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To Cuba and Back
- A Vacation Voyage in 1859
- Narrated by: Andre Stojka
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
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To Cuba and Back
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Publisher's summary
The master is a policeman as well as a judge. His revolver and rife are always loaded. He has his dogs, his trackers, and seizers. No man rides unarmed.
Join abolitionist Richard Henry Dana as he explores Spanish Cuba in 1859, where kidnapped Black Africans were slaves on vast sugar plantations along with impoverished Chinese coolies suffering under unbreakable eight-year contracts. Dana visited Cuba on a fact-finding mission he calls a vacation voyage. He describes Cuban slavery; explores Cuban society, institutions, and educational systems; and exposes a corrupt prison system, where the more a prisoner pays, the less he is punished.
In 1859, slavery was still legal in the United States and flourished throughout the Southern States. Because of Cuba's close proximity to the United States, some slaveholders felt it could be a natural extension of the American southern slave states.
A few years earlier, the Ostend Manifesto was proposed, under which American slave states attempted to have the United States purchase Cuba from Spain for $30 million dollars. Their idea was to expand slavery to beyond the boundary of the US. The plan was not successful.
So when Dana took his vacation, he was well aware that Cuba was a place where United States interests attempted to sustain slavery and that he was entering territory with slave practices that were abhorrent to him.
Senator John Slidell launched another attempt to annex Cuba to the United States for $30 million. It was being debated in Congress during the time Dana was sailing. As Dana later recounted in his narrative, the attempt to purchase of Cuba by the United States failed.
In November, a year later, Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States, and one year after that, the American civil war began. The war resulted in the end of slavery in the United States...but not in Cuba, which was still owned by Spain.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
This account of the life, sufferings, and escape of a fugitive slave was published in London in 1855 by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. It is the autobiography of a simple, sturdy man who spent 30 years as a slave in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Slave Life in Georgia
- By Deedra on 03-27-19
By: John Brown
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Clotel
- Or, The President's Daughter
- By: William Wells Brown
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
First published in 1853 amidst rumors that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with one of his slaves, Clotel is a fictional chronicle of one such child. After Jefferson's death, his mistress and her two daughters are auctioned. One daughter, Clotel, is purchased by a white man from Virginia who impregnates her. Despite the promise of marriage, Clotel is instead sold to another man and separated from her daughter. After escaping from the slave dealer, Clotel returnss to Virginia to reunite with her daughter - now a slave in her father's house.
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4 out of 5 stars
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So Real the Feelings.
- By Anonymous User on 12-26-18
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The Innocents Abroad
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrated by: David McCallion
- Length: 18 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47
In June 1867, Mark Twain set sail for Europe and the Holy Land. Twain recorded this adventurous trip and later turned it into The Innocents Abroad. This book became so popular overseas that it would propel him into an international star. The Innocents Abroad is Twain’s account of his thoughts of the Old World, including Paris, Venice, Pompeii, Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem, as well as many other noteworthy cities. His disbelief and wonder are told with humor that endeared Twain to American audiences.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Big Mistake
- By Megg on 12-18-18
By: Mark Twain
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Hong Kong
- By: Jan Morris
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 73
Hong Kong is the world’s most exciting city, at once fascinating and exasperating, a tangle of contradictions. It is a dazzling amalgam of conspicuous consumption and primitive poverty, the most architecturally incongruous yet undeniably beautiful urban panorama of all. Through firsthand reportage, world-renowned travel writer Jan Morris takes us through the crowded streets of this enigmatic city, offering the most insightful and comprehensive study of Hong Kong thus far. She reviews Hong Kong’s early days as a British opium port controlled by pirates, cutthroats, and scoundrel tycoons, and looks ahead to the city’s future.
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3 out of 5 stars
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An interesting but mild disappointment
- By Jeanette Finan on 06-11-14
By: Jan Morris
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Master Slave Husband Wife
- An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
- By: Ilyon Woo
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards, Leon Nixon
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 337
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 285
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 284
In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Necessary story well told!
- By Marc W Rhoades on 01-19-23
By: Ilyon Woo
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Twelve Years a Slave
- By: Solomon Northup
- Narrated by: Louis Gossett Jr.
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,932
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,561
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,557
In this riveting landmark autobiography, which reads like a novel, Academy Award and Emmy winner Louis Gossett, Jr., masterfully transports us to 1840s New York; Washington, D.C.; and Louisiana to experience the kidnapping and 12 years of bondage of Solomon Northup, a free man of color. Twelve Years a Slave, published in 1853, was an immediate bombshell in the national debate over slavery leading up to the Civil War.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I've waited for this a long time
- By Book Reader on 04-04-13
By: Solomon Northup
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Twelve Years a Slave
- By: Solomon Northup
- Narrated by: Stephen L. Vernon
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 532
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 466
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Story5 out of 5 stars 465
Twelve Years a Slave is an account of actual events that took place in the life of Solomon Northup, during the pre-Civil War era of the 1840s. It follows the trials and tribulations of an educated African American man that was born into freedom and later kidnapped, taken away from his family, and forced into slavery.
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5 out of 5 stars
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What a great book!!!
- By Andrew Robbin on 09-07-14
By: Solomon Northup
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
- By: Frederick Douglass
- Narrated by: Walter Covell
- Length: 3 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 487
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 408
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 406
Frederick Douglass was an American abolitionist, women's suffragist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer. He was called both "The Sage of Anacostia" and "The Lion of Anacostia" and is one of the most prominent figures in African-American history and United States history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book!
- By Mama C on 03-05-11
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Travels with George
- In Search of Washington and His Legacy
- By: Nathaniel Philbrick
- Narrated by: Nathaniel Philbrick
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 276
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 251
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 250
Does George Washington still matter? Best-selling author Nathaniel Philbrick argues for Washington’s unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing his journey as a new president through all 13 former colonies, which were now an unsure nation. Travels with George marks a new first-person voice for Philbrick, weaving history and personal reflection into a single narrative.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fun listen but too much about slavery
- By Paul W. Brazis on 09-19-21
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The Pioneers
- The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
- By: David McCullough
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 4,979
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 4,299
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Story4 out of 5 stars 4,271
The number one New York Times best seller by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that's "as resonant today as ever" (The Wall Street Journal) - the settling of the Northwest Territory by courageous pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would define our country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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i would prefer david reading it
- By hooterwah on 05-07-19
By: David McCullough
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Bury the Chains
- Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves
- By: Adam Hochschild
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 102
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 84
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Story5 out of 5 stars 83
In early 1787, 12 men - a printer, a lawyer, a clergyman, and others united by their hatred of slavery - came together in a London printing shop and began a remarkable grass-roots movement, battling for the rights of people on another continent. Masterfully stoking public opinion, the movement's leaders pioneered a variety of techniques that have been adopted by citizens' movements ever since, from consumer boycotts to wall posters and lapel buttons to celebrity endorsements.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Eye-Opener
- By Carl Thompson on 01-06-19
By: Adam Hochschild
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Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All
- A New Zealand Story
- By: Christina Thompson
- Narrated by: Sarah Mollo-Christensen
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and partly as the story of Christina Thompson's marriage to a Maori man.
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5 out of 5 stars
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a beautiful story
- By Pumpkin99 on 12-24-22
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Outposts
- Journeys to the Surviving Relics of the British Empire
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 213
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 120
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 122
Originally published in 1985, Outposts is Simon Winchester's journey to find the vanishing empire, "on which the sun never sets". In the course of a three-year, 100,000 mile journey - from the chill of the Antarctic to the blue seas of the Caribbean, from the South of Spain and the tip of China to the utterly remote specks in the middle of gale-swept oceans - he discovered such romance and depravity, opulence and despair that he was inspired to write what may be the last contemporary account of the British empire.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Nice Travelogue
- By J. S. Koehler on 01-28-06
By: Simon Winchester
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Life in Ancient Rome
- By: Lionel Casson
- Narrated by: John Glouchevitch
- Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
Lionel Casson paints a vivid portrait of life in ancient Rome - for slaves and emperors, soldiers and commanders alike - during the empire's greatest period, the first and second centuries AD.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A good listen about early Rome.
- By Harry on 08-13-23
By: Lionel Casson
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The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England
- A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
- By: Ian Mortimer
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,217
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,902
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,892
Imagine you could travel back to the 14th century. What would you see? What would you smell? More to the point, where are you going to stay? And what are you going to eat? Ian Mortimer shows us that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived. He sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking you to the Middle Ages. The result is the most astonishing social history book you are ever likely to read: evolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining in its detail.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Detailed, Interesting and Entertaining
- By Marc-Andr? on 05-13-10
By: Ian Mortimer
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On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
- By: Henry David Thoreau
- Narrated by: Jim Killavey
- Length: 1 hr and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 506
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 424
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 419
This essay by Thoreau first published in 1849, argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule their consciences. It goes on to say that individuals have a duty to avoid allowing the government to make them the agents of injustice. The quote: "That government is best which governs least," sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Paine, actually was first found in this essay. Thoreaus' thoughts were motivated by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War but they are still relevant and resonate today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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10:22 p.m., 10th of January, 2018
- By Anonymous User on 01-11-18
What listeners say about To Cuba and Back
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Sean in South Central PA...
- 01-22-23
An excellent reading, but...
in some parts where "sounds effects"are used it can be distracting and once or twice where they are louder than the reader it's annoying. Other than this it was a great listen.
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