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Scandinavians
- In Search of the Soul of the North
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
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Publisher's summary
Scandinavia is the epitome of cool: We fill our homes with Nordic furniture; we envy their humane social welfare system and their healthy outdoor lifestyle; we glut ourselves on their crime fiction. Even their strangely attractive melancholia seems to express a stoic, commonsensical acceptance of life's vicissitudes. But how valid is this outsider's view of Scandinavia, and how accurate is our picture of life in Scandinavia today?
Scandinavians follows a chronological progression across the Northern centuries: the Vendel era of Swedish prehistory; the age of the Vikings; the Christian conversions of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland; the unified Scandinavian state of the late Middle Ages; the sea change of the Reformation; the kingdom of Denmark-Norway, King Gustav Adolphus, and the age of Sweden's greatness; the cultural golden age of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Munch; the impact of the Second World War; Scandinavia's postwar social democratic nirvana; and the terror attacks of Anders Behring Breivik.
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Mark Colvin is a broadcasting legend. He is the voice of ABC Radio’s leading current affairs program PM; he was a founding broadcaster for the groundbreaking youth station Double J; he initiated The World Today program; and he’s one of the most popular and influential journalists in the twittersphere. Mark has been covering local and global events for more than four decades. He has reported on wars, royal weddings and everything in between. In the midst of all this he discovered that his father was an MI6 spy.
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Probably of most interest to Australian readers
- By Robyn on 04-12-17
By: Mark Colvin
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We Don't Know Ourselves
- A Personal History of Modern Ireland
- By: Fintan O'Toole
- Narrated by: Aidan Kelly
- Length: 22 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In We Don't Know Ourselves, Fintan O'Toole weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society - perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. O'Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism.
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Relentlessly Negative
- By John on 06-02-22
By: Fintan O'Toole
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North Korea Undercover
- Inside the World's Most Secret State
- By: John Sweeney
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
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North Korea is like no other tyranny on Earth. Its citizens are told their home is the greatest nation in the world, and Big Brother is always watching. It is Orwell's 1984 made reality. Huge factories with no staff or electricity, hospitals with no patients, uniformed child soldiers, and the world-famous and eerily empty DMZ - the Demilitarized Zone, where North Korea ends and South Korea begins - are all framed by a relentless flow of regime propaganda from omnipresent loudspeakers. Free speech is an illusion: one word out of line, and the gulag awaits.
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Highly listenable, humorous and enlightening
- By Kevin Stokes on 09-09-15
By: John Sweeney
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HHhH
- By: Laurent Binet
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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HHhH: "Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich," or "Himmler's brain is called Heydrich." The most dangerous man in Hitler's cabinet, Reinhard Heydrich was known as the "Butcher of Prague." He was feared by all and loathed by most. With his cold Aryan features and implacable cruelty, Heydrich seemed indestructible-until two men, a Slovak and a Czech recruited by the British secret service-killed him in broad daylight on a bustling street in Prague, and thus changed the course of History.
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Himlers Hirn heisst Heydrich
- By Darwin8u on 02-02-13
By: Laurent Binet
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The Great Escape
- Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World
- By: Kati Marton
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The stunning story of the breathtaking journey of nine extraordinary men from Budapest to the New World, what they experienced along their dangerous route, and how they changed America and the world. In a style both personal and historically groundbreaking, acclaimed author Kati Marton (born in Budapest) tells the tale of their youth in Budapest's Golden Age of the early 20th century, their flight, and their lives of extraordinary accomplishment, danger, glamour, and poignancy.
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very interesting, well-narrated
- By D. Littman on 12-17-06
By: Kati Marton
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Limonov
- The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, a Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia
- By: Emmanuel Carrère, John Lambert - translator
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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This is how Emmanuel Carrère, the magnetic journalist, novelist, filmmaker, and chameleon, describes his subject: "Limonov is not a fictional character. There. I know him. He has been a young punk in Ukraine, the idol of the Soviet underground; a bum, then a multimillionaire's butler in Manhattan; a fashionable writer in Paris; a lost soldier in the Balkans; and now, in the fantastic shambles of postcommunism, the elderly but charismatic leader of a party of young desperadoes."
By: Emmanuel Carrère, and others
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The Novel of the Century
- The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables
- By: David Bellos
- Narrated by: David Bellos
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
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Putting a century of scholarship on one of the world's most enduring popular novels into accessible, narrative form, this new approach to a classic of world literature is written for a wide general audience. Packed full of information about the book's origins and later career on stage and screen, The Novel of the Century brings to life the extraordinary story of how Victor Hugo managed to write his novel of the downtrodden despite a revolution, a coup d'etat, and political exile.
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how hard to write a book
- By James Grohs on 08-06-24
By: David Bellos
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Rebel Souls
- Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians
- By: Justin Martin
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
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Rebel Souls is the first book ever written about the colorful group of artists - regulars at Pfaff's Saloon in Manhattan - rightly considered America's original Bohemians. Besides a young Whitman, the circle included actor Edwin Booth; trailblazing stand–up comic Artemus Ward; psychedelic drug pioneer and author Fitz Hugh Ludlow; and brazen performer Adah Menken, famous for her Naked Lady routine. Central to their times, the artists managed to forge connections with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, and even Abraham Lincoln.
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A Wonderful Read with Vibrant Characters
- By A on 11-11-15
By: Justin Martin
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The Red-Haired Woman
- A Novel
- By: Orhan Pamuk
- Narrated by: John Lee, Katharine Lee McEwan
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
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On the outskirts of a town 30 miles from Istanbul, a master well digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating without luck meter by meter, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before - not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair will come to depend on each other and exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world.
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Drags On
- By T. Conrad on 10-25-17
By: Orhan Pamuk
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The Ambulance Drivers
- Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War
- By: James McGrath Morris
- Narrated by: Dean Temple
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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After meeting for the first time on the front lines of World War I, two aspiring writers forge an intense 20-year friendship and write some of America's greatest novels, giving voice to a "lost generation" shaken by war. Eager to find his way in life and words, John Dos Passos first witnessed the horror of trench warfare in France as a volunteer ambulance driver retrieving the dead and seriously wounded from the front line. Later in the war, he briefly met another young writer, Ernest Hemingway, who was just arriving for his service in the ambulance corps.
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Morris always delivers interesting biographies...
- By NMwritergal on 04-08-17
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Hitler
- The Memoir of a Nazi Insider Who Turned Against the Fuhrer
- By: Ernst Hanfstaengl
- Narrated by: Robin Sachs
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
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An intimate friend of Adolf Hitler’s who turned against him during the Nazi rise to power delves into the character of one of history’s most evil dictators. Of American and German parentage, Ernst Hanfstaengl graduated from Harvard and ran the family business in New York for a dozen years before returning to Germany in 1921. By chance he heard a then little-known Adolf Hitler speaking in a Munich beer hall and, mesmerized by his extraordinary oratorical power, was convinced the man would some day come to power. As Hitler’s fanatical theories and ideas hardened, however, he surrounded himself with rabid extremists...
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Once a Nazi, always a Nazi
- By Alan on 04-10-13
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The Jaguar Smile
- A Nicaraguan Journey
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 4 hrs and 59 mins
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"I did not go to Nicaragua intending to write a book, or, indeed, to write at all: but my encounter with the place affected me so deeply that in the end I had no choice." So notes Salman Rushdie in his first work of nonfiction, a book as imaginative and meaningful as his acclaimed novels. In The Jaguar Smile, Rushdie paints a brilliantly sharp and haunting portrait of the people, the politics, the terrain, and the poetry of "a country in which the ancient, opposing forces of creation and destruction were in violent collision".
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simply Amazing!
- By Cesar Briones on 07-01-18
By: Salman Rushdie
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What listeners say about Scandinavians
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Le Sabre US
- 02-15-18
String of digressions paints cultural picture
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
I recommend this book to people who have an interest in Scandinavia and some knowledge of the history of the countries - Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Knowledge of Finland not really as essential. Without some context you may find it hard to follow.
Would you be willing to try another book from Robert Ferguson? Why or why not?
Yes - he is a scholar widely read and schooled, especially in literature and theatre. He closely observes current events, people and reactions, and can explain current trends.
Which character – as performed by Michael Page – was your favorite?
This was not a "screen play" or theatrical reading, but Mr Page did some characters; in the illustrative scenes about Henrik Ibsen and his wife and the secret of the out-of-wedlock child, the voices were excellent.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes, and it would be better if listened to in one sitting or in close timing. Would be easy to lose the context if spread over time, because the author takes time to unfold his points.
Any additional comments?
Scandinavians are cool. We (Americans) buy Ikea furniture, envy their social welfare system, admire the outdoor lifestyle, read the crime fiction. Even the melancholic view seems stoic and commonsensical; life is tough. But is the outsider's view correct? The author searches for the cause of Scandinavian melancholy, indeed whether it even exists. But you must judge for yourself. A snarky English emigrant's view of the Scandinavian psyche and self-view. If you love English dry humor you will love this book; especially if you don't mind the long digressions - the book is actually a string of digressions. You will either view tthem as a string of pearls or the worst "shaggy dog" stories.
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5 people found this helpful
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- David
- 07-26-17
This book answers many questions I have wondered about and much further beyond that.
I have traveled in Denmark and Sweden and have worked closely with Scandinavian health service providers, as well as providing behavioral health services to a few Scandinavians. This book feels like a roadmap to all of the above, and very much more. It's dense with information presented in a friendly tone describing historical events and processes from prehistory to present-day excursions the author takes with his wife. The narrator easily conveys the impression that he is the erudite author himself
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4 people found this helpful
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- KierONeil
- 11-23-17
An exhausting journey through Scandinavian history
This is a good book, but it is very long. The author does preface the work that it's not really a history but a journey. He explores the scandanavian countries and gathers stories about the entire history of the region. It is mostly in chronological order, which is good in a way, and also bad in a way.
The scandanavian region has history that goes a long way back. To encompass it all the book, by definition, would have to be long.
I think I started to give up on this book when I discovered that a section of the book was devoted to an entire three-act play. I was half-way into the second act before I realized what was going on.
At this point I had invested so much time in the book just getting to year 1900 that I just wanted to get through it and hope there were some useful insights on modern scandanavia. There wasn't much.
I had always put Finland with the Scandanavian countries but there was almost no mention of Finland. I think there was more about Iceland & Greenland than Finland.
This is a good book, but it is for someone who wants to live vicariously through the author and his travels through Scandanavia.
My ratings are: 1 = Couldn't finish book; 2 = Finished book but nothing redeeming in book; 3 = Finished book and there was some new insight, etc.
This is why I give it three-stars.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Shane Ravenbane
- 04-05-24
ADHD Author?
I listened to the first 8+ hours of this book. While it did have some interesting parts, even after listening to 2/3 of the book, I can't seem to quite understand why the book was written. It is not very informative about Scandinavians as a whole. It's more of a rambling through the somewhat uneventful life of a British Scandinaviphile. The only reason I got as far as I did was because I was listening while I worked, and it is written well enough that I didn't feel the need to stop working to find a different book. I didn't hate it, it just wasn't for me.
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- Andrew
- 05-03-19
Not a history book
This is not a history book as the description would lead you to believe. It’s some guy writing about going to Scandinavia.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-16-18
pretentious.
This book was hard to get through. it was a a messy compilation of stories about the author and his friends, none of which are truly interesting. In fact, most of the dialogue gives the reader a feeling of not being a part of the conversation and, instead, being an eavesdropper listening in on a scholarly talk about topic that has no intrigue.
If you enjoy listening to an author describe other works of fiction, then have pretentious conversations with his friends on these topics where everyone is an apparent expert in such topics, then this book is for you!
For everyone else looking for a truly historical background or a good cultural overview of Scandinavia, best to skip this and look for a better option.
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1 person found this helpful