• The End of America

  • Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot
  • By: Naomi Wolf
  • Narrated by: Karen White
  • Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (189 ratings)

Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts.
You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
Audible Plus auto-renews for $7.95/mo after 30 days. Upgrade or cancel anytime.
The End of America  By  cover art

The End of America

By: Naomi Wolf
Narrated by: Karen White
Try for $0.00

$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $14.61

Buy for $14.61

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

The Founding Fathers believed that the proper goal of the State was to make men and women free to develop their faculties and to pursue virtue and wisdom. Our Constitution was built around these principles, protecting civil liberties and developing a careful system of checks and balances that protected our freedom from tyranny.

Naomi Wolf's latest work, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, exposes how the escalation of executive power has eroded these core values and systems, limiting Congress's ability to make laws and our courts' power to interpret them - a scenario that our Founding Fathers foresaw and warned against.

Wolf outlines in this citizen call to action - which is reminiscent of Thomas Paine's revered Common Sense - the real threats to our civil liberties that exist and explains how by working together we can stop the growing threat.

The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot is the centerpiece to the American Freedom Agenda, a nonpartisan organization of which Naomi Wolf is a founding board member and which asks all Americans to support a "Freedom Pledge" to support only candidates who favor restoring the pillars of American liberty. It combines a wide host of partners, united in their belief that when it comes to the Constitution, we are neither conservative nor liberal; we are all Americans.

©2007 Naomi Wolf (P)2008 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Compellingly and cogently argued....Highly recommended." ( Library Journal)

What listeners say about The End of America

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    99
  • 4 Stars
    49
  • 3 Stars
    23
  • 2 Stars
    7
  • 1 Stars
    11
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    56
  • 4 Stars
    26
  • 3 Stars
    12
  • 2 Stars
    3
  • 1 Stars
    3
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    62
  • 4 Stars
    18
  • 3 Stars
    11
  • 2 Stars
    4
  • 1 Stars
    5

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

I wish everyone in Congress would read this

This is a well-thought-out, well-written book. After listening to it, I bought the print version.

The examples and analogies are well-chosen and not overwrought. Before reading the book, I'd often had discussions where I'd tried to make similar arguments. The problem is that most people seem to automatically cringe at any attempt to draw comparisons between prior fascistic governments and what's currently happening in the United States.

The reductio ad Hitlerum argument (term coined by Leo Strauss in 1950) is a "tactic...often used to derail arguments, [and] as such a comparison tends to distract and to result in angry and less reasoned responses." But, as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies (or Godwin's Law), which is sometimes confused with reductio ad Hitlerum, suggests, sometimes such comparisons are appropriate. Or, as George Santayana once said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

REMEMBERING, though, is not enough. There must be a RECOGNITION that what one remembers has application to the present. Otherwise, you won't know when the mistakes are being, or are about to be, repeated.

This book walks through the 10 steps -- and proposes that the model is predictive -- that democracies take on the path to becoming fascist states. This provides the tools for recognition. The arguments are both thought-provoking and compelling.

The narrator's voice is nice; almost TOO nice. She sounds almost seductive. Although I enjoyed listening to her, there were a couple of times I found her approach too relaxing: not conducive to attentive driving.

I wish I could afford to buy copies of this book to send to every United States Congressperson -- for STARTERS. I seriously considered purchasing a large number of copies to give away to some of my friends who take a laissez-faire approach the current U.S. government.

Maybe this book will help revive America before it's truly too late.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

28 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Profound writing; wrong narrator

Naomi Wolf wrote a book that should be read by every citizen who's interested in saving the American republic and preserving our rights and constitution. It's a book suited to our current emergency. It is a compelling call to action with clear, coherent arguments. thoroughly documented and free of the shrill hyperbole that so often characterizes the modern political conversation.
Unfortunately, Karen White's narration is wholly inadequate to the task. Most of the time, she sounds like she's reading from a textbook, trying to sound engaged, but with hardly any connection to the material. Her over careful diction, and maddeningly slow narration display no understanding of the writing, and leave one lost in the middle of Wolf's careful constructed arc of ideas. I often thought while listening, that in this narration she defaulted to a lilting, overly modulated style with the little soft landings at the end of phrases more suited to bedtime stories or light novels that characterize some of her other narrations. There are times when she makes an attempt at urgency in her tone, but it comes across as faux stern, like she's lecturing a 4th grade class somewhere.
In short, no depth here. It was so disheartening to hear Wolf's writing so badly narrated that I had to give up listening. I think Audible should seriously consider a redo of this one. The book is too important to neglect.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Inquiry into what is freedom

This acts in many ways like a workbook comparing our risks and benefits of our freedoms. Can we be fighting a war to spread freedom and in the process destroy the understanding of what freedom is? Has the modification of our freedom become permanent, is it close to being permanent by liteally becoming fascist? The data here are very important in reflecting on these points. I am grateful for the book taking the discussion as far as it does.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

it was ok

As a conservative and not knowing who the author was or where she was coming from when I bought the book, I was afraid at the begining it was all going to be all progressive propaganda. After listening to the entire book, she makes good points on what to look for as a government leans towards facism. Overall it is interesting, but not to much new here.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

excellent

This is a book worth the money and the time it takes to read it. It is worth comtemplating and doing something about.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Timeless 10 Steps to Fascism

Awesome book. It resonates more than ever in 2021 as we see authoritarian entities abusing a declared health emergency to trample individual liberties.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A MUST read book!

While very important at the time of it's writing, it's even more important to read (or reread) now. The worrying actions of the early 2000s don't even shine a light on the current administration and its actions. Probably one of the most important books to read during the Trump regime.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Published before its time. Powerful. Prescient.



When originally published in 2007, I dismissed this book as hyperbolic and hysterical as Naomi Wolf tried to present George Bush as a fascist in a democrat's facade, intent on slowly destroying our democracy from within. I (a staunch progressive) tossed it aside before finishing it as a fear-mongering, exaggerated polemic. Fast forward a decade later to the Trump era and, after a second reading, the book takes on a more sinister and relevant warning. Substitute "Trump" for all references to "Bush," and her historical and current anecdotes chronicling the in-slow-motion, deliberate destruction of democracies into authoritarian regimes (Germany, Italy, Chile, etc.) take on a more timely and frightening tone, as Trump is following the fascist's playbook chapter by chapter. The parallels between Trump's strategies to former fascist regimes are clear and dangerous. Read this book and be scared; then, instead of cowering, become empowered and fight back---before it's too late. Our democracy is under attack. Resist!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

a message worth removing the dated basis from.

she is a democrat. but true enough concepts and facts. sometimes when 5 blind men feel different sides of the same elephant. it takes the only one with sense enough to realize that his had just went into the s hit hole and say what it really is.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Eye Opening!

This audiobook is a must read for anyone interested in America's sliding and shying away crom it's constitutional roots. Please read!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful