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The Golden Fortress
- California's Border War on Dust Bowl Refugees
- Narrated by: Jay Smack
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
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Publisher's summary
In February 1936, Los Angeles police officers drove hundreds of miles to California’s state borders with one mission: turn back anyone deemed too poor to enter.
Myths of the Golden State’s abundance enticed thousands of Americans uprooted by the Depression, but those who created those myths saw only invading criminal “hordes” that they believed just one man could stop: James “Two-Gun” Davis, Los Angeles’ authoritarian police chief.
The Golden Fortress tells the story of Davis’s audacious deployment of hand-picked armed police slamming California’s door on America’s Dust Bowl refugees and Depression-displaced migrants. It depicts the sometimes deadly consequences of law enforcement politicized and weaponized against the poor, even in remote places like Modoc County, where a sheriff’s opposition to the blockade inflamed an already smoldering feud between an itinerant newsman and a publisher obsessed with her California heritage.
Davis, blessed by his city’s ruling business class and fueled by his own wild claims of communist conspiracies undermining America, deployed his “Foreign Legion” to California’s state lines, threatening democracy even as the nation’s cities and rural communities juggled the burdens of economic recovery, migrant aid, and public safety.
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- By: Philip P. Pan
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Prize-winning journalist Philip P. Pan offers an unprecedented inside look at the momentous battle underway for China's future. On one side is the entrenched party elite determined to preserve its authoritarian grip on power. On the other is a collection of lawyers, journalists, entrepreneurs, activists, hustlers, and dreamers striving to build a more tolerant, open, and democratic China.
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Great insight into changes in China
- By Paul on 04-14-09
By: Philip P. Pan
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A Thousand Hills
- Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Paul Kagame grew up as a wretched refugee. He and a group of comrades, determined to force their way back home after a generation of exile, designed one of the most audacious covert operations in the history of clandestine war. Then, after taking power, they amazed the world by stabilizing and reviving their devastated country.
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Best Most Comprehensive Work on Rwanda
- By Greg on 07-30-10
By: Stephen Kinzer
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A Problem From Hell
- America and the Age of Genocide
- By: Samantha Power
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 22 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In her award-winning interrogation of the last century of American history, Samantha Power - a former Balkan war correspondent and founding executive director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy - asks the haunting question: Why do American leaders who vow “never again” repeatedly fail to stop genocide?
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A dark lesson in dramatic irony
- By Andrew Palmer on 10-04-17
By: Samantha Power
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Goliath
- Life and Loathing in Greater Israel
- By: Max Blumenthal
- Narrated by: Richard Powers
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Goliath, New York Times best-selling author Max Blumenthal takes us on a journey through the badlands and high roads of Israel-Palestine, painting a startling portrait of Israeli society under the siege of increasingly authoritarian politics as the occupation of the Palestinians deepens. Beginning with the national elections carried out during Israel's war on Gaza in 2008/9, which brought into power the country's most right-wing government to date, Blumenthal tells the story of Israel in the wake of the collapse of the Oslo peace process.
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The truth is rarely pretty
- By William on 10-15-13
By: Max Blumenthal
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Red Summer
- The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America
- By: Cameron McWhirter
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War. Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti-black riots and lynchings swept the country. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation's capital. Red Summer is the first narrative history about this epic encounter.
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Better Understand 2019 by Looking Closely at 1919
- By JAS on 03-27-19
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At Canaan's Edge
- America in the King Years 1965-68
- By: Taylor Branch
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
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At Canaan's Edge concludes America in the King Years, a three-volume history that will endure as a masterpiece of storytelling on American race, violence, and democracy. Pulitzer Prize-winner and best-selling author Taylor Branch makes clear in this magisterial account of the civil rights movement that Martin Luther King, Jr., earned a place next to James Madison and Abraham Lincoln in the pantheon of American history.
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I hate abridged books
- By Four Bears on 10-19-10
By: Taylor Branch
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Death in the Haymarket
- A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America
- By: James Green
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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On May 4, 1886, a bomb exploded at a Chicago labor rally, wounding dozens of policemen, seven of whom eventually died. A wave of mass hysteria swept the country, leading to a sensational trial that culminated in four controversial executions and dealt a blow to the labor movement from which it would take decades to recover. Historian James Green recounts the rise of the first great labor movement in the wake of the Civil War and brings to life an epic 20-year struggle for the eight-hour workday.
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A must for anyone who enjoys labor history
- By Taurus on 01-10-22
By: James Green
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Waging a Good War
- A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968
- By: Thomas E. Ricks
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Thomas E. Ricks offers an utterly new perspective on America’s greatest moral revolution—the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s—and its legacy today. While the Movement has become synonymous with Martin Luther King Jr.’s ethos of nonviolence, Ricks draws on his deep knowledge of tactics and strategy to advance a surprising but revelatory idea: the greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century were won not by idealism alone, but through recruiting, training, discipline, and organization—the hallmarks of any successful military campaign.
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I was born and raised in Alabama. Jim Crow Era.
- By Moses Pitts on 10-06-22
By: Thomas E. Ricks
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The Devil Is Here in These Hills
- West Virginia’s Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom
- By: James Green
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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From before the dawn of the 20th century until the arrival of the New Deal, one of the most protracted and deadly labor struggles in American history was waged in West Virginia. On one side were powerful corporations whose millions bought armed guards and political influence. On the other side were 50,000 mine workers, the nation's largest labor union, and the legendary "miners' angel", Mother Jones.
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Phenomenal labor history, riveting narrative
- By Chris Brooks on 03-11-18
By: James Green
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Undelivered
- The Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History
- By: Jeff Nussbaum
- Narrated by: Adam Gifford, Brian Bowles, Elisa Roth, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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A fascinating insight into notable speeches that were never delivered, showing what could have been if history had gone down a different path. For almost every delivered speech, there exists an undelivered opposite. These "second speeches" provide alternative histories of what could have been if not for schedule changes, changes of heart, or momentous turns of events.
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Recognize that this is a profoundly partisan book
- By Scott on 11-05-23
By: Jeff Nussbaum
What listeners say about The Golden Fortress
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- David Cole
- 09-20-22
Excellent On Many Levels
This book is well researched and well written. The audio version is also performed well. As a lover of California (indeed U.S.) history, as well as a follower of current events, I love this book. It introduces the us to people and movements that are historic, yet oh-so current, indeed timeless! From the depression era of the 1920s-30s through the early post war (WWII) era of the early 1940s, migrants fleeing poverty stricken states and Dust Bowl conditions (in OK and environs) were deemed "less than" citizens with rights to travel between states, or even to exist within a state like California, without "looking the part" of a "respectable" citizen" (by arbitrary and self-serving standards, no less!). Author Bill Lascher captures the moods, the attitudes, and the experience of so many disparate people from those seeking a new life, to those attempting to maintain the (wealthy) status quo by preventing opportunity seekers from realizing their dreams. This is a very good book, sometimes gritty and sad (as great stories often are), and worth reading by anyone who wants to expand their breadth of knowledge and gain a better understanding of history, events in the news today, and of human nature.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-04-22
Terrific - a forgotten chapter of CA history
Despite being born and raised in Southern California, I had never heard this audacious story about 1930s interstate migration. The author does a brilliant job of weaving together individual stories from the time with the overall narrative, in addition to drawing parallels with our current border crises.
If you like reading historical non-fiction, this is a great read (or listen!)
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- Wendy Lascher
- 08-12-22
Us v. Them
Disclosure: Yes, I am the author's mother. But as he will tell you, I am his harshest critic.
There is much more to The Golden Fortress than its underlying story about how Los Angeles Police Chief James Davis, backed by the business elite of the day, took it upon himself and the police force he commanded to try to keep “undesirables” out of California. The book reminds how dangerous it is when would-be authoritarians lie to advance “us v. them” agendas, especially when business backs the “us” side and the press cheerleads about the dangers “they” pose. I have never been to Modoc County, but it takes little imagination after reading this thoroughly documented tale to recognize that there are Modoc Counties everywhere. The leadership of any community can be coopted by the phony sense of security that Davis proffered if people don’t question what they’re told. The Golden Fortress is a cautionary tale that should be widely read (or, if you prefer, listened to; the audio recording is excellent).
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2 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-02-23
Wide-ranging Insights
Through the lens of the 'bum blockade', the author presents a comprehensive discussion of California and Los Angeles' visions in the 1920s and 1930s, of the rest of the country and themselves. Beginning with the contrast between Los Angeles and Modoc County, the book steadily addresses the use and mechanics of vagrancy laws, Los Angeles' efforts to close itself off, and the rippling effects of decisions made at the California borders during the Great Depression, from effects on the power structure of Depression-era L.A., litigation over the Privileges or Immunities Clause, and a murder at the end. In terms of nits, the assignment of Davis as the villain from the outset was quick, and I would be interested in a book that took a favorable view of his tenure as a counterweight; also, I do not know how well the events in the book correspond to contemporary politics, which is a concern at the start and end of the book. Overall, though, this is an immersive and well narrated discussion of the Golden State in the second quarter of the 20th century and as someone who enjoys stories and histories from that era, I gained a great deal.
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- Bill
- 11-17-22
Had its high points
The author should have stayed to the history, and not sandwiched the subject with the demonization of modern fellow Americans. Frankly I found his approach disgusting.
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