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Tulipomania
- The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
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Publisher's summary
A vivid narration of the history of the tulip, from its origins on the barren, windswept steppes of central Asia to its place of honor in the lush imperial gardens of Constantinople, to its starring moment as the most coveted - and beautiful - commodity in Europe.
In the 1630s, visitors to the prosperous trading cities of the Netherlands couldn't help but notice that thousands of normally sober, hardworking Dutch citizens were caught up in an extraordinary frenzy of buying and selling. The object of this unprecedented speculation was the tulip, a delicate and exotic Eastern import that had bewitched horticulturists, noblemen, and tavern owners alike.
For almost a year, rare bulbs changed hands for incredible and ever-increasing sums, until single flowers were being sold for more than the cost of a house. Historians would come to call it tulipomania. It was the first futures market in history, and like so many of the ones that would follow, it crashed spectacularly, plunging speculators and investors into economic ruin and despair.
This colorful cast of characters includes Turkish sultans, Yugoslav soldiers, French botanists, and Dutch tavern keepers - all centuries apart historically and worlds apart culturally, but with one thing in common: tulipomania.
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The Black Russian
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- Narrated by: Peter Marinker
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
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The Black Russian is the incredible story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, born in 1872 to former slaves who became prosperous farmers in Mississippi. After leaving the South and working as a waiter and valet in Chicago and Brooklyn, Frederick sought greater freedom in London, then crisscrossed Europe, and - in a highly unusual choice for a black American at the time - went to Russia in 1899. Because he found no color line there, Frederick made Moscow his home. He renamed himself Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas, married twice, acquired a mistress, and took Russian citizenship.
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US Born African Descendant 2 Russian Citizenship
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The Island at the Center of the World
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- Narrated by: Russell Shorto
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In a landmark work of history, Russell Shorto presents astonishing information on the founding of our nation and reveals in riveting detail the crucial role of the Dutch in making America what it is today.
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Incomplete history, but fun. Performance is poor.
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By: Russell Shorto
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American Slavery, American Freedom
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- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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"If it is possible to understand the American paradox, the marriage of slavery and freedom, Virginia is surely the place to begin," writes Edmund S. Morgan in American Slavery, American Freedom, a study of the tragic contradiction at the core of America. Morgan finds the key to this central paradox in the people and politics of the state that was both the birthplace of the revolution and the largest slaveholding state in the country.
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Explaining the great American contradiction
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By: Edmund S. Morgan
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The Richest Man Who Ever Lived
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Jacob Fugger lived in Germany at the turn of the 16th century, the grandson of a peasant. By the time he died, his fortune amounted to nearly 2 percent of European GDP. Not even John D. Rockefeller had that kind of wealth. Most people become rich by spotting opportunities, pioneering new technologies, or besting opponents in negotiations. Fugger did all that, but he had an extra quality that allowed him to rise even higher: nerve.
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Narrator the worst I ever heard
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By: Greg Steinmetz
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Young Benjamin Franklin
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From his early career as a printer and journalist to his scientific work and his role as a founder of a new republic, Benjamin Franklin has always seemed the inevitable embodiment of American ingenuity. But in his youth, he had to make his way through a harsh colonial world, where he fought many battles with his rivals, but also with his wayward emotions. Taking Franklin to the age of 41, when he made his first electrical discoveries, Bunker goes behind the legend to reveal the sources of his passion for knowledge.
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Good Book but LOTS of Names
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By: Nick Bunker
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A Splendid Exchange
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In A Splendid Exchange, William J. Bernstein tells the extraordinary story of global commerce from its prehistoric origins to the myriad controversies surrounding it today. He transports listeners from ancient sailing ships that brought the silk trade from China to Rome in the second century to the rise and fall of the Portuguese monopoly in spices in the 16th.
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Very interesting and Germane to Today's World
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Imperial Twilight
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As one of the most potent turning points in the country's modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today's China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to "open" China even as China's imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country's decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China's advantage.
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Balanced readable narrative about the Opium Wars
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By: Stephen R. Platt
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Chocolate Wars
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With a cast of characters that wouldnt be out of place in a Victorian novel, Chocolate Wars tells the story of the great chocolatier dynasties, through the prism of the Cadburys. Chocolate was consumed unrefined and unprocessed as a rather bitter, fatty drink for the wealthy elite until the late 19th century, when the Swiss discovered a way to blend it with milk and unleashed a product that would conquer every market in the world.
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The World of Chocolate
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1493
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More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.
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Fascinating Mindbending History.
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Founding Gardeners
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From the author of the acclaimed The Brother Gardeners, a fascinating look at the founding fathers from the unique and intimate perspective of their lives as gardeners, plantsmen, and farmers. For the founding fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were elemental passions, as deeply ingrained in their characters as their belief in liberty for the nation they were creating. These stories reveal a guiding but previously overlooked ideology of the American Revolution.
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"Outstanding Listen"
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Castles, Customs, and Kings
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A compilation of essays from the English Historical Fiction Authors blog, this book provides a wealth of historical information from Roman Britain to early 20th-century England. Over 50 different authors share hundreds of real life stories and tantalizing tidbits discovered while doing research for their own historical novels.
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Historical Tidbits
- By Troy on 08-03-15
By: Debra Brown, and others
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What listeners say about Tulipomania
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Shauna pieruccini
- 05-02-24
Extremely Thorough
I'm sure it took a tremendous amount of research to write this but it's maybe not the best in audio book form.
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Overall
- ST
- 01-25-21
Too Detailed
Listening to 8 hrs. about tulip mania in Holland was just too much for me to absorb. The author's research and detail is outstanding but I felt it not so necessary for the average reader to know every single grower, buyer and seller's name, etc. I perhaps would have gotten more out of the book, which I read for discussion in a book club, if it would have been an actual book I could have browsed through to see pictures of the many varieties of tulips mentioned so the relevancy of prices paid would have more meaning.
For my first book, I feel the audio version just was too difficult and long for me to take in all I wanted to know about this time period.
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1 person found this helpful
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- appreciative reader
- 02-16-24
Accounting facts of Tulip Trade
The endless reciting of prices was not interesting. I expected a rich cultural history of tulipmania and instead I just heard how much each species was worth in different years. Very disappointed.
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