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A Delicate Aggression
- Savagery and Survival in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 18 hrs and 42 mins
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A Delicate Aggression
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Publisher's Summary
A vibrant history of the renowned and often controversial Iowa Writers’ Workshop and its celebrated alumni and faculty
As the world’s preeminent creative writing program, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop has produced an astonishing number of distinguished writers and poets since its establishment in 1936. Its alumni and faculty include 28 Pulitzer Prize winners, six US poet laureates, and numerous National Book Award winners. This volume follows the program from its rise to prominence in the early 1940s under director Paul Engle, who promoted the “workshop” method of classroom peer criticism.
Meant to simulate the rigors of editorial and critical scrutiny in the publishing industry, this educational style created an environment of both competition and community, cooperation and rivalry. Focusing on some of the exceptional authors who have participated in the program - such as Flannery O’Connor, Dylan Thomas, Kurt Vonnegut, Jane Smiley, Sandra Cisneros, T. C. Boyle, and Marilynne Robinson - David Dowling examines how the Iowa Writers’ Workshop has shaped professional authorship, publishing industries, and the course of American literature.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- PW
- 12-17-21
went off the rails
This started well. Then got very political as it started describing more recent history. Got pretty painful, sadly.
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Story5 out of 5 stars 22
First came parents with the good sense to flee Europe in 1940 and the good fortune to reach the land of freedom. Their daughter, Ruth, grew up in the shadow of genocide - but in tandem with the birth of Israel, which remained her lodestar. She learned that although Jewishness is biologically transmitted, democracy is not, and both require intensive, intelligent transmission through education in each and every generation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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great book
- By Dan M. Cooper on 12-26-21
By: Ruth R. Wisse
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Square Haunting
- Five Writers in London Between the Wars
- By: Francesca Wade
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures - many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living - and, therefore, of being - these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence.
By: Francesca Wade
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Butterfly in the Typewriter
- The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of a Confederacy of Dunces
- By: Cory MacLauchlin
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47
The saga of John Kennedy Toole is one of the greatest stories of American literary history. In Butterfly in the Typewriter, Cory MacLauchlin draws on scores of new interviews with friends, family, and colleagues as well as full access to the extensive Toole archive at Tulane University, capturing his upbringing in New Orleans, his years in New York City, his frenzy of writing in Puerto Rico, his return to his beloved city, and his descent into paranoia and depression.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Worth it! Good biography. Informative.
- By French Quarter on 07-09-13
By: Cory MacLauchlin
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World of Our Fathers
- The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made
- By: Irving Howe
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 35 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 19
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 19
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Story5 out of 5 stars 19
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two million Jewish immigrants poured into America, leaving places like Warsaw or the Russian shtetls to pass through Ellis Island and start over in the New World. Though some moved on to Philadelphia, Chicago, and other points west, many of these new citizens settled in New York City, especially in Manhattan's teeming tenements....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Spectacular but long
- By Len on 10-31-20
By: Irving Howe
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Looking for Lorraine
- The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
- By: Imani Perry
- Narrated by: LisaGay Hamilton
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 152
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 129
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Story5 out of 5 stars 130
Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Radiant
- By Rose Brookins on 03-20-19
By: Imani Perry
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In the Mountains of Madness
- The Life, Death, and Extraordinary Afterlife of H.P. Lovecraft
- By: W. Scott Poole
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
More than a traditional biography, In the Mountains of Madness will place Lovecraft and his work in a cultural context, as an artist more in tune with our time than his own. Much of the literary work on Lovecraft tries to place him in relation to Edgar Allan Poe, M. R. James, or Arthur Machen; these ideas have little meaning for most contemporary listeners. In his provocative new book, W. Scott Poole reclaims the true essence of Lovecraft in relation to the comics of Joe Lansdale, the novels of Stephen King, and more.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Needs Citation
- By Middle Age Gamer on 11-29-16
By: W. Scott Poole
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Zora and Langston
- A Story of Friendship and Betrayal
- By: Yuval Taylor
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 45
They were best friends. They were collaborators, literary gadflies, and champions of the common people. They were the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston, the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Langston Hughes, the author of "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and "Let America Be America Again", first met in 1925, at a great gathering of black and white literati, and they fascinated each other.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating Story
- By Amazon Customer on 08-19-19
By: Yuval Taylor
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Goddess of the Market
- Ayn Rand and the American Right
- By: Jennifer Burns
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 71
Burns highlights the two facets of Rand's work that make her a perennial draw for those on the right: Her promotion of capitalism, and her defense of limited government. Both sprang from her early, bitter experience of life under Communism, and became among the most deeply enduring of her messages, attracting a diverse audience of college students and intellectuals, business people and Republican Party activists, libertarians and conservatives.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The more I learn the less I respect
- By David on 09-28-15
By: Jennifer Burns
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Dorothy Day
- Dissenting Voice of the American Century
- By: John Loughery, Blythe Randolph
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story5 out of 5 stars 32
After growing up in a conservative middle-class Republican household and working several years as a left-wing journalist, Dorothy Day converted to Catholicism and became an anomaly in American life for the next 50 years. As an orthodox Catholic, political radical, and a rebel who courted controversy, she attracted three generations of admirers. A believer in civil disobedience, Day went to jail several times protesting the nuclear arms race. She was critical of capitalism and US foreign policy, and as skeptical of modern liberalism as political conservatism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well Documented
- By dragonfly on 03-19-22
By: John Loughery, and others
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Under the Sign of Saturn
- Essays
- By: Susan Sontag
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
Sontag's most important critical writings from 1972 to 1980 are collected in Under the Sign of Saturn. One of America's leading essayists, Sontag's writings are commentaries on the relation between moral and aesthetic ideas, discussing the works of Antonin Artaud, Leni Riefenstahl, Elias Canetti, Walter Benjamin, and others. The collection includes a variety of her well-known essays. Sontag's writings are famously full of intellectual range and depth, and are at turns exhilarating, ominous, disturbing, and beautiful.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great essays and a great reading performance
- By Jaded Buddha on 03-29-18
By: Susan Sontag
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A Marvelous Life
- The Amazing Story of Stan Lee
- By: Danny Fingeroth
- Narrated by: Danny Fingeroth
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
Danny Fingeroth’s A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee is the first comprehensive biography of this powerhouse of ideas, who, with his invention of Marvel Comics, changed the world’s ideas of what a hero is and how a story should be told. With exclusive interviews with Lee himself, as well as with colleagues, relatives, friends - and detractors - Fingeroth makes a doubly remarkable case for Lee’s achievements, while not ignoring the controversies that dogged him his entire life - and even past his death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Detailed and Personal Look at Stan the Man
- By G. Hernandez on 07-29-20
By: Danny Fingeroth
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Updike
- By: Adam Begley
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 20 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
A masterful, much-anticipated biography of one of the most celebrated figures in American literature: Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike - a candid, intimate, and richly detailed look at his life and work. In this magisterial biography, Adam Begley offers an illuminating portrait of John Updike, the acclaimed novelist, poet, short-story writer, and critic who saw himself as a literary spy in small-town and suburban America.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Literary biography at its best
- By Laurene on 04-05-15
By: Adam Begley
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American Comics
- A History
- By: Jeremy Dauber
- Narrated by: Jeremy Dauber
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 111
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Story4 out of 5 stars 103
Starting with the Civil War and cartoonist Thomas Nast, creator of the lasting images of Uncle Sam and Santa Claus, author Jeremy Dauber whizzes listeners through the progress of comics in the 20th century and beyond. Follow the history from the golden age of newspaper comic strips - Krazy Kat, Yellow Kid, Dick Tracy - to the midcentury superhero boom - Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman - and from the moral panic of the Eisenhower era to the underground comix movement; from the grim and gritty Dark Knights to the graphic novel’s rise.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Shockingly Thorough
- By Alex Firer on 12-29-21
By: Jeremy Dauber
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Springtime for Snowflakes
- 'Social Justice' and Its Postmodern Parentage
- By: Michael Rectenwald
- Narrated by: Shawn Milochik
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
Springtime for Snowflakes: 'Social Justice' and Its Postmodern Parentage is a daring and candid memoir. NYU Professor Michael Rectenwald - the notorious @AntiPCNYUProf - illuminates the obscurity of postmodern theory to track down the ideas and beliefs that spawned the contemporary social justice creed and movement. In fast-paced creative non-fiction, Rectenwald begins by recounting how his Twitter capers and media exposure met with the swift and punitive response of NYU administrators and fellow faculty members.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent information from an insider's view.
- By lynlor123 on 02-04-19
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The Long March
- How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America
- By: Roger Kimball
- Narrated by: Raymond Todd
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 95
The architects of America's cultural revolution of the 1960s were Beat authors like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and celebrated figures like Norman Mailer, Timothy Leary, Eldridge Cleaver, and Susan Sontag. In examining the lives and works of those who spoke for the 1960s, Roger Kimball conceives a series of cautionary tales, an annotated guidebook of wrong turns, dead-ends, and blind alleys.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Long March
- By Suzanne on 05-16-06
By: Roger Kimball