Blood Orchid
An Unnatural History of America
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Blood Orchid
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Narrated by:
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Gary Roelofs
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By:
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Charles Bowden
About this listen
In this ground-shaking, breath-taking cri de coeur, Bowden delves with love-driven fury for the roots of our brutal history in this once-brave New World. The figures he casts before us - from Pancho Villa to a modern-day drug lord, from General Sherman to a skid-row Sioux named Robert Sundance - trace a story not so much of rapaciousness as of fear and loathing. Bowden twines it with the natural history of the hammer orchid, a carnivore whose deceptive delicacy comes to stand for the terror and hypocrisy that have perverted our love of the land, its peoples, and our very natures.
The book is published by University of Texas Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
"Blood Orchid is its own trip, brilliant and always compelling. Bowden…is becoming one of our most important voices in the so-called New West." (Los Angeles Times)
"A first-rate eye-opener to our soul history, the germinal material, vast and brooding, that is always left out of more orthodox (all of them) books about America." (Jim Harrison)
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Story4 out of 5 stars 133
The Darling is Hannah Musgrave's story, told emotionally and convincingly years later by Hannah herself. A political radical and member of the Weather Underground, Hannah has fled America to West Africa, where she and her Liberian husband become friends and colleagues of Charles Taylor, the notorious warlord and now ex-president of Liberia. When Taylor leaves for the United States in an effort to escape embezzlement charges, he's immediately placed in prison.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Complex and compelling
- By Ellen H. Anderson on 02-05-05
By: Russell Banks
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On Drinking
- By: Charles Bukowski
- Narrated by: Roger Wayne
- Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 140
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 119
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 118
Charles Bukowski turns to the bottle in this revelatory collection of poetry and prose that includes some of the writer’s best and most lasting work. A self-proclaimed “dirty old man”, Bukowski used alcohol as muse and as fuel, a conflicted relationship responsible for some of his darkest moments, as well as some of his most joyful and inspired. In On Drinking, Bukowski expert Abel Debritto has collected the writer’s most profound, funny, and memorable work on his ups and downs with the hard stuff.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Don't read this sober
- By Lowball on 03-02-19
By: Charles Bukowski
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Love, Africa
- A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival
- By: Jeffrey Gettleman
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 195
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 171
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 173
A seasoned war correspondent, Jeffrey Gettleman has covered every major conflict over the past 20 years, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Congo. For the past decade, he has served as the East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times, fulfilling his teenage dream of living in Africa. Love, Africa is the story of how he got there - and of his difficult, winding path toward becoming a good reporter and a better man.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved this book!!!
- By Benjamin on 05-26-17
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Driving on the Rim
- By: Thomas McGuane
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4 out of 5 stars 71
The unforgettable voyager of this dark picaresque is I. B. "Berl" Pickett, M.D., whose die was probably cast the moment his mother thought to name him after Irving Berlin. Other insults piled on apace thereafter: the spasms of Pentecostal Sunday worship; the social debilitation of following his parents' itinerant rug-shampooing business; the erotic initiation at the hands of his aunt. It's hard to imagine what would have become of him had he not gone to medical school.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Delightful
- By Roy on 01-05-11
By: Thomas McGuane
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Murder City
- Ciudad Juarez and The Global Economy's New Killing Fields
- By: Charles Bowden
- Narrated by: Charles Bowden
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 168
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 122
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Story4 out of 5 stars 120
Charles Bowden writes, “this book is not about how the world ends but how a new world is being born.” Murder City explores this new world, focusing on the idea that Mexico is collapsing into a permanent culture of violence. Bowden focuses on Ciudad Juarez, which lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, last year alone 1,607 people were murdered, a number that is set to accelerate in 2009.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Listen Up!
- By Roy on 04-04-10
By: Charles Bowden
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Freddy and Fredericka
- By: Mark Helprin
- Narrated by: Robert Ian Mackenzie
- Length: 25 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 505
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 208
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Story4 out of 5 stars 214
Best-selling, critically acclaimed author Mark Helprin's work has drawn favorable comparisons to an elite group of literary legends, including James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, and Thomas Mann. Helprin's sheer comic brilliance shines in this ingenious farce.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Can't rate it high enough (and I'm a tough grader)
- By Annette on 09-06-05
By: Mark Helprin
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On the Road: The Original Scroll
- By: Jack Kerouac
- Narrated by: John Ventimiglia
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 750
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 643
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 642
Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West 20th Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Classic Brought to Life
- By Sil A. on 11-25-16
By: Jack Kerouac
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Mother Tongue
- By: Demetria Martinez
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 18
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 18
A nameless El Salvadoran man, fleeing torture and imprisonment, arrives in the United States - his only hope for asylum. The American woman who has volunteered to help him is searching for something to add meaning to her life. When these two lonely people meet, their haunting relationship fulfills their hearts' desires, but it also gives life to their darkest dreams.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing Story
- By Alexa :3 on 09-26-24
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What Storm, What Thunder
- By: Myriam J.A. Chancy
- Narrated by: Ella Turenne
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
The Earth had buckled, and, in that movement, all that was not in its place fell upon the Earth’s children, upon the blameless as well as the guilty, without discrimination. At the end of a long sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster
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5 out of 5 stars
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We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.
- By AuthorAnnaBella on 03-15-22