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Publisher's summary
The best-known prose work by the winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature examines the moral and intellectual conflicts faced by men and women living under totalitarianism of the left or right.
Written in the early 1950s, when Eastern Europe was in the grip of Stalinism and many Western intellectuals placed their hopes in the new order of the East, this classic work reveals in fascinating detail the often beguiling allure of totalitarian rule to people of all political beliefs and its frightening effects on the minds of those who embrace it.
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- Tim Christenson
- 09-27-20
Every U.S. citizen should read this.
I'm glad this book has been resurrected. It's so easy to forget what a totalitarian state does to human beings. And it's also as easy to forget the benefits and pleasures of living in a free nation and the kind of sacrifices required to maintain that freedom. Before the election all U.S. citizens should read The Federalist Papers and this book. Both will clarify our individual civil responsibilities and warn against the insidious and destructive nature of collectivism and unchecked centralized government.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Schwabe
- 09-20-20
Enlightening and thought-provoking.
A thought-provoking and enlightening. Definitely a must read, especially in this current (political) climate.
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6 people found this helpful
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- zurab
- 07-23-20
Essential reading
A beautiful sad and hopeful meditation on humanity during the worst catastrophies of the 20th century. This should be required reading for all liberal arts programs and many others.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Kourtney
- 03-14-20
phenomenal
on my G.O.A.T. List. purely phenomenal. the narrator brings a calming, but confident voice that compliments the story perfectly.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Jonah
- 02-11-20
Despite describing a bygone era, timeless
Despite describing a bygone era, still relevant in the sense of Orwell's 1984 describing basic psychological and political mechanisms. Orwell's 1984, Animal Farm, and related writings are definitely better as a reader friendly account of totalitarian society. But this book also has its place as a sort of anthropological study focused on a handful of telling individuals who experienced the transition to Stalinism.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Thomas S.
- 03-29-22
All-time great!
I love this writer’s expression of inner conflict and his wisdom about politics, art, and psychology. Exhilarating to read, yet also full of horrors.
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- Nakota
- 10-24-22
Important
This book was perfect! History, culture, art, intellectual thought, what else? I want more books like that.
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- Ben
- 09-22-22
READ WHILE TRAVELING
Perfect companion book while i travelled through Poland: Warsaw, Krakow, Auschwitz Birkenau and Biszczady mountains.
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- Jeff Lacy
- 09-02-19
Lively, authentic and persuasive
It is from his from his own authenticity and gifted pen that Milosz provides engaging essays that prevail against the USSR. Stefan Rudnicki does a fine job narrating.
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- Christopher Emeruwa
- 10-08-20
Thought provoking and intellectually stimulating.
I enjoyed it but at time struggled to make sense of it until I went over it again. I found some sections intellectually stimulating.
It took longer than I expected to finish it.
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Story
A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer—the first and most famous of his books—was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.
By: Eric Hoffer
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Irrationality
- A History of the Dark Side of Reason
- By: Justin E. H. Smith
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal”. But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today - from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump - Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite.
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A good brain workout
- By ThomasC on 04-09-19
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The Closing of the American Mind
- By: Allan Bloom
- Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In one of the most important books of our time, Allan Bloom, a professor of social thought at the University of Chicago and a noted translator of Plato and Rousseau, argues that the social and political crisis of 20th-century America is really an intellectual crisis.
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VERY IMPORTANT WORK!
- By Douglas on 06-29-10
By: Allan Bloom
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Free to Choose
- A Personal Statement
- By: Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose, teamed up to write this most convincing and readable guide, which illustrates the crucial link between Adam Smith's capitalism and the free society. They show how freedom has been eroded and prosperity undermined through the rapid growth of governmental agencies, laws, and regulations.
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Fantastic
- By Erik on 01-21-08
By: Milton Friedman, and others
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The Vision of the Anointed
- Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
- By: Thomas Sowell
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In this devastating critique of the mindset behind the failed social policies of the past 30 years, Thomas Sowell sees what has happened not as a series of isolated mistakes, but as a logical consequence of a vision whose defects have led to disasters in education, crime, family disintegration, and more. This is an empirical study in which “politically correct” theory is repeatedly confronted with facts, and the sharp contradictions between the two are explained in terms of a set of self-congratulatory assumptions held by political and intellectual elites.
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One of the best books I've ever listened to...
- By Dan on 07-29-14
By: Thomas Sowell
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The Bodies of Others
- The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and the War Against the Human
- By: Naomi Wolf
- Narrated by: Chris Gaubatz
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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The Bodies of Others is about how we came to the harrowing civilizational crossroads at which we find ourselves—engaged in a war against vast impersonal forces with limitless power over our lives and which threaten the freedoms we have always taken for granted. In her most provocative book yet, Dr. Naomi Wolf shows how these forces—from Big Tech and Big Pharma to the CCP and our oligarchical elites—seized upon two years of COVID-19 panic in sinister new ways, to not only undermine our republic but to fundamentally reorient human relations.
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Excellent book despite the narrator
- By Memoree Joelle on 06-08-22
By: Naomi Wolf
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Witness
- By: Whittaker Chambers
- Narrated by: John MacDonald
- Length: 30 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1952, Witness came on the heals of America's trial of the century, in which Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss, a full-standing member of the political establishment, of spying for the Soviet Union. In this penetrating philosophical memoir, Chambers recounts the famous case as well as his own experiences as a Communist agent in the United States, his later renunciation of communism, and his conversion to Christianity.
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Great history about Communism
- By Susan on 03-04-10
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The End of History and the Last Man
- By: Francis Fukuyama
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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