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The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
- Narrated by: David Dear
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
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The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
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Author-read Books
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Publisher's summary
In the years after the Civil War, there was an unfortunate amount of importance placed on racial identity. The focus on the races of one’s parents remained a mainstay of culture due to systemic prejudice and racism, and was a way of continuing to enact violence against Black people. For many mixed-race people, it felt safer to try and shift into white society.
It is in this environment that The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is written. In this novel, the narrator describes his life as a Black child and young adult, working his way through the various social classes. He becomes a musician and travels the world as a free Black man for much of his life, but eventually makes the decision to live as a White man after witnessing a horrific lynching. The rest of his life is spent keeping a piece of himself hidden from everyone in an attempt at safety.
The story in this novel is fictional, but it comprises a lot of Black experiences from the time period, and offers the perspective of a mixed-race man living in a society that demanded people obscure their true heritage.
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-
Story4 out of 5 stars 197
Sister Carrie is an epic of urban life, the story of an innocent heroine adrift in an indifferent city. When small-town girl Carrie Meeber sets out for Chicago, she is equipped with nothing but a few dollars, a certain unspoiled beauty and charm, and a pitiful lack of preparation for the complex moral choices she will face. Her story is one of struggle, from sweatshop to stage success, and of the love she inspires in a married man twice her age, whose obsession with her threatens to destroy him.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Why audiobooks matter
- By connie on 12-03-09
By: Theodore Dreiser
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Behind the Scenes in the Lincoln White House
- Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House
- By: Elizabeth Keckley
- Narrated by: Bobbie Frohman
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 119
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Story4 out of 5 stars 106
A former slave who became a successful dressmaker with her own business, became the dresser, dressmaker and confidante to Mary Todd Lincoln during Abraham Lincoln's presidential adminstration. Behind the Scenes tells the story of the rise of Elizabeth Keckley from abused slave to independent business woman to friend of the First Lady of the land during the Civil War.
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3 out of 5 stars
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No Southern Accent
- By GMR on 08-13-14
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Of Human Bondage
- By: W. Somerset Maugham
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 28 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 410
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 369
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 365
Of Human Bondage is one of the greatest novels of modern times, and it is certainly Maugham's greatest achievement. It was published in 1914, when Maugham was at the height of his creative powers. The story concerns Philip Carey, afflicted at birth with a club foot, and his passionate search for truth in a cruel world. We follow his growth to manhood, his educational progress, his first loves, and the wrenching tragedies and disappointments that life has in store for him. In some of the finest prose of the 20th century, Maugham has presented us with the timeless story of one man's search for the meaning of life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Greatly Unsettling
- By Michael on 10-04-14
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World’s End
- The Lanny Budd Novels, Book 1
- By: Upton Sinclair
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 74
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 74
Lanning “Lanny” Budd spends his first 13 years in Europe, living at the center of his mother’s glamourous circle of friends on the French Riviera. In 1913, he enters a prestigious Swiss boarding school and befriends Rick, an English boy, and Kurt, a German. The three schoolmates are privileged, happy, and precocious - but their world is about to come to an abrupt and violent end. When the gathering storm clouds of war finally burst, raining chaos and death over the continent, Lanny must put the innocence of youth behind him.
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3 out of 5 stars
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didn't finish
- By Bird Miller on 05-08-22
By: Upton Sinclair
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The Razor's Edge
- By: W. Somerset Maugham
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 994
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 877
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 868
The Great War changed everything and everyone, and Larry Darrell is no exception. Though his physical wounds from the war heal, his spirit is changed almost beyond recognition. He leaves his betrothed, the beautiful and devoted Isabel; studies philosophy and religion in Paris; lives as a monk, and witnesses the exotic hardships of Spanish life. All of life that he can find - from an Indian Ashrama to labor in a coal mine - becomes Larry's spiritual experiment as he spurns the comfort and privilege of the Roaring 20s.
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4 out of 5 stars
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An Classic of Love and the Desire for Meaning
- By Eric on 01-06-17
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Dombey and Son
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 123
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 66
In this carefully crafted novel, Dickens reveals the complexity of London society in the enterprising 1840s as he takes the listener into the business firm and home of one of its most representative patriarchs, Paul Dombey.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Perfect pair
- By Philip on 03-25-08
By: Charles Dickens
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The Bostonians
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Adam Sims
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 24
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
Taking place in Boston, Massachusetts, a decade after the Civil War, The Bostonians tells the story of two cousins who battle for the affections of and control over an enchanting prophetess. While visiting his cousin Olive Chancellor, a fierce feminist deeply involved in the Suffragette movement, Basil Ransom, a Confederate Civil War veteran turned lawyer, attends a speech by the talented young orator Verena Tarrant. Basil quickly falls in love with Verena, although he disagrees with her politics; Olive, however, sees her as the future of the women's rights movement.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A satire that turns tragic
- By Tad Davis on 08-23-20
By: Henry James
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Fifth Business
- The Deptford Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Robertson Davies
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 793
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 695
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 688
This first novel in The Deptford Trilogy introduces Ramsay, a man who returns from World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross but who is destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As we hear Ramsey tell his story, we begin to realize that, from childhood, he has influenced those around him in a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious way.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Been waiting for this
- By Vinity on 12-10-11
By: Robertson Davies
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My Autobiography
- By: Charles Chaplin, David Robinson - introduction
- Narrated by: Steve John Shepherd
- Length: 19 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story5 out of 5 stars 45
Take an unforgettable journey with the man George Bernard Shaw called "the only genius to come out of the movie industry" as he moves from his impoverished South London childhood to the heights of Hollywood wealth and fame; from the McCarthy-era investigations to his founding of United Artists to his "reverse migration" back to Europe.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finally Chaplin’s auto is available!
- By Ryan Baumbach on 04-28-22
By: Charles Chaplin, and others
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Jude The Obscure
- By: Thomas Hardy
- Narrated by: Stephen Thorne
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 245
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 197
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Story4 out of 5 stars 196
This is the story of a young country workman obsessed by his ambition to become an Oxford student, interwoven with his fraught relationships with two women.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Staggering
- By Tad Davis on 02-16-10
By: Thomas Hardy
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Felix Holt, The Radical
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 277
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 223
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Story4 out of 5 stars 221
Relinquishing thoughts of a materially rewarding life, the respectably educated Felix Holt returns to his native village in North Loamshire and becomes an artisan. He is a forceful young man of honor, integrity, and idealism, burning to participate in political life so that he may improve the lot of his fellow artisans.
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4 out of 5 stars
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four and a half stars
- By connie on 01-02-08
By: George Eliot
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Black No More
- By: George S. Schuyler
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 126
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 104
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
According to Max Disher, an ambitious young black man in 1930s New York, someone of his race has only three alternatives: "Get out, get white, or get along." Incapable of getting out and unhappy with getting along, Max leaps at the remaining possibility. Thanks to a certain Dr. Junius Crookman and his mysterious process, Max and other eager clients develop bleached skin that permits them to enter previously forbidden territory. What they discover in white society, however, gives them second thoughts.
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5 out of 5 stars
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outrageous!
- By Jennifer on 07-31-18
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The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
- By: Olive Gilbert
- Narrated by: Bobbie Frohman
- Length: 3 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 91
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4 out of 5 stars 81
A poignant biography as told to Olive Gilbert by Isabella Bomefree - a slave who later took the name of Sojourner Truth. She recounts the harshness of life under slavery, and after winner her freedom, became a vociferous abolitionist for which she has been long remembered and revered.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Requirement for seminary
- By Steven Small on 12-14-18
By: Olive Gilbert
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The Way of All Flesh
- By: Samuel Butler
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 175
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 111
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Story4 out of 5 stars 107
This brilliant satirical novel, tracing the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex, has continued in popularity since its original publication in 1903. Every generation finds in The Way of All Flesh a reaffirmation of youth's rightful struggle against the tyranny of harsh parents and its admirable will for freedom of personal expression.
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5 out of 5 stars
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classic satire- would make Jon Stewart laugh
- By Connie on 06-04-08
By: Samuel Butler