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The Library
- A Catalogue of Wonders
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
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Publisher's summary
Libraries are much more than mere collections of volumes. The best are magical, fabled places whose fame has become part of the cultural wealth they are designed to preserve.
To research this book, Stuart Kells traveled around the world with his young family like modern-day "library tourists". Kells discovered that stories about libraries are stories about people, containing every possible human drama.
The Library is a celebration of books as objects, a celebration of the anthropology and physicality of books and bookish space, and an account of the human side of these hallowed spaces by a leading and passionate bibliophile.
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You have to love library science
- By A. Yoshida on 10-23-21
By: Judith Flanders
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Twelve Caesars
- Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern (Bollingen Series)
- By: Mary Beard
- Narrated by: Mary Beard
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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What does the face of power look like? Who gets commemorated in art and why? And how do we react to statues of politicians we deplore? In this book - against a background of today’s “sculpture wars” - Mary Beard tells the story of how for more than two millennia portraits of the rich, powerful, and famous in the Western world have been shaped by the image of Roman emperors, especially the “Twelve Caesars”, from the ruthless Julius Caesar to the fly-torturing Domitian.
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This foray into art history is a disappointment.
- By Stephen J Chiulli on 11-10-21
By: Mary Beard
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Books
- The History and Future of Reading
- By: Leah Price
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Do you worry that you've lost patience for anything longer than a tweet? If so, you're not alone. Digital-age pundits warn that as our appetite for books dwindles, so too do the virtues in which printed, bound objects once trained us: the willpower to focus on a sustained argument, the curiosity to look beyond the day's news, the willingness to be alone. The shelves of the world's great libraries, though, tell a more complicated story. Examining the wear and tear on the books that they contain, English professor Leah Price finds scant evidence that a golden age of reading ever existed.
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Wasn't a fan.
- By Erika on 12-27-20
By: Leah Price
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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books
- Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library
- By: Edward Wilson-Lee
- Narrated by: Richard Trinder
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books tells the story of the first and greatest visionary of the print age, a man who saw how the explosive expansion of knowledge and information generated by the advent of the printing press would entirely change the landscape of thought and society. He also happened to be Christopher Columbus’ illegitimate son.
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Erudite. Stimulating. Rewarding.
- By R. P. RIBEYRE on 10-26-20
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Papyrus
- The Invention of Books in the Ancient World
- By: Irene Vallejo, Charlotte Whittle - translator
- Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand-copied on reeds pulled from the Nile were the treasures of the ancient world. Papyrus is the story of the book’s journey from oral tradition to scrolls to codices, and how that transition laid the very foundation of Western culture. Irene Vallejo evokes the great mosaic of literature in the ancient world, all the while illuminating how ancient ideas about education, censorship, authority, and identity still resonate today.
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Great read
- By Hunter Pechin on 12-15-22
By: Irene Vallejo, and others
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Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely
- By: Andrew S. Curran
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world's first comprehensive Encyclopedie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity - for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality.
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lifelong coverage of his life.
- By Michael Daly on 03-22-21
By: Andrew S. Curran
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Sacred Treasure - The Cairo Genizah
- The Amazing Discoveries of Forgotten Jewish History in an Egyptian Synagogue Attic
- By: Rabbi Mark Glickman
- Narrated by: Rabbi Mark Glickman
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code in an old Egyptian synagogue - the amazing story of one of the most important discoveries in modern religious scholarship. In 1897, Rabbi Solomon Schechter of Cambridge University stepped into the attic of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt, and there found the largest treasure trove of medieval and early manuscripts ever discovered.
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Not what I thought it would be, but worth it
- By Lisa on 03-14-12
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Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies
- How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature
- By: Elizabeth Winkler
- Narrated by: Eunice Wong
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The theory that Shakespeare may not have written the works that bear his name is the most horrible, unspeakable subject in the history of English literature. Scholars admit that the Bard’s biography is a “black hole,” yet to publicly question the identity of the god of English literature is unacceptable, even (some say) “immoral.” In Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies, journalist and literary critic Elizabeth Winkler sets out to probe the origins of this literary taboo.
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Excellent!
- By Virgil Tracy on 06-03-23
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Botticelli's Secret
- The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance
- By: Joseph Luzzi
- Narrated by: Keith Szarabajka
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Some 500 years ago, Sandro Botticelli, a painter of humble origin, created work of unearthly beauty. An intimate associate of Florence’s unofficial rulers, the Medici, he was commissioned by a member of their family to execute a near-impossible project: to illustrate all 100 cantos of The Divine Comedy by the city’s greatest poet, Dante Alighieri. A powerful encounter between poet and artist, sacred and secular, earthly and evanescent, these drawings produced a wealth of stunning images but were never finished.
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Great story
- By Chris M on 12-09-22
By: Joseph Luzzi
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The Written World
- The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization
- By: Martin Puchner
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the powerful role stories and literature have played in creating the world we have today. Puchner introduces us to numerous visionaries as he explores 16 foundational texts selected from more than 4,000 years of world literature and reveals how writing has inspired the rise and fall of empires and nations, the spark of philosophical and political ideas, and the birth of religious beliefs. Indeed, literature has touched generations and changed the course of history.
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Powerful and illuminating!
- By Gloria J. Petit-Clair on 12-04-17
By: Martin Puchner
What listeners say about The Library
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Birding_Bubba
- 04-16-23
wonderful!
If the history of libraries and books is exciting to you this book has a great deal to offer. I've thoroughly enjoyed it! I would compare it to Nicholas Basbane's works, Basbanes is slightly better at continuity, but both share great stories.
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