Topsail Island
Mayberry by the Sea, 2nd Edition
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Narrated by:
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John Witt
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By:
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Ray McAllister
About this listen
As if caught in a time warp, Topsail resembles resorts of decades past. It has the small-town feel of a family beach, a place with few commercial trappings whose devotees return generation after generation. McAllister blends interviews with the people who know the island with stories of early pirates, devastating hurricanes, a 1940s dig in search of a 1630 Spanish galleon's treasure, the US government's secret rocket program, a modern-day sea-turtle preservation project, and a black bear that came to stroll the beach. McAllister tells the many stories of Topsail with the help of those who love the island best.
Download the accompanying reference guide.©2006 Ray McAllister (P)2015 Ray McAllisterListeners also enjoyed...
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Comprised of vignettes from his own experiences of growing up in Central Florida, this native Floridian reveals "Old Florida" through its land, its people and their relationship to the times. This is not the Florida of the travel brochures or the concrete and glass glitz of the developers but rather the real Florida as known only by those who are proud to call themselves (or declare themselves) native Floridians. Laugh and cry with the exploits of these tough and proud people.
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Lots of boasting for a bit of History
- By Flo on 07-06-20
By: Lance Edwards
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A Furious Sky
- The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes
- By: Eric Jay Dolin
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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With A Furious Sky, Eric Jay Dolin has created a vivid, sprawling account of our encounters with hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus's New World voyages to the destruction wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. Weaving a story of shipwrecks and devastated cities, of heroism and folly, Dolin introduces a rich cast of unlikely heroes and puts us in the middle of the most devastating storms of the past, none worse than the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which killed at least 6,000 people, the highest toll of any natural disaster in American history.
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Good start but went political at the end.
- By thebreeze on 03-24-21
By: Eric Jay Dolin
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The Seine
- The River That Made Paris
- By: Elaine Sciolino
- Narrated by: Elaine Sciolino
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Elaine Sciolino came to Paris as a young foreign correspondent and was seduced by a river. In The Seine, she tells the story of that river from its source on a remote plateau of Burgundy to the wide estuary where its waters meet the sea, and the cities, tributaries, islands, ports, and bridges in between.
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Disappointed
- By Nom de Guerre on 08-06-21
By: Elaine Sciolino
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Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All
- A New Zealand Story
- By: Christina Thompson
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man.
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a beautiful story
- By Pumpkin99 on 12-24-22
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Sudden Sea
- By: R.A. Scotti
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of The Perfect Storm, Sudden Sea hearkens back to a natural disaster that struck terror in the hearts of many. In this narrative, listeners experience the Great Hurricane of 1938, the most financially destructive storm on record.
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Very professional and interesting
- By Careful Consumer on 08-09-23
By: R.A. Scotti
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The Storm of the Century
- Tragedy, Heroism, Survival, and the Epic True Story of America's Deadliest Natural Disaster: The Great Gulf Hurricane of 1900
- By: Al Roker, William Hogeland
- Narrated by: Byron Wagner
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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On the afternoon of September 8, 1900, 200-mile-per-hour winds and 15-foot waves slammed into Galveston, the prosperous and growing port city on Texas' Gulf Coast. By dawn the next day, when the storm had passed, the city that had existed just hours before was gone. Shattered, grief-stricken survivors emerged to witness a level of destruction never before seen: 8,000 corpses littered the streets and were buried under the massive wreckage.
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Review of "The Storm of the Century "
- By S. Noe on 09-04-15
By: Al Roker, and others
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Last Train to Paradise
- Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad That Crossed an Ocean
- By: Les Standiford
- Narrated by: Del Roy
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The paths of the great American robber barons were paved with riches, and though ordinary citizens paid for them, they also profited. Les Standiford, author of the John Deal thrillers, tells how the man who turned Florida's swamps into the playgrounds of the rich performed the almost superhuman feat of building a railroad from the mainland to Key West at the turn of the century.
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A Pleasant Surprise
- By Roy on 04-05-09
By: Les Standiford
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Beyond the Mountain
- By: Steve House, Reinhold Messner - foreword
- Narrated by: Steve House
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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What does it take to be one of the world's best high-altitude mountain climbers? A lot of fundraising; traveling in some of the world's most dangerous countries; enduring cold bivouacs, searing lungs, and a cloudy mind when you can least afford one. It means learning the hard lessons the mountains teach. Steve House built his reputation on ascents throughout the Alps, Canada, Alaska, the Karakoram, and the Himalaya that have expanded possibilities of style, speed, and difficulty.
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A life-changing book
- By barbudo on 05-02-18
By: Steve House, and others
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Outposts
- Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Abridged
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Originally published in 1985, Outposts is Simon Winchester's journey to find the vanishing empire, "on which the sun never sets". In the course of a three-year, 100,000 mile journey - from the chill of the Antarctic to the blue seas of the Caribbean, from the South of Spain and the tip of China to the utterly remote specks in the middle of gale-swept oceans - he discovered such romance and depravity, opulence and despair that he was inspired to write what may be the last contemporary account of the British empire.
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Nice Travelogue
- By J. S. Koehler on 01-28-06
By: Simon Winchester
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Disney's Land
- Walt Disney and the Invention of the Amusement Park That Changed the World
- By: Richard Snow
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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This is a spectacular story of error and innovation, a wild ride from a vision to the realization of an iconic cultural landscape. It reflects the park’s uniqueness, but just as strongly that of the man who built it with a watchmaker’s precision, an artist’s conviction, and the desperate, high-hearted recklessness of a riverboat gambler.
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Okay, but better books on the subject
- By J.D. on 12-07-19
By: Richard Snow
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Atlantic
- Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Atlantic is a biography of a tremendous space that has been central to the ambitions of explorers, scientists, and warriors, and continues profoundly to affect our character, attitudes, and dreams. Spanning the ocean's story, from its geological origins to the age of exploration, from World War II battles to today's struggles with pollution and overfishing, Winchester's narrative is epic, intimate, and awe inspiring.
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Starts Better Than it Finishes
- By Ray on 12-18-10
By: Simon Winchester
What listeners say about Topsail Island
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michael J. Ruslander
- 10-10-15
A Genuine Historical Narrative
If you could sum up Topsail Island in three words, what would they be?
A destination location
What was one of the most memorable moments of Topsail Island?
The downhome folksiness that permeates the story.
Have you listened to any of John Witt’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
This was my first, but certainly will NOT be my last time listening to the narrator
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
I would have enjoyed that, but time (6 + hours) prevented that.
Any additional comments?
I enjoyed this story and want to take the family to Topsail Island for our annual vacation next year.
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1 person found this helpful
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- littlebear
- 09-30-15
Topsail Sounds Like a Beautiful Island...
If nothing else, you will walk away with that.
The narrator did a wonderful job. His accent is southern without being slow. It has the feel of an older relative telling a story, which I really appreciate.
I'm sure there will be people that disagree with me, but if you're looking for a book about an extremely interesting place- this isn't it. I feel like an editor could cut out so much information (and add an index) and quite possibly give the book potential. I will let a sampling of the story speak for itself below my review.
I think this book would be perfect for someone who lives on Topsail or has had occasion to visit the island to notice some of the island's peculiarities and know some of the population. If someone I knew was going to visit there, I'd probably recommend that they listen to this.
I received a copy of this book for free from the author, narrator or publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.
Except (verbatim):
Chapter Five- Piers
It is 6:40 on an October morning. Sunrise is approaching. the waves crash on the beach, louder, it seems, than during daylight hours. The air is cooler, damper, the breeze seemingly stiffer. Later in the day, shirts and shorts will be fine. But for now, this is jacket weather.
The only light comes from the Surf City Pier, stretching out over the Atlantic. Lights atop poles send small, dim glows into the mist. The lighting is enough only to suggest shapes. There seem to be people on the pier already.
A red-yellow glow appears across the horizon, muted at first, then more commanding. It is a scene of serenity: waves rolling onto the beach, a pier extending into the mist, the awakening sun illuminating it with more artistry than a lighting-effects expert ever could.
The first rays of the day also bring the shapes out of hiding. Dozens of people, perhaps scores, are on the pier. Their faces are still unclear. But their fishing poles extend upward against the railing. A thin line trips from each into the surf. Some have been here for hours already. Some will be here all day.
There are few better places than a fishing pier.
Commercial and individual fisherman mined the waters of Topsail from boats or the beach except when the military controlled the island in the 1930s and 1940s. Fishing resumed after the military left in 1948 and was made easier by the pontoon bridge it left behind. Most of the early postwar fishermen were content to stand on the beach and cast their lines into the surf or drop them from boats into the sound or ocean.
But they were happier when the piers showed up.
There have been as many as nine piers on Topsail at one time-eight on the ocean and one on Topsail Sound. Piers come and go on Topsail, battered by storms, rebuilt, given new names, let go. Even the start-up dates have been debated. An article in the June 1967 issue of The State magazine said Topsail had the largest concentration of fishing piers on the North Carolina coast, including the Surf City Pier (built in 1952; actually in 1953), New Topsail Ocean Pier (1953; actually 1954), Barnacle Bill's Pier (1956), Paradise Pier (1958), Dolphin Pier (1960), McKee's New River Inlet Pier (1960), and Scotch Bonnet Pier (1967). The black-owned Ocean City Pier, not mentioned, opened in 1959.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Deedra
- 10-17-15
Topsail Island
Any additional comments?
This was a wonderful story about a secluded special place.We are given a tour of Topsail Island by a man that has spent time there and other places,Topsail is his favorite.Told wonderfully by John Witt,we fall in love with a place that reminds us of old times in a beach town,the people who people it and the possible future that we can not control."I was provided this audiobook at no charge by the author, publisher and/or narrator in exchange for an unbiased review via AudiobookBlast or MalarHouse dot com"
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Al
- 10-10-15
Wanted To Like It More
"I was provided this audiobook at no charge by the author, publisher and/or narrator in exchange for an unbiased review via AudiobookBlast dot com"
I was looking forward to listening about a place I enjoy visiting. Narrator was good, story a bit weak
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