
The Oppermanns
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Narrated by:
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Remy Auberjonois
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Joshua Cohen
About this listen
Written in real-time, as the Nazis consolidated their power over the winter of 1933, The Oppermanns captures the fall of Weimar Germany through the eyes of one bourgeois Jewish family, shocked and paralyzed by an ideology they cannot comprehend.
In the foment of Weimar-era Berlin, the Oppermann brothers represent tradition and stability. One brother oversees the furniture chain founded by their grandfather, one is an eminent surgeon, and one a respected critic. They are rich, cultured, liberal, and public-spirited, proud inheritors of the German Enlightenment. They don't see Hitler as a threat. Then, to their horror, the Nazis come to power, and the Oppermanns and their children are faced with the terrible decision of whether to adapt—if they can—flee or try to fight.
Written in 1933, nearly in real-time, The Oppermanns captures the day-to-day vertigo of watching a liberal democracy fall apart. As Joshua Cohen writes in his introduction to this new edition, it is "one of the last masterpieces of German-Jewish culture." Prescient and chilling, it has lost none of its power today.
Introduction read by Joshua Cohen.
©2023 Lion Feuchtwanger (P)2023 Podium AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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When Tiro, the confidential secretary (and slave) of a Roman senator, opens the door to a terrified stranger on a cold November morning, he sets in motion a chain of events that will eventually propel his master into one of the most suspenseful courtroom dramas in history.
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Engrossing read
- By Everett Leiter on 08-16-07
By: Robert Harris
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The Idiot
- By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard Pevear - translator, Larissa Volokhonsky - translator
- Narrated by: Peter Batchelor
- Length: 30 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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After his great portrayal of a guilty man in Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky set out in The Idiot to portray a man of pure innocence. The 26-year-old Prince Myshkin, following a stay of several years in a Swiss sanatorium, returns to Russia to collect an inheritance and “be among people”. Even before he reaches home, he meets the dark Rogozhin, a rich merchant’s son whose obsession with the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna eventually draws all three of them into a tragic denouement. In Petersburg, the prince finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with money, power, and manipulation.
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I should've learned my lesson
- By Ben on 11-15-19
By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and others
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Solenoid
- By: Mircea Cărtărescu, Sean Cotter - translator
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 34 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on Cartarescu's own role as a high school teacher, Solenoid begins with the mundane details of a diarist's life and quickly spirals into a philosophical account of life, history, philosophy, and mathematics. One character asks another: when you rush into the burning building, will you save the newborn or the artwork? On a broad scale, the novel's investigations of other universes, dimensions, and timelines reconcile the realms of life and art.
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Our Universal Phantasmagoria
- By Isaac Linder on 03-11-24
By: Mircea Cărtărescu, and others
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Hitler's People
- The Faces of the Third Reich
- By: Richard J. Evans
- Narrated by: Leighton Pugh
- Length: 21 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard Evans, author of the acclaimed The Third Reich Trilogy and over two dozen other volumes on modern Europe, is our preeminent scholar of Nazi Germany. Having spent half a century searching for the truths behind one of the most horrifying episodes in human history, in Hitler’s People, he brings us back to the original site of the Nazi movement: namely, the lives of its most important members. Working in concentric circles out from Hitler and his closest allies, Evans forms a typological framework of Germany society under Nazi rule from the top down.
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Outstanding
- By Peter Ryers on 09-13-24
By: Richard J. Evans
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The Little Liar
- A Novel
- By: Mitch Albom
- Narrated by: Mitch Albom
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Eleven-year-old Nico Krispis has never told a lie. When the Nazis invade his home in Salonika, Greece, the trustworthy boy is discovered by a German officer, who offers him a chance to save his family. All Nico has to do is persuade his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading “north,” where new jobs and safety await. Unaware that this is all a cruel ruse, the innocent boy reassures passengers on the station platform every day.
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Timeliness and timelessness
- By JStan on 02-25-24
By: Mitch Albom
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The Project
- How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America
- By: David A. Graham
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 3 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Project, award-winning journalist David A. Graham offers much-needed context and distills the essential elements of this sprawling document. Breaking down the Project’s strategy for transforming—and radically empowering—the executive branch, Graham then explains what the architects behind Project 2025 would do with that power: restoring traditional gender norms and the supremacy of the nuclear family, decimating the civil service, performing mass deportations, reducing corporate regulation and worker protections, and more.
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Clarity
- By Catherine on 06-21-25
By: David A. Graham
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Battle Cry of Freedom
- The Civil War Era
- By: James M. McPherson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 39 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Battle Cry of Freedom vividly traces how a new nation was forged when a war both sides were sure would amount to little dragged for four years and cost more American lives than all other wars combined. Narrator Jonathan Davis powerful reading brings to life the many voices of the Civil War.
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Excellent Book
- By J. Weston on 12-11-20
The Barbarians Take Over
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I liked the contrast between the measured description of what was happening in Germany and the sensitive description of what the characters went through and felt, not to mention the painful tension between the love for the idea of Germany and the dismay for what Germany was turning in to.
I found the last part of the book less convincing and I don't think I understood why and what for the main character did what he did.
This last part seems to me a bit off and at odds with the rest of the book.
A beautiful chilling book
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Haunting parallels to USA Today
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Important read to understand what is happening today
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Stunning warning to us all.
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Moving
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Quality of the writing
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Timely account of how difficult it is to understand and react to political change
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The author has an uncanny ability to get into people's minds.
Brilliant, and scary and totally applicable to current events.
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Some voices are irritating
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