-
Formation
- A Woman's Memoir of Stepping Out of Line
- Narrated by: Ryan Leigh Dostie
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $29.65
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Tribe
- On Homecoming and Belonging
- By: Sebastian Junger
- Narrated by: Sebastian Junger
- Length: 2 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians - but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the incredibly intimate bonds of platoon life.
-
-
The most profound book on the subject
- By joseph on 05-26-16
By: Sebastian Junger
-
Shoot Like a Girl
- One Woman's Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front
- By: Major Mary Jennings Hegar
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After being commissioned into the US Air Force, MJ Hegar was selected for pilot training by the Air National Guard, finished at the top of her class, then served three tours in Afghanistan flying combat search and rescue missions, culminating in a harrowing rescue attempt that would earn MJ the Purple Heart as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor Device. But it was on American soil that Hegar would embark on her greatest challenge - to eliminate the military's Ground Combat Exclusion Policy.
-
-
Absorbing
- By Jean on 05-21-17
-
The Checklist Manifesto
- How to Get Things Right
- By: Atul Gawande
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies - neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist.
-
-
Riveting!
- By Tad Davis on 01-11-10
By: Atul Gawande
-
The Tobacco Wives
- A Novel
- By: Adele Myers
- Narrated by: Shannon McManus, Janet Metzger
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who’s just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina—the tobacco capital of the South—where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland in full technicolor bloom, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt’s glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives.
-
-
Historical fiction at its best!
- By Rambo on 04-07-22
By: Adele Myers
-
The Warrior Code
- 11 Principles to Unleash the Badass Inside of You
- By: Tee Marie Hanible
- Narrated by: Tee Marie Hanible
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Warrior Code, entrepreneur, philanthropist, reality star, and retired gunnery sergeant Tee Marie Hanible serves up 11 principles to awaken your inner badass and thrive in the face of adversity. With insightful honesty and wisdom and set against the backdrop of Tee’s life, The Warrior Code will help you understand that things can beat us back from realizing our true potential...but the key is finding the way to realize one’s own innate strength.
-
-
Your mother wears combat boots
- By Juanita L. Jones on 04-04-20
-
Generation Kill
- By: Evan Wright
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
They were called a generation without heroes. Then they were called upon to be heroes. Within hours of 9/11, America's war on terrorism fell to those like the 23 Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ended combat since Vietnam.
-
-
Proud of the new breed.
- By Jack OBrien on 03-15-16
By: Evan Wright
-
Tribe
- On Homecoming and Belonging
- By: Sebastian Junger
- Narrated by: Sebastian Junger
- Length: 2 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Decades before the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin lamented that English settlers were constantly fleeing over to the Indians - but Indians almost never did the same. Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species. The most recent example of that attraction is combat veterans who come home to find themselves missing the incredibly intimate bonds of platoon life.
-
-
The most profound book on the subject
- By joseph on 05-26-16
By: Sebastian Junger
-
Shoot Like a Girl
- One Woman's Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front
- By: Major Mary Jennings Hegar
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After being commissioned into the US Air Force, MJ Hegar was selected for pilot training by the Air National Guard, finished at the top of her class, then served three tours in Afghanistan flying combat search and rescue missions, culminating in a harrowing rescue attempt that would earn MJ the Purple Heart as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor Device. But it was on American soil that Hegar would embark on her greatest challenge - to eliminate the military's Ground Combat Exclusion Policy.
-
-
Absorbing
- By Jean on 05-21-17
-
The Checklist Manifesto
- How to Get Things Right
- By: Atul Gawande
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies - neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist.
-
-
Riveting!
- By Tad Davis on 01-11-10
By: Atul Gawande
-
The Tobacco Wives
- A Novel
- By: Adele Myers
- Narrated by: Shannon McManus, Janet Metzger
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Maddie Sykes is a burgeoning seamstress who’s just arrived in Bright Leaf, North Carolina—the tobacco capital of the South—where her aunt has a thriving sewing business. After years of war rations and shortages, Bright Leaf is a prosperous wonderland in full technicolor bloom, and Maddie is dazzled by the bustle of the crisply uniformed female factory workers, the palatial homes, and, most of all, her aunt’s glossiest clientele: the wives of the powerful tobacco executives.
-
-
Historical fiction at its best!
- By Rambo on 04-07-22
By: Adele Myers
-
The Warrior Code
- 11 Principles to Unleash the Badass Inside of You
- By: Tee Marie Hanible
- Narrated by: Tee Marie Hanible
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Warrior Code, entrepreneur, philanthropist, reality star, and retired gunnery sergeant Tee Marie Hanible serves up 11 principles to awaken your inner badass and thrive in the face of adversity. With insightful honesty and wisdom and set against the backdrop of Tee’s life, The Warrior Code will help you understand that things can beat us back from realizing our true potential...but the key is finding the way to realize one’s own innate strength.
-
-
Your mother wears combat boots
- By Juanita L. Jones on 04-04-20
-
Generation Kill
- By: Evan Wright
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
They were called a generation without heroes. Then they were called upon to be heroes. Within hours of 9/11, America's war on terrorism fell to those like the 23 Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ended combat since Vietnam.
-
-
Proud of the new breed.
- By Jack OBrien on 03-15-16
By: Evan Wright
-
North to Paradise
- A Memoir
- By: Ousman Umar, Kevin Gerry Dunn - translator
- Narrated by: Kwesi Busia
- Length: 3 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The inspiring true story of one man’s treacherous boyhood journey from a rural village in Ghana to the streets of Barcelona - and the path that led him home.
-
-
Eyeopening!
- By Kindle Customer on 08-04-22
By: Ousman Umar, and others
-
Never Simple
- A Memoir
- By: Liz Scheier
- Narrated by: Amy Landon
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Scheier’s mother Judith was a news junkie, a hilarious storyteller, a fast-talking charmer you couldn’t look away from, a single mother whose devotion crossed the line into obsession, and—when in the grips of the mental illness that plagued every day of her life—a violent and abusive liar whose hold on reality was shaky at best. On an uneventful afternoon when Scheier was eighteen, her mother sauntered into the room to tell her two important things.
-
-
A lot of WTF through narrative
- By Leah on 03-16-22
By: Liz Scheier
-
Unbecoming
- By: Anuradha Bhagwati
- Narrated by: Anuradha Bhagwati
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After a lifetime of buckling to the demands of her strict Indian parents, Anuradha Bhagwati abandons her grad school career in the Ivy League to join the Marines - the fiercest, most violent, most masculine branch of the military - determined to prove herself there in ways she couldn’t at home. Yet once training begins, Anuradha’s GI Jane fantasy is punctured. As a bisexual woman of color in the military, she faces underestimation at every stage, confronting misogyny, racism, and astonishing injustice perpetrated by those in power.
-
-
Self worth and Others Approval
- By NorCal Girl on 11-20-20
-
Finding Fate
- By: Kennedy L. Mitchell
- Narrated by: Amelie Griffin, Mason Lloyd
- Length: 11 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Master hacker Fate Haley has one objective on her mind - vengeance. A year after an unthinkable tragedy destroys her family, Fate has the two men responsible in her sights and a plan in place to ensure they won't slip through the CIA's fingers again. At the edge of insanity, Fate's prepared to risk it all until he slips in one dark night set on saving her.
-
-
Good story; narrator, not so much
- By Michelle Young on 07-20-22
-
The Book of Collateral Damage
- By: Sinan Antoon, Jonathan Wright - translator
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Widely-celebrated author Sinan Antoon's fourth and most sophisticated novel follows Nameer, a young Iraqi scholar earning his doctorate at Harvard, who is hired by filmmakers to help document the devastation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the excursion, Nameer ventures to al-Mutanabbi street in Baghdad, famed for its bookshops, and encounters Wadood, an eccentric bookseller who is trying to catalogue everything destroyed by war, from objects, buildings, books and manuscripts, flora and fauna, to humans.
-
-
one of my favorite authors
- By Amazon Customer on 04-21-21
By: Sinan Antoon, and others
-
Sex Cult Nun
- Breaking Away from the Children of God, a Wild, Radical Religious Cult
- By: Faith Jones
- Narrated by: Jaime Lamchick
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Educated meets The Vow in this story of liberation and self-empowerment - an inspiring and stranger-than-fiction memoir of growing up in and breaking free from the Children of God, an oppressive, extremist religious cult.
-
-
An absolute page-turner
- By Lara on 12-03-21
By: Faith Jones
-
Eloquent Rage
- A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower
- By: Brittney Cooper
- Narrated by: Brittney Cooper
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
So what if it's true that Black women are mad as hell? They have the right to be. In the Black feminist tradition of Audre Lorde, Brittney Cooper reminds us that anger is a powerful source of energy that can give us the strength to keep on fighting. Far too often, Black women's anger has been caricatured into an ugly and destructive force that threatens the civility and social fabric of American democracy. But Cooper shows us that there is more to the story than that.
-
-
🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾 Eloquent AF
- By Erica on 03-05-18
By: Brittney Cooper
-
Life Undercover
- Coming of Age in the CIA
- By: Amaryllis Fox
- Narrated by: Amaryllis Fox
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Amaryllis Fox's riveting memoir tells the story of her 10 years in the most elite clandestine ops unit of the CIA, hunting the world's most dangerous terrorists in 16 countries while marrying and giving birth to a daughter. Life Undercover is exhilarating, intimate, fiercely intelligent - an impossible-to-pause record of an extraordinary life, and of Amaryllis Fox's astonishing courage and passion.
-
-
Book of the year...
- By Mr Dangerous on 10-16-19
By: Amaryllis Fox
-
The Volunteer
- One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz
- By: Jack Fairweather
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To uncover the fate of the thousands being interred at a mysterious Nazi camp on the border of the Reich, a young Polish resistance fighter named Witold Pilecki volunteered for an audacious mission: intentionally get captured and transported to the new camp to report back on what was going on there. But gathering information was not his only task: he was to execute an attack from inside - where the Germans would least expect it. The name of the camp was Auschwitz.
-
-
It is impossible to hear of the atrocities of Auschwitz without being. Forced to consider man’s infinite cruelty
- By Marge Greenwald on 07-15-19
By: Jack Fairweather
-
Scarred
- The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, the Cult That Bound My Life
- By: Sarah Edmondson, Kristine Gasbarre
- Narrated by: Sarah Edmondson
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The shocking and subversive memoir of a 12-year-NXIVM-member-turned-whistleblower, and her inspiring true story of abuse, escape, and redemption. "Master, would you brand me? It would be an honor." Scarred follows actress Sarah Edmondson's account of her recruitment into the NXIVM cult, founded by Keith Raniere. It narrates in detail the 12 years she spent within the organization, during which she enrolled over 2,000 members, chronicling her breaking point and her harrowing fight to get out, help others, and heal.
-
-
Riveting!
- By Ellen on 10-23-19
By: Sarah Edmondson, and others
-
Carry
- A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land
- By: Toni Jensen
- Narrated by: Toni Jensen
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A powerful, poetic memoir about what it means to exist as an Indigenous woman in America, told in snapshots of the author’s encounters with gun violence.
-
-
A gorgeous performance of a powerful, important new text
- By Elana SJ on 09-11-20
By: Toni Jensen
-
Good and Mad
- How Women's Anger Is Reshaping America
- By: Rebecca Traister
- Narrated by: Rebecca Traister
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the year 2018, it seems as if women’s anger has suddenly erupted into the public conversation. But long before this, women’s anger was not only politically catalytic - but politically problematic. With eloquence and fervor, Rebecca tracks the history of female anger as political fuel - from suffragettes chaining themselves to the White House to office workers vacating their buildings after Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court. She deconstructs society’s (and the media’s) condemnation of female emotion (notably, rage) and the impact of resulting repercussions.
-
-
The perfect book for October 2018.
- By Kate Willette on 10-03-18
By: Rebecca Traister
Publisher's Summary
Cheryl Strayed's Wild meets Anthony Swofford's Jarhead in this powerful literary memoir of a young Army recruit driven to prove herself in a man's world.
Raised by powerful women in a restrictive, sheltered Christian community in New England, Ryan Dostie never imagined herself on the front lines of a war halfway around the world. But then a conversation with an Army recruiter in her high-school cafeteria changes the course of her life. Hired as a linguist, she quickly has to find a space for herself in the testosterone-filled world of the Army barracks, and has been holding her own until the unthinkable happens: she is raped by a fellow soldier.
Struggling with PTSD and commanders who don't trust her story, Dostie finds herself fighting through the isolation of trauma amid the challenges of an unexpected war. What follows is a riveting story of one woman's extraordinary journey to prove her worth, physically and mentally, in a world where the odds are stacked against her.
"Vital, brutal and absolutely compelling...A significant standout." (Marilyn Dahl, Shelf Awareness)
Critic Reviews
"Raw, explosive...Dostie writes powerfully...In the sparse landscape of war memoirs by female soldiers, Dostie's resolute, literary account of her five years in the army sets a benchmark." (Publishers Weekly)
"An essential telling of one woman's account of training and combat: staggeringly beautiful, gutsy, and harrowing. Dostie has written the rare memoir that is destined to be a classic. I couldn't put this book down and I never wanted it to end." (Christa Parravani, best-selling author of Her: A Memoir)
"This is a fierce memoir of survival - a visceral and vital portrait of what it takes to thrive as a woman in a man's world. Time is long overdue for the world to hear Ryan Leigh Dostie's remarkable story of resilience in the face of the unspeakable." (Susannah Cahalan, number-one New York Times best-selling author of Brain on Fire)
"Here is the war memoir re-invented. Dostie offers a beautiful, soulful, and astonishingly fresh take on the war in Iraq, and a deeply original book. Formation should be a must read at West Point, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and all points in between." (Jake Halpern, New York Times best-selling author of Bad Paper)
What listeners say about Formation
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 01-27-21
Women in the military
Great book! If your a female in the military please read! Highly recommend ! Especially if you are in a leadership position.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Fit Mama
- 01-09-20
First Review Ever
I have never felt more compelled to write a review on a book before. But this book commands one. It is powerful. It is raw. It is so honestly written that I feel like I am right beside the author sharing in her pain. I stumbled across this book by chance. And it has changed me. As a veteran female, I can relate. Oh, how I can relate. The military, regardless of branch, treats females differently. And unless you have been in that situation, you don't know. But if you listen to this book you will know. You will have a glimpse behind the uniform...behind the barbed wire. The courageousness of the writer is astounding. To share such personal details is to open a wound for all to see. Ryan Leigh Dostie, you are courageous beyond your uniform. Thank you for taking us with you down that painful path as hard as it must have been. And best wishes on your journey of healing. May God bless you.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Karen U
- 08-20-19
Great book
This was recommended to me from a friend. I probably would have missed it otherwise. I don’t usually read books about rape and it’s aftermath. This book was very different because it dealt with the treatment of women in the military good and bad. I can’t recommend it enough.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 07-07-19
Chilling, uplifting, and humbling all at once
Narration by the author adds a feel that no other can bring to this story.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Yolanda Ceci
- 06-19-19
Fantastic Book
One of the best books I have listened to in a long time. The story is compelling and raw, well written and the fact that it's recorded by the author made it that much more meaningful.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- shelcu
- 06-14-19
Wonderful story in her own voice
This story is so important and I feel very privileged to be able to hear it in her own voice. I felt like I was intruding into Dostie’s life and a part of something so private. I’m so glad she brought it into the light and wrote about the rape and how it has continued to affect her life. These stories need to be told and heard. It is hard and brave. Her story is wonderfully written and spoken.