
The Age of Choice
A History of Freedom in Modern Life
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Narrated by:
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Greg D. Barnett
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By:
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Sophia Rosenfeld
About this listen
Choice touches virtually every aspect of our lives, from what to buy and where to live to whom to love, what profession to practice, and even what to believe. But the option to choose in such matters was not something we always possessed or even aspired to. At the same time, we have been warned by everybody from marketing gurus to psychologists about the negative consequences stemming from our current obsession with choice. It turns out that not only are we not very good at realizing our personal desires, we are also overwhelmed with too many possibilities and anxious about what best to select. How did all this happen? The Age of Choice tells the long history of the invention of choice as the defining feature of modern freedom.
Taking listeners from the seventeenth century to today, Sophia Rosenfeld describes how the early modern world witnessed the simultaneous rise of shopping as an activity and religious freedom as a matter of being able to pick one's convictions. Similarly, she traces the history of choice in romantic life, politics, and the ideals of human rights. Throughout, she pays particular attention to the lives of women, who have frequently been the drivers of this change. She concludes with an exploration of how reproductive rights have become a symbolic flashpoint in our contemporary struggles over the association of liberty with choice.
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Story
The need for a better understanding of how we feed ourselves has never been more urgent. In this wide-ranging and definitive book, philosopher Julian Baggini expertly delves into the best and worst food practices in a huge array of different societies. His exploration takes him from cutting-edge technologies, such as new farming methods, cultured meat, GM and astronaut food, to the ethics and health of ultra processed food and aquaculture, as he takes a forensic look at the effectiveness of our food governance, the difficulties of food wastage, and the effects of commodification.
By: Julian Baggini
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Democracy and Truth: A Short History
- By: Sophia Rosenfeld
- Narrated by: Jean Ann Douglass
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In this lively and illuminating book, historian Sophia Rosenfeld explores a long-standing and largely unspoken tension at the heart of democracy between the supposed wisdom of the crowd and the need for information to be vetted and evaluated by a learned elite made up of trusted experts.
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Such an important subject, but...
- By Nothing really matters on 06-02-24
By: Sophia Rosenfeld
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The Invention of Scarcity
- Malthus and the Margins of History (Yale Agrarian Studies Series)
- By: Deborah Valenze
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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With the publication of Essay on the Principle of Population and its projection of food shortages in the face of ballooning populations, British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus secured a leading role in modern political and economic thought. In this startling new interpretation, Deborah Valenze reveals how canonical readings of Malthus fail to acknowledge his narrow understanding of what constitutes food production.
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Very insightful!
- By Consumer Expert! on 07-21-23
By: Deborah Valenze
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Ignorance and Bliss
- On Wanting Not to Know
- By: Mark Lilla
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In Ignorance and Bliss, the acclaimed essayist and historian of ideas Mark Lilla offers an absorbing psychological diagnosis of the human will not to know. With erudition and brio, Lilla ranges from the Book of Genesis and Plato's dialogues to Sufi parables and Sigmund Freud, revealing the paradoxes of hiding truth from ourselves.
By: Mark Lilla
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Last Seen
- The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families
- By: Judith Giesberg
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Of all the many horrors of slavery, the cruelest was the separation of families in slave auctions. Spouses and siblings were sold away from one other. Young children were separated from their mothers. Fathers were sent down river and never saw their families again. As soon as slavery ended in 1865, family members began to search for one another, in some cases persisting until as late as the 1920s. They took out advertisements in newspapers and sent letters to the editor. Judith Giesberg draws on the archive that she founded to compile these stories in a narrative form for the first time.
By: Judith Giesberg
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Fortunate Sons
- The 120 Chinese Boys Who Came to America, Went to School, and Revolutionized an Ancient Civilization
- By: Liel Leibovitz, Matthew Miller
- Narrated by: Steve Marvel
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1872, China—ravaged by poverty, population growth, and aggressive European armies—sent 120 boys to America to learn the secrets of Western innovation. They studied at New England's finest schools and were driven by a desire for progress and reform. When anti-Chinese fervor forced them back home, the young men had to overcome a suspicious imperial court and a country deeply resistant to change in technology and culture. Fortunate Sons tells a remarkable story, weaving together the dramas of personal lives with the fascinating tale of a nation's endeavor to become a world power.
By: Liel Leibovitz, and others
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Counterculture
- The Story of America from Bohemia to Hip-Hop
- By: Alex Zamalin
- Narrated by: Dan Levy
- Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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This entertaining, intellectual history fulfills the growing appetite for marginalized narratives. Counterculture brilliantly interrogates the diversity of counterculture and the interwoven relationship between each individual legacy. From Anarchism to the Harlem Renaissance, Alex Zamalin unveils the humanity behind these romanticized figures and popularized movements to capture revolutionary freedom in action.
By: Alex Zamalin
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Doctored
- Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer's
- By: Charles Piller
- Narrated by: Lyle Blaker
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Nearly seven million Americans live with Alzheimer’s disease, a tragedy that is already projected to grow into a $1 trillion crisis by 2050. While families suffer and promises of pharmaceutical breakthroughs keep coming up short, investigative journalist Charles Piller’s Doctored shows that we’ve quite likely been walking the wrong path to finding a cure all along—led astray by a cabal of self-interested researchers, government accomplices, and corporate greed.
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Misconduct is the antithesis of science
- By Amazon Customer on 03-08-25
By: Charles Piller
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Hopeful Realism
- Evangelical Natural Law and Democratic Politics
- By: Jesse Covington, Micah Watson, Bryan T. McGraw
- Narrated by: John Patrick Walsh
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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For political theorists Bryan T. McGraw, Jesse Covington, and Micah Watson, a crucial resource is to be found in natural law, a rich tradition of Christian political thought often neglected by evangelicals. Grounded in the hope and realism of the gospel, their evangelical natural law theory is deep in moral conviction yet oriented toward practical political decision-making. Relevant to all dimensions of political life, they show how an evangelical natural law framework can speak into debates about the economy, family life and marriage, violence and war, and religious freedom.
By: Jesse Covington, and others
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Beneath the Surface of Things
- New and Selected Essays
- By: Wade Davis
- Narrated by: Wade Davis
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The essays in this collection came about during the unhurried months when one who had traveled incessantly was obliged to stay still, even as events flared on all sides in a world that never stops moving. Wade Davis brings his unique cultural perspective to such varied topics as the demonization of coca, the sacred plant of the Inca; the Great War and the birth of modernity; the British conquest of Everest; the endless conflict in the Middle East; reaching beyond climate fear and trepidation; on the meaning of the sacred.
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A deep meditation on the issues of our time from a wise elder.
- By Robin L. Billings on 02-20-25
By: Wade Davis
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Speculation Nation
- Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic (Early American Studies)
- By: Michael A. Blaakman
- Narrated by: Scot Wilcox
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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During the first quarter-century after its founding, the United States was swept by a wave of land speculation so unprecedented in intensity and scale that contemporaries and historians alike have dubbed it a “mania.” In Speculation Nation, Michael A. Blaakman uncovers the revolutionary origins of this real-estate bonanza—a story of ambition, corruption, capitalism, and statecraft that stretched across millions of acres from Maine to the Mississippi and Georgia to the Great Lakes.
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Labor’s Partisans
- Essential Writings on the Union Movement from the 1950s to Today
- By: Samir Sonti - editor, Nelson Lichtenstein - editor
- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne, Mirai Mirai
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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With over twenty-five contributions by some of the nation's most influential progressive voices, Labor's Partisans brings to life a history of labor that is of immediate relevance to our own times. Introduced and edited by leading labor historians Nelson Lichtenstein and Samir Sonti, this essential volume reveals the powerful currents and debates running through the labor movement, from the 1950s to today.
By: Samir Sonti - editor, and others
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Pretend We're Dead
- The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the '90s
- By: Tanya Pearson
- Narrated by: Kendra Hoffman, Carrington MacDuffie, Suehyla El-Attar
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2018, during an interview with journalist Tanya Pearson, Shirley Manson lamented: "It’s a blanket fact that after September 11th, nonconformist women were taken off the radio.” This comment echoed a reality Pearson had personally witnessed as a musician and a fan, and launched her into a quest to figure out just what happened to these extraordinary female figures. Pretend We’re Dead seeks to answer two big questions.
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The well investigated content and personal interviews
- By meg jones on 01-29-25
By: Tanya Pearson
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Spetsnaz
- A History of the Soviet and Russian Special Forces
- By: Tor Bukkvoll
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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In January 1951, Lieutenant Evgeniy Borisov was sent to the headquarters of the Soviet 5th Army in Spassk-Dalnii, a small city in the Russian Far East. Borisov was there on a secret mission. Together with his superior, Major Rusinov, his job was to establish the 91st Special Forces Company. The 91st was to be one of forty-six similar units spread out across the Soviet Union. The new forces were called "spetsnaz"—short for spetsnialnoe naznachenie, which translates to "special purpose."
By: Tor Bukkvoll
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The Social Paradox
- Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness
- By: William von Hippel
- Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Why do people who have so much—leading comfortable lives filled with unprecedented freedom, choice, and abundance—often feel so unhappy and unfulfilled? This phenomenon is a defining paradox of our time and one we endlessly seek to solve. In The Social Paradox, psychologist William von Hippel argues that we need to think about this problem in a new way. By changing our perspective, we might finally see the solution, bringing us greater happiness and more satisfying relationships. The key is to understand the interplay between our two most basic psychological needs—for connection and autonomy.
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Very interesting
- By SgtTort on 03-22-25
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The Best of All Possible Worlds
- A Life of Leibniz in Seven Pivotal Days
- By: Michael Kempe, Marshall Yarbrough - translator
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a "universal genius" who ranged across many fields and made breakthroughs in most of them. Leibniz invented calculus (independently from Isaac Newton), conceptualized the modern computer, and developed the famous thesis that the existing world is the best that God could have created.
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Great bio of Leibniz
- By JJ on 01-22-25
By: Michael Kempe, and others