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Refractive Africa
- Ballet of the Forgotten
- Narrated by: Will Alexander
- Length: 2 hrs and 18 mins
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Publisher's summary
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
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- By: Sam Torode - foreword, Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Narrated by: Sam Torode
- Length: 1 hr and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature" is perhaps the greatest original work of philosophy written by an American. This specially-prepared edition includes a foreword on the origin and significance the book.
By: Sam Torode - foreword, and others
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The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History
- By: Jeffrey Burton Russell
- Narrated by: Gordon Greenhill
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
The Devil, Satan, Lucifer, Mephistopheles - throughout history the Prince of Darkness, the Western world's most powerful symbol of evil, has taken many names and shapes. Jeffrey Burton Russell here chronicles the remarkable story of the Devil from antiquity to the present. While recounting how past generations have personified evil, he deepens our understanding of the ways in which people have dealt with the enduring problem of radical evil. Russell uncovers the origins of the concept of the Devil in various early cultures and then traces its evolution in Western thought from the time of the ancient Hebrews through the first centuries of the Christian era. Next he turns to the medieval view of the Devil, focusing on images found in folklore, scholastic thought, art, literature, mysticism, and witchcraft.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderfully engaging
- By Anonymous User on 04-26-23
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Verses from the Center
- By: Stephen Batchelor
- Narrated by: Stephen Batchelor
- Length: 3 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 37
The understanding of the nature of reality is the insight upon which the Buddha was able to achieve his own enlightenment. This vision of the sublime is the source of all that is enigmatic and paradoxical about Buddhism. In Verses from the Center, Stephen Batchelor explores the history of this concept and provides listeners with translations of the most important poems ever written on the subject, the poems of 2nd century philosopher Nagarjuna.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Sublime
- By Krush on 06-19-22
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God According to God
- A Physicist Proves We've Been Wrong About God All Along
- By: Gerald Schroeder
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 22
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Story5 out of 5 stars 22
In his first book since 2002's acclaimed The Hidden Face of God, popular scientist Gerald Schroeder combines decades of scientific research and biblical study to present a groundbreaking new paradigm of how to understand God. Fans of Jack Miles' God: A Biography, Francis Collins' The Language of God, and Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible will find much to contemplate in God According to God.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Next to the bibke itself, my most important book
- By Mark D. Goodley on 02-26-22
By: Gerald Schroeder
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Supernatural Horror in Literature
- By: H. P. Lovecraft
- Narrated by: Sean Branney, Andrew Leman
- Length: 2 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 44
Between 1925-27, H.P. Lovecraft wrote Supernatural Horror in Literature, an extended essay about about the history of the weird tale. In it he describes supernatural horror from its earliest manifestations up to the 1920s. Lovecraft offers his own candid opinions on the merits (and deficiencies) of the world's canon of strange literature. The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society recorded the essay as an audiobook. Read by society founders Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, the recording is approximately three hours long.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Fantastic Multi Dimensional Experience!
- By Sarah on 02-05-19
By: H. P. Lovecraft
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When We Cease to Understand the World
- By: Benjamin Labatut, Adrian West - translator
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 761
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 625
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 619
When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger - these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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the true heir w.g. sebald
- By Thomas on 12-23-21
By: Benjamin Labatut, and others
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Spring and All: Facsimile Edition
- New Directions Pearls
- By: William Carlos Williams
- Narrated by: Sean Slater
- Length: 1 hr and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
A beautiful facsimile of the 1923 original edition which is considered "one of the greatest poems of the twentieth century" by The New York Times. Spring and All is a manifesto of the imagination - a hybrid of alternating sections of prose and free verse that coalesce in dramatic, energetic, and beautifully cryptic statements of how language re-creates the world. Spring and All contains some of Williams' best-known poetry.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Classic!
- By Amazon Customer on 01-25-18
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Cosmos and Psyche
- Intimations of a New World View
- By: Richard Tarnas
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 25 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
From a philosopher whose magisterial history of Western thought was praised by Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith comes a brilliant new book that traces the connection between cosmic cycles and archetypal patterns of human experience. Drawing on years of research and on thinkers from Plato to Jung, Richard Tarnas explores the planetary correlations of epochal events like the French Revolution, the two world wars, and September 11. Cosmos and Psyche is a work of immense sophistication, deep learning, and lasting importance.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Compelling content; monochromatic narration
- By Melissa Chase on 04-14-21
By: Richard Tarnas
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New Self, New World
- Recovering Our Senses in the Twenty-First Century
- By: Philip Shepherd, Andrew Harvey
- Narrated by: Philip Shepherd
- Length: 22 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
New Self, New World challenges the primary story of what it means to be human, the random and materialistic lifestyle that author Philip Shepherd calls our "shattered reality". This reality encourages us to live in our heads, self-absorbed in our own anxieties. Drawing on diverse sources and inspiration, New Self, New World reveals that our state of head-consciousness falsely teaches us to see the body as something we possess and to try to take care of it without ever really learning how to inhabit it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Deep dive into our embodied human experience
- By Marshall White on 01-20-20
By: Philip Shepherd, and others
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My Bright Abyss
- Meditation of a Modern Believer
- By: Christian Wiman
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Story5 out of 5 stars 31
Seven years ago, Christian Wiman, a well-known poet and the editor of Poetry magazine, wrote a now-famous essay about having faith in the face of death. My Bright Abyss, composed in the difficult years since and completed in the wake of a bone marrow transplant, is a moving meditation on what a viable contemporary faith - responsive not only to modern thought and science but also to religious tradition - might look like.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Meditative Poetry in Prose
- By Marianne Murphy Zarzana on 07-21-19
By: Christian Wiman
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He Held Radical Light
- The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art
- By: Christian Wiman
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
Christian Wiman explores the relationships between art and faith, death and fame, heaven and oblivion. Above all, He Held Radical Light is a love letter to poetry, filled with moving, surprising, and sometimes funny encounters with the poets Wiman has known.
By: Christian Wiman
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Nature
- By: Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Narrated by: Phil Paonessa
- Length: 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 86
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 85
This version of Nature is an 1843 revision to the popular essay written and published in 1836. In the original essay, Emerson put forth the foundation of transcendentalism and suggested that reality can be understood by studying nature. Within the essay, Emerson divides nature into four usages: commodity, beauty, language and discipline. These distinctions define how humans use nature for their basic needs, their desire for delight, their communication with one another, and their understanding of the world.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful Classic, rushed reading
- By Chris C. on 01-07-21
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The Meaning of Masonry
- By: W.L. Wilmshurst
- Narrated by: Chris Coxon
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story5 out of 5 stars 38
This set of essays discusses the esoteric side of Freemasonry. The Spirit of Masonry has been the essential source for anyone exploring the inner mysteries of the Masonic fraternity for more than 200 years.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great!
- By Go Seigen on 12-12-23
By: W.L. Wilmshurst
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Dante's Divine Comedy
- A Guide for the Spiritual Journey
- By: Mark Vernon
- Narrated by: Mark Vernon
- Length: 17 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
Dante Alighieri was early in recognizing that our age has a problem. His hometown, Florence, was at the epicenter of the move from the medieval world to the modern. The Divine Comedy was born in a time of troubling transition, which is why it still speaks today. In this narrative retelling and guide, from the gates of hell, up the mountain of purgatory, to the empyrean of paradise, Mark Vernon offers a vivid introduction and interpretation of a book that, 700 years on, continues to open minds and change lives.
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3 out of 5 stars
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An Inversion of Dante
- By A.B.D. on 09-24-22
By: Mark Vernon
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Irrational Man
- A Study in Existential Philosophy
- By: William Barrett
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 60
Widely recognized as the finest definition of existentialist philosophy ever written, this book introduced existentialism to America in 1958. Irrational Man begins by discussing the roots of existentialism in the art and thinking of Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Baudelaire, Blake, Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Picasso, Joyce, and Beckett. The heart of the book explains the views of the foremost existentialists - Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. The result is a marvelously lucid definition of existentialism and a brilliant interpretation of its impact.
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4 out of 5 stars
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heady
- By A. Antine on 07-28-22
By: William Barrett
What listeners say about Refractive Africa
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 06-28-23
Astounding wow wow wow!!!
Alexander is by far one of the most formidable poets of this century! Bless his soul forever and ever!!!
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