Study Guide: Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell
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Narrated by:
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Molly Gallegos
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SuperSummary
About this listen
SuperSummary, a modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, offers high-quality instructional study guides for challenging works of literature. This audio study guide for Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell includes detailed summary and analysis of each chapter and an in-depth exploration of the book’s multiple symbols, motifs, and themes such as American mythology, war as an opportunity, and learning the wrong lessons from history. Featured content also includes commentary on major characters, 25 important quotes, essay questions, and discussion topics.
This nonfiction work uses the perspective of the Marquis de Lafayette - a Frenchman who longed to fight with the Americans and win military glory - to give an irreverent, timely history of the United States, with relevant implications for America’s modern political situation. Vowell shows how disagreeability in politics can be motivated by greed, stubbornness, or ignorance; however, disagreeability in the spirit of genuine, curious inquiry or in response to perceived oppression, can be a source of progress.
This audio study guide presents the same expert content - written by experienced teachers, professors, and literary scholars - in an easy-to-access audio format. SuperSummary study guides demonstrate an authoritative voice, present expert analysis, offer big picture ideas, and help listeners understand a work’s underlying meanings and conclusions.
©2019 SuperSummary (P)2021 SuperSummaryListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Master historian Barbara W. Tuchman looks at history in a unique way and draws lessons from what she sees. This accessible introduction to the subject of history offers striking insights into America's past and present, trenchant observations on the international scene, and thoughtful pieces on the historian's role. Here is a splendid body of work, the story of a lifetime spent "practicing history".
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Barbara Tuchman fan faced with reality
- By J. Whittle on 09-27-18
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Winston Churchill
- A Captivating Guide to the Life of Winston Churchill
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Sean Daily
- Length: 1 hr and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Any general biography of Winston S. Churchill will provide an overview of his greatest achievements, but Churchill had other goals and desires that are often ignored and forgotten. What were they? Churchill had a family - a childhood and children of his own - and a political career that began at a young age. He spoke with and entertained some of the biggest names in the world, within both the political and social realms. How did he interact with Franklin D. Roosevelt?
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Had A Great Time With It
- By Mark on 09-23-17
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The Problem of Democracy
- The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality
- By: Nancy Isenberg, Andrew Burstein
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 22 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth-tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results; and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. When John Adams succeeded George Washington as President, his son had already followed him into public service and was stationed in Europe as a diplomat.
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Very insightful and rewarding adding understanding
- By William on 05-12-19
By: Nancy Isenberg, and others
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On Grand Strategy
- By: John Lewis Gaddis
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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For over 20 years, a select group of Yale undergraduates has been admitted into the year-long "Grand Strategy" seminar team-taught by John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy. Its purpose: to provide a grounding in strategic decision-making in the face of crisis to prepare future American leaders for important work. Now, John Lewis Gaddis has transposed the experience of that course into a wonderfully succinct, lucid and inspirational book, a view from the commanding heights of statesmanship across the landscape of world history from the ancient Greeks to Lincoln, and beyond.
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Interesting, but fails to offer real lessons.
- By Zack on 07-04-18
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Churchill
- The Prophetic Statesman
- By: James C. Humes
- Narrated by: Matthew Brenher
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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James C. Humes reveals the astonishingly accurate predictions of Britain's most famous prime minister and how his critics' perceptions of them shaped his political career. Who could have foreseen the start of World War I twenty-five years before the assassination of a Serbian archduke plunged Europe into war? Who could have predicted the rise of al-Qaeda nearly eight decades before anyone had heard of Osama bin Laden? Winston Churchill did.
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The voice in the wilderness--Are we listening yet?
- By Jean on 12-16-12
By: James C. Humes
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God and Churchill
- How the Great Leader's Sense of Divine Destiny Changed His Troubled World and Offers Hope for Ours
- By: Wallace Henley, Jonathan Sandys
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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When Winston Churchill was a boy of 16, he already had a vision for his purpose in life. "This country will be subjected somehow to a tremendous invasion...I shall be in command of the defenses of London...it will fall to me to save the Capital, to save the Empire." It was a most unlikely prediction. Perceived as a failure for much of his life, Churchill was the last person anyone would have expected to rise to national prominence as prime minister and influence the fate of the world during World War II.
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Just excellent
- By Claude T. Stauffer on 01-10-17
By: Wallace Henley, and others
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Race and Reunion
- The Civil War in American Memory
- By: David W. Blight
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 20 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial.
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How we remember matters
- By Adam Shields on 04-03-19
By: David W. Blight
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire
- By: H. W. Crocker III
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Nothing offends liberals more than Western imperialism—it is racism, sexism, and chauvinism all in one. And of course the epitome of Western imperialism is the British Empire, covering at its height a quarter of the globe’s surface and ruling a quarter of the world’s population. Here, best-selling author H. W. Crocker III exposes how the British Empire was actually one of the greatest establishers and defenders of freedom in history.
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More Propaganda than History
- By Mike on 10-21-19
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Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill
- A Brief Account of a Long Life
- By: Gretchen Rubin
- Narrated by: Gretchen Rubin
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Warrior and writer, genius and crank, rider in the British cavalry’s last great charge and inventor of the tank - Winston Churchill led Britain to fight alone against Nazi Germany in the fateful year of 1940 and set the standard for leading a democracy at war. Like no other portrait of its famous subject, Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill is a dazzling display of facts more improbable than fiction, and an investigation of the contradictions and complexities that haunt biography.
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Great Content
- By Sean P. Whiteley on 07-01-20
By: Gretchen Rubin
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The War That Forged a Nation
- Why the Civil War Still Matters
- By: James McPherson
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James M. McPherson considers why the Civil War remains so deeply embedded in our national psyche and identity. The drama and tragedy of the war help explain why the Civil War remains a topic of interest. But the legacy of the war extends far beyond historical interest or scholarly attention.
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A Different Kind of History from McPherson
- By Carole T. on 08-11-16
By: James McPherson