
Strangers and Intimates
The Rise and Fall of Private Life
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Narrated by:
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Tiffany Jenkins
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By:
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Tiffany Jenkins
About this listen
Read by the author, Tiffany Jenkins
'Brilliantly original . . . endlessly fascinating and full of surprises' – Alice Loxton, author of Eighteen
'It is refreshing - and empowering - to read such a nuanced, thoughtful history of this slippery concept' – Kate Fox, author of Watching the English
A Financial Times 'What to read in 2025' Book
From ancient times to our digital present, Strangers and Intimates traces the dramatic emergence of private life, and argues that it is now in mortal danger.
In this sweeping history, acclaimed cultural historian Tiffany Jenkins takes listeners ion an epic journey, from the strict separations of public and private in ancient Athens to the moral rigidity of the Victorian home, and from the feminists of the 1970s who declared that ‘the personal is political’ to the boundary-blurring demands of our digital age.
Strangers and Intimates is both a celebration of the private realm and a warning: as social media, surveillance and the expectations of constant openness reshape our lives, Jenkins asks a timely question: can private life survive the demands of the twenty-first century?
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Overall
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When the jolly Italian peasant-turned-cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli of Venice was elected Pope John XXIII in 1958, change was in the air. The Church, many said, had refused to enter the twentieth century. In response, Pope John launched Vatican II, an “ecumenical council” that summoned hundreds of church leaders to Rome. It marked one of the most progressive turns the Church had taken in centuries: “medicine of mercy,” as Pope John called it. Yet not everyone in the Church was prepared to accept this modernization.
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Too long by 3x
- By Road Reader on 04-21-25
By: Philip Shenon
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Humans
- A Monstrous History
- By: Surekha Davies
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science Dr. Surekha Davies as she reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations along the way. With rich, evocative storytelling that braids together ancient gods and generative AI, Frankenstein's monster and E.T., Humans: A Monstrous History shows how monster-making is about control: it defines who gets to count as normal.
By: Surekha Davies
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The Genius Myth
- A Curious History of a Dangerous Idea
- By: Helen Lewis
- Narrated by: Helen Lewis
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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You can tell what a society values by who it labels as a genius. You can also tell who it excludes, who it enables, and what it is prepared to tolerate. In The Genius Myth, Helen Lewis unearths how this one word has shaped (and distorted) our ideas of success and achievement. Ultimately, argues Lewis, the modern idea of genius—a single preternaturally gifted individual, usually white and male, exempt from social niceties and sometimes even the law—has run its course.
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Selective, not great…
- By Amazon Customer on 07-12-25
By: Helen Lewis
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Maria Theresa
- Empress: The Making of the Austrian Enlightenment
- By: Richard Bassett
- Narrated by: Kitty Hendrix
- Length: 20 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Maria Theresa was the single most powerful woman in eighteenth-century Europe. At the age of just twenty-three she succeeded to the Habsburg domains only to find them contested by almost every power in Europe. In this engrossing biography, Richard Bassett traces Maria Theresa's life and complex legacy. Drawing on hitherto unpublished sources, Bassett reveals her keen sense of moderation and tolerance, innovative ideas on free trade and finance, and studied reluctance to resort to policies of territorial expansion.
By: Richard Bassett
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The First Fleets
- Colonial Navies of the British Atlantic World, 1630-1775
- By: Benjamin C. Schaffer
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In The First Fleets, Benjamin C. Schaffer reveals how, contrary to widespread beliefs, the American colonies had a long tradition of independent naval defense decades before the Revolution. He demonstrates that Anglo-American governments established and maintained significant provincial naval forces and that the history of provincial navies illuminates broader aspects of colonial history and the colonies' ultimate break with the British Crown. Based on meticulous research, Schaffer recounts the sea-borne threats that American colonies faced from the French, Spanish, pirates, and others.
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The Last Days of Budapest
- The Destruction of Europe's Most Cosmopolitan Capital in World War II
- By: Adam LeBor
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 17 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Budapest, autumn 1943. After four years of war, Hungary was firmly allied with Nazi Germany. Budapest swirled with intrigue and betrayal, home to spies and agents of every kind. But the city remained an oasis in the midst of conflict where Allied POWs and Polish and Jewish refugees found sanctuary. All that came to an end in March 1944 when the Nazis invaded. By the summer Allied bombers were pounding Budapest’s grand boulevards and historic squares.
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Outstanding and harrowing
- By Greg Russell on 06-19-25
By: Adam LeBor
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The Art of Uncertainty
- How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck
- By: David Spiegelhalter
- Narrated by: David Spiegelhalter
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Renowned statistician David Spiegelhalter shows how we can become better at dealing with what we don't know to make smarter choices in a world so full of puzzling variables. In lucid, lively prose, Spiegelhalter guides us through the principles of probability, illustrating how they can help us think more analytically about everything from medical advice to sports to climate change forecasts.
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Terrific
- By Roger March on 04-01-25
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Decent Interval (25th Anniversary Edition)
- An Insider's Account of Saigon's Indecent End Told by the CIA's Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam
- By: Frank Snepp, Gloria Emerson - foreword
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 32 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Widely regarded as a classic on the Vietnam War, Decent Interval provides a scathing critique of the CIA's role in and final departure from that conflict. Still the most detailed and respected account of America's final days in Vietnam, the book was written at great risk and ultimately at great sacrifice by an author who believed in the CIA's cause but was disillusioned by the agency's treacherous withdrawal, leaving thousands of Vietnamese allies to the mercy of an angry enemy.
By: Frank Snepp, and others
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Whack Job
- A History of Axe Murder
- By: Rachel McCarthy James
- Narrated by: Jennifer Pickens
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Whack Job is the story of the axe, first as a convenient danger and then an anachronism, as told through the murders it has been employed in throughout history: from the first axe murder nearly half a million years ago, to the brutal harnessing of the axe in warfare, to its use in King Henry VIII's favorite method of execution, to Lizzie Borden and the birth of modern pop culture.
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Nothing Exciting.
- By Amazon Customer on 06-30-25