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All the King's Men
- Narrated by: Michael Emerson
- Length: 20 hrs and 52 mins
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Publisher's summary
The fictionalized account of Louisiana's colorful and notorious governor, Huey Pierce Long, All the King's Men follows the startling rise and fall of Willie Stark, a country lawyer in the Deep South of the 1930s. Beset by political enemies, Stark seeks aid from his right-hand man, Jack Burden, who will bear witness to the cataclysmic unfolding of this very American tragedy.
Critic reviews
- Audie Award Finalist, Literary Fiction, 2007
"The definitive novel about American politics." (The New York Times)
"Mr. Warren has employed vivid characterization and strong language combined with subtle overtones to write a vital, compelling narrative." (Booklist)
"Michael Emerson's performance brings the characters to life with verve and personality....Through a mix of understatement and intensity, Emerson clearly conveys the political turmoil underlying the book; his performance perfectly complements the story, which is as timely as it was 60 years ago....Emerson's reading does justice to a great work." (AudioFile)
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And now, it's time to honor and celebrate the achievements of the artists who brought these treasures to the big screen. No matter who you're rooting for when the ceremony begins, these listens are all worthy of a golden statuette in our books. Here are the audiobooks that directly inspired the nominees and a few others to check out based on your own personal frontrunners.
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Story
Anders is an angry, cynical man. A book critic known for his scathing reviews, he finds any excuse to dismiss, belittle, or insult. This afternoon is no more agitating than the next. Angers finds himself in a long line at the bank, waiting to reach a teller. Even after two men - wearing masks and carrying guns - take control of the building, Anders is unfazed. It's this behavior that lands him with a pistol against his stomach and a man screamingin his face. And when the bank robber, indignant over Anders' behavior, shoots the book critic in the head, his mind floats through the memories of his life, settling on one particular event....
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The Perfect Example
- By Sarah on 08-01-17
By: Tobias Wolff
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Sanctuary
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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A powerful novel examining the nature of evil, informed by the works of T. S. Eliot and Freud, mythology, local lore, and hard-boiled detective fiction, Sanctuary is the dark, at times brutal, story of the kidnapping of Mississippi debutante Temple Drake. She introduces her own form of venality into the Memphis underworld where she is being held.
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disappointment
- By Dana on 10-20-10
By: William Faulkner
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules (Unabridged Selections)
- By: Edited by David Sedaris
- Narrated by: David Sedaris, Mary-Louise Parker, Cherry Jones
- Length: 2 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules is a collection of short stories, some classic, others impending, selected and introduced by David Sedaris.
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Great stories but only 5 of 17 are included
- By Terri Kirk on 07-13-12
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The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
- By: Eudora Welty
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat, Jessica Almasy, Victor Bevine, and others
- Length: 32 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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This complete collection includes all of the published stories of Eudora Welty. There are 41 stories in all, including those in the earlier collections A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The Golden Apples, and The Bride of the Innisfallen, as well as previously uncollected stories.
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Too Good For Audio
- By Yennta on 06-18-12
By: Eudora Welty
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Peyton Place
- By: Grace Metalious
- Narrated by: Tim O'Connor
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1956, when this novel was first published, communities all over New England snapped up copies to see if they were the town portrayed in the book. Peyton Place is the story of a repressive New England town known for its high standards of public morality, and the steamy sexual activities that take place behind its bedroom doors.
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Best book I've read to date!
- By Crusader on 11-07-11
By: Grace Metalious
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Stories
- All-New Tales
- By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, Al Sarrantonio - editor, Joe Hill, and others
- Narrated by: Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Katherine Kellgren, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.
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Something for Everyone
- By Nicole on 05-24-17
By: Neil Gaiman - author/editor, and others
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The Bell Jar
- By: Sylvia Plath
- Narrated by: Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful but slowly going under - maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
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A must-read for every woman
- By Julie W. Capell on 05-06-16
By: Sylvia Plath
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A Stone for Danny Fisher
- By: Harold Robbins
- Narrated by: Charles Leggett
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Born into a family of modest means and respectability, Danny Fisher was gradually driven downward into the world of crime, racketeering and poverty. His bitterness, his homesickness over the loss of the house in Brooklyn that was given to him for his eighth birthday, and his feud with his harsh father, pulled him one way; his natural decency and his love for a sweet Italian girl, Nellie Petito, pulled him another.
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My teenage read.
- By A. Mitchell on 11-11-11
By: Harold Robbins
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The Stand
- By: Stephen King
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 47 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen.
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My First Completed Stephen King Novel
- By Meaghan Bynum on 02-20-12
By: Stephen King
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dark, sad and tragic, but moving and beautiful
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Excellent!
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Advise and Consent
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It just has to be lived through...
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Robert Olen Butler's lyrical and poignant collection of stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its impact on the Vietnamese was acclaimed by critics across the nation and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993. This edition includes two subsequently published stories - "Salem" and "Missing" - that brilliantly complete the collection's narrative journey with a return to the jungles of Vietnam.
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RARE AND WONDERFUL STORIES!
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Andersonville
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Acclaimed as the greatest novel ever written about the War Between the States, this searing Pulitzer Prize-winning book captures all the glory and shame of America's most tragic conflict in the vivid, crowded world of Andersonville, and the people who lived outside its barricades. Based on the author's extensive research and nearly 25 years in the making, MacKinlay Kantor's best-selling masterwork tells the heartbreaking story of the notorious Georgia prison where 50,000 Northern soldiers suffered.
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Worthy of the Pulitzer
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Transcendent narration of a masterpiece.
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Having inspired a classic film and Broadway play, The Caine Mutiny is Herman Wouk's boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining novel of life—and mutiny—on a Navy warship in the Pacific theater. It was immediately embraced upon its original publication as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of the Second World War. In the intervening half century, this gripping story has become a perennial favorite, selling millions throughout the world, and claiming the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
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Even Better than the Movie
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THAT part of the Universe visible from Chicago!
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Born in 1917, Tennessee author Peter Taylor won the Pulitzer Prize for this exceptional work of literature. The well-to-do Carver family moves to Memphis from Nashville, where they become embroiled in a domestic dispute over the widower patriarch's decision to remarry.
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Not at all interesting
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In 1943, the American Major Victor Joppolo finds himself the civil affairs officer - the mayor - of a small town in Sicily. Equipped with the rulebook, How to Bring American Democracy to Liberated Territories, he sets about bringing choices to a people whose every recent activity had been dictated. Asking them what the town needs most, he is answered: give the town back its spirit - a bell to replace the 700-year-old one that was melted down for bullets.
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A quick little gem
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It Can't Happen Here
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Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor, is dismayed to find that many of the people he knows support presidential candidate Berzelius Windrip. The suspiciously fascist Windrip is offering to save the nation from sex, crime, welfare cheats, and a liberal press. But after Windrip wins the election, dissent soon becomes dangerous for Jessup. Windrip forcibly gains control of Congress and the Supreme Court and, with the aid of his personal paramilitary storm troopers, turns the United States into a totalitarian state.
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The Rise of American Authoritarianism
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By: Sinclair Lewis
What listeners say about All the King's Men
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Cheimon
- 10-12-08
Beautifully presented
This is a wonderfully moving, insightful presentation of the novel, treating the characters with tenderness as they are being torn apart. That said - this is not an audiobook for the casual listener, the novel demands attention. If you are like me, and listen to audiobooks while walking on busy streets, relying on an author to dwell on important plot points long enough for you to hear them eventually (think Tolstoy), you will find yourself rewinding All The King's Men a lot.
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51 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 07-22-17
Read this even if you didn't like the Movie
I had put off reading this book for years because I had seen the old movie many years ago. The movie was not bad, but did not inspire me to read the book. Nevertheless this was on the Modern Library top 100 list I have been going through so I gave it a listen. The book is a true classic and the movie does not do it justice, Subtle and moving with a very different emotional outlook. The prose are outstanding and the story is engaging, both real and allegorical.
This is a great book for the age of Trump. The story tells of a population sickened by a corrupt political system turning to a strongman populist willing to do whatever it takes to get things done.
This is a great book worth reading and re-reading. The narration is spectacular, expressing the inner states of the narrator as the novel progresses. There have been quite a few great reads on the Modern Library list, and this is one of the best so far.
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31 people found this helpful
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Overall
- gracenote
- 10-19-06
people & politics
a classic exploration of the complexities of personality, power, character, good and evil. the writing is sublime and the narration is wonderful. i found myself stopping the play just to think about the implications of the author's observations on characters and events. it is a novel of it's time and uses the vernacular of its time. that, too, is something to ponder and to assess for ourselves how much we believe that we as individuals or society have changed.
very thought provoking. i know i will come back to listen to this again.
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31 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Louie
- 10-18-06
Outstanding
This is an outstanding reading of a great piece of literature. I can't add to 60 years of literary reviews praising this Pulitzer winning classic, but I can compliment Michael Emerson's reading of it. Mr. Emerson's reading is a perfect fit for what is unquestionably a great work of American Literature. His pacing, intonation, and articulation of Warren’s beautiful use of our language enhance the experience of this excellent book.
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28 people found this helpful
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- Richard Delman
- 06-23-13
Fantastic, but a little too Long.
Robert Penn Warren was something of a god among men during his career. He was both a novelist and a poet, and he was literally great at both. This is his masterpiece. It is the story of Huey Long, the governor of Louisiana during the 1930s, and a PR man named Jack Burden. Long is given the name Willie Stark. The actual governor's election slogan was "Every man a king," which might give you something of an idea of what a master of political rhetoric he was. He was a mercurial man, a mighty politician, loved by many and scorned by many for the corruption of his administration. The twin stories of Jack and Willie are brilliantly intertwined. Michael Emerson is a truly wonderful narrator. His ability to convey all the characters of this rich story is remarkable. His Southern accents are perfect. His portrayal of Willie as a man of profound gifts is just magnificent: we are lucky to be able to listen to such a performance.
The stories of Willie Stark and Jack Burden are a bit too long (sorry for the pun), and a sub-plot involving the history of Cass Mastern et al is really a distraction. Jack's mother is a perfect southern archetype: from the hills of Arkansas to New Orleans society by way of both her fragile beauty and her steely wiles with men, Jack shows us a picture of his mother that is poignant and startling. Warren creates a panoply of actors who are fully ranged from low-life slimy craven Southern politicians to the intellectual and incorruptible Judge Irwin, to the triangular relationship among Jack, and Adam and Anne Stanton. This book is really way too wonderful to depict it with credibility in a brief review; I could go on for pages, but I'll spare you. The two most important women in Willie's life, his wife Lucy and his white-hot political assistant Sadie Burke: both of them are in their own ways tormented by Willie's gigantic appetites. Warren's gifts are so many that it's arbitrary to list just a few. His ability to show us what politics really was like at the time, so full of human ambition, frailty, corruption, double- and triple-dealing; it is like having a front row seat to one of the greatest dramas of the twentieth century. Many Northerners know little about the real South; listening to Warren's work and Emerson's amazing performance provides us with the absolute best in learning by being entertained. You have to commit a number of hours to this book, but it is one of the most worthwhile commitments you can make. I can't imagine any Audible reader not loving this book. Really.
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27 people found this helpful
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Overall
- A book reader
- 10-04-06
Marvelously written and read
This is a great novel. You probably already know that. What you may not know is that this audiobook production is top-notch. The narrator is spot on, capturing the poetry of the writing and the tone of the south. Just a fantastic package of writing and narration.
Highly recommended.
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26 people found this helpful
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- David
- 12-20-11
It ain't that simple
I find it really difficult to characterize this book because it is so complex and textured, probing the ever present ambiguities of good and evil in our motivations and actions and rejecting all the simplistic drivel which allows us to choose sides so easily both in politics and in life. Penn Warren makes it clear that nothing is that simple, though it may not make much difference since our hearts usually drive us to make our choices and live with them and perhaps justify them later.
While I recognize that this is a brilliant book, I gave the story four stars because I actually found the first person, central character's struggle a little tiresome by the end. I think I might have tolerated it somewhat better if I were still thirty seven. On the other hand, watching through his eyes as Willie Stark/Huey P. Long carries all before him toward his inevitable destiny is fascinating and completely absorbing. He comes across as an American original and anything but simple.
As noted by most other reviewers, Michael Emerson's rendering of the book is brilliant throughout. One of the really great audible book performances I have heard.
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23 people found this helpful
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Overall
- B.J.
- 05-19-11
I expected politics, but got life intead
No wonder this book is on every "Best Books of the 20th Century" list you see. It's brilliant. I knew it was based loosely on Huey Long, so I expected politics. What I didn't expect was the shift about a third of the way into the book into life: love, loss, betrayal, disappointment, loyalty and more. I can't say more than the thousands of reviews already say. It's beautifully written and the narration suits it perfectly.
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22 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Ted
- 12-15-10
My standard of excellence
This is, to date (Dec 2010), the finest book Ito which I have listened. Every award, every compliment, every praise that Warren accumulated for All The King's Men is deserved. To say that Michael Emerson is up to this work is to say that his interpretive performance is stunning. The tale is timeless and the masterpiece taken as a whole will haunt a listener who is sufficiently mature to value the entirety of its nuance. Every other book I hear will be judged against All The King's Men.
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19 people found this helpful
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Overall
- David
- 08-17-09
Beautiful Prose
Every now and then you happen upon a book that makes you just stop and listen. This is it. The prose is beautiful. It is not an "action" book it is a book to savour. If I could only ever listen to one book this would be it
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