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Empire of Liberty
- A History of the Early Republic
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 30 hrs and 58 mins
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Publisher's summary
In Empire of Liberty, one of America's most esteemed historians, Gordon S. Wood, offers a brilliant account of the early American Republic, ranging from 1789 and the beginning of the national government to the end of the War of 1812.
As Wood reveals, the period was marked by tumultuous change in all aspects of American life - in politics, society, economy, and culture. The men who founded the new government had high hopes for the future, but few of their hopes and dreams worked out quite as they expected. They hated political parties but parties nonetheless emerged. Some wanted the United States to become a great fiscal-military state, like those of Britain and France; others wanted the country to remain a rural agricultural state very different from the European states. Instead, by 1815 the United States became something neither group anticipated. Named a New York Times Notable Book, Empire of Liberty, part of The Oxford History of the United States series, offers a marvelous account of this pivotal era when America took its first unsteady steps as a new and rapidly expanding nation.
The Oxford History of the United States is considered the gold standard for serious historians and general readers (and listeners) alike. Three of the titles have won the Pulitzer Prize for history; two have been Pulitzer Prize finalists, and all of them have enjoyed critical and commercial success.
Please note: The individual volumes of the series have not been published in historical order. Empire of Liberty is number IV in The Oxford History of the United States.
Critic reviews
- Audie Award Winner - Best History Audiobook, 2011
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Highly recommended! Not for the faint of heart!
- By RAC on 12-12-05
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The Real Lincoln
- A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War
- By: Thomas J. Dilorenzo
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Most Americans consider Abraham Lincoln to be the greatest president in history. His legend as the Great Emancipator has grown to mythic proportions as hundreds of books, a national holiday, and a monument in Washington, D.C., extol his heroism and martyrdom. But what if most everything you knew about Lincoln were false? What if, instead of an American hero who sought to free the slaves, Lincoln were in fact a calculating politician who waged the bloodiest war in American history in order to build an empire that rivaled Great Britain's?
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OpEd Disguised as History
- By John McDowell on 10-30-18
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Washington's Farewell
- The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations
- By: John Avlon
- Narrated by: John Avlon
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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George Washington's Farewell Address was a prophetic letter from a "parting friend" to his fellow citizens about the forces he feared could destroy our democracy: hyper-partisanship, excessive debt, and foreign wars. Once celebrated as civic scripture, more widely reprinted than the Declaration of Independence, the Farewell Address is now almost forgotten. Its message remains starkly relevant. In Washington's Farewell, John Avlon offers a stunning portrait of our first president and his battle to save America from self-destruction.
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Very well written and performed
- By Michael Reading on 03-02-17
By: John Avlon
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The Birth of Modern Politics
- Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Election of 1828
- By: Lynn Hudson Parson
- Narrated by: Milton Bagby
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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The 1828 presidential election, which pitted Major General Andrew Jackson against incumbent John Quincy Adams, has long been hailed as a watershed moment in American political history. It was the contest in which an unlettered, hot-tempered southwestern frontiersman, trumpeted by his supporters as a genuine man of the people, soundly defeated a New England "aristocrat" whose education and political resume were as impressive as any ever seen in American public life.
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a very good popular history book
- By D. Littman on 01-29-10
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The Unfinished Symphony
- The Clash of the Two Americas, Volume 1
- By: Matthew Ehret, Cynthia Chung
- Narrated by: Hugh Trudeau
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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This volume will showcase the international grand design led by Benjamin Franklin that manifested in the establishment of the American republic and trace the next 130 years of world history as the USA was targeted for destruction by oligarchical forces from London and also from within leading up to the assassination of William McKinley in 1901.
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Timeless overview of world history
- By Greg W. on 07-06-24
By: Matthew Ehret, and others
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Victorious Century
- The United Kingdom, 1800-1906
- By: David Cannadine
- Narrated by: Kris Dyer
- Length: 24 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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To live in 19th-century Britain was to experience an astonishing series of changes, of a kind for which there was simply no precedent. There were revolutions in transport, communication and work; cities grew vast; and scientific ideas made the intellectual landscape unrecognisable. This was an exhilarating time but also a horrifying one. In his new book, David Cannadine has created a bold, fascinating new interpretation of the British 19th century in all its energy and dynamism, darkness and vice.
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Blandly toeing the line between macro and micro
- By Max Shafer-landau on 10-17-17
By: David Cannadine
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James Madison and the Making of America
- By: Kevin R. C. Gutzman
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In James Madison and the Making of America, historian Kevin Gutzman looks beyond the way James Madison is traditionally seen - as "The Father of the Constitution” - to find a more complex and sometimes contradictory portrait of this influential Founding Father and the ways in which he influenced the spirit of today's United States.
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Not a traditional biography
- By David on 12-14-12
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Wood clearly dislikes Adams
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Provides Context for Todays Mess
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This Audible book is NOT for a popular audience!
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Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy's champion, was an aristocratic Southern slave owner while Adams, the overachiever from New England's rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist view of government.
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A Great Read
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The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
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The preeminent historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history
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Sophisticated analyses
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Gordon Wood's wondrous accomplishment here is to bring these men and their times down to earth and within our reach, showing us just who they were and what drove them. In so doing, he shows us that although a lot has changed in two hundred years, to an amazing degree the virtues these founders defined for themselves are the virtues we aspire to still.
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Wood clearly dislikes Adams
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The half century extending from the imperial crisis between Britain and its colonies in the 1760s to the early decades of the new republic of the United States was the greatest and most creative era of constitutionalism in American history, and perhaps in the world. During these decades, Americans explored and debated all aspects of politics and constitutionalism - the nature of power, liberty, representation, rights, the division of authority between different spheres of government, sovereignty, judicial authority, and written constitutions.
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A Great Read
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Grand in scope, rigorous in its arguments, and elegantly synthesizing 30 years of scholarship, Gordon S. Wood's Pulitzer Prize–winning book analyzes the social, political, and economic consequences of 1776. In The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Wood depicts not just a break with England, but the rejection of an entire way of life: of a society with feudal dependencies, a politics of patronage, and a world view in which people were divided between the nobility and "the Herd."
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Changed the Way I Think
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The American Revolution signalled a great change in the course of world history and progress. From this colonial revolt sprouted ideals of liberty and democracy, and all the aspirations and ambitions of a new people. In this work, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood discusses the character and consequences of the revolution, grounding the events and ideas that shaped the American consciousness.
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The foremost scholar on the subject
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Excellent Book
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I have good news and bad news
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David M. Potter's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Impending Crisis is the definitive history of antebellum America. Potter's sweeping epic masterfully charts the chaotic forces that climaxed with the outbreak of the Civil War: westward expansion, the divisive issue of slavery, the Dred Scott decision, John Brown's uprising, the ascension of Abraham Lincoln, and the drama of Southern secession.
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A Slog for Sure
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In this beautifully written history of America’s formative period, a preeminent historian upends the traditional story of a young nation confidently marching to its continent-spanning destiny.
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Helps the dots of history to today.
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In this magisterial work, Sean Wilentz traces a historical arc from the earliest days of the republic to the opening shots of the Civil War. One of our finest writers of history, Wilentz brings to life the era after the American Revolution, when the idea of democracy remained contentious, and Jeffersonians and Federalists clashed over the role of ordinary citizens in government of, by, and for the people. The triumph of Andrew Jackson soon defined this role on the national level, while city democrats, Anti-Masons, fugitive slaves, and a host of others hewed their own local definitions.
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If you need to sleep...
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The Internal Enemy
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one of the best audiobooks I've read recently
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The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
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To the original text of what has become a classic of American historical literature, Bernard Bailyn adds a substantial essay, "Fulfillment", as a postscript. Here he discusses the intense nationwide debate on the ratification of the Constitution, stressing the continuities between that struggle over the foundations of the national government and the original principles of the Revolution.
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Bernard Bailyn is a genius!
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Terrific book, marginal delivery
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Gore Vidal’s reputation as America’s finest essayist is an enduring one. This collection, chosen by the author from 40 years of work, contains about two-thirds of what he published in various magazines and journals. He has divided the essays into three categories, or states. State of the art covers literature, including novelists and critics, bestsellers, pieces on Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Suetonius, Nabakov, and Montaigne (a previosly uncollected essay from 1992).
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An entertaining anthology & a superb narration
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American Revolutions
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The American Revolution is often portrayed as a high-minded, orderly event whose capstone, the Constitution, provided the ideal framework for a democratic, prosperous nation. Alan Taylor, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, gives us a different creation story in this magisterial history of the nation's founding. Rising out of the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies, Taylor's Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britain's mainland colonies, fueled by local conditions, destructive, hard to quell.
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Best book on the American Revolution that I have read
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By: Alan Taylor
What listeners say about Empire of Liberty
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Boyce
- 10-17-14
Thrilling history read by a master of narration
What did you like best about this story?
Wonderful development of the history of our country. Not having been much of a history student, it was deeply moving to learn how we developed in the late 1700's.
What does Robert Fass bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Robert Fass has a superb voice for a very long read. Never got tired of his voice. Some, like Scott Brick, are for me, good for a short read. But Robert Fass is just superb.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Mike
- 12-03-19
Engaging from start to finish!
A fascinating account of the early United States. Covering just about every major event of the period keeping you engaged from start to finish. The narration and story is presented in excellent fashion and for me personally it seemed like a much shorter listen than most 30 hour audiobooks.
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1 person found this helpful
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- T.J. Dowling
- 02-05-23
America Begins
Too botch narrative of America's growth in all its political, social, economic and cultural aspects from Washington's presidency through the War of 1812.
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- Blake
- 09-12-13
Wow! Astoundingly good!
For a long time I was apprehensive about this book, and afraid that it would be one that drones on and on in my headphones while I can barely pay attention. But I've been on a pretty serious history kick lately and I gave it a shot because I knew very little about the period. Now it's my favorite American history book to date by a mile.
Gordon Wood weaves his anecdotes, political facts and social tidbits in a masterfully informative way, while his writing flows as elegantly as great fiction. Robert Fass reads with perfect pitch, cadence and inflection. I was glued to my headphones from the first hour to the end and there wasn't a single boring chapter. I hadn't realized before how pivotal a time this was in terms of the origins of American ideology, or how unprecedented many of these ideas were. Professor Wood also exposes the absurd cluelessness of these supposedly great men with good humor, and their ironic unfunny hypocrisies with poignancy. There are so many lessons to be learned here, and I can't recommend enough that you take this journey back in time. I suspect you will be happy that you did.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Kristi R.
- 05-21-14
How our country evolved and survived.
This is a wonderful book on the early years of our country. It begins just after the Revolution and ends right after the War of 1812. The Presidents covered are Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison. I am surprised how we revere these men so highly because if they were elected today there Presidency would not get as high of marks, excepting Washington. He was exactly the right leader to have as our first President.
This book gives a lot of time to the power of the Presidency which is engagingly told as it evolved into what we have today. It also talks about the Supreme Court and it's evolution.
I enjoyed the chapters on the "Great Enlightenment" and other religious movements that went on during this period. The separation of Church and State gets some explanations too.
The most surprising thing I learned was what a hypocrite Thomas Jefferson was and not only with his slaves but as President. He didn't think a United States Bank was a good thing until he became President. He was so pro France that he wanted us to get involved against Great Britain. He said he wanted freedom for all men, but he really meant only the elite. He felt the lower classes were too stupid to be trusted to vote. He was a very difficult man to really understand as he did much good for our country but a lot of what he said was hard to swallow.
I liked the way the author described our national character evolving differently from other countries. Most farmers in America were also blacksmith, weavers, tanners or some other trade to supplement their farming.
The War of 1812 was a war of contradictions. It was badly managed by the Madison administration and it's still a surprise to me on how we won the war! I think Great Britain was just tired of fighting.
It also brought the country together as nothing had done before and we finally became a nation of states instead states united as a nation.
The narrator was very good and this is a long book, 30 plus hours so he was a pleasure.
This book is Book 2 in the Oxford History of the United States. I knew very little about this time in our country's history as we mostly learn anecdotes of the various statesmen and many of them aren't true. I also have the next volume and will read that soon. I can highly recommend this book.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Belovelea
- 05-12-12
Great piece of history.
I purchased this book due to it's high ratings and to supplement my learning in an American National Government class I was taking at the time. It proved to be more than valuable as I was able to better understand and appreciate my class more. I would have listened to this book either way. ☺
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2 people found this helpful
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- Bryan E. Canter
- 03-01-15
Reads Like a Story
Histories can tend to be dry reading. This one kept my attention well. It is not as captivating as an historical fiction novel, but was undoubtedly more accurate. It was especially interesting to me as I was taking a college course in US History while I was listening. It gave me a much better appreciation for the revolution in thought and culture that precipitated the American Revolution and that grew out of it - two very different things. This American experiment in Republican liberty is truly an astonishing thing, and the founders of our country deserve our deepest respect and admiration.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Scott Bussom
- 05-03-20
AMAZED
Wow...breathtaking in its scope! Genious in its synthesis. Such a profound and interesting view of history.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Intellectual Warrior
- 02-20-20
Gordon Wood and American Radicalism
In this book, Gordon Wood deepens and widens his overall thesis that the American Revolution was not a struggle of conservative economic elites against Great Britain but a radical socio political conflict that ultimately established American social egalitarianism and national idiosyncrasies as well as its experiment in representational government. Wood trace the Hamilton versus Jefferson controversies arguing that Hamilton wanted to ape Europe by strengthening the national government at the expense of fractious states while Jefferson championed the rights of ordinary white Americans. He goes on to detail the intercine conflict between Republicans and Federalists sparked by the French Revolution. Wood is very good on the War of 1812 and gives credit to Madison who managed an almost unbelievable honorable stalemate and the self immolation of the Federalist opposition at the Hartford Convention of 1814. I have always felt that Wood bends over backwards to praise Jefferson at the expense of Hamilton which is unfair and mistaken hero worship. For example, he puts the best face on Jefferson ‘s self imposed disastrous full embargo on both Great Britain and France. Moreover, while he doesn’t ignore Jefferson’s complicity in American slavery, he mentions his intellectual attacks on the institution as genuine and not hypocritical. All that said, this is a powerful book which I fully recommend.
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- Jerry M. Boland Jr.
- 09-27-17
learned alot about this post revolution time frame
Interesting to get the persepectives of that era and compare them to current affairs. There never was a set in stone, perfect, flawless America; we would be well served though to revisit sprint periods of idealistic striving.
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