Profiles in Audacity
Great Decisions and How They Were Made
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Narrated by:
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Scott Peterson
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By:
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Alan Axelrod
About this listen
Here is a journey of exploration through history’s great decisions and those who had the courage to make them. In brief, compelling, and inspiring vignettes, best-selling historian Alan Axelrod pinpoints and investigates the make-or-break event in the lives and careers of some of history’s most significant figures. Axelrod reexamines history by revealing the answer to the fascinating question of why the people who made history made their choices - and conveys the resonance of those choices today.
The 46 profiles range from ancient times to the present day and include Cleopatra’s decision to rescue Egypt; Washington’s decision to cross the Delaware and win; Gandhi’s decision to prevail against the British Empire without bloodshed; Truman’s decision to drop the A-bomb and end World Ware II; Rosa Parks' decision to sit in for civil rights; Boris Yeltsin’s decision to embrace a new world order; and Flight 93’s decision to take a stand against terror.
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Story
In this incisive, fast-paced history, New York Times best-selling author Arthur Herman brilliantly reveals how Lenin and Wilson rewrote the rules of modern geopolitics. Through the end of World War I, countries marched into war only to increase or protect their national interests. After World War I, countries began going to war over ideas. Together, Lenin and Wilson unleashed the disruptive ideologies that would sweep the world, from nationalism and globalism to Communism and terrorism, and that continue to shape our world today.
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Another book you wish was part of every university world history curriculum
- By Bruno Carleston on 11-26-18
By: Arthur Herman
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Forged in Crisis
- The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times
- By: Nancy Koehn
- Narrated by: Nancy Koehn
- Length: 16 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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An enthralling historical narrative filled with critical leadership insights that will be of interest to a wide range of listeners - including those in government, business, education, and the arts - Forged in Crisis, by celebrated Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn, spotlights five masters of crisis: polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, President Abraham Lincoln, legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Nazi-resisting clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and environmental crusader Rachel Carson.
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Authors are not always the best narrators
- By experimenting on 12-14-17
By: Nancy Koehn
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The Brothers
- John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: David Cochran Heath
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their extraordinary lives against the backdrop ofAmerican culture and history. He uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world?
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A duel biography
- By Jean on 09-26-14
By: Stephen Kinzer
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Israel
- A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
- By: Daniel Gordis
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Israel is a tiny state, and yet it has captured the world's attention, aroused its imagination, and, lately, been the object of its opprobrium. Why does such a small country speak to so many global concerns? More pressingly: Why does Israel make the decisions it does? And what lies in its future? We cannot answer these questions until we understand Israel's people and the questions and conflicts, the hopes and desires, that have animated their conversations and actions.
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Excellent, mildly but honestly biased, terrible narration
- By Schaq on 04-01-17
By: Daniel Gordis
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Supreme Commander
- MacArthur's Triumph in Japan
- By: Seymour Morris
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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He is the most-decorated general in American history - and the only five-star general to receive the Medal of Honor. Yet Douglas MacArthur’s greatest victory was not in war but in peace. As the uniquely titled Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, he was charged with transforming a defeated, militarist empire into a beacon of peace and democracy - "the greatest gamble ever attempted", he called it.
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Compelling book in an pleasant voice
- By Pierke Bosschieter on 04-24-14
By: Seymour Morris
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Menachem Begin
- The Battle for Israel's Soul
- By: Daniel Gordis
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Reviled as a fascist by his great rival Ben-Gurion, venerated by Israel’s underclass, the first Israeli to win the Nobel Peace Prize, a proud Jew but not a conventionally religious one, Menachem Begin was both complex and controversial. Born in Poland in 1913, Begin was a youthful admirer of the Revisionist Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky and soon became a leader within Jabotinsky’s Betar movement.
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Great story lousy oration
- By Jacob Engelstein on 10-03-14
By: Daniel Gordis
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How to Hide an Empire
- A History of the Greater United States
- By: Daniel Immerwahr
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 17 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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We are familiar with maps that outline all 50 states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an "empire", exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories - the islands, atolls, and archipelagos - this country has governed and inhabited? In How to Hide an Empire, author Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light.
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How to beat a straw man to death
- By Susan on 01-25-20
By: Daniel Immerwahr
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Jacksonland
- President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab
- By: Steve Inskeep
- Narrated by: Steve Inskeep
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Jacksonland is the thrilling narrative history of two men - President Andrew Jackson and Cherokee chief John Ross - who led their respective nations at a crossroads of American history. Five decades after the Revolutionary War, the United States approached a constitutional crisis. At its center stood two former military comrades locked in a struggle that tested the boundaries of our fledgling democracy. Jacksonland is their story.
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Fantastic and Thoughtful
- By Elizabeth Westbrook on 05-05-16
By: Steve Inskeep
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes
- By: Brion McClanahan
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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As presidential candidates sling dirt at each other, America desperately needs a few real heroes. Tragically, liberal historians and educators have virtually erased traditional American heroes from history. According to the Left, the Founding Fathers were not noble architects of America but selfish demagogues, and self-made entrepreneurs like Rockefeller were robber barons and corporate polluters.
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Not a history book
- By BrooklynLove on 12-06-20
By: Brion McClanahan
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Power, Faith, and Fantasy
- America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present
- By: Michael B. Oren
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 27 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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From the first cannonballs fired by American warships at North African pirates to the conquest of Falluja by the Marines, and from the early American explorers who probed the sources of the Nile to the diplomats who strove for Arab-Israeli peace, the United States has been dramatically involved in the Middle East. For well over two centuries, American statesmen, merchants, and missionaries, both men and women, have had a profound impact on the shaping of this crucial region.
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Very pleasantly surprised...
- By Judy on 05-30-07
By: Michael B. Oren
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There Was a Country
- A Personal History of Biafra
- By: Chinua Achebe
- Narrated by: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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The defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967-1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe's people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than 40 years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa's most fateful events.
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The Audible Edition Is a Disaster
- By Olu on 11-28-12
By: Chinua Achebe
What listeners say about Profiles in Audacity
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Douglas
- 04-08-17
Easy Listening; Entertaining; Not In Depth
I have now listened to several of the books in this series. The series reminds me of the "Don't Know Much About..." series by Kenneth Davis. Like that series, the Profiles series by Alan Axelrod is always entertaining, and often has interesting tidbits that you may not know, but the books are a bit like introductions. The Profiles books are collections of overviews concerning famous historical figures. This makes for easy listening, but it's perhaps not quite as informative or in depth as you would like. Most of the stories are detailed enough for even a well-informed listener to get something out of it, although a few are little more than encyclopedia type overviews.
The introductory nature is by design of course. If there was such a thing as a "bathroom audiobook" this would be it. That may sound disparaging but it isn't meant to be. What I mean is that this is the sort of book that you could read a bit at a time, over the course of a long time, due to the book's format. Rather than one long narrative, it is really a large number of short narratives, hence the "Profiles" title. It's the sort of thing that someone could pick up for some short diversion and be entertained.
The first section of the book contains the stories of a number of "audacious" women. Listeners may find this refreshing, as so many of history's most well-known figures are male. The bios of female historical figures tend not to be common knowledge the way that many of their male counterparts are.
Personally, I quite enjoyed the passage on Harry Truman. Overall, my favorite entries were the ones which concerned business rather than more general history topics like politics and war. In particular, the chapters on the Texas cattlemen/cowboys and the Tylenol murders were quite interesting for me.
Initially I felt that the title of this edition in the Profiles series was a bit ambiguous. When I think of audacity I think of someone who is being rude or impertinent, as in, "they had the audacity to..." However, in this case, audacity refers to the other definition of the word: the willingness to take bold risks (this turns out to be the primary definition in dictionaries, although I would say that may be outdated at this point).
The subtitle: "Great decisions and how they were made," helps clarify the title, but in my view it turns out to be a bit incongruous with the events of the book. Many of the "decisions" profiled in the narrative are of questionably "great" status. Some of the great decisions were either followed up by equally dubious ones, or ended up being futile. I'm thinking particularly here of the entries on Cleopatra and the Nez Perce War. In those cases it seemed like Axelrod simply wanted to include those stories in the book and so did his best to have them fit the theme of the book.
Next to content, narration is the most important aspect of an audiobook for me. This is mostly about taste and is purely my opinion, but I would describe this narrator, Scott Peterson (unfortunate name), as boring. In addition, the narrator's voice and speech is slightly annoying. He almost has a speech impediment, and while that is certainly no fault of his own, and in some cases could even be charming, for an audiobook narrator it's not usually a useful trait.
Apart from being irritating, the slight quirks in the narrator's speech make "speed listening" difficult. This book should be perfect for speed listening, as the subject is easy to understand and familiar. However, the narrator's speech impediment (for lack of a better term) makes his narration unclear when the rate is speeded up at all.
Peterson's narration includes a clearing of the throat which is not edited out. He also begins a sentence, stops, and then starts over on three separate occasions. These mistakes are obviously the responsibility of the editor, but for me it is always a major distraction. In many cases, those sorts of "typos," if you will, can make it difficult to take the work seriously, but that really isn't a concern here considering how well known Axelrod and this series are.
One last note on the narrator: he does repeatedly mispronounce certain names. Again, this doesn't shed a negative light on the content, as Axelrod is a well-respected historian, but it is always distracting. For listeners who don't know that Peterson is pronouncing names of persons and places incorrectly it can be worse than distracting, as they will now mispronounce those names/places until corrected.
Don't let my negative comments on the narration keep you from giving this book a listen. If you are a very serious history "buff" you may find this book to be a waste of time, but for the great majority of listeners there will be at least some amount of new information here. This isn't an in depth study, but most people with an interest in history will be able to appreciate and enjoy this edition of the series.
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