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The Price of the Ticket
Collected Nonfiction: 1948-1985
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Narrated by:
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JD Jackson
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By:
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James Baldwin
About this listen
An essential compendium of James Baldwin’s most powerful nonfiction work, calling on us “to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country.”
Personal and prophetic, these essays uncover what it means to live in a racist American society with insights that feel as fresh today as they did over the four decades in which he composed them. Longtime Baldwin fans and especially those just discovering his genius will appreciate this essential collection of his great nonfiction writing. Along with 46 additional pieces, it includes the full text of dozens of famous essays from such books as:
- Notes of a Native Son
- Nobody Knows My Name
- The Fire Next Time
- No Name in the Street
- The Devil Finds Work
This collection provides the perfect entrée into Baldwin’s prescient commentary on race, sexuality, and identity in an unjust American society.
©1961, 2021 Estate of James Baldwin (P)2021 Beacon PressCritic reviews
“With burning passion and jabbing, epigrammatic acuity, Baldwin fearlessly articulates issues of race, democracy, and American identity.”—Toni Morrison
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-
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At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo's loyalty.
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Long story
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Fifty Famous Stories Retold
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Legendary tales of the lives of famous people and historic episodes. Of these 50 stories, some have historical value, some are useful as giving point to certain great moral truths, and others are intended only to amuse. A few of these stories are from very ancient sources and are current in the literature of many lands, while many of more recent origin have come to us through the ballads and folk tales of the English people. Nearly all are frequently alluded to in poetry and prose.
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Kids Love the Stories
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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"Any kind of movement for freedom of Black people based solely within the confines of America is absolutely doomed to fail." Speeches and interviews of Malcolm X.
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Confused and disappointed by this book
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James Baldwin
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
This is a biography of James Baldwin, author, one-time preacher, and civil rights activist. He chose David Leeming, a close friend and colleague, to write his biography and granted him access to his correspondence. Leeming traces his life from his birth in Harlem in 1924 to his self-imposed exile in Europe, his later years as political activist, and his public funeral in 1987.
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A great biography of a great man
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Playing in the Dark
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Morrison shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree--and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires. According to the Chicago Tribune, Morrison "reimagines and remaps the possibility of America." Her brilliant discussions of the "Africanist" presence in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemingway leads to a dramatic reappraisal of the essential characteristics of our literary tradition.
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My goodness..get ready to be challenged
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Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race?
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The most toxic racial arguments share one of five traits. They try to erase Black history, prioritize white victimhood, deny Black oppression, promote myths of Black inferiority, or rebrand racism as something else entirely. They’re all designed to distract society from racial justice, but now we have the tools to debunk them.
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Just more of the Usual
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By: Keith Boykin
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Begin Again
- James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
- By: Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
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- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Begin Again is one of the great books on James Baldwin and a powerful reckoning with America’s ongoing failure to confront the lies it tells itself about race. Just as in Baldwin’s “after times,” argues Eddie S. Glaude Jr., when white Americans met the civil rights movement’s call for truth and justice with blind rage and the murders of movement leaders, so in our moment were the Obama presidency and the birth of Black Lives Matter answered with the ascendance of Trump and the violent resurgence of white nationalism.
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I Understand.
- By Carrie Johnson on 07-01-20
What listeners say about The Price of the Ticket
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Cris
- 03-01-24
An honest portrait of the US by an American hero
This is such a fantastic piece of literature I will listen to many times again!
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- James
- 12-08-23
JB is sublime!
I can't get enough of his works. It cannot be described by a scrub such as myself. it is some of the most penetrating prose ever put down on paper. He's a gift!
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- Single Again
- 03-28-24
Authenticity
Excellent. I felt like I was conversing with a close friend sharing his inner most personal thoughts and feelings. That I know profoundly now. Thanks
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- Jose L. Massas
- 01-07-23
insightful
JD Jackson had one thinking it was James Baldwin reading his own work, excellent . . .
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3 people found this helpful