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Postcards from Absurdistan
- Prague at the End of History
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 27 hrs and 59 mins
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Publisher's summary
Postcards from Absurdistan is a cultural and political history of Prague from 1938, when the Nazis destroyed Czechoslovakia's artistically vibrant liberal democracy, to 1989, when the country's socialist regime collapsed after more than four decades of communist dictatorship. Derek Sayer shows that Prague's twentieth century, far from being a story of inexorable progress toward some "end of history," whether fascist, communist, or democratic, was a tragicomedy of recurring nightmares played out in a land Czech dissidents dubbed Absurdistan. Situated in the eye of the storms that shaped the modern world, Prague holds up an unsettling mirror to the absurdities and dangers of our own times.
In a brilliant narrative, Sayer weaves a vivid montage of the lives of individual Praguers—poets and politicians, architects and athletes, journalists and filmmakers, artists, musicians, and comedians—caught up in the crosscurrents of the turbulent half century following the Nazi invasion. This is the territory of the ideologist, the collaborator, the informer, the apparatchik, the dissident, the outsider, the torturer, and the refugee—not to mention the innocent bystander who is always looking the other way, and Václav Havel's greengrocer whose knowing complicity allows the show to go on. Prague exposes modernity's dream worlds of progress as confections of kitsch.
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-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 85
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4 out of 5 stars 73
Amid the ravages of economic depression, Germans in the early 1930s were pulled to political extremes both left and right. Then, in the spring of 1933, Germany turned itself inside out, from a deeply divided republic into a one-party dictatorship. In Hitler's First Hundred Days, award-winning historian Peter Fritzsche offers a probing account of the pivotal moments when the majority of Germans seemed, all at once, to join the Nazis to construct the Third Reich.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Whoa! This Is Too Tense To Be A Horror Novel!
- By Ted on 07-02-20
By: Peter Fritzsche
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Those Who Forget
- By: Geraldine Schwarz
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur
- Length: 11 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
During World War II, Géraldine Schwarz’s German grandparents were neither heroes nor villains; they were merely Mitlaüfer - those who followed the current. Decades later, while delving through filing cabinets in the basement of their apartment building in Mannheim, Schwarz discovers that in 1938, her grandfather took advantage of Nazi policies to buy a business from a Jewish family for a low price. Weaving together the threads of three generations of her family story with Europe’s process of post-war reckoning, Schwarz explores how millions were seduced by ideology.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Not what it purports to be
- By DPM on 10-10-20
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Between Two Fires
- Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia
- By: Joshua Yaffa
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
In this rich and novelistic tour of contemporary Russia, Joshua Yaffa introduces listeners to some of the country’s most remarkable figures - from politicians and entrepreneurs to artists and historians - who have built their careers and constructed their identities in the shadow of the Putin system. Torn between their own ambitions and the omnipresent demands of the state, each walks an individual path of compromise.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Stimulating
- By Amazon Customer on 03-16-20
By: Joshua Yaffa
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1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
- A Memoir
- By: Ai Weiwei, Allan H. Barr - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 175
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 149
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 148
Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as “Little Siberia,” where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol and the artworks of Marcel Duchamp.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This book changed my life
- By Johnny Nopolis on 08-16-22
By: Ai Weiwei, and others
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Crucible
- The Long End of the Great War and the Birth of a New World, 1917-1924
- By: Charles Emmerson
- Narrated by: Charles Emmerson
- Length: 25 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
In Petrograd, a fire is lit. The Tsar is packed off to Siberia. A rancorous Russian exile returns to proclaim a workers' revolution. In America, black soldiers who have served their country in Europe demand their rights at home. An Austrian war veteran trained by the German army to give rousing speeches against the Bolshevik peril begins to rail against the Jews. A solar eclipse turns a former patent clerk into a celebrity. An American reporter living the high life in Paris searches out a new literary style.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Splendid in all respects
- By Paul Custer on 02-11-20
By: Charles Emmerson
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Aftermath
- Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945-1955
- By: Harald Jähner, Shaun Whiteside - translator
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 12 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 324
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 275
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 275
How does a nation recover from fascism and turn toward a free society once more? This internationally acclaimed revelatory history of the transformational decade that followed World War II illustrates how Germany raised itself out of the ashes of defeat and reckoned with the corruption of its soul and the horrors of the Holocaust - and features over 40 eye-opening black-and-white photographs and posters from the period.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Where are the photos?
- By Cassandra on 01-17-22
By: Harald Jähner, and others
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The S.S. Officer's Armchair
- Uncovering the Hidden Life of a Nazi
- By: Daniel Lee
- Narrated by: Alex Wyndham
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 87
One night at a dinner party in Florence, historian Daniel Lee was told about a remarkable discovery. An upholsterer in Amsterdam had found a bundle of swastika-covered documents inside the cushion of an armchair he was repairing. They belonged to Dr. Robert Griesinger, a lawyer from Stuttgart, who joined the S.S. and worked at the Reich's Ministry of Economics and Labor in Nazi-occupied Prague during the war.
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4 out of 5 stars
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good book; strange voice...
- By S. Hall on 11-15-20
By: Daniel Lee
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Fracture
- Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938
- By: Philipp Blom
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 50
When the Great War ended in 1918, the West was broken. Religious faith, patriotism, and the belief in human progress had all been called into question by the mass carnage experienced by both sides. Shell-shocked and traumatized, the West faced a world it no longer recognized: The old order had collapsed, replaced by an age of machines. The world hurtled forward on gears and crankshafts, and terrifying new ideologies arose from the wreckage of past belief.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Lots of good trivia information
- By Jean on 07-23-15
By: Philipp Blom
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Erdogan Rising
- The Battle for the Soul of Turkey
- By: Hannah Lucinda Smith
- Narrated by: Hannah Lucinda Smith
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 59
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
Everyone has heard of Erdogan: Turkey’s bullish, mercurial president is the original postmodern populist. Around the world, other strongmen are now following the path that he has blazed. For the first time, Erdogan Rising tells the inside story of how a democracy on the fringe of Europe has succumbed to dictatorship. Hannah Lucinda Smith, Turkey correspondent with The Times of London, has witnessed all that has befallen Turkey and the wider region since the onset of the Arab Spring.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Overall fascinating profile of Erdogan’s Turkey
- By Saul M on 09-18-20
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Three Tigers, One Mountain
- A Journey Through the Bitter History and Current Conflicts of China, Korea, and Japan
- By: Michael Booth
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 156
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 136
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 137
There is an ancient Chinese proverb that states, "Two tigers cannot share the same mountain." However, in East Asia, there are three tigers on that mountain: China, Japan, and Korea, and they have a long history of turmoil and tension with each other. In his latest entertaining and thought-provoking narrative travelogue, Michael Booth sets out to discover how deep, really, the enmity is between these three "tiger" nations and what prevents them from making peace.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Not much new here if you are already familiar
- By Anonymous User on 07-13-20
By: Michael Booth
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How to Be a Dictator
- The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century
- By: Frank Dikötter
- Narrated by: Jack Bennett
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 157
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 132
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 131
No dictator can rule through fear and violence alone. Naked power can be grabbed and held temporarily, but it never suffices in the long term. A tyrant who can compel his own people to acclaim him will last longer. The paradox of the modern dictator is that he must create the illusion of popular support. Throughout the 20th century, hundreds of millions of people were condemned to enthusiasm, obliged to hail their leaders even as they were herded down the road to serfdom.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Worth a listen
- By Amazon Customer on 12-06-19
By: Frank Dikötter
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Iron Curtain
- The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 26 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 624
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 537
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 533
At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Important story, imperfectly executed
- By jackifus on 12-08-12
By: Anne Applebaum
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The Shining Path
- Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes
- By: Orin Starn, Miguel La Serna
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
On May 17, 1980, on the eve of Peru's presidential election, five masked men stormed a small town. They set election ballots ablaze and vanished, but not before planting a red hammer-and-sickle banner in the town square. The lone man arrested the next morning later swore allegiance to a group called Shining Path. Described by a US State Department cable as "cold-blooded and bestial", Shining Path orchestrated bombings, assassinations, and massacres across the cities, countryside, and jungles of Peru in a murderous campaign to seize power and impose a Communist government.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Understanding my wife
- By Eugene on 06-10-22
By: Orin Starn, and others
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Stalin
- Passage to Revolution
- By: Ronald Grigor Suny
- Narrated by: Robbie Stevens
- Length: 28 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
This is the definitive biography of Joseph Stalin from his birth to the October Revolution of 1917, a panoramic and often chilling account of how an impoverished, idealistic youth from the provinces of tsarist Russia was transformed into a cunning and fearsome outlaw who would one day become one of the 20th century's most ruthless dictators. In this monumental book, Ronald Grigor Suny sheds light on the least understood years of Stalin's career, bringing to life the turbulent world in which he lived and the extraordinary historical events that shaped him.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An outstanding biography
- By Amazon Customer on 04-28-21
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Lenin's Tomb
- The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
- By: David Remnick
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 29 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 378
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 322
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 325
In the tradition of John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World, this best-selling account of the collapse of the Soviet Union combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The moral complexity of a comic book
- By Tot on 02-22-19
By: David Remnick
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The Unfathomable Ascent
- How Hitler Came to Power
- By: Peter Ross Range
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
On the night of January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler leaned out of a spotlit window of the Reich chancellery in Berlin, bursting with joy. The moment seemed unbelievable, even to Hitler. After an improbable political journey that came close to faltering on many occasions, his march to power had finally succeeded. While the path of Hitler's rise has been told in books covering larger portions of his life, no previous work has focused solely on his eight-year climb to rule: 1925-1933.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The best account of Hitler’s rise to power.
- By Deal W. Hudson on 08-26-20
By: Peter Ross Range