The Great Contradiction
The Tragic Side of the American Founding
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Narrated by:
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By:
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Joseph J. Ellis
About this listen
A major new history from the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Founding Brothers and the National Book Award winner American Sphinx, on how America’s founders—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams—regarded the issue of slavery as they drafted the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. In this daring and important work, our most trusted voice on the founding era reckons with the realities and regrets of our founding and the tragedy of its two great failures: the failure to end slavery and the failure to avoid Indian removal
“How does it appear in the sight-of-heaven,” wrote Samuel Hopkins of Newport, “that these States, who have been fighting for liberty, cannot agree in any political constitution unless it indulge and authorize them to enslave their fellow men.”
On the eve of the American Revolution, half a million enslaved African Americans, many in place for several generations, were permanently embedded in the North American population. The slave trade was flourishing, even as the thirteen colonies armed themselves to defend against the idea of being governed without consent. This paradox gave birth to what one of our most trusted and admired historians, Joseph J. Ellis, calls the “American Dilemma.” How could a government that had been fought for and founded on the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence institutionalize slavery? How could it permit a tidal wave of western migration by settlers who understood the phrase “pursuit of happiness” to mean claiming Indian land?
In The Great Contradiction, Ellis, with narrative grace and a flair for irony and paradox, addresses the questions that lie at America’s twisted roots—questions that turned even the sharpest minds of the revolutionary generation into mental contortionists. He discusses the first debates around slavery and the treatment of Native Americans, from the Constitutional Convention to the Treaty of New York, revealing the thinking and rationalizations behind Jay, Hamilton, and Madison’s revisions of the Articles of Confederation, and highlights the key role of figures like Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet and Creek chief Alexander McGillivray.
Ellis writes with candor and deftness, his clarion voice rising above presentist historians and partisans, who are eager to make the founders into trophies in the ongoing culture wars. Instead, Ellis tells a story that is rooted in the coexistence of grandeur and failure, brilliance and blindness, grace and sin.
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Story
In Stomp Off, Let's Go, author and Armstrong expert Ricky Riccardi tells the enthralling story of the iconic trumpeter's meteoric rise to fame. Beginning with Armstrong's youth in New Orleans, Riccardi transports listeners through Armstrong's musical and personal development, including his initial trip to Chicago to join Joe "King" Oliver's band, his first to New York to meet Fletcher Henderson, and his eventual return to Chicago, where he changed the course of music with the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings.
By: Ricky Riccardi
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Soldiers and Silver
- Mobilizing Resources in the Age of Roman Conquest
- By: Michael J. Taylor
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
By the middle of the second century BCE, after nearly one hundred years of warfare, Rome had exerted its control over the entire Mediterranean world, forcing the other great powers of the region—Carthage, Macedonia, Egypt, and the Seleucid empire—to submit militarily and financially. But how, despite its relative poverty and its frequent numerical disadvantage in decisive battles, did Rome prevail? Michael J. Taylor explains this surprising outcome by examining the role that manpower and finances played.
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Islamesque
- The Forgotten Craftsmen Who Built Europe's Medieval Monuments
- By: Diana Darke
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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Story
Who really built Europe's finest Romanesque monuments? Clergymen presiding over holy sites are credited throughout history, while highly skilled creators remain anonymous. But the buildings speak for themselves.
By: Diana Darke