The Discovery of France
A Historical Geography
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Narrated by:
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Derek Perkins
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By:
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Graham Robb
About this listen
A New York Times Notable Book, Publishers Weekly Best Book, Slate Best Book, and Booklist Editor's Choice
A narrative of exploration - full of strange landscapes and even stranger inhabitants - that explains the enduring fascination of France. While Gustave Eiffel was changing the skyline of Paris, large parts of France were still terra incognita. Even in the age of railways and newspapers, France was a land of ancient tribal divisions, prehistoric communication networks, and pre-Christian beliefs. French itself was a minority language.
Graham Robb describes that unknown world in arresting narrative detail. He recounts the epic journeys of mapmakers, scientists, soldiers, administrators, and intrepid tourists, of itinerant workers, pilgrims, and herdsmen with their millions of migratory domestic animals. We learn how France was explored, charted, and colonized, and how the imperial influence of Paris was gradually extended throughout a kingdom of isolated towns and villages.
The Discovery of France explains how the modern nation came to be and how poorly understood that nation still is today. Above all, it shows how much of France - past and present - remains to be discovered.
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Conquistadors
- By: Michael Wood
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
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Following in the footsteps of the greatest Spanish adventurers, Michael Wood retraces the path of the conquistadors from Amazonia to Lake Titicaca, and from the deserts of North Mexico to the heights of Machu Picchu. As he travels the same routes as Hernán Cortés, Francisco, and Gonzalo Pizarro, Wood describes the dramatic events that accompanied the epic sixteenth-century Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires.
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Horrific anti-European bias
- By Anonymous User on 08-30-20
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Life and Death in the Andes
- On the Trail of Bandits, Heroes, and Revolutionaries
- By: Kim MacQuarrie
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 16 hrs and 49 mins
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The Andes Mountains are the world's longest mountain chain, linking most of the countries in South America. Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and author Kim MacQuarrie takes us on a historical journey through this unique region, bringing fresh insight and contemporary connections to such fabled characters as Charles Darwin, Pablo Escobar, Che Guevara, and many others.
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Another Great by Kim MacQuarrie
- By Than on 03-25-24
By: Kim MacQuarrie
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Iberia
- By: James A. Michener
- Narrated by: Larry McKeever
- Length: 37 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Spain is an immemorial land like no other, one that James A. Michener, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and celebrated citizen of the world, came to love as his own. Iberia is Michener’s enduring nonfiction tribute to his cherished second home. In the fresh and vivid prose that is his trademark, he not only reveals the celebrated history of bullfighters and warrior kings, painters and processions, cathedrals and olive orchards, he also shares the intimate, often hidden country he came to know, where the congeniality of living souls is thrust against the dark weight of history.
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Michener's Masterpiece
- By ahusmc on 09-14-17
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A Crack in the Edge of the World
- America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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San Francisco Earthquake that leveled a city symbolic of America's relentless western expansion. Simon Winchester has also fashioned an enthralling and informative informative look at the tumultuous subterranean world that produces earthquakes, the planet's most sudden and destructive force. In the early morning hours of April 18, 1906, San Francisco and a string of towns to its north-northwest and the south-southeast were overcome by an enormous shaking that was compounded by the violent shocks of an earthquake, registering 8.25 on the Richter scale.
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7 Hours and 45 minutes . . .
- By Tim on 12-09-05
By: Simon Winchester
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The Trigger
- Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War
- By: Tim Butcher
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
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The Trigger tells the story of a young man who changed the world forever. It focuses on the drama of the incident itself by following Princip's journey. By retracing his steps from the feudal frontier village of his birth, through the mountains of the northern Balkans to the great plain city of Belgrade, and ultimately to Sarajevo, Tim Butcher illuminates our understanding of Princip and makes discoveries about him that have eluded historians for 100 years.
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Good, but not what I was looking for
- By Kendra on 07-08-14
By: Tim Butcher
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The Men Who United the States
- America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
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How did America become “one nation, indivisible”? What unified a growing number of disparate states into the modern country we recognize today? To answer these questions, Winchester follows in the footsteps of America’s most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators. Introducing the fascinating people who played a pivotal role in creating today’s United States, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree.
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Sarcastic
- By Cynthia Hartman on 06-16-16
By: Simon Winchester
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Lasso the Wind
- Away to the New West
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: John McLain
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Egan leads us on an unconventional, freewheeling tour: from America's oldest continuously inhabited community, the Ancoma Pueblo in New Mexico, to the high kitsch of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where London Bridge has been painstakingly rebuilt stone by stone; from the fragile beauty of Idaho's Bitterroot Range to the gross excess of Las Vegas, a city built as though in defiance of its arid environment.
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Narrator mispronounces everything
- By Catherine on 01-27-22
By: Timothy Egan
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Sovietistan
- Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan
- By: Erika Fatland
- Narrated by: Jill Rolls
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
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Overall
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Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan became free of the Soviet Union in 1991. But though they are new to modern statehood, this is a region rich in ancient history, culture, and landscapes unlike anywhere else in the world. Traveling alone, Erika Fatland is a true adventurer in every sense. In Sovietistan, she takes the listener on a compassionate and insightful journey to explore how their Soviet heritage has influenced these countries, with governments experimenting with both democracy and dictatorships.
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Outstanding book
- By George MP on 04-24-22
By: Erika Fatland
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King and Queen of Malibu
- The True Story of the Battle for Paradise
- By: David K. Randall
- Narrated by: Eric Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
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Story
Over a half century, Malibu went from an untamed ranch in the middle of nowhere to a paradise seeded with movie stars. Behind its transformation is the love story of Frederick and May Rindge. He was a Harvard-trained confidant of presidents; she grew up on a hardscrabble Midwestern farm; yet their unlikely bond would shape history.
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Detailed and interesting
- By SuperLuckyCat on 08-04-24
By: David K. Randall
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1491
- New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus' landing had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago; existed mainly in small nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas were, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last 30 years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.
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Exposes Non-Academic Audience to The Debate Between Ideas of Pre-Colombian America's
- By Christopher on 01-19-17
By: Charles C. Mann
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Making Haste from Babylon
- The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History
- By: Nick Bunker
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 18 hrs and 19 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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At the end of 1618, a blazing green star soared across the night sky over the northern hemisphere. From the Philippines to the Arctic, the comet became a sensation and a symbol, a warning of doom or a promise of salvation. Two years later, as the Pilgrims prepared to sail across the Atlantic on board the Mayflower, the atmosphere remained charged with fear and expectation. Men and women readied themselves for war, pestilence, or divine retribution. Against this background, and amid deep economic depression, the Pilgrims conceived their enterprise of exile.
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Excellent, detailed and eye-opening
- By David on 09-20-15
By: Nick Bunker
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Very well researched, but difficult to follow
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Good Goldsworthy, Not greatest
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needs a good editor.
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Overall
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Elaine Sciolino, the former Paris bureau chief of The New York Times, invites us on a tour of her favorite Parisian street, offering an homage to street life and the pleasures of Parisian living. While many cities suffer from the leveling effects of globalization, the rue des Martyrs maintains its distinct allure. On this street, the patron saint of France was beheaded and the Jesuits took their first vows.
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Not just for Paris lovers.
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A People’s History of the World
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Chris Harman describes the shape and course of human history as a narrative of ordinary people forming and re-forming complex societies in pursuit of common human goals. Interacting with the forces of technological change as well as the impact of powerful individuals and revolutionary ideas, these societies have engendered events familiar to every schoolchild-from the empires of antiquity to the world wars of the 20th century. In a bravura conclusion, Chris Harman exposes the reductive complacency of contemporary capitalism.
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Oh God avoid
- By Robert on 03-28-18
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The French Revolution
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The French Revolution casts a long shadow, one that reaches into our own time and influences our debates on freedom, equality, and authority. Yet it remains an elusive, perplexing historical event. Its significance morphs according to the sympathies of the viewer, who may see it as a series of gory tableaux, a regrettable slide into uncontrolled anarchy - or a radical reshaping of the political landscape. In this riveting new book, Ian Davidson provides a fresh look at this vital moment in European history. He reveals how it was an immensely complicated and multifaceted revolution....
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superficial; trite
- By David Hart on 04-25-19
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The Debatable Land
- The Lost World Between Scotland and England
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Two years ago, Graham Robb moved to a lonely house on the very edge of England, near the banks of a river that once marked the southern boundary of the legendary Debatable Land. The oldest detectable territorial division in Great Britain, the Debatable Land served as a buffer between Scotland and England. It was once the bloodiest region in the country, fought over by Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and James V. After most of its population was slaughtered or deported, it became the last part of Great Britain to be brought under the control of the state.
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A must read for Armstrongs
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What listeners say about The Discovery of France
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- allibrand
- 07-23-22
Anything Graham Robb writes is gold
Graham Robb brings France into a perspective like none other, couldn't stop listening. His depth of research and skill with storytelling keeps you engaged while bringing the reader history, economics, politics, anthropology in combination and nuance with new ways to see the past that always make you think vs. writing with an obvious bias.
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- Steve T Shaw
- 08-17-22
Fascinating History of France Warts and All
Fascinating history of France, the good and the bad. How the country became the wonderful beautiful place it is now. Also how the people became one from many different cultures.
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- Kindle Customer FB
- 07-05-24
Very interesting but…
While I quite recommend the book, I’ll also advise to take everything with a grain of salt. On more recent topics where I can judge, the author is very ideologically oriented, caricatural and arguably factually wrong. Which leaves me unsure of whether to trust the rest.
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- Scotty
- 07-31-21
Great history of the cultural formation of France
I read this to get an understanding of the historical and cultural context of France before going on vacation there. And it was exactly what I was looking for. It covers what life was like for normal people living in the regions of modern day France. It is not a history of important dates and kings and battles like a textbook would be.
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- Anna Noehre
- 12-22-23
Bien parlé et fascinant!
An established expert on French culture, author Graham Robb decides to do something new. He wants to render a view of French history that combines a richly place-based peasant worldview with outsider historical observations, from Julius Caesar to Charles de Gaulle.
The bicycle goes slowly, sensitive to changes in terrain, staying close to the earth. Lingering in dozens of regional "pays" [from Latin paga, meaning tribe] Robb evokes the ancient cycles of village life. Unlike the scholar's mentalized urban-world, identity here is tribal, xenophobic, and rooted in an earthy bond between humans and animals.
The result of Robb's wide-lens, compare-and-contrast exploration is a lively, insightful taste of the old sub-stratum. I listened several times because it was so engaging. And Robb's mixed-level method succeeds intellectually as well. By weaving in charming anecdotes, private journals, and government statistics, he paints a surprisingly clear picture of how the gens-du-pays - with much mistrust -- eventually became French. Or did they?
Elegantly narrated by Derek Perkins. Highly recommended.
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- Preston
- 11-24-21
Not what I expected…
Wanted to like this but it was kind of boring. I thought it would cover more history. It was basically about the daily lives of isolated French tribes and then how they eventually became connected by road and rail.
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- Moodini
- 04-11-21
Almost There
I loved the idea of a history of the ‘small folk’ of France, but the execution of the text didn’t quite get there.
Robb did an admirable job of compiling the history of a largely illiterate and overlooked people. There are some fascinating anecdotes and ‘facts’ in the book, but the narrative jumps from region to region then back again in a way that I found disorienting. This happens in chronology too, though that was easier to parse.
Sometimes I felt as if the story was on the brink of summiting to some greater point only to slip back to its starting position.
In the final chapter, Robb felt the need to highlight some tragic event in modern France and suggest how far France has to go in order to satisfy his utopic vision for it. This tiresome, but oh so fashionable, trope always sours my enjoyment of a book. It would be nice to actually put down a book and be able to draw my own conclusions rather than have a ‘lesson’ spoon-fed to me by a virtue signaling author who can’t figure out any other way to close a story.
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- Peggy
- 11-02-23
I learned a lot
I learned a lot of interesting things about France. It was hard to stay focused. The narrator was good.
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- Joshua L. Smart
- 12-31-23
Different
Was hoping for an intensive history of the founding of France to modern day. Instead, this was more of a historical nature guide that bounced around between the 18th to 19th century, always leaving wondering what was going on.
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