The Golden Spruce
A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
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Narrated by:
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Edoardo Ballerini
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By:
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John Vaillant
About this listen
A tale of obsession so fierce that a man kills the thing he loves most: The only giant golden spruce on earth.
As vividly as Jon Krakauer put readers on Everest, John Vaillant takes us into the heart of North America's last great forest, where trees grow to eighteen feet in diameter, sunlight never touches the ground, and the chainsaws are always at work.
When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island, they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique Sitka spruce, 165 feet tall and covered with luminous golden needles, teetered on its stump. Two days later it fell.
The tree, a fascinating puzzle to scientists, was sacred to the Haida, a fierce seafaring tribe based in the Queen Charlottes. Vaillant recounts the bloody history of the Haida and the early fur trade, and provides harrowing details of the logging industry, whose omnivorous violence would claim both Hadwin and the golden spruce.
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From the author of Apocalyptic Planet, an unsparing, vivid, revelatory travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the First People in North America 20,000 years ago and the artifacts that enable us to imagine their lives and fates. This book upends our notions of where these people came from and who they were.
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Blaaaa
- By Josh NJ on 07-26-18
By: Craig Childs
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Astoria
- John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival
- By: Peter Stark
- Narrated by: Michael Kramer
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time when the edge of American settlement barely reached beyond the Appalachian Mountains, two visionaries, President Thomas Jefferson and millionaire John Jacob Astor, foresaw that one day the Pacific would dominate world trade as much as the Atlantic did in their day. Just two years after the Lewis and Clark expedition concluded in 1806, Jefferson and Astor turned their sights westward once again. Thus began one of history's dramatic but largely forgotten turning points in the conquest of the North American continent.
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Where Lewis and Clark Left Off
- By Mel on 01-11-15
By: Peter Stark
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A Voyage Long and Strange
- Rediscovering the New World
- By: Tony Horwitz
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 17 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz makes an unsettling discovery. A history buff since early childhood, expensively educated at university - a history major, no less! - he's reached middle age with a third-grader's grasp of early America. In fact, he's mislaid more than a century of American history, the period separating Columbus' landing in 1492 from the arrival of English colonists at Jamestown in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between?
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Just Not For Me
- By Sara on 10-25-15
By: Tony Horwitz
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The Secret Token
- Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke
- By: Andrew Lawler
- Narrated by: David H. Lawrence XVII
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1587, 115 men, women, and children arrived at Roanoke Island on the coast of North Carolina to establish the first English settlement in the New World. But when the new colony's leader returned to Roanoke from a resupply mission, his settlers had vanished, leaving behind only a single clue - a "secret token" etched into a tree. What happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke? That question has consumed historians, archeologists, and amateur sleuths for 400 years. In The Secret Token, Andrew Lawler sets out on a quest to determine the fate of the settlers.
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trying to capitalize on race relations
- By Phil on 07-16-19
By: Andrew Lawler
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The Last Slave Ship
- The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning
- By: Ben Raines
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed, the Clotilda became the last ship in history to bring enslaved Africans to the United States. The ship was scuttled and burned on arrival to hide the wealthy perpetrators to escape prosecution. Despite numerous efforts to find the sunken wreck, Clotilda remained hidden for the next 160 years. But in 2019, journalist Ben Raines made international news when he successfully concluded his obsessive quest through the swamps of Alabama to uncover one of our nation’s most important historical artifacts.
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Wow. Just Wow.
- By Pinkhippiechick on 02-11-22
By: Ben Raines
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The Promise of the Grand Canyon
- John Wesley Powell's Perilous Journey and His Vision for the American West
- By: John F. Ross
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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John Wesley Powell’s first descent of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1869 counts among the most dramatic chapters in American exploration history. When the Canyon spit out the surviving members of the expedition - starving, battered, and nearly naked - they had accomplished what others thought impossible and finished the exploration of continental America that Lewis and Clark had begun almost 70 years before.
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Parallels
- By Bruce McClenahan on 01-25-19
By: John F. Ross
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The Man Who Ate His Boots
- The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage
- By: Anthony Brandt
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The enthralling and often harrowing history of the adventurers who searched for the Northwest Passage, the holy grail of 19th-century British exploration. After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying to do since the 16th century: Find the fabled Northwest Passage, a shortcut to the Orient via a sea route over Northern Canada. For the next 35 years the British Admiralty sent out expedition after expedition to probe the ice-bound waters of the Canadian Arctic in search of a route.
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They don't get any better than this
- By Christopher on 08-15-14
By: Anthony Brandt
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The Lost City of Z
- A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
- By: David Grann
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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A sensational disappearance that made headlines around the world. A quest for truth that leads to death, madness or disappearance for those who seek to solve it. The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon. After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed New Yorker writer David Grann set out to find out what happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett and his quest for the Lost City of Z.
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A Worthy Read for Armchair Explorers
- By Jennifer Seattle, WA on 03-01-09
By: David Grann
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The Quiet World
- Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960
- By: Douglas Brinkley
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 23 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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A riveting history of America's most beautiful natural resources, The Quiet World documents the heroic fight waged by the U.S. federal government from 1879 to 1960 to save wild Alaska - ;Mount McKinley, the Tongass and Chugach national forests, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Lake Clark, and the Coastal Plain of the Beaufort Sea, among other treasured landscapes - from the extraction industries.
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Where are Native Alaskans?
- By Peggy on 11-13-14
By: Douglas Brinkley
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In the summer of 1962, a young student named Joachim Rudolph dug a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Waiting on the other side in East Berlin were dozens of men, women, and children - all willing to risk everything to escape.
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In the tradition of Into the Wild comes an instant classic of outdoor literature, a riveting work of uncommon depth. I’m planning on doing four days in the jungle.... It should be difficult to get lost forever: These were the haunting last words legendary adventurer Roman Dial received from his son, before the 27-year old disappeared into the jungles of Costa Rica. This is Dial's intensely gripping and deeply moving account of his two-year quest to unravel the mystery of his son's fate.
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Drawn out attempt to avoid quilt.
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On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, 20-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins - some collected 150 years earlier.
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Unusual and true natural history mystery!
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In the Heart of the Sea
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The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the sinking of the Titanic was in the twentieth. In 1819 the Essex left Nantucket for the South Pacific with 20 crew members aboard. In the middle of the South Pacific the ship was rammed and sunk by an angry sperm whale. The crew drifted for more than 90 days in three tiny whaleboats, succumbing to weather, hunger, and disease and ultimately turning to drastic measures in the fight for survival.
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Audio must have been fixed
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The "unsinkable” Titanic was four city blocks long, with a French “sidewalk café,” private promenade decks, and the latest, most ingenious safety devices… but only twenty lifeboats for the 2,207 passengers and crew on board.
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Riveting story
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As a park ranger with the National Park Service's law enforcement team, Andrea Lankford led search and rescue missions in some of the most beautiful (and dangerous) landscapes across America, from Yosemite to the Grand Canyon. But though she had the support of the agency, Andrea grew frustrated with the service's bureaucratic idiosyncrasies, and left the force after twelve years. Two decades later, however, she stumbles across a mystery that pulls her right back where she left off: three young men have vanished from the Pacific Crest Trail.
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Much ado about nothing
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Filled to the brim with far-out facts, this wickedly informative narrative from the author of National Geographic's popular Gory Details blog takes us on a fascinating journey through an astonishing new reality. Blending humor and journalism in the tradition of Mary Roach, acclaimed science reporter Erika Engelhaupt investigates the gross, strange, and morbid absurdities of our bodies and our universe.
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Feels like old school Discovery channel
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The River of Doubt
- Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
- By: Candice Millard
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At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt's harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.
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This audiobook deserves 6 stars
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By: Candice Millard
What listeners say about The Golden Spruce
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amanda D
- 02-18-20
Instant favorite
So good I will listen again soon. was excited for my commute for a week just to continue the book. Amazed that this was the author's first book. Flows very well and keeps you engaged. Definitely a book that changes you in positive ways. LISTEN!!
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- Susan
- 05-09-22
Lyrical and Powerful
This was an amazing story told by a master. It is also a difficult, heart-rending tale on so many levels. it was one of those books that causes a lot of internal shifting, since the truths, both on a personal and planetary level, are so consumately and deeply tragic. All this while bathing in language so lyrical that it creates its own teleportation. The perfect narrator. Don't miss it. Be prepared to weep.
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- PugetSoundBookworm
- 08-17-17
Fascinating history
This book stretches out a what seems like a simple story of environmental terrorism by giving a ton of background. Going back not just centuries, but providing events in the context of millennia - weaving the disparate facts, opinions, and myths into one fascinating book. While at times the historical diversions seemed a little long winded, especially in the middle of the climactic act, it didn't annoy me & somehow worked. I really enjoyed the thorough exploration and deep history of the story presented in this book. My one complaint about the audio book performance is the mispronunciation of "Weyerhaeuser" - this was grating, plus there's no excuse because they have commercials on the internet where this can be checked.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Julia R. Christenson
- 01-06-17
excellent story, narrated beautifully
This is an amazing historical piece of work. If you love the outdoors of the Pacific Northwest this is a must-read.
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- Stosh A. Kozlowski
- 09-04-19
Captivating, breathtaking and spiritually shaking
This is the first time I’ve listened to this book and the second time I’ve “read” it. Mr. Vaillant is the reincarnation of F Scott Fitzgerald if Fitzgerald was in our time. The story keeps you “turning the page” and procrastinating with your life - in a good way. I highly recommend. The reader gets off to a rocky start but I learned to like his voice.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Peter Bate
- 08-25-22
An amazingly well-told piece of natural history
John Valliant’s extraordinary storytelling talents are in full display in this book on one of the strangest corners of the Earth I have ever come across. A masterful blend of reportage with natural, economic and social history.
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- Jordyn Warren
- 03-25-20
Vaillant is a master!
Vaillant is one of the greatest writers of his generation! His writing style and rhythm makes is stories an unforgettable experience! I first fell in love with "The Tiger," which is one of my favorite books of all time! I then backed up to his earlier work, "The Golden Spruce" and was able to appreciate his work all over again! Thanks!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Chelsie Sheflo
- 05-22-22
Inspiring book and flawless audio
This is an amazing story and insightful work. The audio conveys the greatest of these words.
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- fanboy
- 11-03-16
One of my all time favorites!
What made the experience of listening to The Golden Spruce the most enjoyable?
I love this audio book! It's easily one of my top 5 favorites. The story is terrific, the writing is wonderful and the performance is a perfect match for the text. This is one of the very few audio books I have listened to 3 times.
What other book might you compare The Golden Spruce to and why?
Boy's in the Boat. Unbroken. Seabiscuit. The Tiger
What about Edoardo Ballerini’s performance did you like?
His voice is wonderful and he seamlessly takes the listener into the world of the story.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
not quite
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1 person found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 01-01-20
Terrific
If you are at all attuned to the wonders of the natural world, this is terrific, informative content. I thoroughly enjoyed the narration.
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