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The 42nd Parallel
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
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This first entry in John Dos Passos's celebrated U.S.A. trilogy paints a grand picture of the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century.
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By: Theodore Dreiser
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Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 1)
- 1918-38
- By: Chips Channon
- Narrated by: Tom Ward
- Length: 39 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in Chicago in 1897, 'Chips' Channon settled in England after the Great War, married into the immensely wealthy Guinness family, and served as Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea from 1935 until his death in 1958. His career was unremarkable. His diaries are quite the opposite. Elegant, gossipy and bitchy by turns, they are the unfettered observations of a man who went everywhere and who knew everybody.
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Diary of a man on the Wrong Side of History
- By Last Lemming on 07-20-22
By: Chips Channon
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The Adventures of Augie March
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 22 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Augie is a poor but exuberant boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression. While his friends all settle into chosen professions, Augie demands a special destiny. He tests out a wild succession of occupations, proudly rejecting each as too limiting - until he tangles with the glamorous perfectionist Thea.
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THAT part of the Universe visible from Chicago!
- By Darwin8u on 05-09-12
By: Saul Bellow
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The Moving Target
- A Lew Archer Novel
- By: Ross Macdonald
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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As private eye Lew Archer follows the clues from the canyon sanctuaries of the megarich to jazz joints where you can get beaten up between sets, The Moving Target blends sex, greed, misdirected love, and family hatred into an explosive crime novel.
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Unbearable
- By Bodiccea on 07-07-18
By: Ross Macdonald
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Absalom, Absalom!
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Absalom, Absalom! tells the story of Thomas Sutpen, the enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson township in the early 1830s. With a French architect and a band of wild Haitians, he wrung a fabulous plantation out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. Sutpen was a man, Faulker said, "who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him". His tragedy left its impress not only on his contemporaries but also on men who came after, men like Quentin Compson, haunted even into the 20th century by Sutpen's legacy.
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A long, enjoyable listen
- By pilot on 01-08-09
By: William Faulkner
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All the King's Men
- By: Robert Penn Warren
- Narrated by: Michael Emerson
- Length: 20 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The fictionalized account of Louisiana's colorful and notorious governor, Huey Pierce Long, All the King's Men follows the startling rise and fall of Willie Stark, a country lawyer in the Deep South of the 1930s. Beset by political enemies, Stark seeks aid from his right-hand man Jack Burden, who will bear witness to the cataclysmic unfolding of this very American tragedy.
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Beautifully presented
- By Cheimon on 10-12-08
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The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax
- By: Dorothy Gilman
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Mrs. Virgil (Emily) Pollifax of New Brunswick, New Jersey, was a widow with grown children. She was tired of attending her Garden Club meetings. She wanted to do something good for her country. This first in the series sends Emily on her first case after she successfully persuades a skeptical CIA recruitment officer that she is the best person for the job.
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Masterful writing and incredible narration
- By Barbara on 01-14-12
By: Dorothy Gilman
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The Book of Lies
- By: Brad Meltzer
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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What does Cain, history's greatest villain, have to do with Superman, the world's greatest hero? And what do two murders, committed thousands of years apart, have in common? This is the mystery at the heart of Brad Meltzer's riveting and utterly intriguing new thriller.
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Master Story Teller and Master Narrator
- By Clydene on 09-02-08
By: Brad Meltzer
What listeners say about The 42nd Parallel
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- cmurray
- 08-10-16
Narrator was brilliant
So much range! Male, female, all sorts of accents. Singing and sound effects. So great!
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6 people found this helpful
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- Philharmonic
- 08-04-17
Perfect Narrator for this book!
This book is a great American classis and an essential read. Thank you Narrator for doing an impeccable job in bringing the stories and characters to life. I am definitely moving on to 1919 and happy that David Drummond narrates that one too.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Michael G. Price
- 01-03-13
A Diego Rivera painting in written form
Where does The 42nd Parallel rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Completely unique. The techniques utilized to fine effect by Dos Passos create a surprisingly modern and cinematic feel, especially considering these books were written 80 years ago! In particular, Dos Passos encapsulates visual and audible elements into his prose. The audible parts of the writing, especially newspaper headlines, radio messages, and popular songs, make this a wonderful choice for a book to be listened to as opposed to being read. It is a gift that narrator David Drummond rises brilliantly to the occasion (God this would be a terrifying book to consider reading - and singing - aloud). All this and the 42nd Parallel happens to be one of the most famous books of the 20th Century.... I have read of Ernest Hemingway's respect for Dos Passos. Since that was an exceedingly small camp, as Hemingway seemed to actively hate most writers, I had looked forward to listening to my first Dos Passos novel. I was not disappointed. Throughout the 42nd Parallel, I heard echos of Hemingway dialog and situations. Other writers and artists also. Joyce in particular. And painters. One might do worse than characterizing this novel as a Diego Rivera painting written in prose.
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24 people found this helpful
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- John L. Murphy
- 04-03-16
The other side of WWI and more
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes, but after that friend had read the triogy. It's easier to let the long stories unwind after you have the basics down about the character arcs and the vast plotline the trilogy takes in over so many years
What was one of the most memorable moments of The 42nd Parallel?
Mac's initiation on the road with a traveling salesman in Wisconsin unfolds wonderfully, I wish Dos Passos kept the lighter tone for more of his characters to come in the trilogy; it would have helped.
Have you listened to any of David Drummond’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I liked his reading of the whole USA trilogy. It is part of a whole, and Drummond keeps it flowing,
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
No, I liked it. Dos Passos brought a detached presence to much of his prose, and it shows. It does distance a reader or listener from the events, on the other hand. Drummond does his best to engage you, but it can be difficult as the relentless fates channeled by the trilogy continue on.
Any additional comments?
Probably more valuable, like Sinclair Lewis, for the life of Americans after WWI as recorded, than for the actual stories. Almost a century after the events, it still speaks for the hopes of the little men and women and how they are crushed or warped or abandoned in the rush for survival and wealth
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3 people found this helpful
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- Jerry D.
- 11-24-23
An American classic.
No doubt, I difficult work to narrate but this is very well done, thank you for preserving this American classic!
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- Francine L. Tchan
- 01-18-16
A view into the past I have never seen.
With today's sensitivities it is hard to hear/read the way people talked about women, races, values. I enjoyed going on this trip back in time and ready to go on with the series.
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5 people found this helpful
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- David C.
- 11-10-18
The Capitalist's War
I had heard fleeting references to the U.S.A. yet most likely would not have put it very high on my "to read" list were it not for its placement on the Modern Library's Top 100 list. Good thing for lists other than my own.
John Dos Passos was an ambitious writer. U.S.A. was originally slated to be a singular work however, after clocking in with 1,200 pages, he had no choice but to rethink it as a trilogy. I can totally relate to this as my own debut work was intended to be a stand alone novel until I found myself editing down to 1,500 pages and struck by the fact that my first novel was, in fact, three.
Of course, Dos Passos was already a heralded author, writing his first novel in the trenches of World War I and finding a mass market for his third novel, Manhattan Transfer.
U.S.A. is Dos Passos' opus and 49th Parallel a signature work and of profound influence on American literature in the 20th Century. This first book focuses on the period from the Turn of the Century to America's entry into World War I.
Dos Passos earned great critical acclaim for introducing four distinctive narrative modes into the work much of which was written in a stream of consciousness akin to James Joyce. I was always intrigued to come across literary homages throughout and came to realize how Malcolm Lowry likewise gave literary tribute to Dos Passos in his 1947 work Under The Volcano.
What I also found striking was the description of the political aspects of the time. As Americans tend to lack deep cognizance of its history, the period between the Civil War and World War II is very little understood and scarcely taught. it is fascinating and, perhaps, frightening, how comparative are the tone and temperament of politics today and that of 100 years ago. It rings true how accurate is the saw: he that fails to understand history is doomed to repeat it.
Book Two, 1919, is already queued up.
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- Ryan
- 06-01-13
Powerful document of an all-too-familiar past
Though John dos Passos hasn’t retained the fame of Hemingway or Fitzgerald, his America trilogy still feels like a landmark work of the Jazz Age, a sprawling, panoramic documentary of the US of the early 20th century. Like his contemporaries, Dos Passos writes in a common, everyday vernacular, with an eye and ear for realism, but also mixes in more experimental, modernist passages, such as streams of newspaper headlines and song lyrics, short biopics of various public figures, and the impressionistic, Joyce-ian “camera eye” sequences, which seem to recall scenes from the author’s own mind. Though this flipping-through-the-radio technique has been much-copied, it still feels innovative, especially in audio format. Reader David Drummond, I would add, does a commendable job with a wide range of voices and deliveries -- including the singing.
The main narrative follows several different characters as they make their way through their lives between the turn of the century and World War One. As fiction goes, it’s wandering, nearly plotless stuff, but I found the window into another time fascinating. Along the way, we get an immersion course in cultural attitudes, historical events, people’s daily concerns, and the not-unfamiliar tensions between different layers of society. Then there are all the sights, sounds, smells, sensations, impressions, and emotions of the time -- the raw, intimate, illuminating human stuff that a present-day writer looking back couldn’t hope to replicate.
Yes, some of the themes are dated -- for example, there are no significant non-white characters, and the idea of people having sex (*gasp*) *before* marriage was no doubt more edgy in the ‘30s. Dos Passos seems intent on a soul-baring of his generation through his characters, who are caught between grand ambitions and selfish desires, seemingly unable to make any decisions of lasting consequence. They desert their families and their employers in search of some unknown better thing, and are buffeted about by the indifferent forces of history. Members of the Millennial Generation should read this novel and stop letting older people lecture them with phony-baloney mythology about how everyone had their s--- together back in the day, and America was just honest, happy, patriotic, and swell. It’s a lie.
In fact -- and maybe it’s because I don’t read enough old fiction -- I was taken aback by how many aspects of the world of this novel seem not to have changed much in a hundred years. The way society was divided between the haves and the have-nots -- and the way half of the latter group was sure it would soon be in the ranks of the former, and resented the other half. The same media-fed anti-socialism paranoia. The same naive, flag-waving patriotism around the big war, and the same undercurrent of cynicism that it might have all just been a big scam. The desire for a comfortable, white-picket-fence life versus the fear of selling out. Constant worry about how to pay the bills. Otherness of foreigners. Dating (apparently, the phrase “let’s just be friends” goes way back). Loneliness. Desire. Groping in the dark.
Obviously, a novel of this era and style won’t appeal to all readers, but for those who can embrace its unblinking camera reel view of life, it’s brilliant and definitive. The final chapters generate a palpable atmosphere of anger and unrest, as the US enters the Great War, and the anti-war and pro-war factions square off in New York City, yelling the usual cliches at each other as riot police march in. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
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27 people found this helpful
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- Daniel
- 09-07-11
Advent of the American Century scruitinized
Using 4 different types of narrative devices: biography of famous people, news clipping, streaming consciousness descriptions, and intervening fictional characters to scrutinize the advent of the American Century. Somewhat difficult to get use to at the start, the novel weaves and slides in and out of my grasp, but eventually the brilliance within sank in.
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12 people found this helpful
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- NK
- 09-28-11
The 42nd Parallel
I was disappointed at first listen but the more it continued to more it brought me in. Very enjoyable and well worth the time. The narrator did a wonderful job.
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8 people found this helpful