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News Is a Verb
- Journalism at the End of the 20th Century
- Narrated by: Dan Lauria
- Length: 2 hrs and 51 mins
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News Is a Verb
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Publisher's summary
From sensational headlines to celebrity gossip, how is the critical relationship of reader to newspaper being slowly undermined? Peter Hamill, a newspaperman for almost 4 decades and most recently editor-in-chief of the New York Daily News, gives a powerful critique of journalism at the end of the 20th century. This program is part of a new series called The Library of Contemporary Thought, giving top opinion makers a forum to explore the most provocative, fascinating, and relevant issues of our day.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 668
In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created in the bold, pulpy pages of comic books. The Ten-Cent Plague explores this cultural emergence and its fierce backlash while challenging common notions of the divide between "high" and "low" art.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very frightening
- By Paul on 09-24-08
By: David Hajdu
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The News
- A User's Manual
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4 out of 5 stars 68
The news is everywhere. We can’t stop constantly checking it on our computer screens, but what is this doing to our minds? We are never really taught how to make sense of the torrent of news we face every day, writes Alain de Botton (author of the best-selling The Architecture of Happiness), but this has a huge impact on our sense of what matters and of how we should lead our lives.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Quit the news
- By Bett Bollhoefer on 05-16-15
By: Alain de Botton
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Ida M. Tarbell
- The Woman Who Challenged Big Business - and Won!
- By: Emily Arnold McCully
- Narrated by: Emily Arnold McCully
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4 out of 5 stars 41
Born in 1857 and raised in oil country, Ida M. Tarbell was one of the first investigative journalists and probably the most influential in her time. Her series of articles on the Standard Oil Trust, a complicated business empire run by John D. Rockefeller, revealed to readers the underhanded, even illegal practices that had led to Rockefeller's success.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent!
- By AKA1 on 03-16-19
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With Amusement for All
- A History of American Popular Culture since 1830
- By: LeRoy Ashby
- Narrated by: Kevin Pierce
- Length: 33 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 64
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Story4 out of 5 stars 64
With Amusement for All is the first comprehensive history of two centuries of mass entertainment in the United States, covering everything from the penny press to Playboy, the NBA to NASCAR, big band to hip hop, and other topics including film, comics, television, sports, and music. Paying careful attention to matters of race, gender, class, economics, and politics, LeRoy Ashby emphasizes the complex ways in which popular culture simultaneously reflects and transforms American culture.
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5 out of 5 stars
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So Much Fun!
- By Paul on 11-28-13
By: LeRoy Ashby
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Trailblazer
- A Pioneering Journalist's Fight to Make the Media Look More Like America
- By: Dorothy Butler Gilliam
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 66
Dorothy Butler Gilliam, whose 50-year-career as a journalist put her in the forefront of the fight for social justice, offers a comprehensive view of racial relations and the media in the US.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Struggled to finish
- By SL41639 on 04-06-20
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Broadcast Hysteria
- Orson Welle's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News
- By: A. Brad Schwartz
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
In Broadcast Hysteria, A. Brad Schwartz examines the history behind the infamous radio play. Did it really spawn a wave of mass hysteria? Schwartz is the first to examine the hundreds of letters sent directly to Orson Welles after the broadcast. He draws upon them, and hundreds more sent to the FCC, to recapture the roiling emotions of a bygone era, and his findings challenge conventional wisdom. Relatively few listeners believed an actual attack was underway.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Kinda interesting but incredibly repetitive
- By Lizz on 05-14-15
By: A. Brad Schwartz
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Taking on the Trust
- The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller
- By: Steve Weinberg
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 51
Long before the rise of mega-corporations like Wal-Mart and Microsoft, Standard Oil controlled the oil industry with a monopolistic force unprecedented in American business history. Undaunted by the ruthless power of its owner, John D. Rockefeller, a fearless and ambitious reporter named Ida Minerva Tarbell confronted the company known simply as "The Trust".
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4 out of 5 stars
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Annoying Narrator
- By Nate on 04-03-15
By: Steve Weinberg
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The Nineties
- A Book
- By: Chuck Klosterman
- Narrated by: Chuck Klosterman, Dion Graham
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,865
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,619
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,609
It was long ago, but not as long as it seems: The Berlin Wall fell and the Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn’t know who it was. By the end, exposing someone’s address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn’t know who it was.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A Very White Middle-class Take On The Nineties
- By Umar Lee on 02-10-22
By: Chuck Klosterman
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The Bonjour Effect
- The Secret Codes of French Conversation Revealed
- By: Julie Barlow, Jean-Benoit Nadeau
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 116
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 98
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 97
Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow spent a decade traveling back and forth to Paris as well as living there. Yet one important lesson never seemed to sink in: how to communicate comfortably with the French, even when you speak their language. In The Bonjour Effect, Jean-Benoît and Julie chronicle the lessons they learned after they returned to France to live, for a year, with their twin daughters. They offer up all the lessons they learned and explain the most important aspect of all: the French don't communicate, they converse.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Terrible French pronunciation
- By CA on 01-24-19
By: Julie Barlow, and others
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The Fifties
- By: David Halberstam
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 34 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 537
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 476
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 471
The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the 10 years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower, Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon; but also of Harley Earl, who put fins on cars; Dick and Mac McDonald and Ray Kroc, who mass-produced the American hamburger; Kemmons Wilson, who placed his Holiday Inns along the nation's roadsides; and more.
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5 out of 5 stars
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one of the very best
- By Chester Chellman on 09-25-18
By: David Halberstam
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Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right
- Opinionated Columns on American Life
- By: Michael Smerconish
- Narrated by: Michael Smerconish
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 205
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 179
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 179
Opinionated talk show host and columnist Michael Smerconish has been chronicling local, state, and national events for the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer for more than 15 years. He has sounded off on topics as diverse as the hunt for Osama bin Laden and what the color of your Christmas lights says about you. In this collection of 100 of his most memorable columns, Smerconish reflects on American political life with his characteristic feistiness.
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1 out of 5 stars
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All about Smerc and who cares about the victims
- By Mark J. Rosen on 12-10-20
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Weapons of Mass Instruction
- A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling
- By: John Taylor Gatto
- Narrated by: Michael Puttonen
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 739
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 639
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Story5 out of 5 stars 641
John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction focuses on mechanisms of traditional education which cripple imagination, discourage critical thinking, and create a false view of learning as a byproduct of rote-memorization drills. Gatto's earlier book, Dumbing Us Down, introduced the now-famous expression of the title into the common vernacular. Weapons of Mass Instruction adds another chilling metaphor to the brief against conventional schooling.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I will never see school the same
- By Nicole on 05-21-15
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Arrogance
- Rescuing America from the Media Elite
- By: Bernard Goldberg
- Narrated by: Bernard Goldberg
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 149
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4 out of 5 stars 30
In his #1 New York Times best seller, Bias, Emmy Award-winning journalist Bernard Goldberg created a national firestorm when he exposed the liberal biases of the so-called mainstream media. Now, in his new blockbuster, Goldberg goes even further. He not only takes on Big Journalism, but offers a twelve-step program to help the media elites overcome their addiction to bias.
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4 out of 5 stars
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wow
- By Douglas on 11-11-03
By: Bernard Goldberg
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Labor of Love
- The Invention of Dating
- By: Moira Weigel
- Narrated by: Kyra Miller
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 266
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 244
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Story4 out of 5 stars 244
Weaving together over 100 years of history with scenes from the contemporary landscape, Labor of Love offers a fresh feminist perspective on how we came to date the ways we do. This isn't a guide to "getting the guy". There are no ridiculous "rules" to follow. Instead Weigel helps us understand how looking for love shapes who we are and hopefully leads us closer to the happy ending that dating promises.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Not Meant To Be Useful, But Quite Fun
- By Gillian on 02-14-17
By: Moira Weigel
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When Brooklyn Was Queer
- By: Hugh Ryan
- Narrated by: Hugh Ryan
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 176
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 158
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Story5 out of 5 stars 157
Hugh Ryan's When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the queer women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond. In intimate, evocative, moving prose, Ryan brings this never-before-told story of Brooklyn's vibrant and forgotten queer history to life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Love Letter
- By Jeffrey on 06-26-19
By: Hugh Ryan