
The Great Mistake
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Graham Halstead
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By:
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Jonathan Lee
About this listen
An exultant novel of New York City at the turn of the twentieth century, about one man's rise to fame and fortune, and his mysterious murder—“engrossing” (Wall Street Journal), “immersive” (The New Yorker), and “seriously entertaining” (The Sunday Times, London).
Andrew Haswell Green is dead, shot at the venerable age of eighty-three, when he thought life could hold no more surprises. The killing - on Park Avenue in broad daylight, on Friday the 13th - shook the city.
Born to a struggling farmer, Green was a self-made man without whom there would be no Central Park, no Metropolitan Museum of Art, no Museum of Natural History, no New York Public Library. But Green had a secret, a life locked within him that now, in the hour of his death, may finally break free.
A work of tremendous depth and piercing emotion, The Great Mistake is the story of a city transformed, a murder that made a private man infamous, and a portrait of a singular individual who found the world closed off to him - yet enlarged it.
©2021 Jonathan Lee (P)2021 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
One of the Best Books of the Year: The Guardian, LitHub
One of CrimeReads' Best Historical Novels of the Year
A Best Book of Summer: Entertainment Weekly, Oprah Quarterly, Vulture, Town & Country, Refinery29
“Engrossing.... Genuinely impressive...Lee is an excellent sketcher of character, setter of scene, and weaver of research.... None of Lee’s sentences is soulless. They brim with life and music and filigree-fine craft.” (The Wall Street Journal)
“Unforgettable.... It would be easy to recommend The Great Mistake for its confident, well-researched, and impeccably crafted take on a singular individual who had so much to do with the creation of New York City as we know it. But you should really read this book for Lee’s exquisite prose, his poetic shadings of a life and a time in which so much was possible.” (Chicago Review of Books)
“Finely drawn...Jonathan Lee’s intriguing novel has all the ingredients of a whodunit, but he’s more interested in the personal mysteries of the man who opened up the city ‘while keeping himself closed’.” (Alida Becker, New York Times Book Review)
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Fifteen-year-old Ilya arrives in Louisiana from his native Russia for what should be the adventure of his life: a year in America as an exchange student. But all is not right in Ilya's world: He's consumed by the fate of his older brother, Vladimir, the magnetic rebel to Ilya's dutiful wunderkind, back in their tiny Russian hometown. Just before Ilya left, the murders of three young women rocked the town's usual calm, and Vladimir found himself in prison. With the help of Sadie, who has secrets of her own, Ilya embarks on a mission to prove Vladimir's innocence.
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Couldn't Stop Listening
- By Randi M. on 04-16-19
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Stealing Benefacio's Roses
- By: Martín Prechtel
- Narrated by: Martín Prechtel
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Following the acclaimed Secrets of the Talking Jaguar and Long Life, Honey in the Heart, this is an expansive lyrical novel in the tradition of Indigenous oral storytelling. Based on the author's many years of living in a Guatemalan village, Stealing Benefacio's Roses interweaves dramatic recountings of village life and the political horrors of civil war with lyric retellings of sacred Mayan myths.
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I read this book a long time ago
- By D. Varga on 01-17-22
By: Martín Prechtel
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Haunting Paris
- A Novel
- By: Mamta Chaudhry
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan, Daniel Oreskes
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Paris, 1989: Alone in her luminous apartment on Île Saint-Louis, Sylvie discovers a mysterious letter among her late lover Julien's possessions, launching her into a decades-old search for a child who vanished in the turbulence of the Second World War. She is unaware that she is watched over by Julien's ghost, his love for her powerful enough to draw him back to this world, though doomed now to remain a silent observer. Sylvie's quest leads her deep into the secrets of Julien's past, shedding new light on the dark days of Nazi-occupied Paris
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Ghostly Paris
- By Judith Robertson on 11-28-19
By: Mamta Chaudhry
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The Tiger Mom's Tale
- By: Lyn Liao Butler
- Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Lexa Thomas has never quite fit in. Having grown up in a family of blondes while more closely resembling Constance Wu, she's neither White enough nor Asian enough. Visiting her father in Taiwan as a child, Lexa thought she'd finally found a place where she belonged. But that was years ago, and even there, some never truly considered her to be a part of the family. When her estranged father dies unexpectedly, leaving the fate of his Taiwanese family in Lexa's hands, she is faced with the choice to return to Taiwan and claim her place in her heritage.
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There is more to the story than the title suggests
- By KEM on 07-12-21
By: Lyn Liao Butler
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Half Life
- A Novel
- By: Jillian Cantor
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The USA Today best-selling author of In Another Time reimagines the pioneering, passionate life of Marie Curie using a parallel structure to create two alternative timelines, one that mirrors her real life, one that explores the consequences for Marie and for science if she’d made a different choice.
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Exceptional!
- By Andrea M Schooley on 06-17-21
By: Jillian Cantor
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Boys, Beasts & Men
- By: Sam J. Miller
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead, Krystal Hammond, Alex Boyles, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In Nebula Award-winning author Sam J. Miller’s devastating debut short-fiction collection—featuring an introduction by Amal El-Mohtar—queer infatuation, inevitable heartbreak, and brutal revenge seamlessly intertwine. Whether innocent, guilty, or not even human, the boys, beasts, and men roaming through Miller’s gorgeously crafted worlds can destroy listeners, yet leave them wanting more.
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A story within a story!
- By Gabriel on 01-16-25
By: Sam J. Miller
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When We Fell Apart
- A Novel
- By: Soon Wiley
- Narrated by: Daniel K. Isaac, Shannon Tyo
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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When the Seoul police inform Min that his girlfriend Yu-jin has committed suicide, he’s sure it can't be true. She was successful, ambitious, happy, just on the cusp of graduating from university and claiming the future she’d always dreamed of.
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Cultural story masquerading as a murder mystery
- By Barbara S on 02-05-23
By: Soon Wiley
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Theophilus North
- A Novel
- By: Thornton Wilder
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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The last of Thornton Wilder’s works published during his lifetime, Theophilus North is part autobiographical and part the imagined adventures of Wilder’s twin brother who died at birth. Setting out to see the world in the summer of 1926, Theophilus North gets as far as Newport, Rhode Island, before his car breaks down. To support himself, Theophilus takes jobs in the elegant mansions along Ocean Drive, just as Wilder himself did in the same decade.
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I Absolutely Loved It!
- By SandyK on 06-10-24
By: Thornton Wilder
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Delayed Rays of a Star
- A Novel
- By: Amanda Lee Koe
- Narrated by: Orlagh Cassidy, Amanda Lee Koe
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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At a Berlin soirée in 1928, a photographer captures three very different women together in one frame: up-and-coming German actress Marlene Dietrich, who would wend her way into Hollywood as one of its lasting icons; Anna May Wong, the world's first Chinese American star, playing for bit parts while dreaming of breaking away from her father's modest laundry; and Leni Riefenstahl, whose work as a director of propaganda art films would first make her infamous. From this curious point of intersection, Delayed Rays of a Star lets loose the trajectories of these women's lives.
By: Amanda Lee Koe
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Big Time
- Stories
- By: Jen Spyra, Stephen Colbert - foreword
- Narrated by: Jen Spyra, Stephen Colbert, Dan Stevens, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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A bride so desperate to get in shape for her wedding that she enrolls in a new kind of workout program that promises the moon but costs more than she bargained for. A snowman who, on the wish of a child, comes to life in a decidedly less savory way than in the childhood classic. And in the title story, a time-hopping 1940s starlet tries to claw her way to the top in modern-day Hollywood, despite being ridiculously unwoke.
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Old white dudes might think this is funny?
- By Anonymous User on 05-27-22
By: Jen Spyra, and others
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The Immortals of Tehran
- By: Ali Araghi
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 16 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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As a child living in his family's apple orchard, Ahmad Torkash-Vand treasures his great-great-great-great grandfather's every mesmerizing world. On the day of his father's death, Ahmad listens closely as the seemingly immortal elder tells him the tale of a centuries-old family curse...and the boy's own fated role in the story.
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Unique story with many characters
- By Anonymous User on 08-22-24
By: Ali Araghi
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My Year Abroad
- A Novel
- By: Chang-rae Lee
- Narrated by: Lawrence Kao
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself.
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Worst narration ever
- By Unhappy Sirius Camper on 02-07-21
By: Chang-rae Lee
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The Winged Tiara
- By: J'nell Ciesielski
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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It was a match made in champagne-soaked heaven, but all too soon the bubbles dried up and divorce papers were issued just in time to ring in the end of the Great War. Jewel thieves and ex-lovers Jasper and Esme find themselves circulating among the elite of British aristocracy where the diamond-lined pockets are ripe for picking. But when the last Valkyrie tiara ever created becomes the talk of the season neither will stop to obtain it, not even when they inadvertently find themselves in the middle of a game of cat-and-mouse where their lives are suddenly at stake.
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Amazing!
- By kimseyg on 10-30-24
What listeners say about The Great Mistake
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- michaelforrest
- 08-12-21
intimate
This book was slow and thoughtful and satisfying at a personal and historical level.
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2 people found this helpful
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- David
- 06-27-24
A Well-Lived Life?
“The Great Mistake” is a clever novelization of the life of Andrew Haswell Green, the 19th Century municipal leader who was responsible for creating Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other New York cultural touchstones. Green is shown as a sensitive figure, ambitious but prudent. His closest relationship is with his friend Samuel Tilden, the New York governor and presidential candidate, another confirmed bachelor. There are some surprising, well-drawn characters in the novel. These include a maverick cop investigating Green’s 1903 murder and a ribald brothel owner who may have ties to Green’s killer. Some scenes were surprising as well, like a startling meeting among civic leaders debating the merits of a “central park” in Manhattan—why spend money on another park, when there were more important needs like roads and schools?
The narration was excellent. I enjoyed the book and also learned something about New York life in the nineteenth century.
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-23-21
A Perfect Book
This was a highly interesting, enjoyable and well-written book. I knew nothing about Andrew Haswell Green, even though I have walked through Central Park many times and even played with a toy boat in one of the park’s ponds as a child. I also read books about NY history. I love the NY institutions, the lions in front of the library, the Met. I am so grateful to learn more about how all of these wonderful places came to be. I appreciate how well Johnathon Lee writes. So many newer published books sacrifice good writing.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Alan M
- 03-01-22
Not much happens.
Very well written and structured. Good narration. Not much happens to the main character. There is a resolution of a so/so mystery.
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- Smith's Rock
- 06-20-21
Complete misfire of a biography.
WAY too much emphasis on the fact that Greene was gay, WAY too little focus on what he accomplished and how he accomplished it.
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4 people found this helpful