The Glory and the Dream

A Narrative History of America, 1932 - 1972

By: William Manchester

Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach

Length: 57 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

This great time capsule of a book captures the abundant popular history of the United States from 1932 to 1972. It encompasses politics, military history, economics, the lively arts, science, fashion, fads, social change, sexual mores, communications, graffiti...everything and anything indigenous that can be captured in print.

The Glory and the Dream chronicles the progress of life in the United States, from the time William Manchester and his generation reached the beginning of awareness in the desperate summer of '32 to President Nixon's Second Inaugural Address and the opening scenes of Watergate. Masterfully compressing four crowded decades of our history, Manchester relives the epic, significant, or just memorable events that befell the generation of Americans whose lives pivoted between the America before and the America after the Second World War.

©1974 William Manchester (P)1994 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Lots of Fun

Wonderful book. Description of the 1960's not altogether accurate and sometimes annoying but the 1930's, 1940's and 1970's presentations are memorable -rich and entertaining.

Great story of America

William Manchester is a wonderful historian. His prose is wonderful, and he paints such a nuanced picture of this country. I love the narrative and the texture of the story. The narrator does a remarkable job.

Exhaustive study of America masterfully narrated

This a big book that tells a big story - the history of America during the American century. The history is complete and deeply researched though the stories do have a heavy political slant. That is fine when dealing with the likes of FDR, Eisenhower and Nixon but the book seems to be stretching when dealing with the less impartial Presidents. I felt the book spent too long on the likes of Truman and Johnson at the expense of the world around them. We learn a lot about the corridors of power but little about the consequences of the actions of these poet players on Americans. Still, this is an informative book and it does go into great detail. The writing is also of the highest quality. Written in a lyrical and natural style there were are no dull patches to be found. The writing is sparse and neutral mostly, although the writers opinions are not glossed over.

But the strength of this book is the narrator, Jeff Riggenbach. He was obviously trained to narrate and it shows on every page. He hits every accent and highlight with authority and does so with a balanced, experienced delivery. The narrator adds an element to this book that can only be described as a masterclass in reading narration. The audio is as informative as it is entertaining.

Not bad.

A pretty interesting look into us history from an outsider. As a brit he leans soft towards unions, and his economics isn't great, but his narrative is quite good as a whole.

Great read

I had read other reviews about the fast pace, general dissatisfaction with the narrator and the choppiness of the way material was presented.
But none of this deterred from my enjoyment. The audio is a bit compressed occasionally but overall this was one of the best books on tapes I have received

It is good to remember the past

Excellent book! Long but very enlightening as to the mood of the country at various times but also why certain decisions were made. Listening to the prices of not very long ago, I am shocked at what inflation has caused. It was good to hear about the mistakes of the past and the arrogance of the men who made them. Learn from the past. if we don't we will make the same mistakes.

Another fine one by this author

Short declarative staccato sentences imparting a wealth of information and woven together so very well into the myriad of stories. A wonderful book.

Interesting, but dated. Needs a sequel.

More narrative than history. Read it once, but don't use it as a history reference book. Manchester relies too often on contemporary popular journalism, and a lot of the material has been contradicted by more recent and more scholarly research. After reading the book 20 years ago, I felt I "knew" a lot of things that are now considered just plain wrong. Further, as the book approaches the end-point of 1973 it becomes myopic. (For example, the phony Howard Hughes biography seemed far more important in '73 than it does now.) The Watergate onion was just starting to be unpeeled when the book closes and Nixon is reelected, so we're left hanging, feeling like we've lost the last pages of a mystery novel. Had Manchester known the conclusion of the Watergate scandal, the part of the story he did write about would need to be reshaped.

That said, the book has a great narrative sweep, and a sort of elegant architecture. Forgotten trivia, fads, and cultural artifacts are exhumed and examined. Astonishingly fatuous political utterances and marmoreal editorial pronouncements from the past are trotted out and given the raspberries they deserve. Moreover, Manchester is a lucid storyteller, and refreshingly, his political tendencies (left) give the whole enterprise some spine and forward motion. He successfully shows how, and why, the United States went from point A to point B over 40 event-filled years, and I came away feeling I understood my grandparents, my parents, and my country a little better.

Excellent.

My understanding of US history was greatly enhanced by listening to this account. It was very well written. I highly recommend!

awesome book, subpar recording

One of the best history books covering any period ever written in my opinion. It offers the reader the unique experience of living through this period through the eyes of the forgotten men and women who lived these times. It is truly a unique work by a uniquely gifted writer. Instead of a top to bottom history, focusing on events, dates, battles, meetings and leaders of the time, this is a bottom-up version of history with attention focused on what ordinary men and women felt, did, suffered through, and ultimately triumphed in taking the US from a 2nd rate power to the predominant super power in the world. When you listen to Rock Bottom, you feel like you are living and suffering through the depression, listening to Roosevelt, or been just told that Kennedy was shot. By the end, you feel like you just lived through this entire period of history.

Downside: This is a terrible recording. The narration is way too fast. I had to listen on slower speed on my ipod, or the pace would just be too fast to listen to. Second, there is static which makes certain sections hard to listen to (see on line sample). Most maddening is the “skips” in which words or sentence fragments are skipped in the second section of the book. It sounds like an old LP record where the needle skipped. It is maddening and incredibly distracting.

I would offer future listeners encouragement that once you make it through the 2nd downloadable segments, the worst is over and the rest is from an audio standpoint considerably better. I wish Audible would offer a better version

After listening to the whole work, I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in this period of history, but after struggling through the 1st and 2nd segments, I almost gave up and was extremely upset that this product would even be sold. Overall, however, this is the as good a book I have read/listened to.