-
Theory of the Gimmick
- Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $21.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
A provocative theory of the gimmick as an aesthetic category steeped in the anxieties of capitalism.
Repulsive and yet strangely attractive, the gimmick is a form that can be found virtually everywhere in capitalism. It comes in many guises: a musical hook, a financial strategy, a striptease, a novel of ideas. Above all, acclaimed theorist Sianne Ngai argues, the gimmick strikes us both as working too little (a labor-saving trick) and as working too hard (a strained effort to get our attention).
Focusing on this connection to work, Ngai draws a line from gimmicks to political economy. When we call something a gimmick, we are registering uncertainties about value bound to labor and time-misgivings that indicate broader anxieties about the measurement of wealth in capitalism. With wit and critical precision, Ngai explores the extravagantly impoverished gimmick across a range of examples: the fiction of Thomas Mann, Helen DeWitt, and Henry James; photographs by Torbjørn Rødland; the video art of Stan Douglas; the theoretical writings of Stanley Cavell and Theodor Adorno. Despite its status as cheap and compromised, the gimmick emerges as a surprisingly powerful tool in this formidable contribution to aesthetic theory.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Illuminations
- Essays and Reflections
- By: Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walter Benjamin was an icon of criticism, renowned for his insight on art, literature, and philosophy. This volume includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and Brecht’s epic theater. Illuminations also includes his penetrating study “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his theses on the philosophy of history.
-
-
finally
- By Anonymous User on 12-08-21
By: Walter Benjamin, and others
-
Reflections
- Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings
- By: Walter Benjamin
- Narrated by: Peter Demetz, Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 15 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A companion volume to Illuminations, the first collection of Walter Benjamin’s writings, Reflections presents a further sampling of his wide-ranging work. Here Benjamin evolves a theory of language as the medium of all creation, discusses theater and surrealism, reminisces about Berlin in the 1920s, recalls conversations with Bertolt Brecht, and provides travelogues of various cities, including Moscow under Stalin.
-
-
W. B. Writes beautiful long sentences. yea!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-24-22
By: Walter Benjamin
-
Postcapitalist Desire
- The Final Lectures
- By: Mark Fisher
- Narrated by: Tom Lawrence
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning with that most fundamental of questions - ''Do we really want what we say we want?'' - Fisher explores the relationship between desire and capitalism, and wonders what new forms of desire we might still excavate from the past, present, and future. From the emergence and failure of the counterculture in the 1970s to the continued development of his left-accelerationist line of thinking, this volume charts a tragically interrupted course for thinking about the raising of a new kind of consciousness, and the cultural and political implications of doing so.
-
-
Amazing ideas from a man who was too brilliant
- By Jim on 08-11-21
By: Mark Fisher
-
Doppelganger
- A Trip into the Mirror World
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.
-
-
Elite Psychobabble
- By A Reviewer on 09-30-23
By: Naomi Klein
-
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
- The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
- By: Shoshana Zuboff
- Narrated by: Nicol Zanzarella
- Length: 24 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is neither a hand-wringing narrative of danger and decline nor a digital fairy tale. Rather, it offers a deeply reasoned and evocative examination of the contests over the next chapter of capitalism that will decide the meaning of information civilization in the 21st century. The stark issue at hand is whether we will be the masters of information and machines or its slaves.
-
-
Book Editors failed to trim the word count
- By Todd B on 07-14-19
By: Shoshana Zuboff
-
The Dawn of Everything
- A New History of Humanity
- By: David Graeber, David Wengrow
- Narrated by: Mark Williams
- Length: 24 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state", political violence, and social inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.
-
-
exactly what I've been looking for
- By DankTurtle on 11-10-21
By: David Graeber, and others
-
Illuminations
- Essays and Reflections
- By: Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Walter Benjamin was an icon of criticism, renowned for his insight on art, literature, and philosophy. This volume includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and Brecht’s epic theater. Illuminations also includes his penetrating study “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his theses on the philosophy of history.
-
-
finally
- By Anonymous User on 12-08-21
By: Walter Benjamin, and others
-
Reflections
- Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings
- By: Walter Benjamin
- Narrated by: Peter Demetz, Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 15 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A companion volume to Illuminations, the first collection of Walter Benjamin’s writings, Reflections presents a further sampling of his wide-ranging work. Here Benjamin evolves a theory of language as the medium of all creation, discusses theater and surrealism, reminisces about Berlin in the 1920s, recalls conversations with Bertolt Brecht, and provides travelogues of various cities, including Moscow under Stalin.
-
-
W. B. Writes beautiful long sentences. yea!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-24-22
By: Walter Benjamin
-
Postcapitalist Desire
- The Final Lectures
- By: Mark Fisher
- Narrated by: Tom Lawrence
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning with that most fundamental of questions - ''Do we really want what we say we want?'' - Fisher explores the relationship between desire and capitalism, and wonders what new forms of desire we might still excavate from the past, present, and future. From the emergence and failure of the counterculture in the 1970s to the continued development of his left-accelerationist line of thinking, this volume charts a tragically interrupted course for thinking about the raising of a new kind of consciousness, and the cultural and political implications of doing so.
-
-
Amazing ideas from a man who was too brilliant
- By Jim on 08-11-21
By: Mark Fisher
-
Doppelganger
- A Trip into the Mirror World
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self—a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience—she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who.
-
-
Elite Psychobabble
- By A Reviewer on 09-30-23
By: Naomi Klein
-
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
- The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
- By: Shoshana Zuboff
- Narrated by: Nicol Zanzarella
- Length: 24 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is neither a hand-wringing narrative of danger and decline nor a digital fairy tale. Rather, it offers a deeply reasoned and evocative examination of the contests over the next chapter of capitalism that will decide the meaning of information civilization in the 21st century. The stark issue at hand is whether we will be the masters of information and machines or its slaves.
-
-
Book Editors failed to trim the word count
- By Todd B on 07-14-19
By: Shoshana Zuboff
-
The Dawn of Everything
- A New History of Humanity
- By: David Graeber, David Wengrow
- Narrated by: Mark Williams
- Length: 24 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state", political violence, and social inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.
-
-
exactly what I've been looking for
- By DankTurtle on 11-10-21
By: David Graeber, and others
-
The Years
- By: Annie Ernaux
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Years is a personal narrative of the period of 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present - even projections into the future - photos, books, songs, radio, television, and decades of advertising and headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and written notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect, words of the time, slogans, brands, and names for ever-proliferating objects are given a voice here. The voice we recognize as the author's continually dissolves and re-emerges.
-
-
Mixed Feelings
- By Elin VanD on 05-10-20
By: Annie Ernaux
-
Theodor Adorno
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: Andrew Bowie
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
T. W. Adorno (1903-1969) was a German philosopher and social and cultural theorist. His work has come to be seen as increasingly relevant to understanding the pathologies of contemporary society evident in today's climate emergency, the financial crash, the reappearance of fascism in many countries, and the growing instability of the world order. This Very Short Introduction covers Adorno's work and life, explaining his key philosophical concepts and the philosophical background and historical context of Adorno's thinking.
By: Andrew Bowie
-
Algorithms of Oppression
- How Search Engines Reinforce Racism
- By: Safiya Umoja Noble
- Narrated by: Shayna Small
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Run a Google search for “black girls” - what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls”, the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society. In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities.
-
-
Read this book. Tell everyone you know about it.
- By Joshua Daniel-Wariya on 06-06-19
-
Pure Colour
- A Novel
- By: Sheila Heti
- Narrated by: Sheila Heti
- Length: 3 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this first draft of the world, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira’s chest like a portal—to what, she doesn’t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and his spirit passes into her.
-
-
Nothing else like it
- By Teri Kline on 03-20-22
By: Sheila Heti
-
The Passion According to G.H.
- By: Clarice Lispector
- Narrated by: Sofia Willingham
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lispector’s most shocking novel. The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector’s mystical novel of 1964, concerns a well-to-do Rio sculptress, G.H., who enters her maid’s room, sees a cockroach crawling out of the wardrobe, and, panicking, slams the door - crushing the cockroach - and then watches it die. At the end of the novel, at the height of a spiritual crisis, comes the most famous and most genuinely shocking scene in Brazilian literature....
-
-
So freaking good!
- By Gordy on 04-11-18
-
Poverty, by America
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
-
-
A testimonial based on facts and witness
- By Alonzo Nightjar on 03-27-23
By: Matthew Desmond
-
Debt - Updated and Expanded
- The First 5,000 Years
- By: David Graeber
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 17 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: He shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods - that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.
-
-
Transformative to the point of being revolutionary
- By James C. Samans on 08-14-16
By: David Graeber
-
Aesthetics
- A Very Short Introduction
- By: Bence Nanay
- Narrated by: Alex Wyndham
- Length: 3 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, Bence Nanay introduces the field of aesthetics, considering both Western and non-Western aesthetic traditions and exploring why it is sometimes misunderstood or considered to be too elitist - by artists, musicians, and even philosophers. As Nanay shows, so-called "high art" has no more claims on aesthetics than sitcoms, tattoos, or punk rock.
-
-
Critique of 'Western' Aesthetics - A Virtue Signal
- By Mr Timothy Webber on 10-05-21
By: Bence Nanay
-
On Freedom
- Four Songs of Care and Constraint
- By: Maggie Nelson
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice, and well-being, or is freedom's long star turn coming to a close? Does a continued obsession with the term enliven and emancipate, or reflect a deepening nihilism (or both)? On Freedom examines such questions by tracing the concept's complexities in four distinct realms: art, sex, drugs, and climate.
-
-
Just great
- By Kristi Strong on 12-14-21
By: Maggie Nelson
-
Necropolitics
- By: Achille Mbembe, Steven Corcoran - translator
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 8 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Necropolitics, Achille Mbembe, a leader in the new wave of francophone critical theory, theorizes the genealogy of the contemporary world, a world plagued by ever-increasing inequality, militarization, enmity, and terror as well as by a resurgence of racist, fascist, and nationalist forces determined to exclude and kill. He outlines how democracy has begun to embrace its dark side - what he calls its "nocturnal body" - which is based on the desires, fears, affects, relations, and violence that drove colonialism.
-
-
Forget critical race theory
- By Ian on 01-08-23
By: Achille Mbembe, and others
-
The Master and His Emissary
- The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
- By: Iain McGilchrist
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 27 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain - the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the "rational" side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master.
-
-
The Master and His Emissary
- By Michael on 11-07-20
By: Iain McGilchrist
-
The Source of Self-Regard
- Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 16 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection - a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades.
-
-
Refreshing thoughts
- By Amazon Customer on 04-02-19
By: Toni Morrison
Related to this topic
-
The Art Instinct
- Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution
- By: Denis Dutton
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Art Instinct combines two of the most fascinating and contentious disciplines, art and evolutionary science, in a provocative new work that will revolutionize the way art itself is perceived. Aesthetic taste, argues Denis Dutton, is an evolutionary trait, and is shaped by natural selection. It's not, as almost all contemporary art criticism and academic theory would have it, "socially constructed".
-
-
A breath of fresh air!
- By Michael on 02-19-14
By: Denis Dutton
-
The Art of the Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Linda Asher - translator
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe. Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the postpsychological novel.
-
-
Informative and Inspiring
- By Mo on 11-27-21
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
The Romantic Manifesto
- A Philosophy of Literature
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned collection of essays, Ayn Rand throws new light on the nature of art and its purpose in human life. Once again, she demonstrates her bold originality and her refusal to let conventional ideas define her sense of the truth. Rand eloquently asserts that one cannot create art without infusing it with one's own value judgments and personal philosophy - even an attempt to withhold moral overtones only results in a deterministic or naturalistic message.
-
-
Essential AYN
- By Mica on 07-15-08
By: Ayn Rand
-
The Master and His Emissary
- The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
- By: Iain McGilchrist
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 27 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain - the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the "rational" side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master.
-
-
The Master and His Emissary
- By Michael on 11-07-20
By: Iain McGilchrist
-
Jewish Comedy
- A Serious History
- By: Jeremy Dauber
- Narrated by: Jeremy Dauber
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a major work of scholarship both erudite and very funny, Jeremy Dauber traces the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from Biblical times to the age of Twitter. Organizing his book thematically into what he calls the seven strands of Jewish comedy - including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar - Dauber explores the ways Jewish comedy has dealt with persecution, assimilation, and diaspora through the ages. He explains the rise and fall of popular comic archetypes such as the Jewish mother, the JAP, and the schlemiel and schlimazel.
-
-
Not funny
- By supermantwo on 08-31-20
By: Jeremy Dauber
-
High Weirdness
- Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
- By: Erik Davis
- Narrated by: Erik Davis
- Length: 20 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the 1970s. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality - but how did their writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America?
-
-
High Weirdness
- By Amazon Customer on 09-17-20
By: Erik Davis
-
The Art Instinct
- Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution
- By: Denis Dutton
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 12 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Art Instinct combines two of the most fascinating and contentious disciplines, art and evolutionary science, in a provocative new work that will revolutionize the way art itself is perceived. Aesthetic taste, argues Denis Dutton, is an evolutionary trait, and is shaped by natural selection. It's not, as almost all contemporary art criticism and academic theory would have it, "socially constructed".
-
-
A breath of fresh air!
- By Michael on 02-19-14
By: Denis Dutton
-
The Art of the Novel
- By: Milan Kundera, Linda Asher - translator
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe. Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the postpsychological novel.
-
-
Informative and Inspiring
- By Mo on 11-27-21
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
The Romantic Manifesto
- A Philosophy of Literature
- By: Ayn Rand
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this beautifully written and brilliantly reasoned collection of essays, Ayn Rand throws new light on the nature of art and its purpose in human life. Once again, she demonstrates her bold originality and her refusal to let conventional ideas define her sense of the truth. Rand eloquently asserts that one cannot create art without infusing it with one's own value judgments and personal philosophy - even an attempt to withhold moral overtones only results in a deterministic or naturalistic message.
-
-
Essential AYN
- By Mica on 07-15-08
By: Ayn Rand
-
The Master and His Emissary
- The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
- By: Iain McGilchrist
- Narrated by: Dennis Kleinman
- Length: 27 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This pioneering account sets out to understand the structure of the human brain - the place where mind meets matter. Until recently, the left hemisphere of our brain has been seen as the "rational" side, the superior partner to the right. But is this distinction true? Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues while our left brain makes for a wonderful servant, it is a very poor master.
-
-
The Master and His Emissary
- By Michael on 11-07-20
By: Iain McGilchrist
-
Jewish Comedy
- A Serious History
- By: Jeremy Dauber
- Narrated by: Jeremy Dauber
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a major work of scholarship both erudite and very funny, Jeremy Dauber traces the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from Biblical times to the age of Twitter. Organizing his book thematically into what he calls the seven strands of Jewish comedy - including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar - Dauber explores the ways Jewish comedy has dealt with persecution, assimilation, and diaspora through the ages. He explains the rise and fall of popular comic archetypes such as the Jewish mother, the JAP, and the schlemiel and schlimazel.
-
-
Not funny
- By supermantwo on 08-31-20
By: Jeremy Dauber
-
High Weirdness
- Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies
- By: Erik Davis
- Narrated by: Erik Davis
- Length: 20 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the 1970s. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality - but how did their writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America?
-
-
High Weirdness
- By Amazon Customer on 09-17-20
By: Erik Davis
-
Irrationality
- A History of the Dark Side of Reason
- By: Justin E. H. Smith
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal”. But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today - from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump - Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite.
-
-
A good brain workout
- By ThomasC on 04-09-19
-
The News
- A User's Manual
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The news is everywhere. We can’t stop constantly checking it on our computer screens, but what is this doing to our minds? We are never really taught how to make sense of the torrent of news we face every day, writes Alain de Botton (author of the best-selling The Architecture of Happiness), but this has a huge impact on our sense of what matters and of how we should lead our lives.
-
-
Quit the news
- By Bett Bollhoefer on 05-16-15
By: Alain de Botton
-
Culture and Imperialism
- By: Edward Said
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 19 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A landmark work from the intellectually auspicious author of Orientalism, this book explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. This classic study, the direct successor to Said's main work, is read by Peter Ganim ( Orientalism).
-
-
BRAVO, AUDIBLE!! WE NEED MORE SAID!! REAL BOOKS!!
- By AnthonyStevens on 02-27-11
By: Edward Said
-
Orientalism
- By: Edward Said
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This landmark book, first published in 1978, remains one of the most influential books in the Social Sciences, particularly Ethnic Studies and Postcolonialism. Said is best known for describing and critiquing "Orientalism", which he perceived as a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the East. In Orientalism Said claimed a "subtle and persistent Eurocentric prejudice against Arabo-Islamic peoples and their culture."
-
-
We're lucky to have this on audio
- By Delano on 02-27-13
By: Edward Said
-
Trekonomics
- The Economics of Star Trek
- By: Manu Saadia
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What would the world look like if everybody had everything they wanted or needed? Trekonomics, the premier book in financial journalist Felix Salmon's imprint PiperText, approaches scarcity economics by coming at it backward - through thinking about a universe where scarcity does not exist. Delving deep into the details and intricacies of 24th-century society, Trekonomics explores post-scarcity and whether we, as humans, are equipped for it.
-
-
An Amusing & Practical Analysis of Fictional Ideas
- By Lost In The Wash on 09-19-16
By: Manu Saadia
-
How to Save the West
- Ancient Wisdom for 5 Modern Crises
- By: Spencer Klavan
- Narrated by: Spencer Klavan
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It has been proclaimed many times, but perhaps never more convincingly than now, when every news cycle seems to deliver further confirmation of a world gone mad. Is this the endgame? Author Spencer Klavan is a classicist, with a Ph.D. from Oxford, and a deep understanding of the West. His analysis: The situation is dire. But every crisis we face today, we have faced before. And we can surmount each one. Klavan brings to the West’s defense the insights of Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, and the Founding Fathers to show that in the wisdom of the past lies hope for the future.
-
-
Spectacular! A must read!
- By M.A. on 02-15-23
By: Spencer Klavan
-
The Image, 50th Anniversary Edition
- A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
- By: Daniel J. Boorstin, Douglas Rushkoff - afterword
- Narrated by: Timothy Danko
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1962, this wonderfully provocative book introduced the notion of "pseudo-events" - events such as press conferences and presidential debates, which are manufactured solely in order to be reported - and the contemporary definition of celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness". Since then Daniel J. Boorstin's prophetic vision of an America inundated by its own illusions has become an essential resource for any listeners who wants to distinguish the manifold deceptions of our culture from its few enduring truths.
-
-
Boorstin’s deep Conservative mindset reaches through every example in this book.
- By Christine on 10-12-20
By: Daniel J. Boorstin, and others
-
Six Memos for the Next Millennium
- By: Italo Calvino, Geoffrey Brock - translator
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the time of his death, Italo Calvino was at work on six lectures setting forth the qualities in writing he most valued and which he believed would define literature in the century to come. Here, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, are the five lectures he completed, forming not only a stirring defense of literature but also an indispensable guide to the writings of Calvino himself. He devotes one "memo" each to the concepts of lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity.
By: Italo Calvino, and others
-
Time of the Magicians
- Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy
- By: Wolfram Eilenberger, Shaun Whiteside
- Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year is 1919. The horror of the First World War is fresh for the protagonists of Time of the Magicians, each of whom finds himself at a crucial juncture. Benjamin is trying to flee his overbearing father and floundering in his academic career, living hand to mouth as a critic. Wittgenstein, by contrast, has dramatically decided to divest himself of the monumental fortune he stands to inherit, in search of spiritual clarity.
-
-
Narrator butchers foreign many language quotations
- By William G. Brown on 08-31-20
By: Wolfram Eilenberger, and others
-
Irrational Man
- A Study in Existential Philosophy
- By: William Barrett
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Widely recognized as the finest definition of existentialist philosophy ever written, this book introduced existentialism to America in 1958. Irrational Man begins by discussing the roots of existentialism in the art and thinking of Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Baudelaire, Blake, Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Picasso, Joyce, and Beckett. The heart of the book explains the views of the foremost existentialists - Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. The result is a marvelously lucid definition of existentialism and a brilliant interpretation of its impact.
-
-
heady
- By A. Antine on 07-28-22
By: William Barrett
-
How Much is Enough?
- Money and the Good Life
- By: Edward Skidelsky
- Narrated by: Clay Teunis
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What constitutes the good life? What is the true value of money? Why do we work such long hours merely to acquire greater wealth? These are some of the questions that many asked themselves when the financial system crashed in 2008. This book tackles such questions head-on.The authors begin with the great economist John Maynard Keynes. In 1930 Keynes predicted that, within a century, per capita income would steadily rise, people’s basic needs would be met, and no one would have to work more than fifteen hours a week.
-
-
Not what I expected at all!
- By Chi on 05-22-23
By: Edward Skidelsky
-
Adam Smith
- Father of Economics
- By: Jesse Norman
- Narrated by: Jesse Norman
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A dazzlingly original account of the life and thought of Adam Smith, the greatest economist of all time. In Adam Smith, political philosopher Jesse Norman dispels the myths and caricatures, and provides a far more complex portrait of the man. Offering a highly engaging account of Smith's life and times, Norman explores his work as a whole and traces his influence over two centuries to the present day. Finally, he shows how a proper understanding of Smith can help us address the problems of modern capitalism.
-
-
Most excellent book!
- By Harish G. Naik on 03-02-19
By: Jesse Norman