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The Man of the Crowd
- Edgar Allan Poe and the City
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
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The Man of the Crowd
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Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures - many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living - and, therefore, of being - these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence.
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Publisher's Summary
How four American cities shaped Poe's life and writings.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) changed residences about once a year throughout his life. Driven by a desire for literary success and the pressures of supporting his family, Poe sought work in American magazines, living in the cities that produced them. Scott Peeples chronicles Poe's rootless life in the cities, neighborhoods, and rooms where he lived and worked, exploring how each new place left its enduring mark on the writer and his craft.
Poe wrote short stories, poems, journalism, and editorials with urban readers in mind. He witnessed urban slavery up close, living and working within a few blocks of slave jails and auction houses in Richmond and among enslaved workers in Baltimore. In Philadelphia, he saw an expanding city struggling to contain its own violent propensities. At a time when suburbs were just beginning to offer an alternative to crowded city dwellings, he tried living cheaply on the then-rural Upper West Side of Manhattan and later in what is now the Bronx.
Poe's urban mysteries and claustrophobic tales of troubled minds and abused bodies reflect his experiences living among the soldiers, slaves, and immigrants of the American city.
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What listeners say about The Man of the Crowd
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- Bryan B
- 02-28-23
Incredible biography
This is an absolutely stunning biography of Poe; meticulously researched and a fascinating critical analysis of how the places he lived affected his work. A must read for any Poe fan.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- K. Duffy
- 12-18-21
Urban Life and Edgar Allen Poe
The rise of the city and all it's ambiguities seem reflected in the life of Poe. His restless personality reminded me of Baudelaire and it seems correct that Poe's writings were sometimes set in that modernist city. He was not rich or aristocratic and therefore did not have the capacity for stability, and he was torn between city life with it's drinking dens and air of impermanence and an imagined suburban idyll The author describes Poe's precarious mental states by linking them to the burgeoning era of American urban growth with its corresponding uncertainties. Really enjoyed this book. Proper psycho-geography!
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- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story5 out of 5 stars 33
Denis Diderot is often associated with the decades-long battle to bring the world's first comprehensive Encyclopedie into existence. But his most daring writing took place in the shadows. Thrown into prison for his atheism in 1749, Diderot decided to reserve his best books for posterity - for us, in fact. In the astonishing cache of unpublished writings left behind after his death, Diderot challenged virtually all of his century's accepted truths, from the sanctity of monarchy, to the racial justification of the slave trade, to the norms of human sexuality.
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5 out of 5 stars
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lifelong coverage of his life.
- By Michael Daly on 03-22-21
By: Andrew S. Curran
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An Illuminated Life
- Belle da Costa Greene's Journey from Prejudice to Privilege
- By: Heidi Ardizzone
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 22 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
What would you give up to achieve your dream? When J. P. Morgan hired Belle da Costa Greene in 1905 to organize his rare book and manuscript collection, she had only her personality and a few years of experience to recommend her. Ten years later, she had shaped the famous Pierpont Morgan Library collection and was a proto-celebrity in New York and the art world, renowned for her self-made expertise, her acerbic wit, and her flirtatious relationships. Born to a family of free people of color, Greene changed her name and invented a Portuguese grandmother to enter White society.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A Remarkable Woman
- By HistoryNerd on 01-25-22
By: Heidi Ardizzone
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Barnum
- An American Life
- By: Robert Wilson
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4 out of 5 stars 58
Robert Wilson, editor of The American Scholar, tells a gripping story in Barnum, one that’s imbued with the same buoyant spirit as the man himself. Wilson adeptly makes the case for P. T. Barnum’s place among the icons of American history, as a figure who represented, and indeed created, a distinctly American sense of optimism, industriousness, humor, and relentless energy.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good, but not as much fun as the autobiography
- By D. Frrazier on 11-10-22
By: Robert Wilson
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Square Haunting
- Five Writers in London Between the Wars
- By: Francesca Wade
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 21
Mecklenburgh Square has always been a radical address. Nestled in the heart of Bloomsbury, these townhouses have borne witness to the lives of some of the century's most revolutionary cultural figures - many of whom were extraordinary women. United by their desire to experiment with new ways of living - and, therefore, of being - these authors and thinkers were trailblazers in their commitment to creative independence.
By: Francesca Wade
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Shakespeare
- The World as Stage
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,776
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,222
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,210
William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Too Little, Too Short
- By Charles L. Burkins on 11-30-07
By: Bill Bryson
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Paradise Lost
- A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald
- By: David S. Brown
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 15 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
Pigeonholed in popular memory as a Jazz Age epicurean, a playboy, and an emblem of the Lost Generation, F. Scott Fitzgerald was at heart a moralist struck by the nation's shifting mood and manners after World War I. In Paradise Lost, David Brown contends that Fitzgerald's deepest allegiances were to a fading antebellum world he associated with his father's Chesapeake Bay roots. Yet as a midwesterner, an Irish Catholic, and a perpetually in-debt author, he felt like an outsider in the haute bourgeoisie haunts.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The newest definitive Fitzgerald biography
- By Praxia on 01-08-18
By: David S. Brown
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Mark Twain
- A Life
- By: Ron Powers
- Narrated by: Ron Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 117
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 74
Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. His awestruck contemporaries saw him as the representative figure of his times, and his influence has deeply flavored the 20th and 21st centuries.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Buy the Book
- By W.Denis on 10-22-05
By: Ron Powers
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Passing Strange
- A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
- By: Martha A. Sandweiss
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 14 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 78
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
Brilliant scientist and witty conversationalist, best-selling author and architect of the great surveys that mapped the West after the Civil War, Clarence King was named by John Hay "the best and brightest of his generation". But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for 13 years he lived a double life - as the celebrated White explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a Black Pullman porter and steelworker named James Todd.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Race and Identity
- By Roy on 03-22-10
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The Last American Aristocrat
- The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams
- By: David S. Brown
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
Henry Adams is perhaps the most eclectic, accomplished, and important American writer of his time. The last member of his distinguished family - after great-grandfather John Adams and grandfather John Quincy Adams - to gain national attention, he is remembered today as a historian, a political commentator, and a memoirist. Now, historian David Brown sheds light on the brilliant yet under-celebrated life of this major American intellectual.
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5 out of 5 stars
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outstanding book, highly recommend it
- By D. Littman on 02-19-21
By: David S. Brown
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Dorothy Day
- Dissenting Voice of the American Century
- By: John Loughery, Blythe Randolph
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 17 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story5 out of 5 stars 32
After growing up in a conservative middle-class Republican household and working several years as a left-wing journalist, Dorothy Day converted to Catholicism and became an anomaly in American life for the next 50 years. As an orthodox Catholic, political radical, and a rebel who courted controversy, she attracted three generations of admirers. A believer in civil disobedience, Day went to jail several times protesting the nuclear arms race. She was critical of capitalism and US foreign policy, and as skeptical of modern liberalism as political conservatism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well Documented
- By dragonfly on 03-19-22
By: John Loughery, and others
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Plagued by Fire
- The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright
- By: Paul Hendrickson
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 24 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4 out of 5 stars 37
Frank Lloyd Wright has long been known as a rank egotist who held in contempt almost everything aside from his own genius. Harder to detect, but no less real, is a Wright who fully understood, and suffered from, the choices he made. This is the Wright whom Paul Hendrickson reveals in this masterful biography: the Wright who was haunted by his father, about whom he told the greatest lie of his life.
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1 out of 5 stars
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A Very Nasty Biography of FLW
- By Conrad Hastler on 11-15-19
By: Paul Hendrickson
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Isak Dinesen
- The Life of a Storyteller
- By: Judith Thurman
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 21 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
Isak Dinesen earned international fame for Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, and other stories that skillfully combine elements of fable, social conflict, and psychological drama. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. Yet the story of her life - her travels, affairs, and friendships - remains the greatest story of all.
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3 out of 5 stars
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over-written
- By Jacqui Good on 10-19-18
By: Judith Thurman
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The Regency Years
- During Which Jane Austen Writes, Napoleon Fights, Byron Makes Love, and Britain Becomes Modern
- By: Robert Morrison
- Narrated by: Chris MacDonnell
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 99
The Victorians are often credited with ushering in our current era, yet the seeds of change were planted in the years before. The Regency (1811-1820) began when the profligate Prince of Wales - the future King George IV - replaced his insane father, George III, as Britain's ruler. Around the regent surged a society steeped in contrasts: evangelicalism and hedonism, elegance and brutality, exuberance and despair. The arts flourished at this time with a showcase of extraordinary writers and painters such as Jane Austen, Lord Byron, the Shelleys, John Constable, and J. M. W. Turner.
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3 out of 5 stars
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What a time!
- By BK on 06-18-19
By: Robert Morrison
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J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Making of a Legend
- By: Colin Duriez
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
J.R.R. Tolkien's creations, imagination, and characters captured the attention of millions of readers. But who was the man who dreamt up the intricate languages and perfectly crafted world of Middle-earth? Tolkien had a difficult life, for many years: orphaned and poor, his guardian forbade him to communicate with the woman he had fallen in love with, and he went through the horrors of the First World War. An intensely private and brilliant scholar, he spent over 50 years working on the languages, history, peoples, and geography of Middle-earth,
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very insightful
- By Luke B. on 10-27-20
By: Colin Duriez
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Nazi Literature in the Americas
- By: Roberto Bolaño, Chris Andrews - translator
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 68
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4 out of 5 stars 56
A tour de force of black humor and imaginary erudition, Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as a biographical dictionary of writers who espoused extreme right-wing ideologies in the 20th and 21st centuries.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Eerie and fascinating
- By Jikai Zenshin on 03-19-21
By: Roberto Bolaño, and others