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Great Continental Railway Journeys
- Narrated by: Michael Portillo, Nicky Henson
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
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Great Continental Railway Journeys
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Publisher's summary
A must-have purchase for any armchair fan of unique and award-winning travel programming.
Great Continental Railway Journeys is now a firmly established series on BBC2, following in the illustrious tracks of its predecessor - Great British Railway Journeys. Both series are fronted by ex-politician Michael Portillo, and in this European odyssey he travels around continental Europe using George Bradshaw's 1913 Continental Railway Guide.
Now coming up for its fourth instalment this autumn, Portillo guides the train-travelling fan across Europe, arriving at a myriad of magical and historically fascinating cities we all dream of travelling to by train. From London to Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon, Copenhagen, Oslo, Lisbon, Madrid, Berlin, Monte Carlo, Prague, Munich, Zurich, Rome, Budapest, and St Petersburg all the way down to Constantinople, Haifa and Jerusalem, Portillo describes the great feats of engineering that built the various railway lines connecting Europe and further afield and the men and women who made these journeys famous through their deeds and words.
This audiobook covers every single journey Portillo has undertaken across Europe, capturing all the colour, beauty, excitement and fervour of journeying across this historic continent can muster.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Tale of business, cultures, dances as it teaches
- By Philo on 05-25-16
By: Peter B. Doran
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A History of Future Cities
- By: Daniel Brook
- Narrated by: Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
A pioneering exploration of four cities where East meets West and past becomes future: St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai. Every month, five million people move from the past to the future. Pouring into developing-world “instant cities” like Dubai and Shenzhen, these urban newcomers confront a modern world cobbled together from fragments of a West they have never seen. Do these fantastical boomtowns, where blueprints spring to life overnight on virgin land, represent the dawning of a brave new world? Or is their vaunted newness a mirage?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Engaging and Memorable
- By Marcus Vorwaller on 04-15-14
By: Daniel Brook
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The Men Who United the States
- America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,177
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,074
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,068
How did America become “one nation, indivisible”? What unified a growing number of disparate states into the modern country we recognize today? To answer these questions, Winchester follows in the footsteps of America’s most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators. Introducing the fascinating people who played a pivotal role in creating today’s United States, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Sarcastic
- By Cynthia Hartman on 06-16-16
By: Simon Winchester
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A Shorter History of Australia
- By: Geoffrey Blainey
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 207
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 152
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Story4 out of 5 stars 153
After a lifetime of research and debate on Australian and international history, Geoffrey Blainey is well-placed to introduce us to the people who have played a part and to guide us through the events which have created the Australian identity: the mania for spectator sport, the suspicion of the tall poppy, the rivalries of Catholic and Protestant, Sydney and Melbourne, new and old homelands, the conflicts of war abroad and race at home, the importance of technology, the recognition of our Aboriginal past and Native Title.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Just couldn't stand the paternalism
- By Matthew on 04-02-14
By: Geoffrey Blainey
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City
- A Guidebook for the Urban Age
- By: P. D. Smith
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 75
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4 out of 5 stars 65
For the first time in the history of our planet, more than half the population - 3.3 billion people - is now living in cities. City is the ultimate guidebook to our urban centers - the signature unit of human civilization. With erudite prose, this unique work of metatourism explores what cities are and how they work. It covers history, customs and language, districts, transport, money, work, shops and markets, and tourist sites, creating a fantastically detailed portrait of the city through history and into the future.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Commuters companion
- By Anna on 05-19-13
By: P. D. Smith
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Paris Reborn
- Napoléon III, Baron Haussmann, and the Quest to Build a Modern City
- By: Stephane Kirkland
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 70
Traditionally known as a dirty, congested, and dangerous city, 19th Century Paris was transformed in an extraordinary period from 1848 to 1870, when the government launched a huge campaign to build streets, squares, parks, churches, and public buildings. The Louvre Palace was expanded, Notre-Dame Cathedral was restored and the French masterpiece of the Second Empire, the Opra Garnier, was built.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Why Paris looks the way it does today
- By Neil Chisholm on 11-28-13
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Divided Highways
- Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life
- By: Tom Lewis
- Narrated by: Jim D. Johnston
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 38
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
In Divided Highways, Tom Lewis offers an encompassing account of highway development in the United States. In the early twentieth century Congress created the Bureau of Public Roads to improve roads and the lives of rural Americans. The Bureau was the forerunner of the Interstate Highway System of 1956, which promoted a technocratic approach to modern road building sometimes at the expense of individual lives, regional characteristics, and the landscape.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Lots of interesting facts. Poor narration
- By Richard Joyce on 06-01-21
By: Tom Lewis
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Behemoth
- A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World
- By: Joshua B. Freeman
- Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 247
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 210
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 208
We live in a factory-made world: modern life is built on three centuries of advances in factory production, efficiency, and technology. But giant factories have also fueled our fears about the future since their beginnings, when William Blake called them "dark Satanic mills". Many factories that operated over the last two centuries - such as Homestead, River Rouge, and Foxconn - were known for the labor exploitation and class warfare they engendered, not to mention the environmental devastation caused by factory production.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Get rid of the fake accents
- By J. R. Valery on 03-13-18
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Midnight at the Pera Palace
- The Birth of Modern Istanbul
- By: Charles King
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 187
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 166
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 167
At midnight, December 31, 1925, citizens of the newly proclaimed Turkish Republic celebrated the New Year. For the first time ever, they had agreed to use a nationally unified calendar and clock. Yet in Istanbul - an ancient crossroads and Turkey's largest city - people were looking toward an uncertain future. Never purely Turkish, Istanbul was home to generations of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, as well as Muslims.
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2 out of 5 stars
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INTERESTING SUBJECT - CONFUSED WRITING
- By The Louligan on 01-18-15
By: Charles King
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California
- A History
- By: Kevin Starr
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 287
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 241
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 240
Acclaimed author, historian, and Guggenheim Fellow Kevin Starr is a professor at the University of Southern California. His extensive knowledge shines through this concise, yet comprehensive, depiction of the most fascinating aspects in California's history. From its colonial beginnings through Governor Schwarzenegger's administration, the Golden State has become a uniquely American phenomenon that has enchanted people with the possibility of a better life.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Interesting read, until it's not
- By MiamiMe on 03-27-18
By: Kevin Starr
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The Big Roads
- The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways
- By: Earl Swift
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 166
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 149
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 147
From author Earl Swift comes the surprising history of the U.S. interstate system, a fascinating route through the dreams, discoveries, and protests that shaped these mighty roads.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Lessons from The Big Roads
- By Joshua Kim on 05-06-12
By: Earl Swift
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The Dawn of Innovation
- The First American Industrial Revolution
- By: Charles R. Morris
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 87
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4 out of 5 stars 75
In the 30 years after the Civil War, the United States blew by Great Britain to become the greatest economic power in world history. That is a well-known period in history, when titans like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and J. P. Morgan walked the earth. But as Charles R. Morris shows us, the platform for that spectacular growth spurt was built in the first half of the century. By the 1820s, America was already the world's most productive manufacturer and the most intensely commercialized society in history.
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4 out of 5 stars
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How our industries started
- By Jean on 02-22-13
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How the Post Office Created America
- A History
- By: Winifred Gallagher
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 94
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4 out of 5 stars 81
The founders established the Post Office before they had even signed the Declaration of Independence, and for a very long time it was the US government's largest and most important endeavor - indeed, it was the government for most citizens. This was no conventional mail network but the central nervous system of the new body politic, designed to bind 13 quarrelsome colonies into the United States by delivering news about public affairs to every citizen - a radical idea that appalled Europe's great powers.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Super interesting. I'm so disappointed.
- By william kearns on 07-21-16
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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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Earning the Rockies
- How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 226
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 194
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Story4 out of 5 stars 194
As a boy, Robert D. Kaplan listened to his truck-driver father's evocative stories about traveling across America as a young man, travels in which he learned to understand the country from a ground-level perspective. In Earning the Rockies, Kaplan undertakes his own cross-country journey to recapture an appreciation and understanding of American geography that is often lost in the jet age.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Magnificent book that found a great narrator!
- By BotakTree on 03-09-17
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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From Silk to Silicon
- The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives
- By: Jeffrey E. Garten
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 84
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 81
From Silk to Silicon tells the story of who these men and women were, what they did, how they did it, and how their achievements continue to shape our world today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fantastic Journey
- By Michael on 06-06-16
What listeners say about Great Continental Railway Journeys
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Mark
- 10-29-16
Boring Michael is much better on TV
What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
Less history, better narrator.
Would you ever listen to anything by Michael Portillo again?
Probably not will watch his TV shows
Any additional comments?
Not a travel book more an old history book that is very dry
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