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Nothing to Envy
- Ordinary Lives in North Korea
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
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Publisher's summary
Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over 15 years - a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung and the unchallenged rise to power of his son, Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population.
Taking us into a landscape never before seen, Demick brings to life what it means to be an average Korean citizen, living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today - an Orwellian world in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, a country that is by choice not connected to the Internet, a society in which outward displays of affection are punished, and a police state that rewards informants and where an offhanded remark can send a citizen to the gulag for life. Demick's subjects - a middle-aged party loyalist and her rebellious daughter, an idealistic female doctor, an orphan, and two young lovers - all hail from the same provincial city in the farthest-flung northern reaches of the country. One by one, we witness the moments of revelation, when each realizes that they have been betrayed by the Fatherland and that their suffering is not a global condition but is uniquely theirs.
Nothing to Envy is the first book about North Korea to go deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and penetrate the mind-set of the average citizen. It is a groundbreaking and essential addition to the literature of totalitarianism.
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Story
Eunsun Kim was born in North Korea, one of the most secretive and oppressive countries in the modern world. As a child, Eunsun loved her country...despite her school field trips to public executions, daily self-criticism sessions, and the increasing gnaw of hunger as the countrywide famine escalated. By the time she was 11 years old, Eunsun's father and grandparents had died of starvation, and Eunsun too was in danger of starving. Finally her mother decided to escape North Korea with Eunsun and her sister.
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Not Much New Here, but Courage and Hope to Spare
- By Gillian on 03-25-16
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Behind the Beautiful Forevers
- Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
- By: Katherine Boo
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
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Story
In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away.
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An Antidote for Shantaram
- By Dr. on 06-14-12
By: Katherine Boo
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Under the Same Sky
- From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America
- By: Joseph Kim, Stephan Talty
- Narrated by: Raymond Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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A searing story of starvation and survival in North Korea, followed by a dramatic escape, rescue by activists and Christian missionaries, and success in the United States thanks to newfound faith and courage.
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Tugs at the heart strings
- By R3v13w3r on 07-15-15
By: Joseph Kim, and others
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On Hitler's Mountain
- Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood
- By: Irmgard A. Hunt
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in the beautiful mountains of Berchtesgaden - just steps from Adolf Hitler's alpine retreat - Irmgard Hunt had a seemingly happy, simple childhood. In her powerful, illuminating, and sometimes frightening memoir, Hunt recounts a youth lived under an evil but persuasive leader. As she grew older, the harsh reality of war - and a few brave adults who opposed the Nazi regime - aroused in her skepticism of National Socialist ideology and the Nazi propaganda she was taught to believe in.
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A rare and very much appreciated perspective.
- By tabounds on 12-28-17
By: Irmgard A. Hunt
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The Train to Crystal City
- FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II
- By: Jan Jarboe Russell
- Narrated by: Andrea Gallo
- Length: 14 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War II, where thousands of families - many US citizens - were incarcerated.
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I didn't know...
- By Graham Emslie on 02-27-17
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In Manchuria
- A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China
- By: Michael Meyer
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 13 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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For three years Meyer rented a home in the rice-farming community of Wasteland, hometown of his wife's family, and their personal saga mirrors the tremendous change most of rural China is undergoing in the form of a privately held rice company that has built new roads, introduced organic farming, and constructed high-rise apartments into which farmers can move in exchange for their land rights.
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If you liked the Wonder Years...?
- By Judas Mallory on 05-19-15
By: Michael Meyer
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The Girl Who Smiled Beads
- A Story of War and What Comes After
- By: Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Story
Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety—perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.
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Narrator detracts from story
- By Laura on 01-16-19
By: Clemantine Wamariya, and others
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Claiming My Place: Coming of Age in the Shadow of the Holocaust
- By: Planaria Price, Helen Reichmann West
- Narrated by: Ilyana Kadushin
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Meet Barbara Reichmann, once known as Gucia Gomolinska: smart, determined, independent, and steadfast in the face of injustice. A Jew growing up in predominantly Catholic Poland during the 1920s and ’30s, Gucia studies hard, makes friends, falls in love, and dreams of a bright future. Her world is turned upside down when Nazis invade Poland and establish the first Jewish ghetto of World War II in her town of Piotrko´w Trybunalski.
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Amazing
- By Nordic Artisan on 07-09-18
By: Planaria Price, and others
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Street Without a Name
- Childhood and Other Misadventures in Bulgaria
- By: Kapka Kassabova
- Narrated by: Emily Gray
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Kassabova was born in Sofia, Bulgaria, and grew up under the drab, muddy, gray mantle of one of communism’s most mindlessly authoritarian regimes. Escaping with her family as soon as possible after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, she lived in Britain, New Zealand, and Argentina, and several other places. But when Bulgaria was formally inducted to the European Union she decided it was time to return to the home she had spent most of her life trying to escape. What she found was a country languishing under the strain of transition. This two-part memoir of Kapka’s childhood and return explains life on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
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Good start, but ended up not liking the author
- By Giselle on 11-02-21
By: Kapka Kassabova
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City of Thorns
- Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp
- By: Ben Rawlence
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Situated hundreds of miles from any other settlement, deep within the inhospitable desert of Northern Kenya, Dadaab is a city like no other. Its buildings are made from mud, sticks, or plastic; its entire economy is gray; and its citizens survive on rations and luck. Over the course of four years, Ben Rawlence became a firsthand witness to a strange and desperate limbo-land, getting to know many of those who have come there seeking sanctuary.
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Compelling but dry
- By Megan on 09-16-16
By: Ben Rawlence
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Mighty Be Our Powers
- How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War; a Memoir
- By: Leymah Gbowee, Carol Mithers
- Narrated by: Kimberly Scott
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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As a young woman growing up in Africa, 17-year-old Leymah Gbowee was crushed by a savage war when violence reached her native Monrovia, depriving her of the education she yearned for and claiming the lives of relatives and friends. As war continued to ravage Liberia, Gbowee’s bitterness turned to rage-fueled action as she realized that women bear the greatest burden in prolonged conflicts.
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Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and
- By Kathy on 10-07-11
By: Leymah Gbowee, and others
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Powerful
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The Real North Korea
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Broad and nuanced account of North Korea
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Without You, There Is No Us
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Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST).
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The King and I meets Mary Poppins
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The Reluctant Communist
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In January of 1965, 24-year-old US Army sergeant Charles Robert Jenkins abandoned his post in South Korea, walked across the DMZ, and surrendered to communist North Korean soldiers standing sentry along the world's most heavily militarized border. He believed his action would get him back to the States and a short jail sentence. Instead he found himself in another sort of prison, where for 40 years he suffered under one of the most brutal and repressive regimes the world has known. This fast-paced, harrowing tale, told plainly and simply by Jenkins (with journalist Jim Frederick).
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Excellent history and human story
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The Girl with Seven Names
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As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told, 'the best on the planet'?
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Did not like narrator
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Dear Leader
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As North Korea's State Poet Laureate, Jang Jin-sung led a charmed life. With food provisions (even as the country suffered through its great famine), a travel pass, access to strictly censored information, and audiences with Kim Jong-il himself, his life in Pyongyang seemed safe and secure. But this privileged existence was about to be shattered. When a strictly forbidden magazine he lent to a friend goes missing, Jang Jin-sung must flee for his life.
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Outstanding! A life-changing listen.
- By Gotta Tellya on 09-29-14
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Escape from Camp 14
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North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did. In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin's life unlocks the secrets of the world's most repressive totalitarian state.
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Powerful
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Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state.
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Broad and nuanced account of North Korea
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Without You, There Is No Us
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Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST).
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Eat the Buddha
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A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the best-selling author of Nothing to Envy.
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TIBET
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North Korea Confidential
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North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.
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Interesting portrait of North Korea marred by awful pronunciation
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In Order to Live
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Overall
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Performance
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In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea - and to freedom.
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Wow. What a story!
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Mark Twain: Man in White
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Overall
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Performance
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Pulitzer Prize finalist Michael Shelden illuminates Mark Twain’s twilight years in this brilliant account of the legendary author’s life. Drawing heavily on Twain’s own letters and journals, Mark Twain: Man in White recounts both Twain’s private family experiences and his larger-than-life public image.
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Dynasty
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Overall
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Author and historian Tom Holland returns to his roots in Roman history and the audience he cultivated with Rubicon—his masterful, witty, brilliantly researched popular history of the fall of the Roman republic—with Dynasty, a luridly fascinating history of the reign of the first five Roman emperors. Dynasty continues Rubicon's story, opening where that book ended: with the murder of Julius Caesar. This is the period of the first and perhaps greatest Roman emperors. It's a colorful story of rule and ruination, from the rise of Augustus to the death of Nero.
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Accessible, enjoyable history
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The Accusation
- Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Accusation is a deeply moving and eye-opening work of fiction that paints a powerful portrait of life under the North Korean regime. Set during the period of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il's leadership, the seven stories that make up The Accusation give voice to people living under this most bizarre and horrifying of dictatorships. The characters of these compelling stories come from a wide variety of backgrounds.
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Incredibly powerful
- By Margaret on 09-30-19
By: Bandi
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The Hard Road Out
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North Korea is an open-air prison from which there is no escape. Only a handful of men and women have succeeded. Jihyun Park is one of these rare survivors. Twice she left the land of the ‘socialist miracle’ to flee famine and dictatorship. By the age of 29, she had already witnessed a lifetime of suffering. Family members had died of starvation; her brother was beaten nearly to death by soldiers. Even smiling and laughing was discouraged.
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Excellent
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A Thousand Miles to Freedom
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Eunsun Kim was born in North Korea, one of the most secretive and oppressive countries in the modern world. As a child, Eunsun loved her country...despite her school field trips to public executions, daily self-criticism sessions, and the increasing gnaw of hunger as the countrywide famine escalated. By the time she was 11 years old, Eunsun's father and grandparents had died of starvation, and Eunsun too was in danger of starving. Finally her mother decided to escape North Korea with Eunsun and her sister.
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Not Much New Here, but Courage and Hope to Spare
- By Gillian on 03-25-16
By: Sebastien Falletti, and others
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A River in Darkness
- One Man's Escape from North Korea
- By: Masaji Ishikawa, Risa Kobayashi - translator, Martin Brown - translator
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Story
Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.
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Awful! And I don't mean the book . . .
- By DJW on 01-03-18
By: Masaji Ishikawa, and others
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The Great Successor
- The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un
- By: Anna Fifield
- Narrated by: Olivia Mackenzie-Smith
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Anna Fifield reconstructs Kim's past and present with exclusive access to sources near him and brings her unique understanding to explain the dynastic mission of the Kim family in North Korea. The archaic notion of despotic family rule matches the almost medieval hardship the country has suffered under the Kims. Few people thought that a young, untested, unhealthy, Swiss-educated basketball fanatic could hold together a country that should have fallen apart years ago. But Kim Jong Un has not just survived, he has thrived.
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Great book
- By WPD on 06-26-19
By: Anna Fifield
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The Aquariums of Pyongyang
- By: Chol-hwan Kang, Pierre Rigoulot
- Narrated by: Stephen Park
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- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea's other leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education". Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea.
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Riveting!!
- By Iread on 11-12-20
By: Chol-hwan Kang, and others
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North Korea Undercover
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- By: John Sweeney
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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North Korea is like no other tyranny on Earth. Its citizens are told their home is the greatest nation in the world, and Big Brother is always watching. It is Orwell's 1984 made reality. Huge factories with no staff or electricity, hospitals with no patients, uniformed child soldiers, and the world-famous and eerily empty DMZ - the Demilitarized Zone, where North Korea ends and South Korea begins - are all framed by a relentless flow of regime propaganda from omnipresent loudspeakers. Free speech is an illusion: one word out of line, and the gulag awaits.
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Highly listenable, humorous and enlightening
- By Kevin Stokes on 09-09-15
By: John Sweeney
What listeners say about Nothing to Envy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- S. Yates
- 04-04-17
A peak into a guarded world
Any additional comments?
A window into North Korea that is poignant, tragic, infuriating, and heartbreaking in turns. Through interviews with a handful of North Koreans who have defected and live in South Korea, along with Demick's tenure covering events in Asia for the LA Times, the book lets the reader glimpse life in North Korea, the crippled economy and chronic food shortages, the tightly controlled media and proscribed political thought, the class structure and family make-up. Demick has illuminated an area that is literally blacked out, both by lack of electricity and a locked-down media. Highly recommended.
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Overall
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Performance
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- SJ Lucero
- 02-03-14
Fascinating, Informative, & Entertaining
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes. The author gives an informative, entertaining, and thorough view of North Korea through the stories of real North Koreans. By using the stories of real North Koreans, the author can trace the history of modern North Korea in a way that's entertaining & human without being didactic.
Any additional comments?
The narrator was very good. Her reading was lively and felt true to the source material.
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- Ilana
- 05-21-12
History Repeats Itself
Barbara Demick, a Los Angeles Times journalist, has painted a harrowing picture of what life has been like in North Korea since the establishment of the Democratic People's Republic in 1948. Her narrative is based on interviews with several defectors from Chongjin, North Korea who told her their life stories and related the huge change in quality of life they experienced following Kim Il-sung's death in 1994. Up until then, everyone at least had a roof over their heads and sufficient food, but the famines of the 90s made what had been difficult living until then seem like ideal times in a country where food, electricity and housing are now considered luxuries even for the well-educated. This novel was published in 2009, prior to Kim Jong-il's death in December 2011, so of particular interest to me was the description of how the North Korean people reacted to the passing of his father Kim Il-sung in 1994, who had been considered as a god, due in no small part to the propaganda which was and still is all-pervasive. It was reported that the recent images of grieving North Koreans seen in the world's media had been staged, and Demick's descriptions of how people (over)reacted to Kim Il-sung's death do support this theory. That the North Koreans should so thoroughly grieve a man who's corruption has only brought them worsening inhumane living conditions show the extent of the oppression of the regime on it's people. All the same, Korean children continue to be taught a song that says they have "nothing to envy" the corrupt Western world, something which they wholeheartedly believe even into adulthood, so shielded are they from reality. Fascinating, and of course, very troubling reading which helps us uncover a bit of the mystery surrounding that part of the world.
The narrator does a good enough job, but I found the strong intake of breath with every sentence very distracting at first and wondered how I'd manage to focus on the narrative. It says a lot about Demick's abilities as a reporter that I was eventually able to block it out.
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- COJoebro
- 08-15-15
The Bleak Reality is Extreme but the Defectors Inspire
Whatever your political strength, the suffering of the people in North Korea is a travesty. Barbara Demick puts a face on it.
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- cheeky
- 01-09-15
Compelling and fascinating
Would you consider the audio edition of Nothing to Envy to be better than the print version?
I think I would rather read the book, having listened to the narration.
What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?
I really don't have an answer for this. I did not care for the narration.
How did the narrator detract from the book?
The narrator had very strange voice modulations and emphasized words strangely. There was perhaps too much emphasis put on the pronunciations of the Korean words. It was like listening to Siri read, with that choppy, slightly monotone manner than computerized speech has.
What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?
I was fascinated by the descriptions of the faith that people had in the North Korean regime to take care of their needs and their unquestioning loyalty to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Terrifying.
Any additional comments?
If vocal quality and narration style is something you really care about, you might want to just read the print version.
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- Sandra
- 05-10-12
Something to Miss
Don't miss this book! Very interesting and sad. Hard to believe how a people can be so misdirected and denied basic human rights. Take a risk and listen to something that is out of your comfort zone. You won't be sorry. This book is informative and well written.
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- Ellen Vines
- 04-18-12
Really great read!
If you could sum up Nothing to Envy in three words, what would they be?
Makes an impact
What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?
The stories for each of the different North Koreans were so well told it made is so easy to visualize and very gripping.
Which scene was your favorite?
The story of Meeh ran who became a teacher and had to see her students starving and dying.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
I think generally I was outraged listening to what these people have to endure under a dictator. It is so hard to comprehend when you live in a free nation.
Any additional comments?
I highly recommend it. It will really give you perspective on life.
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- GarageGator561
- 10-29-13
Great insight into a secret and horrifying world
Nothing to Envy provides the reader with insight into the opressive regime that controls North Korea and how the individual and family unit has been affected. A true cautionary tale of what happens inside a totalitarian regime and why it is so difficult to change.
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- maida smith
- 01-23-12
Amazing Book
Would you listen to Nothing to Envy again? Why?
Yes- It was such a great explaination of times for those peopel
What did you like best about this story?
The Depth of the Characters and the hard choices before each of them
What does Karen White bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
It is easier for me to visualize the descriptions when they are read to me
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
yes
Any additional comments?
Loved this book and enjoyed the voice of the reader.
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- Kiki Loccisano
- 01-17-11
fascinating peak into North Korea
Gripping and shocking stories about living under totalitarianism, but not depressing and sometimes even humorous and relatable stories that speak to humans everywhere trying to just get along. She explains how one of the most bizarre dictatorships in modern history was able to happen, and why it will likely fall soon. Demick is very fair as she profiles people to show shortcomings and personalities for what they are. This book is solidly on the side of democracy, but Demick doesn't saint the people she writes about which makes you trust that she is telling you the truth about everything else. Never knew much about Korean history in general before this book, but now I'm hooked. Didn't notice a tick with narrator's breathing as others complained, but listened on speakers and not on headphones which might make the difference.
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