The Politics of Pain
Postwar England and the Rise of Nationalism
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Narrated by:
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Bruce Mann
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By:
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Fintan O'Toole
About this listen
From one of the most perceptive observers of the English today comes a brilliantly insightful, mordantly funny account of their seemingly irrational embrace of nationalism.
England's recent lurch to the right appears to be but one example of the nationalist wave sweeping across the world, yet as acclaimed Irish critic Fintan O'Toole suggests in The Politics of Pain, it is, in reality, a phenomenon rooted in World War II. We must look not to the vagaries of the European Union but, instead, far back to the end of the British empire, if we hope to understand our most fraternal ally - and the royal mess in which the British now find themselves. O'Toole depicts a roiling nation that almost ludicrously dreams of a German invasion, if only to get the blood going, and that erupts in faux outrage over regulations on "prawn-flavored crisps." A sympathetic yet unsparing observer, O'Toole asks: How did a great nation bring itself to the point of such willful self-harm? His answer represents one of the most profound portraits of the English since Sarah Lyall's New York Times best seller The Anglo Files.
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Hitler's True Believers
- How Ordinary People Became Nazis
- By: Robert Gellately
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Understanding Adolf Hitler's ideology provides insights into the mental world of an extremist politics that, over the course of the Third Reich, developed explosive energies culminating in the Second World War and the Holocaust. Too often the theories underlying National Socialism or Nazism are dismissed as an irrational hodgepodge of ideas. Yet that ideology drove Hitler's quest for power in 1933, colored everything in the Third Reich, and transformed him, however briefly, into the most powerful leader in the world.
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Fascinating listen
- By Amy Neff on 12-15-22
By: Robert Gellately
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Stop Mass Hysteria
- America's Insanity from the Salem Witch Trials to the Trump Witch Hunt
- By: Michael Savage
- Narrated by: Barry Baer
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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In his new audiobook, Stop Mass Hysteria, number one New York Times best-selling author Michael Savage calls out the mass hysteria mongers and their methods and shows Americans that we must look to history to understand the present and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
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Common sense in a country that is trying not to
- By Mike on 10-09-18
By: Michael Savage
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Fascism
- A Warning
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 9 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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At the end of the 1980s, when the Cold War ended, many, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, believed that democracy had triumphed politically once and for all. Yet nearly 30 years later, the direction of history no longer seems certain. A repressive and destructive force has begun to reemerge on the global stage - sweeping across Europe, parts of Asia, and the United States - that to Albright, looks very much like fascism.
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Warning!
- By JAL on 04-19-18
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Weimar Culture
- The Outsider as Insider
- By: Peter Gay
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1968, Weimar Culture is one of the masterworks of Peter Gay's distinguished career. A study of German culture between the two wars, the book brilliantly traces the rise of the artistic, literary, and musical culture that bloomed ever so briefly in the 1920s amid the chaos of Germany's tenuous post-World War I democracy, and crashed violently in the wake of Hitler's rise to power.
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Engaging book, terrible narrator
- By Beth Simone Noveck on 05-08-21
By: Peter Gay
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Reappraisals
- Reflections on the Forgotten 20th Century
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The accelerating changes of the past generation have been accompanied by a similarly accelerated amnesia. The 20th century has become "history" at an unprecedented rate. The world of 2007 was so utterly unlike that of even 1987, much less any earlier time, that we have lost touch with our immediate past even before we have begun to make sense of it - and the results are proving calamitous.
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Superb. Insightful essays, Performance to match
- By Louis on 05-02-12
By: Tony Judt
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The Long Shadow
- The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century
- By: David Reynolds
- Narrated by: John FitzGibbon
- Length: 19 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the most violent conflicts in the history of civilization, World War I has been strangely forgotten in American culture. It has become a ghostly war fought in a haze of memory, often seen merely as a distant preamble to World War II. In The Long Shadow critically-acclaimed historian David Reynolds seeks to broaden our vision by assessing the impact of the Great War across the twentieth century. He shows how events in that turbulent century—particularly World War II, the Cold War, and the collapse of Communism—shaped and reshaped attitudes to 1914–18.
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The World According to David Reynolds (feat. WWI)
- By Steve on 02-26-15
By: David Reynolds
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The Case for Nationalism
- How It Made Us Powerful, United, and Free
- By: Rich Lowry
- Narrated by: Roy Worley
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Case for Nationalism, Lowry explains how nationalism was central to the American Project. It fueled the American Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution. It preserved the country during the Civil War. It led to the expansion of the American nation’s territory and power, and eventually to our invaluable contribution to creating an international system of self-governing nations.
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Truth does matter !
- By CFC on 11-06-19
By: Rich Lowry
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The Smallest Minority
- Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics
- By: Kevin D. Williamson
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Listener beware: Kevin D. Williamson - the lively, literary firebrand from National Review who was too hot for The Atlantic to handle - comes to bury democracy, not to praise it. With electrifying honesty and spirit, Williamson takes a flamethrower to mob politics, the “beast with many heads” that haunts social media and what currently passes for real life. It’s destroying our capacity for individualism and dragging us down “the Road to Smurfdom, the place where the deracinated demos of the Twitter age finds itself feeling small and blue.”
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Brutally honest, accurate and relevant
- By Sean on 09-19-19
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A Short History of Russia
- How the World's Largest Country Invented Itself, from the Pagans to Putin
- By: Mark Galeotti
- Narrated by: Mark Galeotti
- Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Russia is a country with no natural borders, no single ethnic group, no true central identity. At the crossroads of Europe and Asia, it has been subject to invasion by outsiders, from Vikings to Mongols, from Napoleon’s French to Hitler’s Germans. In order to forge an identity, it has mythologized its past to unite its people and to signal strength to outsiders. In A Short History of Russia, Mark Galeotti explores the history of this fascinating, glorious, desperate, and exasperating country.
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Wonderful short history
- By Tad Davis on 01-19-21
By: Mark Galeotti
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Blood and Iron
- The Rise and Fall of the German Empire; 1871-1918
- By: Katja Hoyer
- Narrated by: Natasha Soudek
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Before 1871, Germany was not yet a nation but simply an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring 39 individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? How would he convince proud Prussians, Bavarians, and Rhinelanders to become Germans? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France - all without destroying itself in the process?
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Misleading title/subtitle
- By Ethan Brown on 12-15-21
By: Katja Hoyer
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When the Facts Change
- Essays, 1995-2010
- By: Tony Judt
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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In When the Facts Change, Tony Judt's widow and fellow historian Jennifer Homans has assembled an essential collection of the most important and influential pieces written in the last 15 years of Judt's life, the years in which he found his voice in the public sphere. Included are seminal essays on the full range of Judt's concerns, including Europe as an idea and in reality, before 1989 and thereafter; Israel, the Holocaust and the Jews; American hyperpower and the world after 9/11.
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Essential
- By Herman Utik on 09-19-16
By: Tony Judt
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The War on History
- The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past
- By: Jarrett Stepman
- Narrated by: Chris Abell
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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America is hopelessly divided, but more worryingly, the ideas and “mystic chords of memory” that rest at the cornerstone of our civilization and bind the generations are being severed, attacked, and forgotten. The left has set out to shatter these bonds with a war on American history - the fundamental concepts, institutions, and icons that make our country what it is. And we have failed to protect our history, allowing Hollywood, educators, and the media to rewrite the story of America. We have ignored the invaluable lessons of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.
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Culture war, not history
- By J. Pulton on 03-08-21
By: Jarrett Stepman
What listeners say about The Politics of Pain
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Hendrik Lagewaard
- 11-27-19
Interesting book slaughtered by the narrator.
O'Toole gives a great insight on the how of Brexit as an English event.
The narrator however has such a lack of diction that it actually becomes a chore to listen to this highly entertaining book.
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- mcr
- 08-03-24
Britain's stupidity
the delivery voice was harsh and offered no subtlety in my opinion. loved the content
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