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Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
- Britain and the American Dream (1740–1776)
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
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Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
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Publisher's summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
Bestselling historian Peter Moore traces how Enlightenment ideas were exported from Britain and put into practice in America - where they became the most successful export of all time, the American Dream.
'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness' is the best-known phrase from the Declaration of Independence, one of the most important documents of the eighteenth century and the whole Enlightenment Age. Written by Thomas Jefferson, it is frequently evoked today as a shorthand for that idea we call the 'American Dream'. But this is a line with a surprising history. Rather than being uniquely American, the vision it encapsulates - of a free and happy world - owes a great deal to British thinkers too.
Centred on the life of Benjamin Franklin, featuring figures like the cultural giant Samuel Johnson, the ground-breaking historian Catharine Macaulay, the firebrand politician John Wilkes and revolutionary activist Thomas Paine, this book looks at the generation that preceded the Declaration in 1776. It takes us back to a vital moment in the foundation of the West, a time full of intent, confidence and ideas. It tells a whole new story about the birth of the United States of America - and some of the key principles by which we live to this very day.
Critic reviews
'A trove of gripping...characters. Wonderfully absorbing and stimulating.' SARAH BAKEWELL, author of AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFE
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 391
Washington’s End begins where most biographies of George Washington leave off, with the first president exiting office after eight years and entering what would become the most bewildering stage of his life. Embittered by partisan criticism and eager to return to his farm, Washington assumed a role for which there was no precedent at a time when the kings across the ocean yielded their crowns only upon losing their heads. In a different sense, Washington would lose his head, too.
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5 out of 5 stars
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INTRIGUING SNAPSHOT
- By JPALJ on 02-23-20
By: Jonathan Horn
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Thomas Paine and the Clarion Call for American Independence
- By: Harlow Giles Unger
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 42
From New York Times best-selling author and Founding Fathers' biographer Harlow Giles Unger comes the astonishing biography of the man whose pen set America ablaze, inspiring its revolution, and whose ideas about reason and religion continue to try men's souls.
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5 out of 5 stars
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well written and researched
- By K D on 09-29-19
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Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
- By: Jon Meacham
- Narrated by: Edward Herrmann, Jon Meacham
- Length: 18 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 6,601
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 5,806
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 5,764
In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Man and Biography Relevant to Our Day
- By Darwin8u on 11-14-12
By: Jon Meacham
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Foundation
- The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors: The History of England, Book 1
- By: Peter Ackroyd
- Narrated by: Clive Chafer
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 827
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 753
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 748
In Foundation the chronicler of London and of its river, the Thames, takes us from the primeval forests of England's prehistory to the death of the first Tudor king, Henry VII, in 1509. He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He shows us glimpses of the country's most distant past - a Neolithic stirrup found in a grave, a Roman fort, a Saxon tomb, a medieval manor house.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The Most Annoying Narrator EVER
- By JudieBee on 12-25-15
By: Peter Ackroyd
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Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
- By: Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 24 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8,659
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7,592
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 7,558
Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings. In best-selling author Walter Isaacson's vivid and witty full-scale biography, we discover why Franklin turns to us from history's stage with eyes that twinkle from behind his new-fangled spectacles. In Benjamin Franklin, Isaacson shows how Franklin defines both his own time and ours. The most interesting thing that Franklin invented, and continually reinvented, was himself.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good book, not crazy about the narrator
- By Cathi on 07-20-13
By: Walter Isaacson
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Notes from the Underground (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Constance Garnett - translator
- Narrated by: Pete Simonelli
- Length: 4 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 292
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 247
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 245
Isolated from society in a tenement basement in St. Petersburg, a malicious former civil servant vents his resentments. In the rambling notes that follow, we are exposed to the inner turmoil of the Underground Man, who represents the voice of his generation. An emotional, paranoid knot of contradictions, the spiteful narrator is also desperate to join a society he loathes, if only to prove his superiority to it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing
- By Bryan on 02-19-19
By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and others
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Young Benjamin Franklin
- The Birth of Ingenuity
- By: Nick Bunker
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 17 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
From his early career as a printer and journalist to his scientific work and his role as a founder of a new republic, Benjamin Franklin has always seemed the inevitable embodiment of American ingenuity. But in his youth, he had to make his way through a harsh colonial world, where he fought many battles with his rivals, but also with his wayward emotions. Taking Franklin to the age of 41, when he made his first electrical discoveries, Bunker goes behind the legend to reveal the sources of his passion for knowledge.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good Book but LOTS of Names
- By Tim on 10-31-19
By: Nick Bunker
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Thomas Paine
- Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations
- By: Craig Nelson
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
John Adams told Thomas Jefferson that “history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine.” Thomas Edison called him “the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible.” He was a founder of both the United States and the French Revolution. He invented the phrase, “The United States of America.” He rose from abject poverty in working-class England to the highest levels of the era’s intellectual elite. And yet, by the end of his life, Thomas Paine was almost universally reviled.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This man should be a household name!
- By Darlene Davis on 11-21-11
By: Craig Nelson
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The Regency Years
- During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern
- By: Robert Morrison
- Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 108
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 106
The Victorians are often credited with ushering in our current era, yet the seeds of change were planted in the years before. The Regency (1811-1820) began when the profligate Prince of Wales - the future King George IV - replaced his insane father, George III, as Britain's ruler. Around the regent surged a society steeped in contrasts: evangelicalism and hedonism, elegance and brutality, exuberance and despair. The arts flourished at this time with a showcase of extraordinary writers and painters such as Jane Austen, Lord Byron, the Shelleys, John Constable, and J. M. W. Turner.
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3 out of 5 stars
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What a time!
- By BK on 06-18-19
By: Robert Morrison
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The Modern Scholar
- The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
- By: Professor H.W. Brands
- Narrated by: H.W. Brands
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 136
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 104
This course examines the life of Benjamin Franklin and his influence on both American and world history. He remains the model of the American thinker - a man who was interested in nearly everything, and who pursued those interests with an admirable and contagious passion. To study Franklin's life is to learn not only the history of a single man, but to understand some of the most monumental changes in all of human history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Love it
- By Holly on 02-20-16
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Oliver Wendell Holmes
- A Life in War, Law, and Ideas
- By: Stephen Budiansky
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 413
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 347
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 344
Holmes twice escaped death as a young Union officer in the Civil War when musket balls barely missed his heart and spinal cord. He lived ever after with unwavering moral courage, scorn for dogma, and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. Named to the Supreme Court by Theodore Roosevelt at age 61, he served for nearly three decades, writing a series of famous, eloquent, and often dissenting opinions that would prove prophetic in securing freedom of speech, protecting the rights of criminal defendants, and ending the Court's reactionary resistance to social and economic reforms.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Top-Notch Biography
- By Jean on 08-01-19
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Ben Franklin: Inventing America
- Sterling Point Books
- By: Thomas Fleming
- Narrated by: A. C. Fellner
- Length: 4 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
Perhaps more than even Washington, Jefferson, or Adams, Ben Franklin is the Founding Father who best exemplifies the authentic American spirit and values. Eminent historian Thomas Fleming paints a lively portrait of this self-made man blessed with a wealth of talents: a best-selling author, the most important newspaper publisher in America, and a world-renowned scientist and inventor before he took on the task of becoming the true "Father" of American independence.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing and Inspiring
- By Kindle Customer on 11-26-11
By: Thomas Fleming
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American Rebels
- How the Hancock, Adams, and Quincy Families Fanned the Flames of Revolution
- By: Nina Sankovitch
- Narrated by: Suzie Althens
- Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 44
Nina Sankovitch’s American Rebels explores, for the first time, the intertwined lives of the Hancock, Quincy, and Adams families, and the role each person played in sparking the American Revolution. American Rebels explores how the desire for independence cut across class lines, binding people together as well as dividing them -rebels versus loyalists - as they pursued commonly held goals of opportunity, liberty, and stability. Nina Sankovitch's new audiobook is a fresh history of our revolution that makes listeners look more closely at Massachusetts.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I loved this book!
- By John H on 06-22-20
By: Nina Sankovitch
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Amazing Grace
- William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery
- By: Eric Metaxas
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,591
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,323
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1,323
Amazing Grace tells the story of the remarkable life of the British abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833). This accessible biography chronicles Wilberforce's extraordinary role as a human rights activist, cultural reformer, and member of Parliament. At the center of this heroic life was a passionate 20-year fight to abolish the British slave trade, a battle Wilberforce won in 1807, as well as efforts to abolish slavery itself in the British colonies.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Marvelous Story Gloriously Told
- By Douglas on 02-24-13
By: Eric Metaxas
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The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 159
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 97
Central to America's idea of itself is the character of Benjamin Franklin. We all know him, or think we do: In recent works and in our inherited conventional wisdom, he remains fixed in place as a genial polymath and self-improver who was so very American that he is known by us all as the first American.
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2 out of 5 stars
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I have good news and bad news
- By Ernie on 07-22-04
By: Gordon S. Wood
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Covered with Night
- A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America
- By: Nicole Eustace
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
On the eve of a major treaty conference between Iroquois leaders and European colonists in the distant summer of 1722, two White fur traders attacked an Indigenous hunter and left him for dead near Conestoga, Pennsylvania. This act of brutality set into motion a remarkable series of criminal investigations and cross-cultural negotiations that challenged the definition of justice in early America. Leading historian Nicole Eustace reconstructs the crime and its aftermath, bringing us into the overlapping worlds of white colonists and Indigenous peoples in this formative period.
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2 out of 5 stars
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YES! I GET IT! I've read history before - JUST STOP!!!!! British settlers were arrogant jerks!! Aaaaaaaargh
- By Anonymous From MA on 06-02-22
By: Nicole Eustace
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First Principles
- What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country
- By: Thomas E. Ricks
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 669
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 564
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 560
On the morning after the 2016 presidential election, Thomas Ricks awoke with a few questions on his mind: What kind of nation did we now have? Is it what was designed or intended by the nation's founders? Trying to get as close to the source as he could, Ricks decided to go back and read the philosophy and literature that shaped the founders' thinking, and the letters they wrote to each other debating these crucial works—among them the Iliad, Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Xenophon, Epicurus, Aristotle, Cato, and Cicero.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Excellent book, opinionated epilogue.
- By Noetic Seeker on 01-23-21
By: Thomas E. Ricks