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The Big Money
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 19 hrs and 30 mins
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Publisher's summary
The Big Money completes John Dos Passos's three-volume "fable of America's materialistic success and moral decline" (American Heritage) and marks the end of "one of the most ambitious projects that an American novelist has ever undertaken" (Time).
Here, we come back to America after the war and find a nation on the upswing. Industrialism booms. The stock market surges. Lindbergh takes his solo flight. Henry Ford makes automobiles. From New York to Hollywood, love affairs to business deals, it is a country taking the turns too fast, speeding toward the crash of 1929.
Ultimately, the novels of the U.S.A. trilogy - both individually and as a whole - paint a sweeping portrait of collective America and showcase the brilliance and bravery of one of its most enduring and admired writers.
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What listeners say about The Big Money
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Demonwife
- 12-01-11
Excellent Historical (Experimental) Novel
I read and listened to this book because I was taking a class about Depression-era film & literature. What Dos Passos did was integrate a colloquial, real, personal, and fictional history in the U.S.A. trilogy ("The Big Money" is the third part of the trilogy). He used real headlines from newspapers of the time period along with advertising slogans and pop songs in the "Newsreel" portions of the novel. These are really fun to hear through the audio performance, and one of the reasons it is worth listening to.
The "Camera Eye" portion of the novel was harder to listen to, and in truth, it is difficult to read without some contextual information. These are largely stream-of-consciousness portions which Dos Passos used to describe his own memories. They are poetic at times--and like most poetry--benefit from being seen on the page.
The biography sections of the novel are fantastic, and worth the price of the book. His depictions of T. Veblen, I. Duncan, W. Hearst, The Wright Bros. (and more!) are fascinating studies of the larger-than-life historical figures whom we might have only heard about in positive ways in history books. A definite strength of the book.
His fictional portions, the characters he strings through these other portions of the book are engaging and interesting. A satisfying read, worth your time and money.
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- Mike Henderson
- 08-03-17
Finally!
Read the first two parts of the three-book novel in paperback..The first part was getting used to the style and disjointed nature...Following the characters is tough, but eventually you let the whole thing wash over you..The biographies, newsreels and Camera's Eye were welcome distractions..Powerful, tragic, infuriating and apropos..Update the references and you could write a similar book today..Not much has changed...
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- Bill Morgan
- 12-20-22
The Great American Novel by
One mid century young writer remarked, “I set out to write the Great American Novel, but it had already been written.” He was talking about “USA.”
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- Johann Cat
- 03-09-22
Great Novel; Reading skilled but Cartoonish
The novel itself is a 5-star, remarkable panoply of action across classes during the boom of the 1920s. It has main characters who recur, a few whose paths cross, but no central heroes.
The characters include an airplane engineer who becomes submerged in speculative ambition and hedonistic distractions; a labor activist journalist who was the daughter of a bitchy, greedy matriarch and a self-sacrificing doctor; and an orphan who ends up in Hollywood. Each is rooted in their own familial and regional histories and, by implication, in the culture and moved by the tidal forces of their moments. The pathos and promise of these characters is handled with unusual mix of sensitivity and detachment that puts Dos Passos in a rare artistic territory. The absence of a hero or even Hemingway-esque anti-hero actually increases the drama and educational power of the whole, as it gives us more history and fewer magnetic-to-sympathies archetypes than most novels do, while retaining the sense of a unique moral and creative vision, yet without blunt sermons.
The reader here, David Drummond, is enormously talented at creating different voices, but he may use his skills too often, as I find it easy to imagine that many characters are Hanna-Barbera cartoon animals. His late-middle aged men especially sound like primary colored cartoon bears intoning these lines, and several women sound like Bugs Bunny or some other cartoon knave trying to fool an antagonist by wearing a mop-head for a disguise--I am not sure at all about the strategy of men reading women in breathy or squeaky falsetto voices. (The Blackstone audio reading of The Great Gatsby gets around this problem, by--who would've considered it--getting a woman to read the female parts of the novel). Drummond is skilled, but maybe too arch or cutesy for many scenes here. Drummond also sings all of the songs that are "sampled" in the collage-of-the-now Camera Eye scenes, apparently in their original tunes. He has a gift for singing stable-on-key, which excuses most any other oddity, but his timbre is like a bass in a Peoria Methodist choir most times, and this too becomes odd in the singing of many 1920s snappy blues or flapper ditties. This is all to say I wouldn't want to do without the Drummond version, but I am interested in what a) the Camera Eye collages would sound like if read like poems, straight, without so many quirky changes of voice; b) a straighter reading, with fewer Foghorn Leghorn intonations for men overall [his southern accents are plainly an outsider's guesses] and c) a real woman reading the female roles, or at least dropping the bass-voice-in-falsetto modes that the audio reader Drummond engages. Note he is enormously skilled and this is entertaining--I just have reservations about his chameleonic, sometimes cartoonish enthusiasms.
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- Dale
- 06-02-20
a forgotten history of America roots.
classic, well worth revisiting . experiment al in its day. unforgiving. compassionate, insight into the lost causes that shaped us as clearly as our successes
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- dragoness' utterances
- 04-07-20
Dos Passos was a poet
This delicious to hear the narration at production a perfect I read this book in1070 as I began life in NYC. To hear these intertwined story’s with the narrator sing parts I did know wee music on first glance. Amazing tale of New York and the USA frozen in the poet’s amber.
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- David C.
- 12-24-18
The culmination of an amazing journey
When I set out on this journey three novels ago, I wasn't sure how engaged I would be. Not that I don't appreciate the subject matter. As a labor activist, I fully appreciate the importance of the period in question as these years surrounding World War I were critical to the growth of the labor movement. Rather, I was concerned how the zealous observations of a committed leftist would color their perspective of an era where America wrestled with the demands of the contradictions of an expanding global corporate footprint and a struggling working class.
What I came away with was how concerted and sanctioned the effort to keep workers from organizing and how tone deaf was capital and the courts to the legitimate suffering of workers in mining and steel country.
Sadly, while many of these conditions have improved, the cooperation between commerce, government and the courts continues to make it difficult to organize. Though the labels have changed, the demonization of those who strive to organize continues.
The U.S.A. Trilogy and Big Money demonstrate that so many of the arguments for and against the capitalist system haven't improved over the last 80+ years since Dos Passos took up the subject. The characters are as relevant now as when the author conceived them. the 1,300+ pages may seem daunting, but the story moves and the characters interweave to show the complicated tapestry of this nation and the people who have always made it great, even if only minor characters.
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- John L. Murphy
- 04-03-16
The start of something big
Would you listen to The Big Money again? Why?
Probably not as I have read the trilogy already before hearing it.
What did you like best about this story?
Mac's youthful adventures on the road start the tale strongly, reminiscent of Twain. A great satire of door-to-door salesmen, and lighter in touch than much of Dos Passos before or after.
What does David Drummond bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The grainy, gritty American voices he dramatizes and the Camera Eye and Newsreels sections, difficult to energize, come alive in his command of American vernaculars and period 1920s slang.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
No, I liked it. Dos Passos brought a detached presence to much of his prose, and it shows.
Any additional comments?
Probably more valuable, like Sinclair Lewis, for the life of Americans after WWI as recorded, than for the actual stories. Almost a century after the events, it still speaks for the hopes of the little men and women and how they are crushed or warped or abandoned in the rush for survival and wealth.
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Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness and determination. She used those attributes to survive a divorce in 1940s America with two children and to claw her way out of poverty, becoming a successful businesswoman. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for shiftless men and an unreasoning devotion to her monstrous daughter.
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Mildred -- you pierce my heart
- By P. Giorgio on 03-11-11
By: James M. Cain
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The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
- By: Mordecai Richler
- Narrated by: David Julian Hirsh
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Duddy - the third generation of a Jewish immigrant family in Montreal - is combative, amoral, scheming, a liar, and totally hilarious. From his street days tormenting teachers at the Jewish academy to his time hustling four jobs at once in a grand plan to "be somebody", Duddy learns about living - and the lesson is an outrageous roller-coaster ride through the human comedy.
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OK but a bit disappointing; weak narration
- By Merlin on 05-12-17
By: Mordecai Richler
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Marjorie Morningstar
- By: Herman Wouk
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 28 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Marjorie Morningstar is a love story. It presents one of the greatest characters in modern fiction: Marjorie, the pretty 17-year-old who left the respectability of New York's Central Park West to join the theater, live in the teeming streets of Greenwich Village, and seek love in the arms of a brilliant, enigmatic writer.
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Great story with really cheesy narration
- By James on 05-05-12
By: Herman Wouk
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Babbitt
- By: Sinclair Lewis
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In this sardonic portrait of the up-and-coming middle class during the prosperous 1920s, Sinclair Lewis perfectly captures the sound, the feel, and the attitudes of the generation that created the cult of consumerism. With a sharp eye for detail and keen powers of observation, Lewis tracks successful realtor George Babbitt's daily struggles to rise to the top of his profession while maintaining his reputation as an upstanding family man.
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Makes You Think
- By E. Pearson on 02-21-13
By: Sinclair Lewis
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Babbitt
- By: Sinclair Lewis
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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On the surface, everything is all right with Babbitt’s world of the solid, successful businessman. But in reality, George F. Babbitt is a lonely, middle-aged man. He doesn’t understand his family, has an unsuccessful attempt at an affair, and is almost financially ruined when he dares to voice sympathy for some striking workers. Babbitt finds that his only safety lies deep in the fold of those who play it safe. He is a man who has added a new word to our language: a “Babbitt,” meaning someone who conforms unthinkingly, a sheep.
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Jonathan Franzen, circa 1922
- By Joe Kraus on 04-09-16
By: Sinclair Lewis
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The Wayward Bus
- By: John Steinbeck, Gary Schamhorst - introduction
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In his first novel to follow the publication of his enormous success, The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's vision comes wonderfully to life in this imaginative and unsentimental chronicle of a bus traveling California's back roads, transporting the lost and the lonely, the good and the greedy, the stupid and the scheming, the beautiful and the vicious away from their shattered dreams and, possibly, toward the promise of the future. This edition features an introduction by Gary Scharnhorst.
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Steinbeck always touches the heart, makes you feel
- By Kelly on 05-08-17
By: John Steinbeck, and others
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Mildred Pierce
- By: James M. Cain
- Narrated by: Christine Williams
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness and determination. She used those attributes to survive a divorce in 1940s America with two children and to claw her way out of poverty, becoming a successful businesswoman. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for shiftless men and an unreasoning devotion to her monstrous daughter.
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Mildred -- you pierce my heart
- By P. Giorgio on 03-11-11
By: James M. Cain
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The Deep Blue Good-By
- A Travis McGee Novel, Book 1
- By: John D. MacDonald
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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He's a self-described beach bum who won his houseboat in a card game. He's also a knight errant who's wary of credit cards, retirement benefits, political parties, mortgages, and television. He only works when his cash runs out, and his rule is simple: he'll help you find whatever was taken from you, as long as he can keep half.
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Before the A-Team, there was Travis McGee
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 11-12-16
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The Bell Jar
- By: Sylvia Plath
- Narrated by: Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The Bell Jar chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful but slowly going under - maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made The Bell Jar a haunting American classic.
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A must-read for every woman
- By Julie W. Capell on 05-06-16
By: Sylvia Plath
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The Brass Cupcake: A Novel
- By: John D. MacDonald
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A classic novel by John D. MacDonald with an exclusive introduction written and read by Dean Koontz. Ex-cop Cliff Bartells might be the last honest man in Florence City, Florida. After quitting the force over a crisis of conscience, he takes a job at an insurance company buying back stolen jewelry. Cliff is focused on keeping the bottom line down and staying out of the spotlight.But when an affluent tourist from Boston is murdered over a hefty collection of jewelry, Cliff finds himself wrapped up in a case that’s making national headlines.
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Good Social History ...
- By Montana on 05-14-17
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Appointment in Samarra
- Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition
- By: John O'Hara, Charles McGrath - introduction
- Narrated by: Christian Camargo
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In December 1930, just before Christmas, the Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, social circuit is electrified with parties and dances. At the center of the social elite stand Julian and Caroline English. But in one rash moment born inside a highball glass, Julian breaks with polite society and begins a rapid descent toward self-destruction.
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Quite good, but not a classic
- By Michael on 04-25-15
By: John O'Hara, and others
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Where I'm Calling From
- Selected Stories
- By: Raymond Carver
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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By the time of his early death in 1988, Raymond Carver had established himself as one of the great practitioners of the American short story. Where I'm Calling From, his last collection, encompasses classic stories from Cathedral, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and earlier Carver volumes, along with seven new works previously unpublished in book form.
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Love Carver, But Dietz Ruins It With Reading
- By Noirbat on 05-10-18
By: Raymond Carver
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Miss Lonelyhearts
- By: Nathanael West
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser, Kevin Pariseau
- Length: 2 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Miss Lonelyhearts is an unnamed male newspaper columnist writing an advice column, which is viewed by the newspaper as a joke. As "Miss Lonelyhearts" reads letters from desperate New Yorkers, he feels terribly burdened and falls into a cycle of deep depression, accompanied by heavy drinking and occasional barfights. The novel is essentially a black comedy and is characterized by an extremely dark but clever sense of humor and irony.
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Charged with Meaning, and Far Leftist Leaning
- By W Perry Hall on 01-27-16
By: Nathanael West
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This Side of the Sky
- By: Elyse Singleton
- Narrated by: Myra Taylor, Sharon Washington, Richard Ferrone
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Elyse Singleton delivers what Essence calls “a gem - the perfect book to curl up with.”
Best friends Lilian and Myraleen, two African American women from rural Mississippi, travel to Europe during World War II to act as members of the Women’s Army Corps. During this time of segregation and destruction, both women discover love and heartbreak, triumph and defeat.
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A Breath of Fresh Air
- By Adina Andreu on 07-19-12
By: Elyse Singleton
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Welcome to the Monkey House
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall