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.

The next best thing to living through 1933-1973

There isn't much I can add to what other reviewers have already said but I still had to share my enthusiasm for what may be the best history I've read/heard of the 20th century. There are all the major developments but also minor stories that might seem anecdotal but are often representative of the ethos of the time they describe. My remembered consciousness only begins in the 1980s but I imagine that these are all the things people of those times sat around the kitchen table or the workplace water cooler talking about. The sound quality isn't very good with many glitches throughout and long stretches of distortions in chapters 15 and 26. The material was so spectacularily good though that the sound problems didn't appreciably detract from my enjoyment. Highly, highly recommended! 57 1/2 hours might seem long but at the end I just found myself wanting another 50 hours. I just wish there were a similar a-book covering the following 40 year stretch to the present.

An amazing book

I never thought a 1,600 page book could be such a joy to experience, but The Glory and the Dream offers a tight brilliant narrative that makes it hard to stop listening. As other reviewers have noted, there are occasional skips, but they should not stop you from experiencing this American classic.

Great Book

I have listen to this twice now and learned something each time. It’s well researched, paced and detailed without being slanted in any perspective.

Instructive on contemporary USA

This book contains a wealth of details on the history of this country. Mostly the Presidents and their campaigns, but also about daily life and what people like to do, beside going to work. However Mr. Manchester, all too often, gives his own personal judgment about political events. But still the book is really worth reading (or listening).

Two things that stand out

Probably my favorite thing about the book is the periodic elaboration of slang terms of each decade. Reading about things like that makes those who came before us more human and real as opposed to mythological figures that we are far removed from. Also enjoyed the luminaries that the author inserted throughout the book from the various eras that may not be as well known but were significant in their own way to the time.

Breezy, enjoyable popular history--if a bit biased

Giving Manchester his due, this book is remarkably listenable and compelling, and Jeff Riggenbach reads it superbly; it's clear he's the perfect match for the author. As a result, just as a good book is hard to put down, I found this audiobook is awfully hard to switch off.

Yet it frequently left me feeling annoyed... And its flaws and omissions are not confined to the many places where the audio skips (as mentioned by other commenters); in fact, those skips seem relatively minor annoyances, when you consider how many hours of good listening you get for just one credit. For me, the bigger annoyances are those of Manchester's biases and emphasis.

As it happens, I read this book around fifteen or twenty years ago. At the time, I loved it. As in his multivolume Churchill biography and the assorted magazine essays I'm familiar with, Manchester had an amazing gift for lively, brisk, readable, colorful popular history spiced with memorable quotes and well-chosen details (all of which probably set him apart from his fellow academics). Subsequently, however, I've read a good deal more twentieth-century U.S. history, and Manchester's biases in this book -- his left-of-center politics, rather uncritical adulation of unions, slightly sentimental affection for working stiffs, scorn for businessmen and disdain for Republicans (whom he tends to caricature), worship of FDR, and penchant for breezy generalizations about the American people and their opinions, from bobby-soxers to G.I.'s -- seemed more glaring this time around, and more irritating. I sometimes felt as if I were listening to a sort of scholarly Joe Biden (and that's not a good thing) or a medley of Time magazine essays (also not a good thing).

I was also irritated by the very chapters I remember devouring with the greatest pleasure the first time around: those that focus on World War II. Any book that encompasses this much history is bound to be a bit superficial, but Manchester's treatment of many key aspects of the war seems almost inexcusably hasty. The Fall of France, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz are barely alluded to (though for some reason Julie Andrews receives three mentions); the Battle of Midway -- one of the most crucial events of the war, and easily one of the most dramatic -- is described in two or three paragraphs, and somewhat confusingly at that. (His much lengthier coverage of Pearl Harbor is also a little confusing, though still gripping.) Because Manchester himself fought in the Pacific, we get plenty of that side of the war, plus a very skillful account of the Manhattan Project and the dropping of the bombs. But D-Day, Omaha Beach and all, gets -- astonishingly -- just a few sentences; so does the Battle of the Bulge (which is personally disappointing, since my father fought in it); Market Garden isn't even mentioned; and yet the intricacies of Franklin Roosevelt's medical history, the various worrisome signs of his failing health, his behavior at his final public appearances, the feelings of his doctors and various colleagues and relatives, the minute-by-minute events leading up to his death, the memories of various people as to what they were doing when they learned of it, the exact wording of the news flashes, the minutiae of his funeral and its press coverage -- all are treated in endless, almost microscopic detail.

In sum, Manchester was a wonderfully gifted writer, and his talent makes anything he chooses to talk about in this breezy, colorful, lively narrative fairly enjoyable. But in the end you're likely to come away with a somewhat distorted picture.

A story of WWII told with honesty and perspective

This book is a masterpiece. It is an honest story of a very personal war fought by a young Marine in the WWII Pacific told by a writer who excels at his craft of writing history and who after a lifetime of telling the stories of others now tells his own. He manages to evoke immediacy and endow it with perspective.

Parts

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, I would. The book itself is great and the narration isn't bad played at half-speed. However, why the hell would you present a book of this length, and this many parts, without labeling the parts so that when finished with one part, you don't have to hunt for the next?

Great book full of America at its best and worst

Fascinating book enjoy everything about it
And it’s length makes it even better
There are no flaws that make a difference

Excellent in every way.

this is a very comprehensive history of the United States from 1932 to 1972. Except for the adulation of Ralph Nader (grifter) it seemed both objective and thorough. Superb narrator as well.