Why Visit America
Stories
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Narrated by:
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Peter Ganim
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By:
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Matthew Baker
About this listen
Equal parts speculative and satirical, the stories in Why Visit America form an exegesis of our current political predicament while offering an eloquent plea for connection and hope.
The citizens of Plainfield, Texas, have had it with the broke-down United States. So they vote to secede, rename themselves America in memory of their former country, and happily set themselves up to receive tourists from their closest neighbor: America. Couldn’t happen? Well, it might, and so it goes in the 13 stories in Matthew Baker’s brilliantly illuminating, incisive, and heartbreaking collection Why Visit America.
The audiobook opens with a seemingly traditional story in which the speculative element is extremely minimal - the narrator has a job that doesn’t actually exist - a story that wouldn’t seem much out of place in a collection of literary realism. From there the stories get progressively stranger: A young man breaks the news to his family that he is going to transition - from an analog body to a digital existence. A young woman abducts a child - her own - from a government-run childcare facility. A man returns home after committing a great crime, his sentence being that his memory - his entire life - is wiped clean.
As the audiobook moves from universe to universe, the stories cross between different American genres: from bildungsroman to rom-com, Western to dystopian, including fantasy, horror, erotica, and a noir detective mystery. Listened to together, these parallel-universe stories create a composite portrait of the true nature of the United States and a Through the Looking-Glass reflection of who we are as a country.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company
©2020 Matthew Baker (P)2020 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
In 1961, Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant - the postwar optimism seemed assured. A book of great ambition, Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America’s most mythologized cities.
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Great book. I wish the pictures had been included.
- By Lindsay on 02-28-20
By: Sarah M. Broom
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Inherit the Bones
- A Detective Gemma Monroe Mystery, Book 1
- By: Emily Littlejohn
- Narrated by: Harper Landry
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Secrets and lies can’t stay buried forever in Cedar Valley. In the summer, hikers and campers pack the small Colorado town’s meadows and fields. And in the winter, skiers and snowboarders take over the mountains. Season by season, year after year, time passes, and the lies, like the aspens and evergreens that surround the town, take root and spread deep. Now, someone has uncovered the lies, and it is his murder that continues a chain of events that began almost 40 years ago.
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intriguing
- By Anonymous User on 06-26-19
By: Emily Littlejohn
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The Saturday Night Ghost Club
- A Novel
- By: Craig Davidson
- Narrated by: Corey Brill
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in 1980s Niagara Falls - a seedy but magical, slightly haunted place - Jake Baker spends most of his time with his uncle Calvin, a kind but eccentric enthusiast of occult artifacts and conspiracy theories. The summer Jake turns 12, he befriends a pair of siblings new to town, and so Calvin decides to initiate them all into the "Saturday Night Ghost Club." But as the summer goes on, what begins as a seemingly light-hearted project may ultimately uncover more than any of its members had imagined.
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Emotionless
- By Noura on 10-18-20
By: Craig Davidson
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Project Hail Mary
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 16 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
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Bazinga
- By Davidgonzalezsr on 05-04-21
By: Andy Weir
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George Orwell’s 1984
- An Audible Original adaptation
- By: George Orwell, Joe White - adaptation
- Narrated by: Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins
- Original Recording
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It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.
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A Revelation!
- By wotsallthisthen on 04-07-24
By: George Orwell, and others
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Starter Villain
- By: John Scalzi
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.
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Volcanic Lairs, Death Rays & Cats… Oh My! 😼
- By C. White on 09-19-23
By: John Scalzi
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The Martian
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.
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I love Wil Wheaton but why not R. C. Bray?
- By L. Newman on 01-11-20
By: Andy Weir
What listeners say about Why Visit America
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anat
- 07-30-23
Creative and genuine
I don’t usually go for short stories, I find they’re sometimes underdeveloped or feel unfinished.
Most of the short stories in this book aren’t quite like that.
There were a few stories in this book that I did feel were unfinished, but none of them were underdeveloped. The author managed to make a small twist in reality in each and one of those which resulted in a highly interesting and creative world. I also thought that characters in all of the stories were extremely fleshed out and genuine. It was very easy to feel for them, even in the really short ones, which is quite an accomplishment.
I personally didn’t like the 2 longer stories toward the end of the book, but then the last (and shorter) story was so heart wrenching and creative, I forgave the previous ones.
Overall, a very distinctive voice with creative ideas and characters you care about. I give it 4 and not 5 stars simply because, as I said, I didn’t quite love all of the stories. But all the rest were absolutely excellent.
The narrator was also excellent.
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