
The Age of Choice
A History of Freedom in Modern Life
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
3 months free
Buy for $21.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Greg D. Barnett
-
By:
-
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.
©2025 Princeton University Press (P)2025 Highbridge AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
The Great Transformation
- The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time
- By: Karl Polanyi
- Narrated by: David Pickering
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the great transformation of the Industrial Revolution. His analysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulating market, but the potentially dire social consequences of untempered market capitalism. New introductory material reveals the renewed importance of Polanyi's seminal analysis in an era of globalization and free trade.
-
-
Self regulating markets eventually fail
- By Robert Ziegler on 02-15-25
By: Karl Polanyi
-
The Revolutionary Self
- Social Change and the Emergence of the Modern Individual 1770-1800
- By: Lynn Hunt
- Narrated by: Kate Udall
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The eighteenth century was a time of cultural friction: individuals began to assert greater independence and there was a new emphasis on social equality. In this surprising history, Lynn Hunt examines women's expanding societal roles, such as using tea to facilitate conversation between the sexes in Britain. In France, women also pushed boundaries by becoming artists, and printmakers' satiric takes on the elite gave the lower classes a chance to laugh at the upper classes and imagine the potential of political upheaval.
By: Lynn Hunt
-
Children of Radium
- A Buried Inheritance
- By: Joe Dunthorne
- Narrated by: Joe Dunthorne
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Joe Dunthorne began researching his family history, he expected to write the account of their harrowing escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. What he found in his great-grandfather Siegfried’s voluminous, unpublished, partially translated memoir was a much darker, more complicated story. Armed only with his great-grandfather’s rambling, nearly two-thousand-page deathbed memoir and a handful of archival clues, Dunthorne traveled to Munich, Ammendorf, Berlin, Ankara, and Oranienburg to uncover the sprawling, unsettling legacy of Siegfried’s work.
-
-
One of 6 million stories that needed to be told.
- By Nancy on 05-03-25
By: Joe Dunthorne
-
We Tell Ourselves Stories
- Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine
- By: Alissa Wilkinson
- Narrated by: Alissa Wilkinson
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this cultural biography, New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson examines Joan Didion's influence through the lens of American mythmaking. As a young girl, Didion was infatuated with John Wayne and his on-screen bravado, and was fascinated by her California pioneer ancestry and the infamous Donner Party. The mythos that preoccupied her early years continued to influence her work as a magazine writer and film critic in New York, offering glimmers of the many stories Didion told herself that would come to unravel over the course of her career. But out west, show business beckoned.
-
-
Interesting Approach to Didion but narration lacki
- By G on 06-21-25
By: Alissa Wilkinson
-
Is a River Alive?
- By: Robert Macfarlane
- Narrated by: Robert Macfarlane
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes listeners on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada.
-
-
One of the few books I will return
- By Amazon Customer on 06-28-25
-
Illiberal America
- A History
- By: Steven Hahn
- Narrated by: Mitch Crawford
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That's not us,' think again: in Illiberal America, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian uncovers a powerful illiberalism as deep seated in the American past as the founding ideals.
-
-
A good title with a vague content
- By d.l.bagnoli on 04-26-25
By: Steven Hahn
-
The Great Transformation
- The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time
- By: Karl Polanyi
- Narrated by: David Pickering
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this classic work of economic history and social theory, Karl Polanyi analyzes the economic and social changes brought about by the great transformation of the Industrial Revolution. His analysis explains not only the deficiencies of the self-regulating market, but the potentially dire social consequences of untempered market capitalism. New introductory material reveals the renewed importance of Polanyi's seminal analysis in an era of globalization and free trade.
-
-
Self regulating markets eventually fail
- By Robert Ziegler on 02-15-25
By: Karl Polanyi
-
The Revolutionary Self
- Social Change and the Emergence of the Modern Individual 1770-1800
- By: Lynn Hunt
- Narrated by: Kate Udall
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The eighteenth century was a time of cultural friction: individuals began to assert greater independence and there was a new emphasis on social equality. In this surprising history, Lynn Hunt examines women's expanding societal roles, such as using tea to facilitate conversation between the sexes in Britain. In France, women also pushed boundaries by becoming artists, and printmakers' satiric takes on the elite gave the lower classes a chance to laugh at the upper classes and imagine the potential of political upheaval.
By: Lynn Hunt
-
Children of Radium
- A Buried Inheritance
- By: Joe Dunthorne
- Narrated by: Joe Dunthorne
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Joe Dunthorne began researching his family history, he expected to write the account of their harrowing escape from Nazi Germany in 1935. What he found in his great-grandfather Siegfried’s voluminous, unpublished, partially translated memoir was a much darker, more complicated story. Armed only with his great-grandfather’s rambling, nearly two-thousand-page deathbed memoir and a handful of archival clues, Dunthorne traveled to Munich, Ammendorf, Berlin, Ankara, and Oranienburg to uncover the sprawling, unsettling legacy of Siegfried’s work.
-
-
One of 6 million stories that needed to be told.
- By Nancy on 05-03-25
By: Joe Dunthorne
-
We Tell Ourselves Stories
- Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine
- By: Alissa Wilkinson
- Narrated by: Alissa Wilkinson
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this cultural biography, New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson examines Joan Didion's influence through the lens of American mythmaking. As a young girl, Didion was infatuated with John Wayne and his on-screen bravado, and was fascinated by her California pioneer ancestry and the infamous Donner Party. The mythos that preoccupied her early years continued to influence her work as a magazine writer and film critic in New York, offering glimmers of the many stories Didion told herself that would come to unravel over the course of her career. But out west, show business beckoned.
-
-
Interesting Approach to Didion but narration lacki
- By G on 06-21-25
By: Alissa Wilkinson
-
Is a River Alive?
- By: Robert Macfarlane
- Narrated by: Robert Macfarlane
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes listeners on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada.
-
-
One of the few books I will return
- By Amazon Customer on 06-28-25
-
Illiberal America
- A History
- By: Steven Hahn
- Narrated by: Mitch Crawford
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That's not us,' think again: in Illiberal America, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian uncovers a powerful illiberalism as deep seated in the American past as the founding ideals.
-
-
A good title with a vague content
- By d.l.bagnoli on 04-26-25
By: Steven Hahn
-
Ancient Christianities
- The First Five Hundred Years
- By: Paula Fredriksen
- Narrated by: Rachel Perry
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The ancient Mediterranean teemed with gods. For centuries, a practical religious pluralism prevailed. How, then, did one particular god come to dominate the politics and piety of the late Roman Empire? In Ancient Christianities, Paula Fredriksen traces the evolution of early Christianity—or rather, of early Christianities—through five centuries of Empire, mapping its pathways from the hills of Judea to the halls of Rome and Constantinople.
-
-
Among the best
- By Jacob Kilgore on 04-17-25
By: Paula Fredriksen
-
How to Win an Information War
- The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler
- By: Peter Pomerantsev
- Narrated by: Matthew Waterson
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1941, Hitler ruled Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Britain was struggling to combat his powerful propaganda machine, crowing victory and smearing his enemies as liars and manipulators over his frequent radio speeches, blasted out on loudspeakers and into homes. British claims that Hitler was dangerous had little impact against this wave of disinformation. Except for the broadcasts of someone called Der Chef, a German who questioned Nazi doctrine, and most importantly, a character created by the British propagandist Thomas Sefton Delmer, a unique weapon in the war.
-
-
A charming but responsible take on a key issue
- By Catherine Spiller on 07-23-24
-
India
- 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent
- By: Audrey Truschke
- Narrated by: Audrey Truschke
- Length: 24 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Much of world history is Indian history. Home today to one in four people, the subcontinent has long been densely populated and deeply connected to Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas through migration and trade. In this magisterial history, Audrey Truschke tells the fascinating story of the region historically known as India--which includes today's India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and parts of Afghanistan—and the people who have lived there.
By: Audrey Truschke
-
Open Socrates
- The Case for a Philosophical Life
- By: Agnes Callard
- Narrated by: Agnes Callard
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Socrates has been hiding in plain sight. We call him the father of Western philosophy, but what exactly are his philosophical views? He is famous for his humility, but readers often find him arrogant and condescending. We parrot his claim that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” yet take no steps to live examined ones. In Open Socrates, acclaimed philosopher Agnes Callard recovers the radical move at the center of Socrates’ thought, and shows why it is still the way to a good life.
-
-
Great insights on interpersonal philosophising, and how it differs from and interacts with internal philosophising.
- By Brian Pestridge on 06-22-25
By: Agnes Callard
-
A History of the Muslim World
- From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity
- By: Michael A. Cook
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 52 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This book describes and explains the major events, personalities, conflicts, and convergences that have shaped the history of the Muslim world. The body of the work takes listeners from the origins of Islam to the eve of the nineteenth century, and an epilogue continues the story to the present day. Michael Cook thus provides a broad history of a civilization remarkable for both its unity and diversity.
-
-
Sweeping yet detailed
- By Dr. Krishnendu Ray on 05-22-24
By: Michael A. Cook
-
Stone Yard Devotional
- A Novel
- By: Charlotte Wood
- Narrated by: Ailsa Piper
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.
-
-
A profound inward journey
- By Kathlene barrett on 02-17-25
By: Charlotte Wood
-
Lawless
- How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes
- By: Leah Litman
- Narrated by: Leah Litman
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the gravitas of Joan Biskupic and the irreverence of Elie Mystal, Leah Litman brings her signature wit to the question of what’s gone wrong at One First Street. In Lawless, she argues that the Supreme Court is no longer practicing law; it’s running on vibes. By “vibes,” Litman means legal-ish claims that repackage the politics of conservative grievance and dress them up in robes. Major decisions adopt the language and posture of the law, while in fact displaying a commitment to protecting a single minority: the religious conservatives and Republican officials.
-
-
Litman is an essential voice in this moment
- By L B on 07-04-25
By: Leah Litman
-
Summa Contra Gentiles
- By: Thomas Aquinas
- Narrated by: Martin Swain
- Length: 44 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The four books of the Summa contra Gentiles were written by Thomas Aquinas between 1259-1265, before the considerably larger and more influential, Summa Theologica. The purpose of each work was different. Whereas the Summa Theologica addressed the faithful, especially theology students, the intention of the Summa Contra Gentiles (Systematic Exposition Against Non-Christians) was to speak to a non-aligned and even hostile audience. To that purpose, Aquinas presented arguments ‘refuting specific beliefs or heresies.'
-
-
Brilliant as only St Thomas Aquinas can be.
- By The Phil on 06-28-25
By: Thomas Aquinas
-
The Tears of Things
- Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage
- By: Richard Rohr
- Narrated by: Drew Jackson
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In his first major work since The Universal Christ, one of our most prominent spiritual voices offers a wholehearted and hope-filled model for the world today, grounded in the timeless wisdom of the Hebrew prophets. How do we live compassionately in a time of violence and despair? What can we do with our private disappointments and the anger we feel in such an unjust world? In his most personal book yet, Richard Rohr turns to the writings of the Jewish prophets, revealing how some of the lesser-read books of the Bible offer us a crucial path forward today.
-
-
This is the book we need
- By Kaitlyn Terrell on 03-09-25
By: Richard Rohr
-
More Everything Forever
- AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity
- By: Adam Becker
- Narrated by: Greg Tremblay
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tech billionaires have decided that they should determine our futures for us. According to Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and more, the only good future for humanity is one powered by technology: trillions of humans living in space, functionally immortal, served by superintelligent AIs. In More Everything Forever, science writer Adam Becker investigates these wildly implausible and often profoundly immoral visions of tomorrow—and shows why, in reality, there is no good evidence that they will, or should, come to pass.
-
-
Puts words to thoughts that have been haunting me
- By Ellen L. on 04-24-25
By: Adam Becker
-
Pronoun Trouble
- The Story of Us in Seven Little Words
- By: John McWhorter
- Narrated by: John McWhorter
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With his trademark humor and flair, bestselling linguist John McWhorter busts the myths and shares the history of the most controversial language topic of our times: pronouns.
-
-
It’s ok
- By Anat on 06-17-25
By: John McWhorter
-
Buddenbrooks
- The Decline of a Family
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.
-
-
Where Have You Been All My Life, Thomas Mann?
- By Virginia Waldron on 03-30-17
By: Thomas Mann
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Democracy and Truth: A Short History
- By: Sophia Rosenfeld
- Narrated by: Jean Ann Douglass
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Democracy vs populism and technocracy
- By J. C. de Vrieze on 07-10-20
By: Sophia Rosenfeld
-
Immediacy
- Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism
- By: Anna Kornbluh
- Narrated by: Sara Sheckells
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Contemporary cultural style boosts transparency and instantaneity. These are values absorbed from our current economic conditions of disintermediation: cutting out the middleman. Like Uber, but for art. Immediacy names this style to make sense of what we lose when the contradictions of twenty-first-century capitalism demand that aesthetics negate mediation. Surging realness as an aesthetic program synchs with the economic imperative to intensify circulation when production stagnates. Flow is the ultimate twenty-first-century buzzword, but speedy circulation grinds art down to the nub.
By: Anna Kornbluh
-
Martin Van Buren
- America's First Politician
- By: James M. Bradley
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 26 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This new biography of Van Buren—the first full-scale portrait in four decades—charts his ascent from a tavern in the Hudson Valley to the presidency, concluding with his late-career involvement in an antislavery movement. Offering vivid profiles of the day's leading figures (Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, DeWitt Clinton, James K. Polk), James Bradley's book depicts the struggle for power in the tumultuous decades leading up to the Civil War.
-
-
Woke
- By sriaknal on 06-06-25
By: James M. Bradley
-
Chokepoints
- American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare
- By: Edward Fishman
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 17 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It used to be that ravaging another country’s economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities. Now all it takes is a statement posted online by the U.S. government. In Chokepoints, Edward Fishman, a former top State Department sanctions official, takes us deep into the back rooms of power to reveal the untold history of the last two decades of U.S. foreign policy, in which America renounced the gospel of globalization and waged a new kind of economic war.
-
-
Impressive
- By Harry Helbock on 06-17-25
By: Edward Fishman
-
American Civil Wars
- A Continental History, 1850-1873
- By: Alan Taylor
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The American Civil War stands at the center of the story, its military history and the drama of emancipation the highlights. Taylor relies on vivid characters to carry the story, from Joseph Hooker, whose timidity in crisis was exploited by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the Union defeat at Chancellorsville, to Martin Delany and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Black abolitionists whose critical work in Canada and the United States advanced emancipation and the enrollment of Black soldiers in Union armies.
-
-
fascinating!
- By Brandon Marken on 07-12-24
By: Alan Taylor
-
Waste Wars
- The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash
- By: Alexander Clapp
- Narrated by: Greg Lockett
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing. Disputes about what to do with the millions of tons of garbage generated every day have given rise to waste wars waged almost everywhere you look. Some are border skirmishes. Others hustle trash across thousands of miles and multiple oceans. But no matter the scale, one thing is true about almost all of them: few people have any idea they're happening.
-
-
Horrifying Exposé
- By HappyatHeart on 06-24-25
By: Alexander Clapp
-
Democracy and Truth: A Short History
- By: Sophia Rosenfeld
- Narrated by: Jean Ann Douglass
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Democracy vs populism and technocracy
- By J. C. de Vrieze on 07-10-20
By: Sophia Rosenfeld
-
Immediacy
- Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism
- By: Anna Kornbluh
- Narrated by: Sara Sheckells
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Contemporary cultural style boosts transparency and instantaneity. These are values absorbed from our current economic conditions of disintermediation: cutting out the middleman. Like Uber, but for art. Immediacy names this style to make sense of what we lose when the contradictions of twenty-first-century capitalism demand that aesthetics negate mediation. Surging realness as an aesthetic program synchs with the economic imperative to intensify circulation when production stagnates. Flow is the ultimate twenty-first-century buzzword, but speedy circulation grinds art down to the nub.
By: Anna Kornbluh
-
Martin Van Buren
- America's First Politician
- By: James M. Bradley
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 26 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This new biography of Van Buren—the first full-scale portrait in four decades—charts his ascent from a tavern in the Hudson Valley to the presidency, concluding with his late-career involvement in an antislavery movement. Offering vivid profiles of the day's leading figures (Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, DeWitt Clinton, James K. Polk), James Bradley's book depicts the struggle for power in the tumultuous decades leading up to the Civil War.
-
-
Woke
- By sriaknal on 06-06-25
By: James M. Bradley
-
Chokepoints
- American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare
- By: Edward Fishman
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 17 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It used to be that ravaging another country’s economy required blockading its ports and laying siege to its cities. Now all it takes is a statement posted online by the U.S. government. In Chokepoints, Edward Fishman, a former top State Department sanctions official, takes us deep into the back rooms of power to reveal the untold history of the last two decades of U.S. foreign policy, in which America renounced the gospel of globalization and waged a new kind of economic war.
-
-
Impressive
- By Harry Helbock on 06-17-25
By: Edward Fishman
-
American Civil Wars
- A Continental History, 1850-1873
- By: Alan Taylor
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The American Civil War stands at the center of the story, its military history and the drama of emancipation the highlights. Taylor relies on vivid characters to carry the story, from Joseph Hooker, whose timidity in crisis was exploited by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in the Union defeat at Chancellorsville, to Martin Delany and Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Black abolitionists whose critical work in Canada and the United States advanced emancipation and the enrollment of Black soldiers in Union armies.
-
-
fascinating!
- By Brandon Marken on 07-12-24
By: Alan Taylor
-
Waste Wars
- The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash
- By: Alexander Clapp
- Narrated by: Greg Lockett
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing. Disputes about what to do with the millions of tons of garbage generated every day have given rise to waste wars waged almost everywhere you look. Some are border skirmishes. Others hustle trash across thousands of miles and multiple oceans. But no matter the scale, one thing is true about almost all of them: few people have any idea they're happening.
-
-
Horrifying Exposé
- By HappyatHeart on 06-24-25
By: Alexander Clapp
-
Superbloom
- How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart
- By: Nicholas Carr
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the telegraph and telephone in the 1800s to the internet and social media in our own day, the public has welcomed new communication systems. Whenever people gain more power to share information, the assumption goes, society prospers. Superbloom tells a startlingly different story. As communication becomes more mechanized and efficient, it breeds confusion more than understanding, strife more than harmony. Media technologies all too often bring out the worst in us.
-
-
Absolutely Necessary.
- By JT on 05-18-25
By: Nicholas Carr
-
Doppelganger
- A Trip into the Mirror World
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.
-
-
Elite Psychobabble
- By A Reviewer on 09-30-23
By: Naomi Klein
-
Red Scare
- Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America
- By: Clay Risen
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 15 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An urgent, accessible, and important history, Red Scare reveals an all-too-familiar pattern of illiberal conspiracy-mongering and political and cultural backlash that speaks directly to the antagonism and divisiveness of our contemporary moment. Drawing upon newly declassified documents, journalist Clay Risen recounts how politicians like Joseph McCarthy, with the help of an extended network of other government officials and organizations, systematically ruined thousands of lives in their deluded pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies.
-
-
Very disappointing narrator
- By DB on 04-19-25
By: Clay Risen
-
Money, Lies, and God
- Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy
- By: Katherine Stewart
- Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.
-
-
Describes a well funded international fascist cult
- By marwalk on 03-24-25
-
Lawless
- How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes
- By: Leah Litman
- Narrated by: Leah Litman
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the gravitas of Joan Biskupic and the irreverence of Elie Mystal, Leah Litman brings her signature wit to the question of what’s gone wrong at One First Street. In Lawless, she argues that the Supreme Court is no longer practicing law; it’s running on vibes. By “vibes,” Litman means legal-ish claims that repackage the politics of conservative grievance and dress them up in robes. Major decisions adopt the language and posture of the law, while in fact displaying a commitment to protecting a single minority: the religious conservatives and Republican officials.
-
-
Litman is an essential voice in this moment
- By L B on 07-04-25
By: Leah Litman
-
Caste
- The Origins of Our Discontents
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
-
-
Brilliant, articulate, highly listenable.
- By GM on 08-05-20
By: Isabel Wilkerson