The Heart of Things
A Midwestern Almanac
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Narrated by:
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Dalan Edwin Decker
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By:
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John Hildebrand
About this listen
“I’ve never believed that living in one place means being one thing all the time, condemned like Minnie Pearl to wear the same hat for every performance. Life is more complicated than that.”
In this remarkable audiobook of days, John Hildebrand charts the overlapping rings - home, town, countryside - of life in the Midwest.
Like E. B. White, Hildebrand locates the humor and drama in ordinary life: church suppers, Friday night football, outdoor weddings, garden compost, family reunions, roadside memorials, camouflage clothing. In these wry, sharply observed essays, the Midwest isn’t "The Land Time Forgot", but a more complicated (and vastly more interesting) place where the good life awaits once we figure exactly out what it means.
From his home range in Northwestern Wisconsin, Hildebrand attempts to do just that by boiling down a calendar year to its rich marrow of weather, animals, family, and home - in other words, all the things that matter.
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White man bad, capitalism bad
- By Forget about it on 04-15-21
By: Timothy Egan
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Travels in Siberia
- By: Ian Frazier
- Narrated by: Ian Frazier
- Length: 20 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Ian Frazier trains his eye for unforgettable detail on Siberia, that vast expanse of Asiatic Russia. He explores many aspects of this storied, often grim region. He writes about the geography, the resources, the native peoples, the history, the 40-below midwinter afternoons, the bugs. The book brims with Mongols, half-crazed Orthodox archpriests, fur seekers, ambassadors of the czar bound for Peking, tea caravans, German scientists, American prospectors, intrepid English nurses, and prisoners and exiles of every kind....
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I Loved This Book
- By Sara on 01-05-14
By: Ian Frazier
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Afield
- American Writers on Bird Dogs
- By: David Smith - editor, Robert Demott - editor
- Narrated by: Bryan Brendle
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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This marvelous collection features stories from some of America’s finest and most respected writers about every outdoorsman’s favorite and most loyal hunting partner: his dog. For the first time, the stories of acclaimed writers such as Richard Ford, Tom Brokaw, Howell Raines, Rick Bass, Sydney Lea, Jim Harrison, Tom McGuane, Phil Caputo, and Chris Camuto come together in one collection. Hunters and non-hunters alike will recognize in these poignant tales the universal aspects of owning dogs.
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Great stories. Poor performance.
- By Paul on 12-09-17
By: David Smith - editor, and others
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Travels with Charley in Search of America
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Gary Sinise
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America, from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Travels with Charley is animated by Steinbeck’s attention to the specific details of the natural world and his sense of how the lives of people are intimately connected to the rhythms of nature—to weather, geography, the cycles of the seasons. His keen ear for the transactions among people is evident, too, as he records the interests and obsessions that preoccupy the Americans he encounters along the way.
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Gary Sinise is fantastic!
- By C. Wilson on 01-11-17
By: John Steinbeck
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Grandma Gatewood's Walk
- The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
- By: Ben Montgomery
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."
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Inspiring story about a strong amazing woman
- By David Shear on 12-22-14
By: Ben Montgomery
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Goodbye to a River
- By: John Graves
- Narrated by: Henry Strozier
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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In this classic from the Lone Star State, John Graves learns that the river he knew and loved as a youth, the Brazos in north-central Texas, is slated to be dammed at multiple points - and he understands that things will never be the same. Goodbye to a River is a poignant narrative of one man's journey by canoe down the river of his memories. Along the way, he describes the colorful Texas landscape and recounts its rich history.
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Undoubtedly a great piece of American literature
- By Chris on 04-04-13
By: John Graves
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Should the Tent Be Burning Like That?
- A Professional Amateur's Guide to the Outdoors
- By: Bill Heavey
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than 20 years, Heavey has staked a claim as one of America's best sportsmen writers. In feature stories and his Field & Stream column A Sportsman's Life, he has taken audiences across the country and beyond to experience his triumphs and failures as a suburban dad who happens to love hunting and fishing. This new collection gathers together a wide range of his best work - tales that are odes to the notion that enthusiasm is more important than skill and testaments to the enduring power of the natural world.
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one of the best storytellers of all time!
- By Adam on 12-16-17
By: Bill Heavey
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The Adventures of Henry Thoreau
- A Young Man's Unlikely Path to Walden Pond
- By: Michael Sims
- Narrated by: David Rapkin
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Henry David Thoreau has long been an intellectual icon and folk hero. In this strikingly original profile, Michael Sims reveals how the bookish, quirky young man evolved into the patron saint of environmentalism and nonviolent activism. Working from 19th-century letters and diaries, Sims charts Henry’s course from his time at Harvard through the years he spent living in a cabin beside Walden Pond. Sims uncovers a previously hidden Thoreau - the rowdy boy reminiscent of Tom Sawyer, the sarcastic college iconoclast, the devoted son who kept imitating his beloved older brother’s choices in life.
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Pleasant surprise
- By Norman Wendth on 10-21-14
By: Michael Sims
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A Hunter's Fireside Book
- Tales of Dogs, Ducks, Birds, & Guns
- By: Gene Hill
- Narrated by: Ray Childs
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The legendary American outdoor writer’s finest collection. For decades, Gene Hill’s articles and books have captured the spirit of the outdoors in a way that inspires and entertains millions of readers. A Hunter’s Fireside Book captures the essence of the life of a sportsman and explores the full spectrum of the hunter’s experience: sunrises in the duck blind, an unforgettable hunter’s moon, the camaraderie of men who know the pleasures of being wet and cold and a little bit lost.
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Beyond acquiring meat, this is why we go afield
- By Ray C on 02-28-20
By: Gene Hill
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Martin Marten
- A Novel
- By: Brian Doyle
- Narrated by: Travis Baldree
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Dave is 14 years old, living with his family in a cabin on Oregon's Mount Hood. Dave will soon enter high school, with adulthood and a future not far off - a future away from his mother, father, his precocious younger sister, and the wilderness where he's lived all his life. And Dave is not the only one approaching adulthood and its freedoms that summer. Martin, a pine marten (of the mustelid family), is leaving his own mother and siblings and setting off on his own as well. As Dave and Martin set off on their own adventures, their lives, paths, and trails will cross.
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Captivated to the end
- By Sidney Dickson on 03-23-19
By: Brian Doyle
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We Stood upon Stars
- Finding God in Lost Places
- By: Roger W. Thompson
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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You are made for freedom and adventure, friendship and romance. Yet too much of your life is spent unfulfilled at work, restless at home, and bored at church. All the while, you know there is something more. You'll find some of life's best moments waiting for you over a campfire, on a river - even in that coffee shop or brewery you didn't know you'd discover along the way. It's time to begin the search.
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Such a good book
- By The Great Bambino on 06-16-21
What listeners say about The Heart of Things
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joe in New Burbs
- 03-09-20
needs a new narrator
I love the stories but the narrator tone drove me insane. reminded me of Chandler being - can you narrate any more annoying?
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