hypocrisy of America’s control of women’s sexuality - to trial. And, surprisingly, she won.
-
-
Stay with it. It is amazing.
- By Living Downeast on 09-29-19
By: Patricia Miller
-
Passing Strange
- A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
- By: Martha A. Sandweiss
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brilliant scientist and witty conversationalist, best-selling author and architect of the great surveys that mapped the West after the Civil War, Clarence King was named by John Hay "the best and brightest of his generation". But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for 13 years he lived a double life - as the celebrated White explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a Black Pullman porter and steelworker named James Todd.
-
-
Race and Identity
- By Roy on 03-22-10
-
The Woman They Could Not Silence
- One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear
- By: Kate Moore
- Narrated by: Kate Moore
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil, Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Her husband of 21 years is plotting against her because he feels increasingly threatened - by Elizabeth’s intellect, independence, and unwillingness to stifle her own thoughts. So Theophilus makes a plan to put his wife back in her place. One summer morning, he has her committed to an insane asylum.
-
-
Everyone should read this!
- By Lana S on 12-22-21
By: Kate Moore
-
Master Slave Husband Wife
- An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
- By: Ilyon Woo
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards, Leon Nixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.
-
-
Necessary story well told!
- By Marc W Rhoades on 01-19-23
By: Ilyon Woo
-
First Ladies
- The Ever Changing Role, from Martha Washington to Melania Trump
- By: Betty Boyd Caroli
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 20 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Betty Boyd Caroli's engrossing and informative First Ladies is an essential resource for anyone interested in the role of America's First Ladies. Caroli observes the role as it has shifted and evolved from ceremonial backdrop to substantive world figure. This expanded and updated fifth edition presents Caroli's keen political analysis and astute observations of recent developments, including Melania Trump's reluctance to take on the mantle and former First Lady Hilary Clinton's recent run for president. Caroli here contributes a new preface and updated chapters.
-
-
Thorough
- By Kindle Customer on 10-11-20
-
Emily Post
- Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners
- By: Laura Claridge
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 18 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the excesses of the late 19th-century Gilded Age, through the horrors of World War I, to the transformations of the Roaring 20s that gave birth to her magisterial Etiquette, Emily Post unfailingly took the measure of her era. A Baltimore blue blood with a populist heart, she helped the masses live the American dream with her hugely popular book, which has been continuously in print for over 85 years.
-
-
Typical for Emily Post
- By Stephanie on 01-07-19
By: Laura Claridge
-
"The Rest of Us"
- The Rise of America's Eastern European Jews
- By: Stephen Birmingham
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The wave of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who swept into New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by way of Ellis Island were not welcomed by the Jews who had arrived decades before. These refugees from czarist Russia and the Polish shtetls who came to America to escape pogroms and persecution were considered barbaric, uneducated, and too steeped in the traditions of the "old country" to be accepted by the more refined and already well-established German-Jewish community. But the new arrivals were tough, passionate, and determined.
-
-
Book 3 of 3
- By Etoile NEOhio on 11-15-22
-
A Secret Life
- The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland
- By: Charles Lachman
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The child was born on September 14, 1874, at the only hospital in Buffalo, New York, that offered maternity services for unwed mothers. It was a boy, and though he entered the world in a state of illegitimacy, a distinguished name was given to this newborn: Oscar Folsom Cleveland. The son of the future president of the United States - Grover Cleveland. The story of how the man who held the nation’s highest office eventually came to take responsibility for his son is a thrilling one that unfolds like a sordid romance novel....
-
-
Are the charges true?
- By Jean on 02-16-13
By: Charles Lachman
-
Oliver Wendell Holmes
- A Life in War, Law, and Ideas
- By: Stephen Budiansky
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Holmes twice escaped death as a young Union officer in the Civil War when musket balls barely missed his heart and spinal cord. He lived ever after with unwavering moral courage, scorn for dogma, and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. Named to the Supreme Court by Theodore Roosevelt at age 61, he served for nearly three decades, writing a series of famous, eloquent, and often dissenting opinions that would prove prophetic in securing freedom of speech, protecting the rights of criminal defendants, and ending the Court's reactionary resistance to social and economic reforms.
-
-
Top-Notch Biography
- By Jean on 08-01-19
-
Eleanor in the Village
- By: Jan Jarboe Russell
- Narrated by: Samantha Desz
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A captivating blend of personal history detailing Eleanor’s struggle with issues of marriage, motherhood, financial independence, and femininity, and a vibrant portrait of one of the most famous neighborhoods in the world, this unique work examines the ways that the sensibility, mood, and various inhabitants of the neighborhood influenced the First Lady’s perception of herself and shaped her political views over four decades, up to her death in 1962.
-
-
Grabs your attention
- By Amanda Hodges on 05-13-21
-
Guest of Honor
- Booker T. Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, and the White House Dinner that Shocked a Nation
- By: Deborah Davis
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to have dinner at the executive mansion with the First Family. The next morning, news that the president had dined with a Black man-and former slave-sent shock waves through the nation. Although African Americans had helped build the White House and had worked for most of the presidents, not a single one had ever been invited to dine there. Fueled by inflammatory newspaper articles, political cartoons, and even vulgar songs, the scandal escalated.
-
-
Great So
- By Maureen Monahan on 04-11-21
By: Deborah Davis
-
Self Made
- Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker
- By: A'Lelia Bundles
- Narrated by: A'Lelia Bundles
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The daughter of slaves, Madam C.J. Walker was orphaned at seven, married at 14, and widowed at 20. She spent the better part of the next two decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then - with the discovery of a revolutionary hair care formula for Black women - everything changed. By her death in 1919, Walker managed to overcome astonishing odds: Building a storied beauty empire from the ground up that would be run by four generations of Walker women until its sale in 1985.
-
-
Please read the book and not rely on the Netflix series
- By Sweet Pea's Mommy on 04-27-20
By: A'Lelia Bundles
-
Eleanor Roosevelt
- Volume I, 1884-1933
- By: Blanche Wiesen Cook
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 22 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eleanor Roosevelt was born into the privileges and prejudices of American aristocracy and into a family ravaged by alcoholism. She overcame debilitating roots: in her public life, fighting against racism and injustice and advancing the rights of women; and in her private life, forming lasting intimate friendships with some of the great men and women of her time.
-
-
One of the Great Americans I knew too little about
- By Ray M on 07-19-20
-
Why They Marched
- Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote
- By: Susan Ware
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For far too long, the history of how American women won the right to vote has been told as the tale of a few iconic leaders, all white and native-born. But Susan Ware uncovered a much broader and more diverse story waiting to be told. Why They Marched is a tribute to the many women who worked tirelessly in communities across the nation, out of the spotlight, protesting, petitioning, and insisting on their right to full citizenship.
-
-
a needed history lesson
- By Jerseycookie on 05-14-22
By: Susan Ware
-
Eleanor
- By: David Michaelis
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 19 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the first single-volume cradle-to-grave portrait in six decades, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis delivers a stunning account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarkable life of transformation. An orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she converted her Gilded Age childhood of denial and secrecy into an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin Franklin. Franklin Roosevelt transformed Eleanor from a settlement house volunteer on New York’s Lower East Side into a matching partner in New York’s most important power couple in a generation.
-
-
Stands apart from other biographies of ER
- By Debra Malone on 11-20-20
By: David Michaelis
-
The Purple Diaries
- Mary Astor and the Most Sensational Hollywood Scandal of the 1930s
- By: Joseph Egan
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
1936 was a great year for the movie industry - the financial setbacks of the Great Depression were subsiding, so theater attendance was up. Americans everywhere were watching the stars, and few stars shined as brightly as one of America's most enduring screen favorites, Mary Astor. But Astor's personal story wasn't a happy one. Born poor and widowed at 24, Mary Astor had spent years looking for stability when she met and wed Dr. Franklyn Thorpe.
-
-
Impossible not to like for old movie buffs
- By Gary on 03-09-17
By: Joseph Egan
-
The White Devil's Daughters
- The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown
- By: Julia Flynn Siler
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During the first hundred years of Chinese immigration - from 1848 to 1943 - San Francisco was home to a shockingly extensive underground slave trade in Asian women, who were exploited as prostitutes and indentured servants. In this gripping, necessary book, best-selling author Julia Flynn Siler shines a light on this little-known chapter in our history - and gives us a vivid portrait of the safe house to which enslaved women escaped.
-
-
Well researched
- By Qats reads on 08-05-19
-
Vanderbilt
- The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
- By: Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe
- Narrated by: Anderson Cooper
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with New York Times best-selling historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty - his mother’s family, the Vanderbilts.
-
-
Interesting Approach to a Well Known History
- By HistoryNerd on 09-24-21
By: Anderson Cooper, and others