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Nothin' But Blue Skies
- The Heyday, Hard Times and Hopes of America's Industrial Heartland
- Narrated by: Ben Bartolone
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
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Nothin' But Blue Skies
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Publisher's summary
The Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region became the "arsenal of democracy" - the greatest manufacturing center in the world-in the years during and after World War II, thanks to natural advantages and a welcoming culture. Decades of unprecedented prosperity followed, memorably punctuated by riots, strikes, burning rivers, and oil embargoes. A vibrant, quintessentially American character bloomed in the region's cities, suburbs, and backwaters.
But the innovation and industry that defined the Rust Belt also helped to hasten its demise. An air conditioner invented in Upstate New York transformed the South from a sweaty backwoods to a non-unionized industrial competitor. Japan and Germany recovered from their defeat to build fuel-efficient cars in the stagnant 1970s. The tentpole factories that paid workers so well also filled the air with soot, and poisoned waters and soil. The jobs drifted elsewhere, and many of the people soon followed suit.
Nothin' but Blue Skies tells the story of how the country's industrial heartland grew, boomed, bottomed, and hopes to be reborn. Through a propulsive blend of storytelling and reportage, celebrated writer Edward McClelland delivers the rise, fall, and revival of the Rust Belt and its people.
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-
5 out of 5 stars
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Cabrini was my home
- By George Dorsey on 10-13-20
By: Ben Austen
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Boom, Bust, Exodus
- The Rust Belt, the Maquilas, and a Tale of Two Cities
- By: Chad Broughton
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 15 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
In 2002, the town of Galesburg, a slowly declining Rustbelt city of 33,000 in western Illinois, learned that it would soon lose its largest factory, a Maytag refrigerator plant that had anchored Galesburg's social and economic life for decades. Workers at the plant earned $15.14 an hour, had good insurance, and were assured a solid retirement. In 2004, the plant was relocated to Reynosa, Mexico, where workers sometimes spent 13-hour days assembling refrigerators for $1.10 an hour.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Story I thought I Knew
- By Meek84 on 07-08-18
By: Chad Broughton
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Glass House
- The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town
- By: Brian Alexander
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 104
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
The Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world's largest maker of glass tableware, was the base on which Lancaster's society was built. As Glass House unfolds, bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders, and Lancaster's citizens, Alexander shows how financial engineering took hold in the 1980s, accelerated in the 21st century, and wrecked the company.
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5 out of 5 stars
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What really happened to the American Dream?
- By Bill on 05-10-17
By: Brian Alexander
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Strange Stones
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 157
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 135
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 138
Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of adventure, Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Peter Hessler’s best reportage - a dazzling display of the powerful storytelling, shrewd cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that are the trademarks of his work. Over the last decade, as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of three books, Peter Hessler has lived in Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions.
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4 out of 5 stars
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funny, entertaining
- By Katherine on 08-02-13
By: Peter Hessler
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Supreme City
- How Jazz Age Manhattan Gave Birth to Modern America
- By: Donald L. Miller
- Narrated by: Frangione Jim
- Length: 29 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 85
In four words - "the capital of everything" - Duke Ellington captured Manhattan during one of the most exciting and celebrated eras in our history: The Jazz Age. Radio, tabloid newspapers, and movies with sound appeared. The silver screen took over Times Square as Broadway became America's movie mecca. Tremendous new skyscrapers were built in Midtown in one of the greatest building booms in history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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the background to the NYC we now live in
- By Marcie on 03-05-15
By: Donald L. Miller
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Levittown
- Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America's Legendary Suburb
- By: David Kushner
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
In the decade after World War II , one entrepreneurial family helped thousands of people buy into the American dream of owning a home. The Levitts, William, Alfred, and their father, Abe, pooled their talents to create storybook towns with affordable little houses. They laid out the welcome mat - but not to everyone. Levittown had a Whites-only policy.
By: David Kushner
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Methland
- The Death and Life of an American Small Town
- By: Nick Reding
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 884
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 471
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Story4 out of 5 stars 477
Crystal methamphetamine is widely considered to be the most dangerous drug in the world, and nowhere is that more true than in the small towns of the American heartland. Methland tells the story of Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), which, like thousands of other small towns across the country, has been left in the dust by the consolidation of the agricultural industry, a depressed local economy, and an out-migration of people.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Beautifully written, but insubstantial
- By Flavius Krakdaddius on 02-10-10
By: Nick Reding
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St. Marks Is Dead
- The Many Lives of America's Hippest Street
- By: Ada Calhoun
- Narrated by: Carla Mercer-Meyer
- Length: 10 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
St. Marks Place in New York City has spawned countless artistic and political movements. Here Frank O'Hara caroused, Emma Goldman plotted, and the Velvet Underground wailed. But every generation of miscreant denizens believes that their era, and no other, marked the street's apex.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful history of a wonderful place.
- By bsolo on 11-07-15
By: Ada Calhoun
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New World Coming
- The 1920s and the Making of Modern America
- By: Nathan Miller
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 18 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 123
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
Jazz. Bootleggers. Flappers. Talkies. Model T Fords. Lindbergh's history-making flight over the Atlantic. The 1920s was also the decade of the hard-won vote for women, racial injustice, censorship, social conflict, and the birth of organized crime.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My High School History Class Never Told
- By Charles Stembridge on 06-29-04
By: Nathan Miller
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Detroit
- An American Autopsy
- By: Charlie LeDuff
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,321
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,170
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,164
In the heart of America, a metropolis is quietly destroying itself. Detroit, once the richest city in the nation, is now its poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age - mass production, automobiles, and blue-collar jobs - Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, foreclosure, and dropouts. With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark and the righteous indignation that only a native son can possess, journalist Charlie LeDuff sets out to uncover what has brought low this once-vibrant city, his city.
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3 out of 5 stars
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WOW
- By Avid Reader and Listener on 07-09-13
By: Charlie LeDuff
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Fins
- Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit
- By: William Knoedelseder
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 97
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 97
This audiobook chronicles the birth and rise to greatness of the American auto industry through the life of Harley Earl, an eccentric six-foot-five, stuttering visionary who dropped out of college and went on to invent the profession of automobile styling, thereby revolutionized the way cars were made, marketed, and even imagined. Harleys Earl’s story qualifies as a bona fide American family saga. It began in the Michigan pine forest in the years after the Civil War, traveled across the Great Plains on the wheels of a covered wagon, and eventually settled in Hollywood, California.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great report of amazing history but could do without the WOKE lean..
- By joshua Shaw on 07-02-22
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Oh, Florida!
- How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country
- By: Craig Pittman
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 88
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 87
Oh, Florida! To some people it's a paradise. To others it's a punch line. As Oh, Florida! shows, it's both of these, and, more important, it's a Petri dish, producing trends that end up influencing the rest of the country. Without Florida there would be no NASCAR, no Bettie Page pinups, no Glenn Beck radio rants, no USA Today, no "Stand Your Ground" - you get the idea.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A book about the author's political views - boring
- By L. Burney on 03-03-17
By: Craig Pittman
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Vanishing New York
- How a Great City Lost Its Soul
- By: Jeremiah Moss
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 15 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
New York City has long been a destination for rebels and rule breakers, artists, writers, and other hopefuls longing to be part of its rich cultural exchange and unique social fabric. But today, modern gentrification is transforming the city from an exceptional, iconoclastic metropolis into a suburbanized luxury zone. Blogger and cultural commentator Jeremiah Moss leads us on a colorful guided tour of the most changed parts of town lovingly eulogizing iconic institutions as they're replaced with soulless upscale boutiques, luxury condo towers, and suburban chains.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A compelling story, but the narration???
- By S. McGee on 11-30-17
By: Jeremiah Moss
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Strangers in Their Own Land
- Anger and Mourning on the American Right
- By: Arlie Russell Hochschild
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,846
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,625
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,609
In Strangers in Their Own Land, the renowned sociologist Arlie Hochschild embarks on a thought-provoking journey from her liberal hometown of Berkeley, California, deep into Louisiana bayou country - a stronghold of the conservative right. As she gets to know people who strongly oppose many of the ideas she famously champions, Hochschild nevertheless finds common ground and quickly warms to the people she meets.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Performance undercuts thesis
- By married, one tall dog, one smelly dog on 01-02-17
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30 Days a Black Man
- The Forgotten Story That Exposed the Jim Crow South
- By: Bill Steigerwald, Juan Williams - foreword
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 201
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 173
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 171
In 1948 most White people in the North had no idea how unjust and unequal daily life was for the 10 million African Americans living in the South. But that suddenly changed after Ray Sprigle, a famous White journalist from Pittsburgh, went undercover and lived as a Black man in the Jim Crow South. Escorted through the South's parallel Black society by John Wesley Dobbs, a historic Black civil rights pioneer from Atlanta, Sprigle met with sharecroppers, local Black leaders, and families of lynching victims.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Review review
- By bill steigerwald on 12-13-20
By: Bill Steigerwald, and others
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Country Driving
- A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 565
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 373
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 365
In the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, acquired his Chinese driver's license. For the next seven years, he traveled the country, tracking how the automobile and improved roads were transforming China.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Pass the white rice please
- By Nick on 02-18-10
By: Peter Hessler
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Fulfillment
- Winning and Losing in One-Click America
- By: Alec MacGillis
- Narrated by: Danny Gavigan
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 202
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 170
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Story4 out of 5 stars 170
Alec MacGillis’ Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company’s growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon’s sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Missing some important angles
- By D. Zimmerle on 08-19-21
By: Alec MacGillis