Try free for 30 days
-
The Forest
- A Fable of America in the 1830s
- Narrated by: Clarke Peters
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 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 $27.99
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
-
Fierce Poise
- Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York
- By: Alexander Nemerov
- Narrated by: Alison Fraser
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the dawn of the 1950s, a promising and dedicated young painter named Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, moved back home to New York City to make her name. By the decade's end, she had succeeded in establishing herself as an important American artist of the postwar period. In the years in between, she made some of the most daring, head-turning paintings of her day and also came into her own as a woman: traveling the world, falling in and out of love, and engaging in an ongoing artistic education.
-
The Entanglement
- How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are
- By: Alva Noe
- Narrated by: Christopher Douyard
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, arguing that we have greatly underestimated what this entangled reality means for understanding human nature. Life supplies art with its raw materials, but art, Noë argues, remakes life by giving us resources to live differently. Our lives are permeated with the aesthetic. Indeed, human nature is an aesthetic phenomenon, and art is the truest way of understanding ourselves. All this suggests that human nature is not a natural phenomenon.
-
Wanderlust
- An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age
- By: Reid Mitenbuler
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 19 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deep in the Arctic wilderness, Peter Freuchen awoke to find himself buried alive under the snow. During a sudden blizzard the night before, he had taken shelter underneath his dogsled and become trapped there while he slept. Now, as feeling drained from his body, he managed to claw a hole through the ice only to find himself in even greater danger: his beard, wet with condensation from his struggling breath, had frozen to his sled runners and lashed his head in place, exposing it to icy winds that needed only a few minutes to kill him. If Freuchen could escape that, he could escape anything.
-
-
Fascinating
- By Jacinda on 18-08-2023
-
The Iliad & The Odyssey
- By: Homer
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 28 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Little is known about the Ancient Greek oral poet Homer, the supposed 8th century BC author of the world-read Iliad and his later masterpiece, The Odyssey. These classic epics provided the basis for Greek education and culture throughout the classical age and formed the backbone of humane education through the birth of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity.
-
-
Epic
- By Anonymous User on 22-05-2023
-
The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars
- Cheating and Deception in the Living World
- By: Lixing Sun
- Narrated by: Jason Vu
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nature is rife with cheating. Possums play possum, feigning death to cheat predators. Crows cry wolf to scare off rivals. Amphibians and reptiles are inveterate impostors. Even genes and cells cheat. The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars explores the evolution of cheating in the natural world, revealing how dishonesty has given rise to wondrous diversity.
-
These Trees Tell a Story
- The Art of Reading Landscapes
- By: Noah Charney
- Narrated by: Douglas R Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charney’s stories and lessons will provide anyone with the necessary investigative skills to look at a landscape, interpret it, and tell its story—from its start as rock or soil to the plants and animals that live on it. Ultimately, Charney argues, by critically engaging with the landscape we will become better at connecting with nature and ourselves.
-
Fierce Poise
- Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York
- By: Alexander Nemerov
- Narrated by: Alison Fraser
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the dawn of the 1950s, a promising and dedicated young painter named Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, moved back home to New York City to make her name. By the decade's end, she had succeeded in establishing herself as an important American artist of the postwar period. In the years in between, she made some of the most daring, head-turning paintings of her day and also came into her own as a woman: traveling the world, falling in and out of love, and engaging in an ongoing artistic education.
-
The Entanglement
- How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are
- By: Alva Noe
- Narrated by: Christopher Douyard
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, arguing that we have greatly underestimated what this entangled reality means for understanding human nature. Life supplies art with its raw materials, but art, Noë argues, remakes life by giving us resources to live differently. Our lives are permeated with the aesthetic. Indeed, human nature is an aesthetic phenomenon, and art is the truest way of understanding ourselves. All this suggests that human nature is not a natural phenomenon.
-
Wanderlust
- An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age
- By: Reid Mitenbuler
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 19 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deep in the Arctic wilderness, Peter Freuchen awoke to find himself buried alive under the snow. During a sudden blizzard the night before, he had taken shelter underneath his dogsled and become trapped there while he slept. Now, as feeling drained from his body, he managed to claw a hole through the ice only to find himself in even greater danger: his beard, wet with condensation from his struggling breath, had frozen to his sled runners and lashed his head in place, exposing it to icy winds that needed only a few minutes to kill him. If Freuchen could escape that, he could escape anything.
-
-
Fascinating
- By Jacinda on 18-08-2023
-
The Iliad & The Odyssey
- By: Homer
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 28 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Little is known about the Ancient Greek oral poet Homer, the supposed 8th century BC author of the world-read Iliad and his later masterpiece, The Odyssey. These classic epics provided the basis for Greek education and culture throughout the classical age and formed the backbone of humane education through the birth of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity.
-
-
Epic
- By Anonymous User on 22-05-2023
-
The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars
- Cheating and Deception in the Living World
- By: Lixing Sun
- Narrated by: Jason Vu
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nature is rife with cheating. Possums play possum, feigning death to cheat predators. Crows cry wolf to scare off rivals. Amphibians and reptiles are inveterate impostors. Even genes and cells cheat. The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars explores the evolution of cheating in the natural world, revealing how dishonesty has given rise to wondrous diversity.
-
These Trees Tell a Story
- The Art of Reading Landscapes
- By: Noah Charney
- Narrated by: Douglas R Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charney’s stories and lessons will provide anyone with the necessary investigative skills to look at a landscape, interpret it, and tell its story—from its start as rock or soil to the plants and animals that live on it. Ultimately, Charney argues, by critically engaging with the landscape we will become better at connecting with nature and ourselves.
Publisher's Summary
This audiobook narrated by Clarke Peters shares a vivid historical imagining of the lives of individuals—from painters, poets, and politicians to enslaved people, artisans, and travelers—in the early United States
Set amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States, The Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, featuring both real and invented characters, the book follows painters, poets, enslaved people, farmers, and artisans living and working in a world still made largely of wood. Some of the historical characters—such as Thomas Cole, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanny Kemble, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nat Turner—are well-known, while others are not. But all are creators of private and grand designs.
The Forest unfolds in brief stories. Each episode reveals an intricate lost world. Characters cross paths or go their own ways, each striving for something different but together forming a pattern of life. For Alexander Nemerov, the forest is a description of American society, the dense and discontinuous woods of nation, the foliating thoughts of different people, each with their separate shade and sun. Through vivid descriptions of the people, sights, smells, and sounds of Jacksonian America, The Forest brings American history to life on a human scale.
Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Critic Reviews
“The Forest is a series of richly imagined, gemlike tales that capture the worlds of nineteenth-century Americans. Born of tactile sensations and inspired by nature, this is literature as a kind of cultural history. Nemerov has forged a new genre of writing, prompting us all to think about the hidden fictions within our own efforts to reconstruct the past. Reading this extraordinary book made me love the nineteenth century anew.”—Angela L. Miller, coauthor of American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity
“Nemerov is the consummate poet of the past, steering history writing in a new direction through the power of his language. His images come from art history, popular culture, and history, but many are borne aloft only through the visual suggestiveness of his descriptions. A bold and successful experiment in American studies.”—Michael Ann Holly, author of The Melancholy Art