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Alex's Wake
- A Voyage of Betrayal and Journey of Remembrance
- Narrated by: Martin Goldsmith
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
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Alex's Wake
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Alex's Wake is a tale of two parallel journeys undertaken seven decades apart. In the spring of 1939, Alex and Helmut Goldschmidt were two of more than 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany aboard the St. Louis, the saddest ship afloat (New York Times). Turned away from Cuba, the United States, and Canada, the St. Louis returned to Europe, a stark symbol of the world's indifference to the gathering Holocaust. The Goldschmidts disembarked in France, where they spent the next three years in six different camps before being shipped to their deaths in Auschwitz.
In the spring of 2011, Alex's grandson, Martin Goldsmith, followed in his relatives' footsteps on a six-week journey of remembrance and hope, an irrational quest to reverse their fate and bring himself peace. Alex's Wake movingly recounts the detailed histories of the two journeys, the witnesses Martin encounters for whom the events of the past are a vivid part of a living present, and an intimate, honest attempt to overcome a tormented family legacy.
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- The Rise of Fascism: 1919-1945
- By: Julia Boyd
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 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 72
Travelers in the Third Reich is an extraordinary history of the rise of the Nazis based on fascinating firsthand accounts, drawing together a multitude of voices and stories, including politicians, musicians, diplomats, schoolchildren, communists, scholars, athletes, poets, fascists, artists, tourists, and even celebrities like Charles Lindbergh and Samuel Beckett. Their experiences create a remarkable three-dimensional picture of Germany under Hitler - one so palpable that the listener will feel, hear, even breathe the atmosphere.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Why must I write a review to have my rating count?
- By Saint Exupery on 03-04-23
By: Julia Boyd
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Paper Love
- Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind
- By: Sarah Wildman
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
Years after her grandfather's death, journalist Sarah Wildman stumbled upon a cache of his letters in a file labeled "Correspondence: Patients A-G". What she found inside weren't dry medical histories; instead what was written opened a path into the destroyed world that was her family's prewar Vienna. One woman's letters stood out: those from Valy-Valerie Scheftel, her grandfather's lover who remained behind when he fled Europe six months after the Nazis annexed Austria.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Compelling and Personal Exploration
- By Murphee on 08-09-23
By: Sarah Wildman
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Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden
- Two Sisters Separated by China’s Civil War
- By: Zhuqing Li
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
Scions of a once-great southern Chinese family that produced the tutor of the last emperor, Jun and Hong were each other’s best friends until, in their twenties, they were separated at the end of the Chinese Civil War. One became a model Communist, the other a model capitalist. On Taiwan, Jun married a Nationalist general, established a trading company, and emigrated to the United States. On the Communist mainland, Hong built her medical career under a cloud of suspicion about her family and survived two waves of “re-education” before she was acclaimed for her achievements.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful Story of a Family’s Survival Through Political Change…
- By Marie G. on 04-12-23
By: Zhuqing Li
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Forty Autumns
- A Family's Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall
- By: Nina Willner
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 805
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 724
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 720
In this illuminating and deeply moving memoir, a former American military intelligence officer goes beyond traditional Cold War espionage tales to tell the true story of her family - of five women separated by the Iron Curtain for more than 40 years and their miraculous reunion after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A personal look at a tenuous era that divided a city and a nation and continues to haunt us, Forty Autumns is an intimate and beautifully written story of courage, resilience, and love.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent look into the divided Germanys
- By Mary Aalgaard on 01-18-18
By: Nina Willner
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Midnight in Broad Daylight
- A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds
- By: Pamela Rotner Sakamoto
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 177
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 158
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 157
After their father's death, Harry, Frank, and Pierce Fukuhara - all born and raised in the Pacific Northwest - moved to Hiroshima, their mother's ancestral home. Eager to go back to his own land - America - Harry returned in the late 1930s. Then came Pearl Harbor. Despite being sent to an internment camp, Harry dutifully volunteered to serve his country. Back in Hiroshima, his brothers, Frank and Pierce, became soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A must listen
- By Jon on 02-01-16
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The Return
- Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
- By: Hisham Matar
- Narrated by: Hisham Matar
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 975
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 866
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 867
When Hisham Matar was a 19-year-old university student in England, his father was kidnapped. One of the Qaddafi regime's most prominent opponents in exile, he was held in a secret prison in Libya. Hisham would never see him again. But he never gave up hope that his father might still be alive. "Hope," as he writes, "is cunning and persistent." Twenty-two years later, after the fall of Qaddafi, the prison cells were empty, and there was no sign of Jaballa Matar. Hisham returned with his mother and wife to the homeland he never thought he'd go back to again.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Touching memoir. Consider hard copy
- By Joschka Philipps on 02-22-18
By: Hisham Matar
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The Last Palace
- Europe's Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House
- By: Norman Eisen
- Narrated by: Jeff Goldblum
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 227
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 201
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 198
When Norman Eisen moved into the US ambassador’s residence in Prague, returning to the land his mother had fled after the Holocaust, he was startled to discover swastikas hidden beneath the furniture in his new home. These symbols of Nazi Germany were remnants of the residence’s forgotten history, and evidence that we never live far from the past. From that discovery unspooled the twisting, captivating tale of four of the remarkable people who had called this palace home. Their story is Europe’s....
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great book despite goldblum’s narration
- By Fernando Ferrante on 01-19-19
By: Norman Eisen
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Road to Valor
- A True Story of World War II Italy, the Nazis, and the Cyclist Who Inspired a Nation
- By: Aili McConnon, Andres McConnon
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 132
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 118
Based on nearly 10 years of research in Italy, France, and Israel, including interviews with Gino Bartali's family, former teammates, a Holocaust survivor Bartali saved, and many others, Road to Valor is the first book ever written about the Italian cycling legend in English and the only book written in any language to fully explore the scope of Bartali's wartime work. An epic tale of courage, comeback, and redemption, it is the untold story of one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Hollywood .... look this story !!!
- By Fabiano on 04-03-19
By: Aili McConnon, and others
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The Devil in the White City
- Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
- By: Erik Larson
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30,087
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24,836
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24,826
Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Rich Read!
- By D on 09-18-03
By: Erik Larson
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King and Queen of Malibu
- The True Story of the Battle for Paradise
- By: David K. Randall
- Narrated by: Eric Summerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 106
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 93
Over a half century, Malibu went from an untamed ranch in the middle of nowhere to a paradise seeded with movie stars. Behind its transformation is the love story of Frederick and May Rindge. He was a Harvard-trained confidant of presidents; she grew up on a hardscrabble Midwestern farm; yet their unlikely bond would shape history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Listen!
- By Anonymous User on 09-25-23
By: David K. Randall
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The Sugar King of Havana
- The Rise and Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba's Last Tycoon
- By: John Paul Rathbone
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
Fifty years after the Cuban revolution, the legendary wealth of the sugar magnate Julio Lobo remains emblematic of a certain way of life that came to an abrupt end when Fidel Castro marched into Havana. Known in his day as the King of Sugar, Lobo was for decades the most powerful force in the world sugar market, controlling vast swaths of the island's sugar interests.
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4 out of 5 stars
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VERY INFORMATIVE
- By Terry on 03-26-12
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Freedom at Midnight
- By: Dominique Lapierre, Larry Collins
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 22 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 107
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 89
This is the story of the eclipse of the British Raj and the birth of an independent India and Pakistan. The fabled India of the maharajas, with their palaces and harems, their gold-caparisoned elephants and their glittering private armies—the India of Kipling’s legendary army, with its young British officers commanding troops of a dozen races, religions, and castes—the India of tiger hunts and pigsticking.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Awful - Need for diversity
- By RNS on 02-01-20
By: Dominique Lapierre, and others
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The Aquariums of Pyongyang
- By: Chol-hwan Kang, Pierre Rigoulot
- Narrated by: Stephen Park
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 283
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 245
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Story5 out of 5 stars 246
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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4 out of 5 stars
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Riveting!!
- By Iread on 11-12-20
By: Chol-hwan Kang, and others
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Hanns and Rudolf
- The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz
- By: Thomas Harding
- Narrated by: Mark Meadows
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 70
May 1945: In the aftermath of the Second World War, the first British War Crimes Investigation Team is assembled to hunt down the senior Nazi officials responsible for the greatest atrocities the world has ever seen. One of the lead investigators is Lieutenant Hanns Alexander, a German Jew who is now serving in the British Army. Rudolf Höss is his most elusive target. Hanns and Rudolf reveals for the very first time the full, exhilarating account of Höss' capture, an encounter with repercussions that echo to this day.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I Read This Marvelous Book...
- By Douglas on 01-04-14
By: Thomas Harding
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The House of Government
- A Saga of the Russian Revolution
- By: Yuri Slezkine, Claire Bloom - director
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 45 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 169
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 147
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction. The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Inside saga of the leaders of Bolshevism & the USSR
- By Edward V. Blanchard on 11-05-17
By: Yuri Slezkine, and others
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Gertrude Bell
- Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations
- By: Georgina Howell
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 18 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 110
She has been called the female Lawrence of Arabia, which, while not inaccurate, fails to give Gertrude Bell her due. She was at one time the most powerful woman in the British Empire: a nation builder, the driving force behind the creation of modern-day Iraq. Born in 1868 into a world of privilege, Bell turned her back on Victorian society, choosing to read history at Oxford and going on to become an archaeologist, spy, Arabist, linguist, author, poet, photographer, and legendary mountaineer.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Shattering The Glass Ceiling in Britain
- By Nostromo on 08-05-18
By: Georgina Howell
What listeners say about Alex's Wake
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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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Meggan (Tom)
- 07-01-14
READ IT! READ IT ! READ IT!
What did you love best about Alex's Wake?
It was a truely wonderful journey.
What did you like best about this story?
The author was able to find out about his ancestors even though it had been many years since their deaths.
What does Martin Goldsmith bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
As a fellow Jew, the authors unending challenge to be outraged or forgiving. This was the first author I read that spoke to my own feelings of hatred and understanding. It is the single thing that makes this book unforgettable every step of the way.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I was on an emotional rollercoaster as the author worked through his own reactions. But it furthered my own journey.
Any additional comments?
I am so glad that I heard the author on NPR. I will be looking into his other books.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- E. J. Zell
- 11-27-15
Home Again
The perfect read at this time of national concern over immigration. The author as narrator adds a deeper connection to this sad, but necessary story about one family's experience facing death at the hands of Nazis and their sympathizers.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- A. Yates
- 02-09-15
Heart gripping
Being a classical musician I have enjoyed the voice of Martin Goldsmith for years. I never knew of his family history and it was quite enjoyable to hear it firsthand. Thank you for sharing your story Mr. Goldsmith.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Mary
- 11-25-15
Not what I expected
I chose this book because the story of Jewish refugees being turned away from a country that represents a land built on people looking for freedom is an important one. Sadly I did not hear about the family's plight. This was about the grandson's personal journey coming to terms in his own mind. It was boring and trivial compared to what it could have been. I did not want to hear about the weather conditions abroad as the author visited various places. Very disappointed. We were not given any more insight into their journey then before reading the book.
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