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The House of Rothschild, Volume 1
- Money's Prophets: 1798-1848
- Narrated by: Alexander Adams
- Length: 28 hrs and 11 mins
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Publisher's summary
From the best-selling author of The Ascent of Money and The Square and the Tower.
In his rich and nuanced portrait of the remarkable, elusive Rothschild family, Oxford scholar and best-selling author Niall Ferguson uncovers the secrets behind the family's phenomenal economic success. He reveals for the first time the details of the family's vast political network, which gave it access to and influence over many of the greatest statesmen of the age. And he tells a family saga, tracing the importance of unity and the profound role of Judaism in the lives of a dynasty that rose from the confines of the Frankfurt ghetto and later used its influence to assist oppressed Jews throughout Europe.
A definitive work of impeccable scholarship with a thoroughly engaging narrative, The House of Rothschild is a biography of the rarest kind, in which mysterious and fascinating historical figures finally spring to life.
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In a sweeping narrative, the author of the mega-bestseller A Beautiful Mind takes us on a journey through modern history with the men and women who changed the lives of every single person on the planet. It’s the epic story of the making of modern economics, and of how it rescued mankind from squalor and deprivation by placing its material fate in its own hands rather than in Fate. Nasar’s account begins with Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew observing and publishing the condition of the poor majority in mid nineteenth-century London, the richest and most glittering place in the world.
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A Beautiful Grand Pursuit
- By Joshua Kim on 05-06-12
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Washington's Circle
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- Length: 18 hrs and 37 mins
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In Washington's Circle, David and Jeanne Heidler introduce not just the president but the group of extraordinary men who advised him. The familiar names are here, like the often irked and occasionally irksome John Adams, the scheming Alexander Hamilton, and the prodigiously talented James "Jemmy" Madison, but so are the lesser known Edmund Randolph, John Jay, and Gouverneur Morris. Washington's choices of whom to listen to, for better and sometimes worse, were as consequential as the advice his cabinet gave.
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Very Enlightening
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By: David S. Heidler, and others
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Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician
- By: Anthony Everitt
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
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In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life here as a witty and cunning political operator.
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An eloquent man, and a patriot
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By: Anthony Everitt
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Imperial Twilight
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- By: Stephen R. Platt
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As one of the most potent turning points in the country's modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today's China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to "open" China even as China's imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country's decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China's advantage.
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Balanced readable narrative about the Opium Wars
- By Carl A. Gallozzi on 09-05-18
By: Stephen R. Platt
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The Battle of Bretton Woods
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When turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for "a new Bretton Woods" to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict. The name of the remote New Hampshire town where representatives of 44 nations gathered in July 1944, in the midst of the century's second great war, has become shorthand for enlightened globalization.
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Is this a mystery, a history or an economics book?
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The Modern Scholar
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Love it
- By Holly on 02-20-16
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Queen Anne
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Queen Anne ascended the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1702. By the end of her comparatively short 12-year reign, Britain had emerged as a great power. But while the queen's military was performing dazzling exploits on the continent, her own attention rested on a more intimate conflict: the female friendship on which her happiness had for decades depended and which became, for her, a source of utter torment.
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Spoilt by a poorly edited, inadequate narration
- By Lesley on 04-01-17
By: Anne Somerset
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America's Bank
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Performance
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A tour de force of historical reportage, America’s Bank illuminates the tumultuous era and remarkable personalities that spurred the unlikely birth of America’s modern central bank, the Federal Reserve. Today, the Fed is the bedrock of the financial landscape, yet the fight to create it was so protracted and divisive that it seems a small miracle that it was ever established. For nearly a century, America, alone among developed nations, refused to consider any central or organizing agency in its financial system.
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Important and Intriguing
- By Jean on 11-02-15
By: Roger Lowenstein
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The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin
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Central to America's idea of itself is the character of Benjamin Franklin. We all know him, or think we do: In recent works and in our inherited conventional wisdom, he remains fixed in place as a genial polymath and self-improver who was so very American that he is known by us all as the first American.
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I have good news and bad news
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The Warburgs
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Bankers, philanthropists, scholars, socialites, artists, and politicians, the Warburgs stood at the pinnacle of German (and, later, German American) Jewry. They forged economic dynasties, built mansions and estates, assembled libraries, endowed charities, and advised a German kaiser and two American presidents. But their very success made the Warburgs lightning rods for anti-Semitism, and their sense of patriotism became increasingly dangerous in a Germany that had declared Jews the enemy.
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The Warburg's Dynamic Family History
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The Innocence of Kaiser Wilhelm II
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Almost a century after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Kaiser Wilhelm II is still viewed as either a warmonger or a madman, as the hundred-year-old propaganda posters remain fixed in the general consciousness. Was he, though, truly responsible for the catastrophe of the First World War, or was he in fact a convenient scapegoat, blamed for a conflict which he desperately tried to avoid?
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Really make you re-think what your were told
- By Andrew Marsh on 11-09-18
By: Christina Croft
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What listeners say about The House of Rothschild, Volume 1
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- Anonymous User
- 02-13-20
inspiring
it was very inspiring i really enjoyed it hope there is a volume 2 very soon.
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- Jean
- 06-26-19
Fascinating
Niall Ferguson is a preeminent historian. This was his first book that helped build his reputation as a meticulous researcher. This is a scholarly work and is not for everyone.
The book is well written and meticulously researched. Ferguson has gone into depth and with great detail in telling the history of the Rothschild family. The author tells the story of a German Jewish family from the ghettoes who rose over many generations to be the most powerful and secretive family held financial institution in the world. At times the book is a bit tedious. Overall, I learned a great amount of most interesting information about finance, as well about the finance of wars. The family are Jewish and experienced extreme anti-Semitism over the centuries. I found the hatred of the Jews in Europe over the centuries shocking. They confined them to walled in ghettoes, made them wear certain markings on their clothing and then about every fifty years they killed them in massive numbers. I found the book fascinating, but it will be a while before I tackle volume two.
The book is twenty-eight hours and eleven minutes. Alexander Adams does an excellent job narrating the book. Alexander Adams is a pseudonym for narrator Grover Gardner. Gardner is an Audie winner and has won eighteen Earphone Awards. He is also Audiophile’s One of the Best Voices of the Century and a winner of the Golden Voice Award.
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- Stevon
- 02-23-21
myth vs fact
First time author for me. The Rothschild family is one that I'd heard of for most of my life but never knew any real detail about and sometimes pondered who they were and where were they today, they seem to be everywhere, which basically they are.
This book goes back to the roots, Frankfurt, Germany in the 1700s. Even back then there were Jewish Ghettos, which became more famous in World War II. The ghetto wasn't even called that rather Gasse or street but they were the same thing. Even in the mid 1700s the Jews were forced to live in very small communities and were restricted from just about everything, even when they could venture into the world of the gentiles. They were limited as to how many could even live in the Gasse, how many could marry, how many could move in from the outside. In fact, even in my lifetime, I've heard the question asked as to how could the Jews be such good businessmen? Well, one reason is that they were restricted from just about every profession so they went to the areas where they weren't restricted and business was an area they could function. Into this scenario was born the House of Rothschild. From one person who grew up in this environment, the founder got very good at it. He saved his money and used it to make more money. He sent his sons to Vienna, Naples, Paris, and London and along with Frankfurt developed them all into business centers. They worked with governments, the wealthy, anyone or anything that needed money and got very good at it. They succeeded where others didn't and that success exists even today.
I would have been better off with an abridged version of this book. This one was too long and detailed for my interests. I suppose scholars and others with a keen interest on the subject might like it in this detail. But for my informational purposes I only needed more of an overview. Still it is a fascinating story.
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- Amaze
- 04-30-19
Great research, poor narrative
I am impressed by the amount of research that went into this book, but it needed, and didn't get, good editing. The narrative is something of a mess. For example, the author goes on at great length about the consequences of a "Belgian Crisis' of 1830 without devoting a single sentence to explaining the nature of the crisis. There's another Belgian Crisis later in the decade, also unexplained. What is it with those Belgians?! An entire chapter is devoted to the death of Nathan Rothschild, only to have him appear alive again in a later chapter. The revolutions of 1848 are covered, in terms of their effects on the Rothschilds, without a single sentence devoted to the roots of that crisis, or indeed, as to why it was such a big deal. The personalities of the protagonists are rather ghostly; the author does a poor job of bringing them to life. I've read bios of other bankers, notably Andrew Mellon, where the protagonist was much more real. Admittedly, here you have a multigenerational family, not a single individual. Whatever the reason, the result is rather tedious.
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- steve
- 02-20-21
Rich in detail and education
I love Niall’s books and this is no exception. Well worth your time. The intricacies of the family and the history of Europe is fascinating
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- Rob Garces
- 04-04-20
Very inside baseball.
Kind of dull unless your a banker and are into 19th century milieu of aristocrats, squabbles, wars and politics focused on lending practices as investments in growth potential as strictly a capitalist endeavor. Informative.
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- John
- 03-16-20
if you like minutiea and tedium you'll love this
bouncing back and forth, it was sometimes difficult to follow in some controlled manner. I ha thought this was going to be more of a history of the rothschilds themselves rather than the story of the time, the politics and the economics of the era up to 1848. While I love history and historical figures, I'm not sure that I came away from this book knowing much more about the Rothschilds other than what I'd learned from other books.
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- Antone Ferreira
- 05-16-23
Amazing!
Detailed to a fault, this is a comprehensive look of the Rothschild family, business, motivations and personalities.
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- Lindsay Morgan
- 01-25-24
can't wait for number 2
well done very detailed. the author did his research and it shows. the Narrator was wonderful.
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- Half Moon
- 04-08-21
Superb
I've read this three times to absorb all the nuances of information packed into this volume. WHEN IS BOOK 2 GOING TO BE AVAILABLE?!?! :->
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3 people found this helpful