Twelve Against the Gods
The Story of Adventure
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Narrated by:
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Ric Jerom
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By:
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William Bolitho
About this listen
Twelve Against the Gods was an instant best seller when it first published in 1929. In his trademark journalist style, author William Bolitho details the lives of 12 great adventurers - Alexander the Great, Casanova, Christopher Columbus, Mahomet, Lola Montez, Cagliostro (and Seraphina), Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon I, Lucius Sergius Catiline, Napoleon III, Isadora Duncan, and Woodrow Wilson. Bolitho shines light on both the struggles and successes that made these figures so iconic, and demonstrates how they all battled convention and conformity to achieve enduring fame and notoriety.
©1929 William Bolitho. Renewed 1956 (P)2019 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Best selling history writer Thomas Cahill continues his series on the roots of Western civilization with this volume about the contributions of ancient Greece to the development of contemporary culture. Tracing the origin of Greek culture in the migrations of armed Indo-European horsemen into Attica and the Peloponnesian peninsula, he follows their progress into the creation of the Greek city-states, the refinement of their machinery of war, and the flowering of intellectual and artistic culture.
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Super super
- By Richard on 12-28-03
By: Thomas Cahill
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The Education of Henry Adams
- By: Henry Adams
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 19 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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As a journalist, historian, and novelist born into a family that included two past presidents of the United States, Henry Adams was constantly focused on the American experiment. An immediate bestseller awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1919, The Education of Henry Adams recounts his own and the country's education from 1838, the year of his birth, to 1905, incorporating the Civil War, capitalist expansion, and the growth of the United States as a world power.
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A Book EVERYONE should read once.
- By Darwin8u on 04-17-12
By: Henry Adams
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Notes from the Underground (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Constance Garnett - translator
- Narrated by: Pete Simonelli
- Length: 4 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Isolated from society in a tenement basement in St. Petersburg, a malicious former civil servant vents his resentments. In the rambling notes that follow, we are exposed to the inner turmoil of the Underground Man, who represents the voice of his generation. An emotional, paranoid knot of contradictions, the spiteful narrator is also desperate to join a society he loathes, if only to prove his superiority to it.
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Amazing
- By Bryan on 02-19-19
By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and others
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The Secret History
- By: Procopius
- Narrated by: James Cameron Stewart
- Length: 5 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The Secret History, written by the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius, is one of the most extraordinary and scandalous documents to have survived from the early Byzantine period. Procopius, the leading official historian of his time, lived during the testing and indulgent time of Emperor Justinian the Great and wrote the official records of the successful wars and the grand building projects of his ruler. These were words of aggrandisement. But covertly, Procopius kept a very different record....
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A Bit Hyperbolic
- By HalfWit on 10-13-19
By: Procopius
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Self Reliance
- By: Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Narrated by: Alana Munro
- Length: 1 hr and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes, the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and follow his or her own instincts and ideas. It is the source of one of Emerson's most famous quotations, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." This essay is a considered a watershed moment in which transcendentalism became a major cultural movement. An American classic.
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Don't buy this
- By Leah L on 07-31-16
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The Outline of History
- Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind
- By: H. G. Wells
- Narrated by: Bernard Mayes
- Length: 44 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Having coined the phrase "the war that will end war," H. G. Wells was disillusioned by the World War I peace settlement. Convinced that humanity needed to awaken to the instability of the world order and remember lessons from the past, the author of science-fiction classics set out to write about history. Wells hoped to remind mankind of its common past, provide it with a basis for international patriotism, and guide it to renounce war.
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Loved it
- By Eric on 05-07-15
By: H. G. Wells
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Isak Dinesen
- The Life of a Storyteller
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Isak Dinesen earned international fame for Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, and other stories that skillfully combine elements of fable, social conflict, and psychological drama. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Yet the story of her life - her travels, affairs, and friendships - remains the greatest story of all.
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over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
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Lives of the Twelve Caesars
- By: Suetonius
- Narrated by: Derek Jacobi
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Abridged
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Suetonius wrote his Lives of the Twelve Caesars in the reign of Vespasian around 70AD. He chronicled the extraordinary careers of Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vespasian, and Domitian and the rest in technicolour terms. They presented some high and low times at the heart of the Roman Empire. The accounts provide us with perspicacious insights into the men as much as their reigns.
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Translation doubts
- By Elizabeth on 05-20-07
By: Suetonius
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Prince Albert
- The Man Who Saved the Monarchy
- By: A. N. Wilson
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawn from the Royal archives, including Prince Albert’s voluminous correspondence, this brilliant and ambitious book offers fascinating never-before-known details about the man and his time. A superb match of biographer and subject, Prince Albert, at last, gives this important historical figure the reverence and recognition that is long overdue.
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Excellent Bio!
- By Nancy on 04-24-24
By: A. N. Wilson
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One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's Iliad tells the story of the darkest episode in the Trojan War. At its centre is Achilles, the greatest warrior-champion of the Greeks, and his refusal to fight after being humiliated by his leader, Agamemnon. But when the Trojan Hector kills Achilles' close friend Patroclus, he storms back into battle to take revenge - although knowing this will ensure his own early death.
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By: Ernst Junger
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The Age of Faith
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By: Will Durant PhD, and others
What listeners say about Twelve Against the Gods
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- Justin Miller
- 07-25-22
Disappointed
Bought it since I heard Elon Musk liked it. Kind of boring and couldn’t keep my attention but I finished it.
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