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The Family
- Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century
- Narrated by: Geoffrey Cantor
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
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Publisher's summary
The author of the The Children's Blizzard delivers an epic work of 20th-century history through the riveting story of one extraordinary Jewish family.
With cinematic power and beauty, best-selling author David Laskin limns his own genealogy to tell the spellbinding tale of the three drastically different paths that his family members took across the span of 150 years.
In the latter half of the 19th century Laskin's great-great-grandfather, a Torah scribe named Shimon Dov HaKohen, raised six children with his wife, Beyle, in a yeshiva town at the western fringe of the Russian empire. The pious couple expected their sons and daughters to carry the family tradition into future generations. But the social and political upheavals of the 20th century decreed otherwise.
The HaKohen family split off into three branches. One branch emigrated to America and founded the fabulously successful Maidenform Bra Company; one branch went to Palestine as pioneers and participated in the contentious birth of the state of Israel; and the third branch remained in Europe and suffered the Holocaust.
In tracing the roots of his own family, Laskin captures the epic sweep of 20th-century history. A modern-day scribe, Laskin honors the traditions, the lives, and the choices of his ancestors: revolutionaries and entrepreneurs, scholars and farmers, tycoons and truck drivers. The Family is an eloquent masterwork of true grandeur - a deeply personal, dramatic, and universal account of a people caught in a cataclysmic time in world history.
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Critic reviews
"The Family is as rich and poignant as any novel, only all true and impeccably researched.” (Erik Larson, New York Times best-selling author of In the Garden of the Beasts)
"A true triumph of historical storytelling.... David Laskin is a magical searcher into the past.... His generations of Cohens could be your Johansens, Smiths, Lopezes, Schmidts, O’Houlihans, even my Scottish peasant forebears.... The Family will touch you, heart and soul." (Ivan Doig, National Book Award finalist for This House of Sky)
"I read The Family without stopping, except sometimes to weep (and occasionally to chuckle). Through the stories of members of David Laskin’s large, dispersing family, history sharpens into individual lives and deaths and losses and becomes personal and vivid and tragic." (Edith Pearlman, National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist for Binocular Vision)
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Remember Us is a look back at the lost world of the shtetl: a wise Zayde offering prophetic and profound words to his grandson, the rich experience of Shabbos, and the treasure of a loving family. All this is torn apart with the arrival of the Holocaust, beginning a crucible fraught with twists and turns so unpredictable and surprising that they defy any attempt to find reason within them. Through the eyes of 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Martin Small, we learn that these priceless memories that are too painful to remember are also too painful to forget.
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A Tragic and Rich Life, With Lessons For All
- By still reading on 03-17-16
By: Vic Shayne, and others
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Echoes from the Holocaust
- A Memoir
- By: Mira Ryczke Kimmelman
- Narrated by: Susan Marlowe
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of a Jewish seed exporter, the author was born Mira Ryczke in 1923 in a suburb of the Baltic seaport of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). Her childhood was happy, and she learned to cherish her faith and heritage. Through the 1930s, Mira's family remained in the Danzig area despite a changing political climate that was compelling many friends and neighbors to leave. With the Polish capitulation to Germany in the autumn of 1939, however, Mira and her family were forced from their home.
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4.5* - memoir of a survivor
- By Christine Newton on 06-09-17
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Schindler's List
- By: Thomas Keneally
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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An “extraordinary” (New York Review of Books) novel based on the true story of how German war profiteer and factory director Oskar Schindler came to save more Jews from the gas chambers than any other single person during World War II. In this milestone of Holocaust literature, Thomas Keneally, author of The Book of Science and Antiquities and The Daughter of Mars, uses the actual testimony of the Schindlerjuden — Schindler’s Jews — to brilliantly portray the courage and cunning of a good man in the midst of unspeakable evil.
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really well done
- By Neil H. Greenberg on 03-09-19
By: Thomas Keneally
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Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden
- Two Sisters Separated by China’s Civil War
- By: Zhuqing Li
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Scions of a once-great southern Chinese family that produced the tutor of the last emperor, Jun and Hong were each other’s best friends until, in their twenties, they were separated at the end of the Chinese Civil War. One became a model Communist, the other a model capitalist. On Taiwan, Jun married a Nationalist general, established a trading company, and emigrated to the United States. On the Communist mainland, Hong built her medical career under a cloud of suspicion about her family and survived two waves of “re-education” before she was acclaimed for her achievements.
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Wonderful Story of a Family’s Survival Through Political Change…
- By Marie G. on 04-12-23
By: Zhuqing Li
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Country of Ash
- A Jewish Doctor in Poland, 1939-1945
- By: Edward Reicher, Magda Bogin - translator
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Country of Ash is the starkly compelling, original chronicle of a Jewish doctor who miraculously survived near-certain death, first inside the Lodz and Warsaw ghettoes, where he was forced to treat the Gestapo, then on the Aryan side of Warsaw, where he hid under numerous disguises. He clandestinely recorded the terrible events he witnessed, but his manuscript disappeared during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After the war, reunited with his wife and young daughter, he rewrote his story.
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Excellent
- By valia on 07-12-15
By: Edward Reicher, and others
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Dutch Girl
- Audrey Hepburn and World War II
- By: Robert Matzen, Luca Dotti - foreword
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty-five years after her passing, Audrey Hepburn remains the most beloved of all Hollywood stars, known as much for her role as UNICEF ambassador as for films like Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Several biographies have chronicled her stardom, but none has covered her intense experiences through five years of Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. According to her son, Luca Dotti, "The war made my mother who she was."
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Good story, poor narration
- By sas on 07-09-19
By: Robert Matzen, and others
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The Daughter of Auschwitz
- My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope
- By: Tova Friedman, Malcolm Brabant
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful memoir by one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, Tova Friedman, following her childhood growing up during the Holocaust and surviving a string of near-death experiences in a Jewish ghetto, a Nazi labor camp, and Auschwitz.
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Very interesting and well told
- By Tracy F. on 03-31-23
By: Tova Friedman, and others
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Four Perfect Pebbles
- A Holocaust Story
- By: Lila Perl, Marion Blumenthal Lazan
- Narrated by: Cheryl Stern, A. C. Fellner
- Length: 2 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Marion Blumenthal Lazan's unforgettable memoir recalls the devastating years that shaped her childhood. Following Hitler's rise to power, the Blumenthal family - father, mother, Marion, and her brother, Albert - were trapped in Nazi Germany. They managed eventually to get to Holland, but soon thereafter it was occupied by the Nazis. For the next six and a half years the Blumenthals were forced to live in refugee, transit, and prison camps that included Westerbork in Holland and the notorious Bergen-Belsen in Germany.
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A Wonderful/Terrible Story
- By EmilyA on 10-20-11
By: Lila Perl, and others
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Secondhand Time
- The Last of the Soviets
- By: Svetlana Alexievich, Bela Shayevich - translator
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin, Mark Bramhall, Cassandra Campbell, and others
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the Nobel Prize, it cited her for inventing "a new kind of literary genre", describing her work as "a history of emotions - a history of the soul". Alexievich's distinctive documentary style, combining extended individual monologues with a collage of voices, records the stories of ordinary women and men who are rarely given the opportunity to speak, whose experiences are often lost in the official histories of the nation.
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The Heart, Soul & Iron Fist Of Russia
- By Sara on 02-22-17
By: Svetlana Alexievich, and others
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Brothers of the Gun
- A Memoir of the Syrian War
- By: Marwan Hisham, Molly Crabapple
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2011, Marwan Hisham and his two friends - fellow working-class college students Nael and Tareq - joined the first protests of the Arab Spring in Syria, in response to a recent massacre. Arm in arm they marched, poured Coca-Cola into one another’s eyes to blunt the effects of tear gas, ran from the security forces, and cursed the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad. It was ecstasy. A long-bottled revolution was finally erupting, and freedom from a brutal dictator seemed, at last, imminent.
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Perfect with Peter Ganim
- By Anonymous User on 06-14-24
By: Marwan Hisham, and others
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Pearl Buck in China
- Journey to The Good Earth
- By: Hilary Spurling
- Narrated by: Hilary Spurling
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of the much honored two-volume biography of Henri Matisse unearths the life and work of the Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winner Pearl Buck, whose novels in the 1930's and 40's were the first written for a Western audience to describe ordinary life in the still secret China of the late 19th and early 20th century.
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Very good
- By M. Brandman on 06-15-10
By: Hilary Spurling
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Mussolini's Daughter
- The Most Dangerous Woman in Europe
- By: Caroline Moorehead
- Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Edda Mussolini was the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s oldest and favorite child. At 19, she was married to Count Galleazzo Ciano, Il Duce’s Minister for Foreign Affairs during the 1930s, the most turbulent decade in Italy’s fascist history. In the years preceding World War II, Edda ruled over Italy’s aristocratic families and the cultured and middle classes while selling Fascism on the international stage. How a young woman wielded such control is the heart of Moorehead’s fascinating history.
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Mind Blowing
- By Greg on 01-27-23
What listeners say about The Family
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Brair Rabbit
- 11-11-16
A heartbreaking yet entertaining story
My family history would be considered gentilian. Prior to listening to this fabulous book I had a general knowledge of the horrible events that occurred. It was so interesting to hear a more intimate version of the lives of this family.
I'm thankful that the author took the time to research his family's story and share it with those lucky enough to partake.
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-24-24
The author’s personal discoveries exploring his family, his insights, his relationships to all of the family and Judaism.
What a great researcher and storyteller! Incredible writing, compelling, sadly graphic, and revealing. The author’s family is so similar to my lost relatives from that area. I cherish learning what likely happened to them…no words or history was ever talked about or shared.
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- SophiesPlace # 2
- 01-14-22
Incredible tale. Incredible research.
The story is so well written I feel I was there witnessing history. Highly Recommended.
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- L. J. Mace
- 12-01-15
Engaging and beautifully narrated, I loved it!
Engaging and beautifully narrated, I loved it! I was hooked from the first moment and every moment after
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- Friendly
- 11-24-14
Meaningfully woven story
If you could sum up The Family in three words, what would they be?
Significant historical treasure
What other book might you compare The Family to and why?
Cain & Abel but I like nonfiction much better!
What do you think the narrator could have done better?
This is my only criticism. He should have stated "Chapter One," "Chapter Two," etc.
between each branch of the story. I'm sure it would have been more understandable
if it were on the page instead of listening. He went from one family to the next without a break and it took a lot of concentration to remember each name of each family member and what country they were in.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
It warmed and tore my heart at the same time!
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1 person found this helpful
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- galina ostromogolsky
- 12-31-21
History through lives of members of the Jewish family
Emotionally rich, dedicated to historical facts and
Jewish traditions.
Story that will find place in the heart of anybody who wants to learn about Russia, America And Israel
Full of humor and sadness,
Still a beautiful story.
Excellent narration
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- grammargirl
- 11-11-13
A Must Read
What made the experience of listening to The Family the most enjoyable?
David Lasken has written a saga of a family's hard work, enduring love, heartbreak and fate. This true story encompasses life's experiences that are relevant to every individual. The reader feels as though he has made the journey along with this family and one embraces each member and feels immersed in his or her story.
What did you like best about this story?
The tone and the even-handedness of the author in telling the story.
What about Geoffrey Cantor’s performance did you like?
Was able to sweep you up and engage the listener as if this was really his story.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The epilogue was immensely moving.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Daryl
- 05-13-14
Unforgetable!
What made the experience of listening to The Family the most enjoyable?
I enjoyed the author's look into his family background with a riveting eye to detail. He displayed his sense of humor and his penchant for fantastic research, compiling a compulsively readable account of three branches of his ancestry. There are many players on this stage, and with such a large canvas it is occasionally hard to keep track, but what a wonderful chronicle!
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Family?
The early immigrant experience in new York, Sonya's risky venture to Palestine, the horrors of the Holocaust...
Any additional comments?
This book and performance were fantastic! My only quibble about the audio is related more to post-production than the narrator himself. There were several passages - only a sentence or two - where the narrator's voice was pitched low, and the sound quality was quite obviously different.. It throws one for an auditory loop.
This aside, The Family is a wonderful performance and ancestry.
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2 people found this helpful
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- susan
- 12-07-13
great telling,feeling,huge success,voice abit fast
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
yes, it's a must, hard to ignore either the voice or the content, masses of facts and reminders, impressive organisation
What did you like best about this story?
the dirth of adjectives and adverbs makes for a strong message
Have you listened to any of Geoffrey Cantor’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
no
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
no
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2 people found this helpful
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- Elizabeth
- 06-18-14
Great potential, but doesn't quite make it
This book looks at three branches of the same Jewish family from pre-WWII Europe and the three routes they take--emigrating to America, Palestine, and staying in Europe. Each branch had a different outcome. The book is the result of the author's research into his own family. I liked, but didn't love, the book. I had a hard time tracking some of the family members and their stories, and I felt the writing was, at times, cumbersome.
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2 people found this helpful