The Broken Road
George Wallace and a Daughter’s Journey to Reconciliation
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
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $19.63
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Caitlin Thorburn
About this listen
Bloomsbury presents The Broken Road by Peggy Wallace Kennedy, read by Caitlin Thorburn.
From the daughter of one of America’s most virulent segregationists, a memoir that reckons with her father George Wallace’s legacy of hate—and illuminates her journey towards redemption.
Peggy Wallace Kennedy has been widely hailed as the “symbol of racial reconciliation” (Washington Post). In the summer of 1963, though, she was just a young girl watching her father stand in a schoolhouse door as he tried to block two African-American students from entering the University of Alabama. This man, former governor of Alabama and presidential candidate George Wallace, was notorious for his hateful rhetoric and his political stunts. But he was also a larger-than-life father to young Peggy, who was taught to smile, sit straight, and not speak up as her father took to the political stage. At the end of his life, Wallace came to renounce his views, although he could never attempt to fully repair the damage he caused. But Peggy, after her own political awakening, dedicated her life to spreading the new Wallace message—one of peace and compassion.
In this powerful new memoir, Peggy looks back on the politics of her youth and attempts to reconcile her adored father with the man who coined the phrase “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever.”
Timely and timeless, The Broken Road speaks to change, atonement, activism, and racial reconciliation.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
His Majesty's Airship
- The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine
- By: S. C. Gwynne
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The tragic fate of the British airship R101—which went down in a spectacular fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later—has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty’s Airship, S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong.
-
-
O, The Humanity
- By Glenn G Poole II on 06-11-23
By: S. C. Gwynne
-
Claudette Colvin
- Twice Toward Justice
- By: Phillip Hoose
- Narrated by: Channie Waites
- Length: 3 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On March 2, 1955, a slim, bespectacled teenager refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Mont-gomery, Alabama. Shouting "It's my constitutional right!" as police dragged her off to jail, Claudette Colvin decided she'd had enough of the Jim Crow segregation laws that had angered and puzzled her since she was a young child.
-
-
The funny yet touching story of women leders!
- By Talia on 02-06-12
By: Phillip Hoose
-
While the World Watched
- A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age During the Civil Rights Movement
- By: Carolyn Maull McKinstry
- Narrated by: Felicia Bullock
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fifteen-year-old Carolyn Maull McKinstry was just a few feet away when the Klan - planted bomb that killed four of her friends exploded in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history…and the turning point in a young girl's life.
-
-
Look Back and Live With Greater Understanding
- By jerrie Will on 05-07-21
-
The Year That Broke Politics
- Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968
- By: Luke A. Nichter
- Narrated by: Kent Klineman
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The 1968 presidential race was a contentious battle between Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Republican Richard Nixon, and former Alabama governor George Wallace. The United States was reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy and was bitterly divided on the Vietnam War and domestic issues, including civil rights and rising crime. Drawing on previously unexamined archives and numerous interviews, Luke A. Nichter upends the conventional understanding of the campaign.
-
-
Stilted and sibilant
- By K. W. on 08-05-24
By: Luke A. Nichter
-
Stars of Alabama
- A Novel by Sean of the South
- By: Sean Dietrich
- Narrated by: Sean Dietrich
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When 15-year-old Marigold becomes pregnant amid the Great Depression, she is rejected by her family and forced to fend for herself. And when she loses her baby in the forest, her whole world turns upside down. She’s even more distraught upon discovering she has an inexplicable power that makes her both beautiful and terrifying - and something of a local legend. Meanwhile, migrant workers Vern and Paul discover a violet-eyed baby and take it upon themselves to care for her.
-
-
Wow! How have I not heard of this?!?
- By Wren on 01-05-20
By: Sean Dietrich
-
Watergate
- By: Garrett M. Graff
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy, Garrett M. Graff
- Length: 25 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early hours of June 17, 1972, a security guard named Frank Wills enters six words into the log book of the Watergate office complex that will change the course of history: 1:47 AM Found tape on doors; call police. The subsequent arrests of five men seeking to bug and burgle the Democratic National Committee offices—three of them Cuban exiles, two of them former intelligence operatives—quickly unravels a web of scandal that ultimately ends a presidency and forever alters views of moral authority and leadership.
-
-
Elucidating
- By J.B. on 02-23-22
By: Garrett M. Graff
-
His Majesty's Airship
- The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine
- By: S. C. Gwynne
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The tragic fate of the British airship R101—which went down in a spectacular fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later—has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty’s Airship, S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong.
-
-
O, The Humanity
- By Glenn G Poole II on 06-11-23
By: S. C. Gwynne
-
Claudette Colvin
- Twice Toward Justice
- By: Phillip Hoose
- Narrated by: Channie Waites
- Length: 3 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On March 2, 1955, a slim, bespectacled teenager refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Mont-gomery, Alabama. Shouting "It's my constitutional right!" as police dragged her off to jail, Claudette Colvin decided she'd had enough of the Jim Crow segregation laws that had angered and puzzled her since she was a young child.
-
-
The funny yet touching story of women leders!
- By Talia on 02-06-12
By: Phillip Hoose
-
While the World Watched
- A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age During the Civil Rights Movement
- By: Carolyn Maull McKinstry
- Narrated by: Felicia Bullock
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fifteen-year-old Carolyn Maull McKinstry was just a few feet away when the Klan - planted bomb that killed four of her friends exploded in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history…and the turning point in a young girl's life.
-
-
Look Back and Live With Greater Understanding
- By jerrie Will on 05-07-21
-
The Year That Broke Politics
- Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968
- By: Luke A. Nichter
- Narrated by: Kent Klineman
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The 1968 presidential race was a contentious battle between Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Republican Richard Nixon, and former Alabama governor George Wallace. The United States was reeling from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy and was bitterly divided on the Vietnam War and domestic issues, including civil rights and rising crime. Drawing on previously unexamined archives and numerous interviews, Luke A. Nichter upends the conventional understanding of the campaign.
-
-
Stilted and sibilant
- By K. W. on 08-05-24
By: Luke A. Nichter
-
Stars of Alabama
- A Novel by Sean of the South
- By: Sean Dietrich
- Narrated by: Sean Dietrich
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When 15-year-old Marigold becomes pregnant amid the Great Depression, she is rejected by her family and forced to fend for herself. And when she loses her baby in the forest, her whole world turns upside down. She’s even more distraught upon discovering she has an inexplicable power that makes her both beautiful and terrifying - and something of a local legend. Meanwhile, migrant workers Vern and Paul discover a violet-eyed baby and take it upon themselves to care for her.
-
-
Wow! How have I not heard of this?!?
- By Wren on 01-05-20
By: Sean Dietrich
-
Watergate
- By: Garrett M. Graff
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy, Garrett M. Graff
- Length: 25 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early hours of June 17, 1972, a security guard named Frank Wills enters six words into the log book of the Watergate office complex that will change the course of history: 1:47 AM Found tape on doors; call police. The subsequent arrests of five men seeking to bug and burgle the Democratic National Committee offices—three of them Cuban exiles, two of them former intelligence operatives—quickly unravels a web of scandal that ultimately ends a presidency and forever alters views of moral authority and leadership.
-
-
Elucidating
- By J.B. on 02-23-22
By: Garrett M. Graff
-
Say I'm Dead
- A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets, and Love
- By: E. Dolores Johnson
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fearful of prison time - or lynching - for violating Indiana’s anti-miscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson's Black father and White mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry in Buffalo. Her mother simply vanished, evading an FBI and police search that ended with the declaration to her family that she was the victim of foul play, either dead or sold into white slavery.
-
-
Deeply meaningful important read
- By A.M.Rousseau on 12-21-21
-
Happiness Falls (Good Morning America Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Angie Kim
- Narrated by: Shannon Tyo, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Thomas Pruyn, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything—which is why she isn’t initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don’t return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia’s brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.
-
-
A mixed review, but recommend
- By Andrea B. on 09-07-23
By: Angie Kim
-
The Warmth of Other Suns
- The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
-
-
Superior non-fiction
- By Lila on 05-20-11
By: Isabel Wilkerson
-
Mad Honey
- A Novel
- By: Jodi Picoult, Jennifer Finney Boylan
- Narrated by: Carrie Coon, Key Taw, Jodi Picoult, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising their beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined that she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in and taking over her father’s beekeeping business. Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start.
-
-
Good writing but...
- By Suzanna on 10-08-22
By: Jodi Picoult, and others
-
Go Set a Watchman
- A Novel
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Reese Witherspoon
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An historic literary event: the publication of a newly discovered novel, the earliest known work from Harper Lee, the beloved, best-selling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014.
-
-
To Kill A Mockingbird vs Go Set A Watchman
- By Sara on 07-15-15
By: Harper Lee
-
Our Missing Hearts
- A Novel
- By: Celeste Ng
- Narrated by: Lucy Liu, Celeste Ng
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old. He doesn’t know what happened to her—only that her books have been banned—and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him.
-
-
Listen to the sample
- By Sunny White on 10-11-22
By: Celeste Ng
-
The Poisonwood Bible
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Dean Robertson
- Length: 15 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to Scripture - is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
-
-
Listen to the sample first!
- By Cheryl D on 07-30-08
-
The Personal Librarian
- By: Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps create a world-class collection.
-
-
A Treat For This Academic Librarian!
- By AlTonya on 07-14-21
By: Marie Benedict, and others
-
Olive Kitteridge
- Fiction
- By: Elizabeth Strout
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.
-
-
Depressing! Watse of a credit!
- By Amazon Customer on 10-28-19
By: Elizabeth Strout
-
Unsheltered
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brilliantly executed and compulsively listenable, Unsheltered is the story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum, as they navigate the challenges of surviving a world in the throes of major cultural shifts. In this mesmerizing story told in alternating chapters, Willa and Thatcher come to realize that though the future is uncertain, even unnerving, shelter can be found in the bonds of kindred - whether family or friends - and in the strength of the human spirit.
-
-
Spring for a professional narrator, please!
- By Gail D. on 11-05-18
-
Gracianna
- By: Trini Amador
- Narrated by: Trini Amador
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gracianna is inspired by true events in the life of Trini Amador’s great-grandmother, Gracianna Lasaga. As an adult, Amador was haunted by the vivid memory of finding a loaded German Luger tucked away in a nightstand while wandering his great-grandmother’s home in Southern California. He was only four years old at the time. Decades later, Amador would delve into the remarkable odyssey of his Gracianna’s past, a road that led him to an incredible surprise. In Gracianna, Amador weaves fact and fiction to tell his great-grandmother’s story.
-
-
Different Narration
- By Kippy on 12-02-21
By: Trini Amador
-
Homeland Elegies
- A Novel
- By: Ayad Akhtar
- Narrated by: Ayad Akhtar
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.
-
-
a mishmash of political theory and porn
- By LC on 02-06-21
By: Ayad Akhtar
Related to this topic
-
Say I'm Dead
- A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets, and Love
- By: E. Dolores Johnson
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fearful of prison time - or lynching - for violating Indiana’s anti-miscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson's Black father and White mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry in Buffalo. Her mother simply vanished, evading an FBI and police search that ended with the declaration to her family that she was the victim of foul play, either dead or sold into white slavery.
-
-
Deeply meaningful important read
- By A.M.Rousseau on 12-21-21
-
A Mighty Long Way
- My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School
- By: Carlotta Walls Lanier
- Narrated by: Peter Fernandez, Lizan Mitchell
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1951, Carlotta Walls Lanier was one of the nine African-American students to integrate Little Rock High School, and the first to earn a diploma. Here she provides a firsthand account of her experiences - including the bombing that rocked her home, the constant threats she and her classmates faced, and the pressure and bullying her parents endured.
-
-
Very insightful book
- By karen feek on 01-05-21
-
Lady Bird
- A Biography of Mrs. Johnson
- By: Jan Jarboe Russell
- Narrated by: Andrea Gallo
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A revealing biography of Lady Bird Johnson with startling new insights into her marriage to Lyndon Baines Johnson and her unexpectedly strong impact on his presidency. Long obscured by her husband's shadow, Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson emerges in this first comprehensive biography as a figure of surprising influence and the centering force for LBJ, a man who suffered from extreme mood swings and desperately needed someone to help control his darker impulses.
-
-
Do not waste an audible credit
- By Sandra B. on 10-15-23
-
The Yellow House
- By: Sarah M. Broom
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1961, Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant - the postwar optimism seemed assured. A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities.
-
-
Great book. I wish the pictures had been included.
- By Lindsay on 02-28-20
By: Sarah M. Broom
-
Eleanor in the Village
- By: Jan Jarboe Russell
- Narrated by: Samantha Desz
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A captivating blend of personal history detailing Eleanor’s struggle with issues of marriage, motherhood, financial independence, and femininity, and a vibrant portrait of one of the most famous neighborhoods in the world, this unique work examines the ways that the sensibility, mood, and various inhabitants of the neighborhood influenced the First Lady’s perception of herself and shaped her political views over four decades, up to her death in 1962.
-
-
Grabs your attention
- By Amanda Hodges on 05-13-21
-
Eleanor
- By: David Michaelis
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 19 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the first single-volume cradle-to-grave portrait in six decades, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis delivers a stunning account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarkable life of transformation. An orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she converted her Gilded Age childhood of denial and secrecy into an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin Franklin. Franklin Roosevelt transformed Eleanor from a settlement house volunteer on New York’s Lower East Side into a matching partner in New York’s most important power couple in a generation.
-
-
Stands apart from other biographies of ER
- By Debra Malone on 11-20-20
By: David Michaelis
-
Say I'm Dead
- A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets, and Love
- By: E. Dolores Johnson
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fearful of prison time - or lynching - for violating Indiana’s anti-miscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson's Black father and White mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry in Buffalo. Her mother simply vanished, evading an FBI and police search that ended with the declaration to her family that she was the victim of foul play, either dead or sold into white slavery.
-
-
Deeply meaningful important read
- By A.M.Rousseau on 12-21-21
-
A Mighty Long Way
- My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School
- By: Carlotta Walls Lanier
- Narrated by: Peter Fernandez, Lizan Mitchell
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1951, Carlotta Walls Lanier was one of the nine African-American students to integrate Little Rock High School, and the first to earn a diploma. Here she provides a firsthand account of her experiences - including the bombing that rocked her home, the constant threats she and her classmates faced, and the pressure and bullying her parents endured.
-
-
Very insightful book
- By karen feek on 01-05-21
-
Lady Bird
- A Biography of Mrs. Johnson
- By: Jan Jarboe Russell
- Narrated by: Andrea Gallo
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A revealing biography of Lady Bird Johnson with startling new insights into her marriage to Lyndon Baines Johnson and her unexpectedly strong impact on his presidency. Long obscured by her husband's shadow, Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson emerges in this first comprehensive biography as a figure of surprising influence and the centering force for LBJ, a man who suffered from extreme mood swings and desperately needed someone to help control his darker impulses.
-
-
Do not waste an audible credit
- By Sandra B. on 10-15-23
-
The Yellow House
- By: Sarah M. Broom
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1961, Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant - the postwar optimism seemed assured. A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities.
-
-
Great book. I wish the pictures had been included.
- By Lindsay on 02-28-20
By: Sarah M. Broom
-
Eleanor in the Village
- By: Jan Jarboe Russell
- Narrated by: Samantha Desz
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A captivating blend of personal history detailing Eleanor’s struggle with issues of marriage, motherhood, financial independence, and femininity, and a vibrant portrait of one of the most famous neighborhoods in the world, this unique work examines the ways that the sensibility, mood, and various inhabitants of the neighborhood influenced the First Lady’s perception of herself and shaped her political views over four decades, up to her death in 1962.
-
-
Grabs your attention
- By Amanda Hodges on 05-13-21
-
Eleanor
- By: David Michaelis
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 19 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the first single-volume cradle-to-grave portrait in six decades, acclaimed biographer David Michaelis delivers a stunning account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s remarkable life of transformation. An orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she converted her Gilded Age childhood of denial and secrecy into an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin Franklin. Franklin Roosevelt transformed Eleanor from a settlement house volunteer on New York’s Lower East Side into a matching partner in New York’s most important power couple in a generation.
-
-
Stands apart from other biographies of ER
- By Debra Malone on 11-20-20
By: David Michaelis
-
The Warmth of Other Suns
- The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
- By: Isabel Wilkerson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
-
-
Superior non-fiction
- By Lila on 05-20-11
By: Isabel Wilkerson
-
While the World Watched
- A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age During the Civil Rights Movement
- By: Carolyn Maull McKinstry
- Narrated by: Felicia Bullock
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fifteen-year-old Carolyn Maull McKinstry was just a few feet away when the Klan - planted bomb that killed four of her friends exploded in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history…and the turning point in a young girl's life.
-
-
Look Back and Live With Greater Understanding
- By jerrie Will on 05-07-21
-
My Grandfather's Son
- A Memoir
- By: Clarence Thomas
- Narrated by: Clarence Thomas
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.
-
-
Wonderful read
- By Amazon Customer on 10-17-21
By: Clarence Thomas
-
Reclamation
- Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant's Search for Her Family's Lasting Legacy
- By: Gayle Jessup White
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ family explores America’s racial reckoning through the prism of her ancestors - both the enslaver and the enslaved.
-
-
Slow start, eventually a worthwhile story
- By ChocolateDweller on 12-17-21
-
My Vanishing Country
- A Memoir
- By: Bakari Sellers
- Narrated by: Bakari Sellers
- Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What J. D. Vance did for Appalachia with Hillbilly Elegy, CNN analyst and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history Bakari Sellers does for the rural South, in this important book that illuminates the lives of America’s forgotten Black working-class men and women. Part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis, My Vanishing Country is an eye-opening journey through the South's past, present, and future.
-
-
What America Needs NOW!!!
- By Unknown on 05-22-20
By: Bakari Sellers
-
Lady Bird Johnson
- An Oral History
- By: Michael L. Gillette
- Narrated by: Corinna May
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over a span of 18 years, Lady Bird Johnson recorded 47 oral history interviews with Michael Gillette and his colleagues. These conversations, just released in 2011, form the heart of Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History, an intimate story of a shy young country girl's transformation into one of America's most effective and admired First Ladies.
-
-
Fantastic
- By Syd Young on 06-01-19
-
What It Takes
- The Way to the White House
- By: Richard Ben Cramer
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 54 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An American Iliad in the guise of contemporary political reportage, What It Takes penetrates the mystery at the heart of all presidential campaigns: How do presumably ordinary people acquire that mixture of ambition, stamina, and pure shamelessness that makes a true candidate? As he recounts the frenzied course of the 1988 presidential race, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer comes up with the answers, in a book that is vast, exhaustively researched, exhilarating, and sometimes appalling in its revelations.
-
-
Great political book
- By Hebern on 09-11-20
-
The Other Madisons
- The Lost History of a President's Black Family
- By: Bettye Kearse
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Other Madisons, Bettye Kearse - a descendant of a slave named Coreen and, according to oral tradition, President James Madison - finally shares her family story, exploring legacy, race, and the powerful consequences of telling the whole truth.
-
-
Enlightening
- By D C on 08-24-20
By: Bettye Kearse
-
A Wild and Precious Life
- A Memoir
- By: Edie Windsor, Joshua Lyon
- Narrated by: Donna Postel, Joshua Lyon
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this memoir, which she began before passing away in 2017 and completed by her co-writer, Edie recounts her childhood in Philadelphia, her realization that she was a lesbian, and her active social life in Greenwich Village's electrifying underground gay scene during the 1950s. Edie was also one of a select group of trailblazing women in computing, working her way up the ladder at IBM and achieving their highest technical ranking while developing software.
-
-
🏳️🌈 Wow! 🏳️🌈
- By Natalia Zimnoch on 10-15-19
By: Edie Windsor, and others
-
Alburquerque
- By: Rudolfo Anaya
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Abrán González always knew he was different. Called a coyote because of his fair skin, the kid from Barelas found escape through boxing and became one of the youngest Golden Gloves champs. But the arrival of a letter from a dying woman turns his entire life into a lie. The revelation that he was adopted makes him feel like an orphan and sends him on a quest to find his birth father.
-
-
Alburquerque
- By Paul Hernandez on 04-29-20
By: Rudolfo Anaya
-
The Song and the Silence
- A Story About Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright
- By: Yvette Johnson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"Have to keep that smile", said Booker Wright in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time Wright was a waiter in a Whites-only restaurant and a local business owner who would become an unwitting icon of the civil rights movement. For he did the unthinkable: Before a national audience, he described what life was truly like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.
-
-
Exceeded every expectation
- By ZeeJ84 on 05-23-21
By: Yvette Johnson
-
A Mighty Long Way
- My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School
- By: Carlotta Walls LaNier, Lisa Frazier Page, Bill Clinton - foreword
- Narrated by: Carlotta Walls LaNier
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When 14-year-old Carlotta Walls walked up the stairs of Little Rock Central High School on September 25, 1957, she and eight other Black students only wanted to make it to class. But the journey of the “Little Rock Nine”, as they came to be known, would lead the nation on an even longer and much more turbulent path, one that would challenge prevailing attitudes, break down barriers, and forever change the landscape of America.
-
-
Disappointing
- By SWF in Minneapolis on 04-27-24
By: Carlotta Walls LaNier, and others
What listeners say about The Broken Road
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Katia
- 02-08-21
Mispronunciations are shocking
The number of mispronunciations is shocking. I understand the narrator is purposely using a Southern accent, but she blatantly mispronounces numerous words.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Griffin Mckay
- 02-18-20
Good Book, Subpar Narration
It's so interesting to hear Kennedy's point-of-view about her father, former Alabama governor George Wallace. Kennedy does not shy away from acknowledging his faults and foibles nor his negative place in the civil rights movement. The reader also sees her fervent desire to transcend her father's words and actions. At the same time, Wallace was her father and so, of course, Kennedy does have positive feelings toward him as well, but still is careful not to excuse his detrimental behaviors.
I loved how each chapter started with a quote. The book follows Kennedy's life, but mostly focuses on her father and her relationship with him.
The narration of this book, as other reviewers have noted, can be distracting at times. I was not surprised to learn that the reader, Caitlin Thornburn, is British because although she reads the book in an American (and sometimes American southern) accent, some words such as "dynasty," "lever," and "been" are said in a British way and then she had some weird pronunciations for words such as "penchant," "obscenities," "carbuncle," and "referee," among others. Her most glaring mispronunciations were "Tuskagee" and actor Gary Sinise's last name. She has a pleasant voice and otherwise reads fine, but the her narration could be distracting at times, and I was surprised that these errors were not pointed out in production.
The book itself is good.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- PJ
- 01-09-20
An incredible story butchered by a horrible narration
Peggy Sue Wallace Kennedy writes a story that is both honorable and remarkable. Her ability to understand the politics of her father and mother and her willingness and fortitude to right those wrongs with past leaders of the civil rights movement is an incredible journey.
With regard to this Audiobook, this wonderful story is butchered with the worst narration I have heard in over 250 Audible titles. Caitlin Thorburn butchers the English language to a point where simple words and phrases need to be replayed for listener understanding.
Although I highly recommend this book the listener must truly be an active listener so that the narration does not ruin the beautiful story told within.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Margaret Taylor
- 07-18-20
Narrator?
This was a compelling book and a must read for the times. However, the narrator left much to be desired. Much.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 04-26-20
I wish the author had been the narrator !
I am from Clayton, Alabama, three years younger than the author, with many memories of her and her family. I found this narrative to be in keeping with what I had been told as an adult from people who were there during my childhood. The story is inspiring, but the mispronunciation of towns in Alabama from Clio to Mobile to Montgomery and Tuskegee was really off- putting, and at times almost laughable. The pronunciation of many names wears also mangled. I tried not to let it detract from the quality of the writing.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- ljeff205
- 02-13-20
Such a great story, but who decides on the reader?
The reading of this is such a disservice to such a great story by a wonderful lady. Pronunciation is horrible. This is a truly Southern book, however, the narration is often very distracting. Read the book rather than listen.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ann Miller
- 03-26-20
moBEEEL!
A fresh account of an enigmatic historical figure made torturous by the horrible narration. I started keeping a mental list of the mispronunciations but it got too long and I gave up. Her “southern accent” was borderline offensive.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- jim
- 01-26-20
The Broken Road-- view from an Alabamian
THE BROKEN ROAD: JOURNEY TO RECONCILIATION is a very good book. I grew up at the same time Peggy Wallace Kennedy did. The events in the book, as I remember, were exactly as she described. I think most of us who grew up in Alabama but have traveled widely have had their own "reconciliation" of their childhood.
Listening to the Audible recording was most difficult since the reader did not know pronunciations of towns and cities in Alabama. I think this was an unfortunate because I cringed as Mobile, Birmingham, Clio, and Tuskegee, among others, were read. I assume if you are not from Alabama or the South pronunciation would not be an issue. The book is worth a read.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sally Smith
- 04-05-20
Mispronunciations of important Alabama places
This book is the author’s remembering of her life’s events. It is her story and not up to me to make comments about it. But the reading had so many mispronunciations of places in the state that is was difficult to hear the story. The reader’s voice was lovely but the author should not have allowed those mispronunciations to remain. I would not recommend the audio version.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Brenda Kozakis
- 01-23-21
Narrator makes this audiobook a challenge to finish
Enjoyed the story but the narration was awful. Mispronunciations were the least of it. Her poor attempts to voice children, men, and others from that time period were distracting from the story. To top it off, halfway through the book, she changes the way she pronounces Peggy’s names for her mother and grandmother. How does this not get corrected before publishing the audiobook?
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!