The Opportunist
John Howard and the Triumph of Reaction
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 $19.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Peter Byrne
-
By:
-
Guy Rundle
About this listen
In the third Quarterly Essay of 2001, Guy Rundle comes to grips with John Howard, the prime minister who, on the eve of an election, seems to have turned round his political fortunes by spurning refugees and writing blank cheques for America's War on Terror.
This is a brilliant account of John Howard's dominant ideas, his concerted "dreaming" with its emphasis on unity and national identity that reveals him to be the most reactionary PM we have ever had, the only political leader who would allow ideas like those of One Nation to dominate the mainstream of Australian politics in order to improve his political chances.
Rundle puts Howard in the context of the economic liberalism he shares with his colleagues and opponents and the conservative social ideology that sets him apart. It is a complex portrait in a radical mirror which relates John Howard to everything from Menzies's "forgotten people" to the inadvertent glamour of the government's antidrug advertising. It is also a plea for right-thinking people of every political persuasion to resist the call to prejudice and reaction.
©2001 Guy Rundle (P)2012 Bolinda PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
-
In Denial
- The Stolen Generations and the Right
- By: Robert Manne
- Narrated by: Peter Byrne
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this national best seller, Robert Mane attacks the right-wing campaign against the "Bringing Them Home" report that revealed how thousands of Aborigines had been taken from their parents. What was the role of Paddy McGuinness as editor of Quadrant? How reliable was the evidence that led newspaper columnists from Piers Akerman in the Sydney Daily Telegraph to Andrew Bolt in the Melbourne Herald Sun to deny the gravity of the injustice done?
By: Robert Manne
-
How to Be a Conservative
- By: Roger Scruton
- Narrated by: Kris Dyer
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Roger Scruton’s How to be a Conservative presents the case for modern conservatism not in the terms of an elegy but rather as a practical example of how to live as a conservative despite the pressures to live otherwise. As he writes, the book ‘is not about what we have lost, but about what we have retained, and how to hold on to it’. In this witty and frank account, Scruton draws on his years of experience as a counter-cultural presence in public life.
By: Roger Scruton
-
The Inevitability of Tragedy
- Henry Kissinger and His World
- By: Barry Gewen
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few public officials have provoked such intense controversy as Henry Kissinger. During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he came to be admired and hated in equal measure. Notoriously, he believed that foreign affairs ought to be based primarily on the power relationships of a situation, not simply on ethics. He went so far as to argue that under certain circumstances America had to protect its national interests even if that meant repressing other countries' attempts at democracy.
-
-
Interesting but rambles
- By K on 02-17-21
By: Barry Gewen
-
When the Facts Change
- Essays, 1995-2010
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In When the Facts Change, Tony Judt's widow and fellow historian Jennifer Homans has assembled an essential collection of the most important and influential pieces written in the last 15 years of Judt's life, the years in which he found his voice in the public sphere. Included are seminal essays on the full range of Judt's concerns, including Europe as an idea and in reality, before 1989 and thereafter; Israel, the Holocaust and the Jews; American hyperpower and the world after 9/11.
-
-
Essential
- By Herman Utik on 09-19-16
By: Tony Judt
-
The Light That Failed
- Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy
- By: Ivan Krastev, Stephen Holmes
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance? In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West. In this brilliant work of political history, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of Communism turned out to be only the beginning of the age of the autocrat.
-
-
Great text
- By Safronov on 05-03-21
By: Ivan Krastev, and others
-
The Arab Winter
- A Tragedy
- By: Noah Feldman
- Narrated by: Noah Feldman
- Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Arab Spring promised to end dictatorship and bring self-government to people across the Middle East. Yet everywhere except Tunisia it led to either renewed dictatorship, civil war, extremist terror, or all three. In The Arab Winter, Noah Feldman argues that the Arab Spring was nevertheless not an unmitigated failure, much less an inevitable one. Rather, it was a noble, tragic series of events in which, for the first time in recent Middle Eastern history, Arabic-speaking peoples took free, collective political action as they sought to achieve self-determination.
-
-
Illuminating book, poor reading
- By Faycal Ikhouane on 09-19-24
By: Noah Feldman
-
In Denial
- The Stolen Generations and the Right
- By: Robert Manne
- Narrated by: Peter Byrne
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this national best seller, Robert Mane attacks the right-wing campaign against the "Bringing Them Home" report that revealed how thousands of Aborigines had been taken from their parents. What was the role of Paddy McGuinness as editor of Quadrant? How reliable was the evidence that led newspaper columnists from Piers Akerman in the Sydney Daily Telegraph to Andrew Bolt in the Melbourne Herald Sun to deny the gravity of the injustice done?
By: Robert Manne
-
How to Be a Conservative
- By: Roger Scruton
- Narrated by: Kris Dyer
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Roger Scruton’s How to be a Conservative presents the case for modern conservatism not in the terms of an elegy but rather as a practical example of how to live as a conservative despite the pressures to live otherwise. As he writes, the book ‘is not about what we have lost, but about what we have retained, and how to hold on to it’. In this witty and frank account, Scruton draws on his years of experience as a counter-cultural presence in public life.
By: Roger Scruton
-
The Inevitability of Tragedy
- Henry Kissinger and His World
- By: Barry Gewen
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few public officials have provoked such intense controversy as Henry Kissinger. During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he came to be admired and hated in equal measure. Notoriously, he believed that foreign affairs ought to be based primarily on the power relationships of a situation, not simply on ethics. He went so far as to argue that under certain circumstances America had to protect its national interests even if that meant repressing other countries' attempts at democracy.
-
-
Interesting but rambles
- By K on 02-17-21
By: Barry Gewen
-
When the Facts Change
- Essays, 1995-2010
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In When the Facts Change, Tony Judt's widow and fellow historian Jennifer Homans has assembled an essential collection of the most important and influential pieces written in the last 15 years of Judt's life, the years in which he found his voice in the public sphere. Included are seminal essays on the full range of Judt's concerns, including Europe as an idea and in reality, before 1989 and thereafter; Israel, the Holocaust and the Jews; American hyperpower and the world after 9/11.
-
-
Essential
- By Herman Utik on 09-19-16
By: Tony Judt
-
The Light That Failed
- Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy
- By: Ivan Krastev, Stephen Holmes
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance? In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West. In this brilliant work of political history, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of Communism turned out to be only the beginning of the age of the autocrat.
-
-
Great text
- By Safronov on 05-03-21
By: Ivan Krastev, and others
-
The Arab Winter
- A Tragedy
- By: Noah Feldman
- Narrated by: Noah Feldman
- Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Arab Spring promised to end dictatorship and bring self-government to people across the Middle East. Yet everywhere except Tunisia it led to either renewed dictatorship, civil war, extremist terror, or all three. In The Arab Winter, Noah Feldman argues that the Arab Spring was nevertheless not an unmitigated failure, much less an inevitable one. Rather, it was a noble, tragic series of events in which, for the first time in recent Middle Eastern history, Arabic-speaking peoples took free, collective political action as they sought to achieve self-determination.
-
-
Illuminating book, poor reading
- By Faycal Ikhouane on 09-19-24
By: Noah Feldman
-
The Death of Politics
- How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump
- By: Peter Wehner
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 6 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Frustrated and feeling betrayed, Americans have come to loathe politics with disastrous results, argues Peter Wehner. In this timely manifesto, the veteran of three Republican administrations and man of faith offers a reasoned and persuasive argument for restoring “politics” as a worthy calling to a cynical and disillusioned generation of Americans.
-
-
review
- By Amazon Customer on 06-23-19
By: Peter Wehner
-
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
- By: Richard Hofstadter, Sean Wilentz - foreward
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This timely reissue of Richard Hofstadter's classic work on the fringe groups that influence American electoral politics offers an invaluable perspective on contemporary domestic affairs. In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence - and derail - the larger agendas of a political party.
-
-
Written in the 50s and 60s...
- By Kindle Customer on 11-06-19
By: Richard Hofstadter, and others
-
The Age of Illusions
- How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory
- By: Andrew Bacevich
- Narrated by: Andrew Bacevich, Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation”, its “sole superpower”, the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable.
-
-
Needs an update
- By Scott Burton on 05-24-20
By: Andrew Bacevich
-
Can It Happen Here?
- Authoritarianism in America
- By: Cass R. Sunstein
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the election of Donald J. Trump, many people on both the left and right feared that America's 240-year-old grand experiment in democracy was coming to an end, and that Sinclair Lewis' satirical novel, It Can't Happen Here, written during the dark days of the 1930s, could finally be coming true. Is the democratic freedom that the United States symbolizes really secure? Can authoritarianism happen in America? Acclaimed legal scholar, Harvard Professor, and best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein queried a number of the nation's leading thinkers.
By: Cass R. Sunstein
-
Except for Palestine
- The Limits of Progressive Politics
- By: Marc Lamont Hill, Mitchell Plitnick
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this major work of daring criticism and analysis, scholar and political commentator Marc Lamont Hill and Israel-Palestine expert Mitchell Plitnick spotlight how holding fast to one-sided and unwaveringly pro-Israel policies reflects the truth-bending grip of authoritarianism on both Israel and the United States.
-
-
Excellent Look Into Right Now
- By n.o. on 10-28-23
By: Marc Lamont Hill, and others
-
The Coming Civil War
- By: Tom Kawczynski
- Narrated by: Jeff Winston
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first skirmishes are already being fought. The crisis America faces is between two incompatible visions of the future, and a nation sharply divided between them. Will we become this diverse beacon of tolerance where we forget our past and embrace socialism and political correctness? Or, will we stand for our traditional beliefs, values, liberty, and sovereign government as free citizens our Founders did?
-
-
Provocative; too long; fanciful conclusions
- By The Eagle on 07-26-20
By: Tom Kawczynski
-
What Is Populism?
- By: Jan-Werner Müller
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Donald Trump, Silvio Berlusconi, Marine Le Pen, Hugo Chávez - populists are on the rise across the globe. But what exactly is populism? Should everyone who criticizes Wall Street or Washington be called a populist? What precisely is the difference between right-wing and left-wing populism? Does populism bring government closer to the people or is it a threat to democracy? Who are "the people" anyway and who can speak in their name? In this groundbreaking volume, Jan-Werner Müller argues that at populism's core is a rejection of pluralism.
-
-
a political theory that is well supported
- By Midwestbonsai on 07-20-17
-
The Bill of Obligations
- The Ten Habits of Good Citizens
- By: Richard Haass
- Narrated by: Richard Haass
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There is no question that the United States faces dangerous threats from without; the greatest peril to the country, however, comes from within. In The Bill of Obligations, bestselling author Richard Haass argues that, to solve our climate of division and safeguard our democracy, the very idea of citizenship must be revised and expanded. The Bill of Rights is at the center of our Constitution, yet the most intractable conflicts often emerge from cases that, as former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out, “are not about right versus wrong. They are about right versus right.”
-
-
Trying His Best to Be Balenced
- By Kindle Customer Frank E. Norman III on 01-28-23
By: Richard Haass
-
Democracy Incorporated
- Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
- By: Sheldon S. Wolin
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive - and where elites are eager to keep them that way.
-
-
Essential listening....
- By M. Levine on 02-25-11
By: Sheldon S. Wolin
-
Reappraisals
- Reflections on the Forgotten 20th Century
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The accelerating changes of the past generation have been accompanied by a similarly accelerated amnesia. The 20th century has become "history" at an unprecedented rate. The world of 2007 was so utterly unlike that of even 1987, much less any earlier time, that we have lost touch with our immediate past even before we have begun to make sense of it - and the results are proving calamitous.
-
-
Superb. Insightful essays, Performance to match
- By Louis on 05-02-12
By: Tony Judt
-
A Time to Build
- From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream
- By: Yuval Levin
- Narrated by: Ford Enlow
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics is polarized and bitterly divided. Culture wars rage on campus, in the media, social media, and other arenas of our common life. And for too many Americans, alienation can descend into despair, weakening families and communities and even driving an explosion of opioid abuse. Left and right alike have responded with populist anger at our institutions, and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cleaning house, draining swamps. But, as Yuval Levin argues, this is a misguided prescription.
-
-
Incisive and Illuminating
- By Jakob on 01-26-23
By: Yuval Levin
-
Thinking the Twentieth Century
- By: Tony Judt, Timothy Snyder
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 15 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here is the final book of unparalleled historian Tony Judt. Where Judt’s masterpiece Postwar redefined the history of modern Europe by uniting the stories of its eastern and western halves, Thinking the Twentieth Century unites the century’s conflicted intellectual history into a single soaring narrative. The 20th century comes to life as the age of ideas - a time when, for good or for ill, the thoughts of the few reigned over the lives of the many.
-
-
UNINTELLIGIBLE
- By Norman on 03-07-12
By: Tony Judt, and others
Related to this topic
-
The Inevitability of Tragedy
- Henry Kissinger and His World
- By: Barry Gewen
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few public officials have provoked such intense controversy as Henry Kissinger. During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he came to be admired and hated in equal measure. Notoriously, he believed that foreign affairs ought to be based primarily on the power relationships of a situation, not simply on ethics. He went so far as to argue that under certain circumstances America had to protect its national interests even if that meant repressing other countries' attempts at democracy.
-
-
Interesting but rambles
- By K on 02-17-21
By: Barry Gewen
-
When the Facts Change
- Essays, 1995-2010
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In When the Facts Change, Tony Judt's widow and fellow historian Jennifer Homans has assembled an essential collection of the most important and influential pieces written in the last 15 years of Judt's life, the years in which he found his voice in the public sphere. Included are seminal essays on the full range of Judt's concerns, including Europe as an idea and in reality, before 1989 and thereafter; Israel, the Holocaust and the Jews; American hyperpower and the world after 9/11.
-
-
Essential
- By Herman Utik on 09-19-16
By: Tony Judt
-
The Light That Failed
- Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy
- By: Ivan Krastev, Stephen Holmes
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance? In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West. In this brilliant work of political history, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of Communism turned out to be only the beginning of the age of the autocrat.
-
-
Great text
- By Safronov on 05-03-21
By: Ivan Krastev, and others
-
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
- By: Richard Hofstadter, Sean Wilentz - foreward
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This timely reissue of Richard Hofstadter's classic work on the fringe groups that influence American electoral politics offers an invaluable perspective on contemporary domestic affairs. In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence - and derail - the larger agendas of a political party.
-
-
Written in the 50s and 60s...
- By Kindle Customer on 11-06-19
By: Richard Hofstadter, and others
-
The Age of Illusions
- How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory
- By: Andrew Bacevich
- Narrated by: Andrew Bacevich, Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation”, its “sole superpower”, the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable.
-
-
Needs an update
- By Scott Burton on 05-24-20
By: Andrew Bacevich
-
Except for Palestine
- The Limits of Progressive Politics
- By: Marc Lamont Hill, Mitchell Plitnick
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this major work of daring criticism and analysis, scholar and political commentator Marc Lamont Hill and Israel-Palestine expert Mitchell Plitnick spotlight how holding fast to one-sided and unwaveringly pro-Israel policies reflects the truth-bending grip of authoritarianism on both Israel and the United States.
-
-
Excellent Look Into Right Now
- By n.o. on 10-28-23
By: Marc Lamont Hill, and others
-
The Inevitability of Tragedy
- Henry Kissinger and His World
- By: Barry Gewen
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few public officials have provoked such intense controversy as Henry Kissinger. During his time in the Nixon and Ford administrations, he came to be admired and hated in equal measure. Notoriously, he believed that foreign affairs ought to be based primarily on the power relationships of a situation, not simply on ethics. He went so far as to argue that under certain circumstances America had to protect its national interests even if that meant repressing other countries' attempts at democracy.
-
-
Interesting but rambles
- By K on 02-17-21
By: Barry Gewen
-
When the Facts Change
- Essays, 1995-2010
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In When the Facts Change, Tony Judt's widow and fellow historian Jennifer Homans has assembled an essential collection of the most important and influential pieces written in the last 15 years of Judt's life, the years in which he found his voice in the public sphere. Included are seminal essays on the full range of Judt's concerns, including Europe as an idea and in reality, before 1989 and thereafter; Israel, the Holocaust and the Jews; American hyperpower and the world after 9/11.
-
-
Essential
- By Herman Utik on 09-19-16
By: Tony Judt
-
The Light That Failed
- Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy
- By: Ivan Krastev, Stephen Holmes
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance? In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West. In this brilliant work of political history, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of Communism turned out to be only the beginning of the age of the autocrat.
-
-
Great text
- By Safronov on 05-03-21
By: Ivan Krastev, and others
-
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
- By: Richard Hofstadter, Sean Wilentz - foreward
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This timely reissue of Richard Hofstadter's classic work on the fringe groups that influence American electoral politics offers an invaluable perspective on contemporary domestic affairs. In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence - and derail - the larger agendas of a political party.
-
-
Written in the 50s and 60s...
- By Kindle Customer on 11-06-19
By: Richard Hofstadter, and others
-
The Age of Illusions
- How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory
- By: Andrew Bacevich
- Narrated by: Andrew Bacevich, Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation”, its “sole superpower”, the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable.
-
-
Needs an update
- By Scott Burton on 05-24-20
By: Andrew Bacevich
-
Except for Palestine
- The Limits of Progressive Politics
- By: Marc Lamont Hill, Mitchell Plitnick
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this major work of daring criticism and analysis, scholar and political commentator Marc Lamont Hill and Israel-Palestine expert Mitchell Plitnick spotlight how holding fast to one-sided and unwaveringly pro-Israel policies reflects the truth-bending grip of authoritarianism on both Israel and the United States.
-
-
Excellent Look Into Right Now
- By n.o. on 10-28-23
By: Marc Lamont Hill, and others
-
Democracy Incorporated
- Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
- By: Sheldon S. Wolin
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive - and where elites are eager to keep them that way.
-
-
Essential listening....
- By M. Levine on 02-25-11
By: Sheldon S. Wolin
-
Reappraisals
- Reflections on the Forgotten 20th Century
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The accelerating changes of the past generation have been accompanied by a similarly accelerated amnesia. The 20th century has become "history" at an unprecedented rate. The world of 2007 was so utterly unlike that of even 1987, much less any earlier time, that we have lost touch with our immediate past even before we have begun to make sense of it - and the results are proving calamitous.
-
-
Superb. Insightful essays, Performance to match
- By Louis on 05-02-12
By: Tony Judt
-
A Time to Build
- From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream
- By: Yuval Levin
- Narrated by: Ford Enlow
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans are living through a social crisis. Our politics is polarized and bitterly divided. Culture wars rage on campus, in the media, social media, and other arenas of our common life. And for too many Americans, alienation can descend into despair, weakening families and communities and even driving an explosion of opioid abuse. Left and right alike have responded with populist anger at our institutions, and use only metaphors of destruction to describe the path forward: cleaning house, draining swamps. But, as Yuval Levin argues, this is a misguided prescription.
-
-
Incisive and Illuminating
- By Jakob on 01-26-23
By: Yuval Levin
-
Of Paradise and Power
- America and Europe in the New World Order
- By: Robert Kagan
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 2 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When historians want to find out about the ideas that motivated American foreign policy in the early years of the twenty-first century, they would do well to read this book. Robert Kagan has formally set out a case for unilateralism on the part of the United States, as opposed to the multilateralism now characteristic of Europe. Kagan believes that the United States can disregard a weak Europe, and have a free hand in pursuing its global interests.
-
-
Quick and pithy listen
- By Erik Fosshage on 01-14-04
By: Robert Kagan
-
The Great Delusion
- Liberal Dreams and International Realities
- By: John J. Mearsheimer
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this major statement, the renowned international-relations scholar John Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony, the foreign policy pursued by the United States since the Cold War ended, is doomed to fail. It makes far more sense, he maintains, for Washington to adopt a more restrained foreign policy based on a sound understanding of how nationalism and realism constrain great powers abroad.
-
-
Dense, fact filled, sober analysis and prescription
- By John Brynjolfsson on 12-15-18
-
Temptations of Power
- Islamists & Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East
- By: Shadi Hamid
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1989, Francis Fukuyama famously announced the "end of history." The Berlin Wall had fallen; liberal democracy had won out. But what of illiberal democracy - the idea that popular majorities, working through the democratic process, might reject gender equality, religious freedoms, and other norms that Western democracies take for granted? Nowhere have such considerations become more relevant than in the Middle East, where the uprisings of 2011 swept the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups to power.
-
-
A new perspective
- By Dave114 on 08-06-18
By: Shadi Hamid
-
What Were We Thinking
- A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era
- By: Carlos Lozada
- Narrated by: Christian Barillas
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is an irony of our age that a man who rarely reads has unleashed an onslaught of books about his tenure and his time. Dissections of the white working class. Manifestos of political resistance. Works on identity, gender, and migration. Memoirs on race and protest. Revelations of White House mayhem. Warnings over the future of conservatism, progressivism, and of American democracy itself.
-
-
Useful book
- By Kindle Customer on 11-22-20
By: Carlos Lozada
-
A Lot of People Are Saying
- The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy
- By: Nancy L. Rosenblum, Russell Muirhead
- Narrated by: Katherine Fenton
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Conspiracy theories are as old as politics. But conspiracists today have introduced something new - conspiracy without theory. And the new conspiracism has moved from the fringes to the heart of government with the election of Donald Trump. In A Lot of People Are Saying, Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum reveal how the new conspiracism differs from classic conspiracy theory, why so few officials speak truth to conspiracy, and what needs to be done to resist it.
-
-
INSIGHTFUL
- By JaredENH on 04-30-19
By: Nancy L. Rosenblum, and others
-
Our Divided Political Heart
- The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent
- By: E. J. Dionne
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our Divided Political Heart will be the must-listen book of the 2012 election campaign. Offering an incisive analysis of how hyper-individualism is poisoning the nation's political atmosphere, E. J. Dionne Jr., argues that Americans can't agree on who we are because we can't agree on who we've been, or what it is, philosophically and spiritually, that makes us Americans.
-
-
Good points and lots of good information
- By Jamie B on 08-15-12
By: E. J. Dionne
-
The Demon in Democracy
- Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies
- By: Ryszard Legutko, John O'Sullivan, Teresa Adelson
- Narrated by: Liam Gerrard
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades - and he fought with the Polish anti-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature.
-
-
Important book on political philosophy
- By Wayne on 08-02-19
By: Ryszard Legutko, and others
-
Tomorrow, the World
- The Birth of US Global Supremacy
- By: Stephen Wertheim
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For most of its history, the US avoided making political and military commitments that would entangle it in European-style power politics. Then, suddenly, it conceived a new role for itself as the world’s armed superpower and never looked back. In Tomorrow, the World, Wertheim traces America’s transformation to the crucible of World War II, especially in the months prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. As the Nazis conquered France, the architects of the nation’s new foreign policy came to believe that the US ought to achieve primacy in international affairs forevermore.
-
-
Powerful punch to American dogma.
- By JLK on 06-30-21
By: Stephen Wertheim
-
The Smallest Minority
- Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics
- By: Kevin D. Williamson
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Listener beware: Kevin D. Williamson - the lively, literary firebrand from National Review who was too hot for The Atlantic to handle - comes to bury democracy, not to praise it. With electrifying honesty and spirit, Williamson takes a flamethrower to mob politics, the “beast with many heads” that haunts social media and what currently passes for real life. It’s destroying our capacity for individualism and dragging us down “the Road to Smurfdom, the place where the deracinated demos of the Twitter age finds itself feeling small and blue.”
-
-
Brutally honest, accurate and relevant
- By Sean on 09-19-19
What listeners say about The Opportunist
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mara
- 10-10-15
Good essay, but not read by rundle
Interesting argument, worth listening to. Disappointing that the essay is not read by Rundle himself.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!