Try free for 30 days
-
Glad to the Brink of Fear
- A Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $31.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
Chasing Beauty
- The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner
- By: Natalie Dykstra
- Narrated by: Maggi-Meg Reed
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston’s Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture.
-
Bugsy Siegel
- The Dark Side of the American Dream (Jewish Lives Series)
- By: Michael Shnayerson
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a brief life that led to a violent end, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (1906-1947) rose from desperate poverty to ill-gotten riches, from an early-20th-century family of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side to a kingdom of his own making in Las Vegas. In this captivating portrait, author Michael Shnayerson sets out not to absolve Bugsy Siegel but rather to understand him in all his complexity.
-
Three Roads Back
- How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives
- By: Robert D. Richardson, Megan Marshall - foreword
- Narrated by: William Hope
- Length: 2 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook narrated by William Hope examines how Emerson, Thoreau, and William James forged resilience from devastating loss and changed the course of American thought.
-
An Emancipation of the Mind
- Radical Philosophy, the War Over Slavery, and the Refounding of America
- By: Matthew Stewart
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How a band of antislavery leaders recovered the radical philosophical inspirations of the first American Revolution to defeat the slaveholders' oligarchy in the Civil War.
-
The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic
- Reconstruction, 1860-1920
- By: Manisha Sinha
- Narrated by: Deepa Samuel
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A sweeping narrative that remakes our understanding of perhaps the most consequential period in American history, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic shows how the great contest of that age is also the great contest of our age—and serves as a necessary reminder of how young and fragile our democracy truly is.
-
Finding Margaret Fuller
- A Novel
- By: Allison Pataki
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young, brazen, beautiful, and unapologetically brilliant, Margaret Fuller accepts an invitation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the celebrated Sage of Concord, to meet his coterie of enlightened friends. There she becomes “the radiant genius and fiery heart” of the Transcendentalists, a role model to a young Louisa May Alcott, an inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne and the scandalous Scarlet Letter, a friend to Henry David Thoreau as he ventures out to Walden Pond . . . and a muse to Emerson. But Margaret craves more than poetry and interpersonal drama.
-
Chasing Beauty
- The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner
- By: Natalie Dykstra
- Narrated by: Maggi-Meg Reed
- Length: 15 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Isabella Stewart Gardner’s museum, with its plain exterior enfolding an astonishing four-story Italian palazzo, rose from Boston’s Fens at the turn of the twentieth century. Its treasures encompassed not only masterwork paintings but tapestries, rare books, prints, porcelains, and fine furniture.
-
Bugsy Siegel
- The Dark Side of the American Dream (Jewish Lives Series)
- By: Michael Shnayerson
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a brief life that led to a violent end, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (1906-1947) rose from desperate poverty to ill-gotten riches, from an early-20th-century family of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side to a kingdom of his own making in Las Vegas. In this captivating portrait, author Michael Shnayerson sets out not to absolve Bugsy Siegel but rather to understand him in all his complexity.
-
Three Roads Back
- How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives
- By: Robert D. Richardson, Megan Marshall - foreword
- Narrated by: William Hope
- Length: 2 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook narrated by William Hope examines how Emerson, Thoreau, and William James forged resilience from devastating loss and changed the course of American thought.
-
An Emancipation of the Mind
- Radical Philosophy, the War Over Slavery, and the Refounding of America
- By: Matthew Stewart
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How a band of antislavery leaders recovered the radical philosophical inspirations of the first American Revolution to defeat the slaveholders' oligarchy in the Civil War.
-
The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic
- Reconstruction, 1860-1920
- By: Manisha Sinha
- Narrated by: Deepa Samuel
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A sweeping narrative that remakes our understanding of perhaps the most consequential period in American history, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic shows how the great contest of that age is also the great contest of our age—and serves as a necessary reminder of how young and fragile our democracy truly is.
-
Finding Margaret Fuller
- A Novel
- By: Allison Pataki
- Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young, brazen, beautiful, and unapologetically brilliant, Margaret Fuller accepts an invitation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the celebrated Sage of Concord, to meet his coterie of enlightened friends. There she becomes “the radiant genius and fiery heart” of the Transcendentalists, a role model to a young Louisa May Alcott, an inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne and the scandalous Scarlet Letter, a friend to Henry David Thoreau as he ventures out to Walden Pond . . . and a muse to Emerson. But Margaret craves more than poetry and interpersonal drama.
-
Familiarity Breeds Content
- New and Selected Essays
- By: Joseph Epstein
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America’s greatest living essayist writes about life and aging and being all too nicely out of it. In these personal pieces, he takes on topics as varied as grieving for a dead son, learning Latin late in life, and the pleasures of living with cats. Epstein gives us a “bonfire of his own vanities,” his thoughts about why watching sports is so impossibly seductive, what it is like to be short, and why he misses smoking even decades as a health-obsessed non-smoker.
-
Native Nations
- A Millennium in North America
- By: Kathleen DuVal
- Narrated by: Carolina Hoyos
- Length: 21 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today. Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.
-
Never Say You've Had a Lucky Life
- Especially If You've Had a Lucky Life
- By: Joseph Epstein
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An autobiography usually requires a justification. The great autobiographies—those by Benvenuto Cellini, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Brooks Adams—were justified by their authors living in interesting times, harboring radically new ideas, or participating in great events. Joseph Epstein qualifies on none of these counts. His life has been quiet, lucky in numerous ways, and far from dramatic. But it has also been emblematic of the great changes in our country since World War II. Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life is an intimate look at one life steeped in radical change.
-
Why We Read
- On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out
- By: Shannon Reed
- Narrated by: Paige McKinney
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We read to escape, to learn, to find love, to feel seen. We read to encounter new worlds, to discover new recipes, to find connection across difference, or simply to pass a rainy afternoon. No matter the reason, books have the power to keep us safe, to challenge us, and perhaps most importantly, to make us more fully human. Shannon Reed, a longtime teacher, lifelong reader, and New Yorker contributor, gets it. With one simple goal in mind, she makes the case that we should read for pleasure above all else.
-
Marcus Aurelius
- The Stoic Emperor
- By: Donald J. Robertson
- Narrated by: Donald J. Robertson
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This novel biography brings Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE) to life for a new generation by exploring the emperor’s fascinating psychological journey. Donald J. Robertson examines Marcus’s relationships with key figures in his life, such as his mother, Domitia Lucilla, and the emperor Hadrian, as well as his Stoic tutors. He draws extensively on Marcus’s own Meditations and correspondence, and he examines the emperor’s actions as detailed in the Augustan History and other ancient texts.
-
The Blind Spot
- Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience
- By: Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, Evan Thompson
- Narrated by: Perry Daniels
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Blind Spot goes where no science book goes, urging us to create a new scientific culture that views ourselves both as an expression of nature and as a source of nature's self-understanding, so that humanity can flourish in the new millennium.
-
The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson
- By: Brian C. Wilson
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the spring of 1871, Ralph Waldo Emerson boarded a train in Concord, Massachusetts, bound for a month-and-a-half-long tour of California—an interlude that became one of the highlights of his life. Based on original research employing newly discovered documents, The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson maps the public story of this trip onto the private story of Emerson's final years. Engaging and compelling, this travelogue makes it clear that Emerson was still capable of wonder, surprise, and friendship, debunking the presumed darkness of his last decade.
-
Henry at Work
- Thoreau on Making a Living
- By: John Kaag, Jonathan van Belle
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Henry at Work invites listeners to rethink how we work today by exploring an aspect of Henry David Thoreau that has often been overlooked: Thoreau the worker. John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle overturn the popular misconception of Thoreau as a navel-gazing recluse who was scornful of work and other mundanities. In fact, Thoreau worked hard—surveying land, running his family's pencil-making business, writing, lecturing, and building his cabin at Walden Pond—and thought intensely about work in its many dimensions.
-
Lessons from an American Stoic
- How Emerson Can Change Your Life
- By: Mark Matousek
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this wise, illuminating book, award-winning author Mark Matousek reveals how Emerson’s timeless wisdom can help us with the problems we’re facing today. America’s ‘original Stoic’ confronted many of the issues before us, from polarization to fake news, from crooked politicians and rampant materialism, to the scourge of racism.
-
Homer Box Set: Iliad & Odyssey
- By: Homer, W. H. D. Rouse - translator
- Narrated by: Anthony Heald
- Length: 25 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are unquestionably two of the greatest epic masterpieces in Western literature. Though more than 2,700 years old, their stories of brave heroics, capricious gods, and towering human emotions are vividly timeless. The Iliad can justly be called the world’s greatest war epic. The terrible and long-drawn-out siege of Troy remains one of the classic campaigns. The Odyssey chronicles the many trials and adventures Odysseus must pass through on his long journey home from the Trojan wars to his beloved wife.
-
-
10/10
- By Mr on 12-09-2014
-
Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair
- Jewish Lives Series
- By: Maurice Samuels
- Narrated by: Jason Grasl
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus's cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting "Death to Judas!" In this book, Maurice Samuels gives listeners new insight into Dreyfus himself—the man at the center of the affair. He tells the story of Dreyfus's early life in Paris, his promising career as a French officer, the false accusation leading to his imprisonment on Devil's Island, the fight to prove his innocence that divided the French nation, and his life of quiet obscurity after World War I.
-
The Court at War
- FDR, His Justices, and the World They Made
- By: Cliff Sloan
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the summer of 1941, in the ninth year of his presidency, Franklin Roosevelt had molded his Court. He had appointed seven of the nine justices—the most by any president except George Washington—and handpicked the chief justice. But the wartime Roosevelt Court had two faces. One was bold and progressive, the other supine and abject, cowed by the charisma of the revered president. The Court at War explores this pivotal period.
Publisher's Summary
An engaging reassessment of the celebrated essayist and his relevance to contemporary audiences.
More than two centuries after his birth, Ralph Waldo Emerson remains one of the presiding spirits in American culture. Yet his reputation as the starry-eyed prophet of self-reliance has obscured a much more complicated figure who spent a lifetime wrestling with injustice, philosophy, art, desire, and suffering. James Marcus introduces listeners to this Emerson, a writer of self-interrogating genius whose visionary flights are always grounded in Yankee shrewdness.
This Emerson is a rebel. He is also a lover, a friend, a husband, and a father.
Having declared his great topic to be “the infinitude of the private man,” he is nonetheless an intensely social being who develops Transcendentalism in the company of Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, and Theodore Parker. And although he resists political activism early on—hoping instead for a revolution in consciousness—the burning issue of slavery ultimately transforms him from cloistered metaphysician to fiery abolitionist.
Drawing on telling episodes from Emerson’s life alongside landmark essays like “Self-Reliance,” “Experience,” and “Circles,” Glad to the Brink of Fear reveal show Emerson shares our preoccupations with fate and freedom, race and inequality, love and grief. It shows, too, how his desire to see the world afresh, rather than accepting the consensus view, is a lesson that never grows old.
“Of all of Emerson’s biographers, James Marcus is the first to make the man and his thought come alive in the present. His Emerson is a marvel—a skeptic and an apostle, a creature of flawed feelings and noble ideals, a lover, a mourner, a wit, and a visionary. How lucky we are to encounter him through Marcus’s wonderfully exact and affable prose.”—Merve Emre, Wesleyan University, contributing writer at The New Yorker