The Free World
Art and Thought in the Cold War
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Narrated by:
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David Colacci
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By:
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Louis Menand
About this listen
"Narrator David Colacci approaches this opinionated, engrossing audiobook with a practiced voice that lets its numerous stories tell themselves without fanfare...this audiobook is a monumental work." (AudioFile Magazine)
In his follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand offers a new intellectual and cultural history of the postwar years.
The Cold War was not just a contest of power. It was also about ideas, in the broadest sense - economic and political, artistic and personal. In The Free World, the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar and critic Louis Menand tells the story of American culture in the pivotal years from the end of World War II to Vietnam and shows how changing economic, technological, and social forces put their mark on creations of the mind.
How did elitism and an anti-totalitarian skepticism of passion and ideology give way to a new sensibility defined by freewheeling experimentation and loving the Beatles? How was the ideal of “freedom” applied to causes that ranged from anti-communism and civil rights to radical acts of self-creation via art and even crime? With the wit and insight familiar to listeners of The Metaphysical Club and his New Yorker essays, Menand takes us inside Hannah Arendt’s Manhattan, the Paris of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, Merce Cunningham and John Cage’s residencies at North Carolina’s Black Mountain College, and the Memphis studio where Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley created a new music for the American teenager. He examines the post-war vogue for French existentialism, structuralism and post-structuralism, the rise of abstract expressionism and pop art, Allen Ginsberg’s friendship with Lionel Trilling, James Baldwin’s transformation into a Civil Rights spokesman, Susan Sontag’s challenges to the New York Intellectuals, the defeat of obscenity laws, and the rise of the New Hollywood.
Stressing the rich flow of ideas across the Atlantic, he also shows how Europeans played a vital role in promoting and influencing American art and entertainment. By the end of the Vietnam era, the American government had lost the moral prestige it enjoyed at the end of the Second World War, but America’s once-despised culture had become respected and adored. With unprecedented verve and range, this book explains how that happened.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
©2021 Louis Menand (P)2021 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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There are many stories we can spin about previous ages, but which accounts get told? And by whom? Is there even such a thing as “objective” history? In this “witty, wise, and elegant” (The Spectator), book, Richard Cohen reveals how professional historians and other equally significant witnesses, such as the writers of the Bible, novelists, and political propagandists, influence what becomes the accepted record. Cohen argues, for example, that some historians are practitioners of “Bad History” and twist reality to glorify themselves or their country.
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Missing 20 pages from book
- By Rick, Austin on 04-23-22
By: Richard Cohen
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Goddess of the Market
- Ayn Rand and the American Right
- By: Jennifer Burns
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Burns highlights the two facets of Rand's work that make her a perennial draw for those on the right: Her promotion of capitalism, and her defense of limited government. Both sprang from her early, bitter experience of life under Communism, and became among the most deeply enduring of her messages, attracting a diverse audience of college students and intellectuals, business people and Republican Party activists, libertarians and conservatives.
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Unfortunate
- By Andrej Drapal on 03-14-18
By: Jennifer Burns
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Weimar Culture
- The Outsider as Insider
- By: Peter Gay
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1968, Weimar Culture is one of the masterworks of Peter Gay's distinguished career. A study of German culture between the two wars, the book brilliantly traces the rise of the artistic, literary, and musical culture that bloomed ever so briefly in the 1920s amid the chaos of Germany's tenuous post-World War I democracy, and crashed violently in the wake of Hitler's rise to power.
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Engaging book, terrible narrator
- By Beth Simone Noveck on 05-08-21
By: Peter Gay
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Parfit
- A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality
- By: David Edmonds
- Narrated by: Zeb Soanes
- Length: 13 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Derek Parfit (1942–2017) is the most famous philosopher most people have never heard of. Widely regarded as one of the greatest moral thinkers of the past hundred years, Parfit was anything but a public intellectual. Yet his ideas have shaped the way philosophers think about things that affect us all: equality, altruism, what we owe to future generations, and even what it means to be a person. In Parfit, David Edmonds presents the first biography of an intriguing, obsessive, and eccentric genius.
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Loved it
- By Anna Karenina on 07-05-23
By: David Edmonds
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The Image, 50th Anniversary Edition
- A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
- By: Daniel J. Boorstin, Douglas Rushkoff - afterword
- Narrated by: Timothy Danko
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1962, this wonderfully provocative book introduced the notion of "pseudo-events" - events such as press conferences and presidential debates, which are manufactured solely in order to be reported - and the contemporary definition of celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness". Since then Daniel J. Boorstin's prophetic vision of an America inundated by its own illusions has become an essential resource for any listeners who wants to distinguish the manifold deceptions of our culture from its few enduring truths.
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Boorstin’s deep Conservative mindset reaches through every example in this book.
- By Christine on 10-12-20
By: Daniel J. Boorstin, and others
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Author in Chief
- The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote
- By: Craig Fehrman
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In Craig Fehrman’s groundbreaking work of history, Author in Chief, the story of America’s presidents and their books opens a rich new window into presidential biography. From volumes lost to history - Calvin Coolidge’s Autobiography, which was one of the most widely discussed titles of 1929 - to ones we know and love - Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, which was very nearly never published - Fehrman unearths countless insights about the presidents through their literary works.
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Fascinating
- By Jean on 03-12-20
By: Craig Fehrman
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The Fire Is upon Us
- James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America
- By: Nicholas Buccola
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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On February 18, 1965, an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. The topic was "the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro", and no one who has seen the debate can soon forget it. Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is upon Us is the first book to tell the full story of the event.
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Sadly, the story is timeless.
- By Edward P. Cerne on 01-17-20
By: Nicholas Buccola
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Weimar Germany
- Promise and Tragedy, Weimar Centennial Edition
- By: Eric D. Weitz
- Narrated by: Robert G. Slade
- Length: 18 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Weimar Germany brings to life an era of unmatched creativity in the 20th century - one whose influence and inspiration still resonate today. Eric Weitz has written the authoritative history that this fascinating and complex period deserves, and he illuminates the uniquely progressive achievements and even greater promise of the Weimar Republic. Weimar Germany also shows that beneath its glossy veneer lay political turmoil that ultimately led to the demise of the republic and the rise of the radical right.
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Ended up returning this one
- By Amazon Customer on 04-22-21
By: Eric D. Weitz
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Genius & Anxiety
- How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947
- By: Norman Lebrecht
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 18 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it. In Genius & Anxiety, Lebrecht begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends in 1947, when Israel was founded. This robust, magnificent volume, beautifully designed, is an urgent and necessary celebration of Jewish genius and contribution.
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Post-anxiety
- By Amaze on 03-27-20
By: Norman Lebrecht
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Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely
- By: Andrew S. Curran
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world's first comprehensive Encyclopedie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity - for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality.
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lifelong coverage of his life.
- By Michael Daly on 03-22-21
By: Andrew S. Curran
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The Europeans
- Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 21 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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At the center of the book is a poignant love triangle: the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev; the Spanish prima donna Pauline Viardot, with whom Turgenev had a long and intimate relationship; and her husband Louis Viardot, an art critic, theater manager, and republican activist. Together, Turgenev and the Viardots acted as a kind of European cultural exchange - they either knew or crossed paths with Delacroix, Berlioz, Chopin, Brahms, Liszt, the Schumanns, Hugo, Flaubert, Dickens, and Dostoyevsky, among many other towering figures.
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DO LISTEN TO THIS BOOK!!!
- By JK on 10-28-21
By: Orlando Figes
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The War on the West
- By: Douglas Murray
- Narrated by: Douglas Murray
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows how many well-meaning people have been fooled by hypocritical and inconsistent anti-West rhetoric. After all, if we must discard the ideas of Kant, Hume, and Mill for their opinions on race, shouldn’t we discard Marx, whose work is peppered with racial slurs and anti-Semitism? Embers of racism remain to be stamped out in America, but what about the raging racist inferno in the Middle East and Asia?
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Every Human (seriously, everyone) Read This!
- By aaron on 04-27-22
By: Douglas Murray
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What listeners say about The Free World
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jerome Gentes
- 03-13-22
History at its richest
Extraordinary text by Menand, perfectly read. I’ll be re-listening soon. It’s an exceptional book.
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- Joe
- 05-09-21
Excellent book!
Great book and history of the 1945 - 1965 era. Can't say enough about it. If you've never understood modern art this book will help too. Totally unexpected ending about the CIA (you gotta read it). Many prominent arts and social movements of the era are covered -- Menand distills it all through mini-biographies. One of the best things about the book is that for every arts and social movements' controversies Menand presents the other side of, and push back to, those controversies.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Mark C
- 05-05-21
Stunning
There are not words for how wonderful this listen is.
So much to learn- abstraction in art is the attempt to express the unconscious.
Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views,
beyond the comprehension of the weak.
John Adams
That dreary tribe of high minded women and sandal wearers and fruit juice drinkers
who come flocking towards the smell of ‘progress’, like bluebottles to a dead cat.
George Orwell
Todestrieb
Love the world weary narrator, who conveys the clear text.
One quibble- for a book with so much French the pronunciation is painful.
Does Audible not have pronunciation help for its readers?
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-28-21
Louis Menand is phenomenal.
Even a phenomenal work may leave a few unresolved reflections. The final chapters did not provide a sense of an ending despite its promise. This was likely intentional. But it was exacerbated by the Audible version that I received that ended two-and-one-half pages before the end of the book in mid-sentence. And, yes, I tried more than five times to get it to provide those last pages, but it would not and it was not operator error. Also, the reader, who has admirable diction and an ease with French phrases has a slightly snide tone. But Louis Menand is above all, a phenomenal witness to these two decades of art and thought.
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1 person found this helpful
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- KO
- 11-04-22
Excellent survey of thought
Only catch: some irksome mispronunciations. Worthwhile listening all the same. I learned a lot I did not know about the early lives of influential thinkers, writers, and activists. Could have gone into more detail at certain points and less in others, but I’m sure that’s subjective.
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- William P. Warford
- 05-07-21
Recording cut off
The end cut off, which was disappointing. Audible needs to re-release it so we can hear how it ends.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Jane Vandenburgh
- 09-17-21
Invaluable book can’t imagine anyone wouldn’t benefit from reading it
Completely necessary for anyone hoping to understand what Eric Hobsbawm calls The Short American Century and the part The Wise men played
The narration is wooden and riff with true gaff but mispronunciations however
Still. So invaluable I’m gong to read and listen again
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- Sil A.
- 07-28-22
An Incredible Journey
Who am I to rate a book by a scholar like Dr. Menand. The breath of his knowledge and intellectual ambition is matched by few in our world. That said, I enjoyed the incredible journey he takes the reader through in this long comprehensive book about the cultural history of the Cold War. Sometimes I did not know where he was going, so broad was his net, from pop culture to spy-wars to art and politics and everything in between. But even stories I was already familiar with had new and insightful information and an original point of view that kept it all fascinating and instructive. I felt I had just finished a semester long high level university course when I finished the book, which is not surprising since Dr Menand is an English professor at Harvard.
Ps: excellent narrator
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- wwallach
- 07-26-21
Brilliant but weak ion women's contribution
Louis Menand is a wonderful writer and introduces new insights when covering even well-known material. However, I was somewhat taken aback at the emphasis on male contributors. Even when introducing a remarkable figure such as Simone de Beauvoir he primarily discusses her relationship with Sartre but says very little about here contributions to philosophy and feminism. Later when he mentions the impact of feminism and at least discusses Betty Friedan, it feels like this section was an after thought. I am a man, and well aware of how much intellectual thought was driven, at least publicly, by men, and yet in this day and age you would expect a writer who is covering such a broad intellectual landscape to be more sensitive to the contributions of women.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Nana Landgraf
- 07-23-21
The free world not as free as we thought?
I listened twice! It’s a long book, and parts I’m not interested in at all, even second time through. Many other parts are enlightening, like Black Mountain College, the New Criticism, “I Take My Stand,” Kenyon and Sewanee, Black writers, many more. Mr. Menand has a great mind, a broad mind, an expansive mind; and exploring this book was very much worth doing. I also bought a hard copy to refer to because I HATE murdered French pronunciation. That’s my criticism of the performer: his French.
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2 people found this helpful