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The Mansion of Happiness
- A History of Life and Death
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
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Publisher's summary
Renowned Harvard scholar and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore has composed a strikingly original, ingeniously conceived, and beautifully crafted history of American ideas about life and death from before the cradle to beyond the grave.
How does life begin? What does it mean? What happens when we die? “All anyone can do is ask,” Lepore writes. “That’s why any history of ideas about life and death has to be, like this book, a history of curiosity.” Lepore starts that history with the story of a 17th-century Englishman who had the idea that all life begins with an egg and ends it with an American who, in the 1970s, began freezing the dead. In between, life got longer, the stages of life multiplied, and matters of life and death moved from the library to the laboratory, from the humanities to the sciences.
Lately, debates about life and death have determined the course of American politics. Each of these debates has a history. Investigating the surprising origins of the stuff of everyday life - from board games to breast pumps - Lepore argues that the age of discovery, Darwin, and the space age turned ideas about life on earth topsy-turvy. “New worlds were found,” she writes, and “old paradises were lost.”
As much a meditation on the present as an excavation of the past, The Mansion of Happiness is delightful, learned, and altogether beguiling.
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The Story of America
- Essays on Origins
- By: Jill Lepore
- Narrated by: Colleen Devine
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Story of America, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore investigates American origin stories - from John Smith's account of the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural address - to show how American democracy is bound up with the history of print. Over the centuries, Americans have read and written their way into a political culture of ink and type. Part civics primer, part cultural history, The Story of America excavates the origins of everything from the paper ballot and the Constitution to the I.O.U. and the dictionary.
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A Fun Read on Historical Subjects
- By Jim on 08-31-13
By: Jill Lepore
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Going Clear
- Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
- By: Lawrence Wright
- Narrated by: Morton Sellers
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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A clear-sighted revelation, a deep penetration into the world of Scientology by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, the now-classic study of al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack. Based on more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—both famous and less well known—and years of archival research, Lawrence Wright uses his extraordinary investigative ability to uncover for us the inner workings of the Church of Scientology.
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Shockingly Great
- By Michael on 01-27-13
By: Lawrence Wright
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When Everything Changed
- The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present
- By: Gail Collins
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
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An enthralling blend of oral history and Gail Collins' keen research, this definitive look at 50 years of feminist progress shimmers with the amusing, down-to-earth liberal tone that is this New York Times columnist's trademark.
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The book I have been waiting for!
- By A Teacher on 09-10-10
By: Gail Collins
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King of Hearts
- The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery
- By: G. Wayne Miller
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.
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Loved every minute
- By Brian on 02-05-08
By: G. Wayne Miller
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And So It Goes
- Kurt Vonnegut: A Life
- By: Charles J. Shields
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author and biographer Charles J. Shields crafts this fascinating portrait of literary icon Kurt Vonnegut. The first authorized biography of the influential American writer, And So It Goes examines Vonnegut’s life, from his childhood to his death in 2007, and explores how the author changed the conversation of American literature.
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Probably only for die hard Vonnegut fans
- By Watery M on 12-22-12
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Rush
- Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father
- By: Stephen Fried
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 22 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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By the time he was 30, Dr. Benjamin Rush had signed the Declaration of Independence, edited Common Sense, toured Europe as Benjamin Franklin’s protégé, and become John Adams’s confidant, and was soon to be appointed Washington’s surgeon general. And as with the greatest Revolutionary minds, Rush was only just beginning his role in 1776 in the American experiment.
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The narration problem can be corrected
- By Sandra L. on 09-27-18
By: Stephen Fried
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Sex, Mom, and God
- How the Bible's Strange Take on Sex Led to Crazy Politics - and How I Learned to Love Women (and Jesus) Anyway
- By: Frank Schaeffer
- Narrated by: Frank Schaeffer
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Alternating between laugh-out-loud scenes from his childhood and acidic ruminations on the present state of an America he and his famous fundamentalist parents helped create, best-selling author Frank Schaeffer asks what the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs and the paranoid fantasies of the “right-wing echo chamber” are really all about. Here’s a hint: sex.
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Entertaining and enlightening
- By Listens-a-lot on 11-16-11
By: Frank Schaeffer
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Galileo's Middle Finger
- Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science
- By: Alice Dreger
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful defense of intellectual freedom told through the ordeals of contemporary scientists attacked for exploring controversial ideas, by a noted science historian and medical activist.
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Engrossing but...
- By Lilly F. on 12-30-20
By: Alice Dreger
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Polio
- An American Story
- By: David M. Oshinsky
- Narrated by: Jonathan Hogan
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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This comprehensive and gripping narrative, which received the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for history, covers all the challenges, characters, and controversies in America's relentless struggle against polio. Funded by philanthropy and grassroots contributions, Salk's killed-virus vaccine (1954) and Sabin's live-virus vaccine (1961) began to eradicate this dreaded disease.
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Wonderful
- By Patricia B Tripoli on 07-22-08
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Splendid Solution
- Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio
- By: Jeffrey Kluger
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Salk became a cultural hero and icon for a whole generation. Now, at the fiftieth anniversary of the first national vaccination program, and as humanity is tantalizingly close to eradicating polio worldwide, comes this unforgettable chronicle. Salk's work was an unparalleled achievement, and it makes for a magnificent listen.
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Excellent book
- By Tim on 08-10-06
By: Jeffrey Kluger
What listeners say about The Mansion of Happiness
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- John P. Stierman
- 05-30-15
Love Jill Lepore, but performance needs revision
Anyone who reads the New Yorker, knows that you never go wrong with Jill Lepore. She is very entertaining, and I always come away learning something thought provoking. The narrator, however, does not know a lot about 20th century history. For example, she mispronounces W.E.B. Du Bois's name. I am sure that this has been pointed out to her. "The pronunciation of my name is Due Boyss, with the accent on the last syllable." -David Levering Lewis W.E.B. DuBois, Biography of a Race, p. 11 Also, in the same section of _The Mansion_ she refers to a law as Title "X" not title Ten. I also found her delivery to sound automated. I actually thought it was until she tried some oral interpretation, which was not bad. Great book. Performer could have been more informed and skilled.
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- Sean
- 06-25-12
Disappointing
The book does not engage in any philosophical discussion of life and death, despite the title. The author talks about breast pumps, cryogenics and birth control without venturing an opinion about them.
She seems more interested in the biographies of people who were associated with various movements than in discussing our attitudes of life and death. Rather than taking a stand on an issue the reader is left to determine the author's position by how sympathetically she paints the protagonists. The subject matter is so rich it is hard to believe that she did not dive into it with more conviction.
The performance is very good. It is read with excellent pacing and inflection and the narrator's voice is pleasant.
Despite the title this is not a reflection on life and death. I'm still not sure what it is.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Pembroke
- 02-02-18
One great book
Beautifully written & scholarly, Professor Lepore sweeps the reader through life’s stages
& the backstory history. Highly recommended for anyone but especially boomers!
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- SomervilleWhereElse
- 10-06-12
Not As the Title Suggests
This book was awful. The narrator spoke at a speed that was not good for my ears or brain. The book isn't about life and death or people's attitudes toward them at different time periods. It is about board games and trivia. It should have a different title and then maybe people interested in what it is about could purchase it. A waste of a credit.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Emily
- 10-01-12
Boring, slow, dull narrator
I have tried to finish this book several times. Maybe it is the narrator, but it ends up being very dull overall.
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1 person found this helpful