Broadway Goes to War
American Theater During World War II
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Broadway Goes to War
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Narrated by:
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Marlin May
About this listen
The American theater was not ignorant of the developments brought on by World War II, and actively addressed and debated timely, controversial topics for the duration of the war, including neutrality and isolationism, racism and genocide, and heroism and battle fatigue. Productions such as Watch on the Rhine, The Moon Is Down, Tomorrow the World, and A Bell for Adano encouraged public discussion of the war's impact on daily life and raised critical questions about the conflict well before other forms of popular media.
American drama of the 1940s is frequently overlooked, but the plays performed during this eventful decade provide a picture of the rich and complex experience of living in the United States during the war years. McLaughlin and Parry's work fills a significant gap in the history of theater and popular culture, showing that American society was more divided and less idealistic than the received histories of the WWII home front and the entertainment industry recognize.
The book is published by The University Press of Kentucky. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
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Critic reviews
"McLaughlin and Parry have taken on much impressive research to accomplish this project, revealing a fascinating depiction of connections among theatrical history, culture, and politics." (Hometowns to Hollywood)
"Impeccably researched study..." (Stage and Cinema)
"An engaging, thorough...work about an overlooked period of American drama." (Library Journal)
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- By Arlene S. Burke on 02-23-22
-
Israel
- A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
- By: Daniel Gordis
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 16 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,334
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,179
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,170
Israel is a tiny state, and yet it has captured the world's attention, aroused its imagination, and, lately, been the object of its opprobrium. Why does such a small country speak to so many global concerns? More pressingly: Why does Israel make the decisions it does? And what lies in its future? We cannot answer these questions until we understand Israel's people and the questions and conflicts, the hopes and desires, that have animated their conversations and actions.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent, mildly but honestly biased, terrible narration
- By Schaq on 04-01-17
By: Daniel Gordis
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A Thousand Hills
- Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 144
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 120
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 119
Paul Kagame grew up as a wretched refugee. He and a group of comrades, determined to force their way back home after a generation of exile, designed one of the most audacious covert operations in the history of clandestine war. Then, after taking power, they amazed the world by stabilizing and reviving their devastated country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Best Most Comprehensive Work on Rwanda
- By Greg on 07-30-10
By: Stephen Kinzer
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Becoming Hitler
- The Making of a Nazi
- By: Thomas Weber
- Narrated by: Alex Hyde-White
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
In Becoming Hitler, award-winning historian Thomas Weber examines Adolf Hitler's time in Munich between 1918 and 1926, the years when Hitler shed his awkward, feckless persona and transformed himself into a savvy opportunistic political operator who saw himself as Germany's messiah. The story of Hitler's transformation is one of a fateful match between man and city. After opportunistically fluctuating between the ideas of the left and the right, Hitler emerged as an astonishingly flexible leader of Munich's right-wing movement.
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5 out of 5 stars
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talented malevolence c a dash of amazing luck
- By emilio squillante on 11-05-18
By: Thomas Weber
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Prague Winter
- A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 435
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 384
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 382
Before Madeleine Albright turned twelve, her life was shaken by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia—the country where she was born—the Battle of Britain, the near total destruction of European Jewry, the Allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War. Albright's experiences, and those of her family, provide a lens through which to view the most tumultuous dozen years in modern history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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History from a Personal Perspective
- By Jeanette Finan on 02-22-13
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Fracture
- Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938
- By: Philipp Blom
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 17 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 51
When the Great War ended in 1918, the West was broken. Religious faith, patriotism, and the belief in human progress had all been called into question by the mass carnage experienced by both sides. Shell-shocked and traumatized, the West faced a world it no longer recognized: The old order had collapsed, replaced by an age of machines. The world hurtled forward on gears and crankshafts, and terrifying new ideologies arose from the wreckage of past belief.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Lots of good trivia information
- By Jean on 07-23-15
By: Philipp Blom
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Menachem Begin
- The Battle for Israel's Soul
- By: Daniel Gordis
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 162
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 148
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 149
Reviled as a fascist by his great rival Ben-Gurion, venerated by Israel’s underclass, the first Israeli to win the Nobel Peace Prize, a proud Jew but not a conventionally religious one, Menachem Begin was both complex and controversial. Born in Poland in 1913, Begin was a youthful admirer of the Revisionist Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky and soon became a leader within Jabotinsky’s Betar movement.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great story lousy oration
- By Jacob Engelstein on 10-03-14
By: Daniel Gordis
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Lioness
- Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel
- By: Francine Klagsbrun
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 32 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 209
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 182
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 183
Golda Meir was a world figure unlike any other. Born in tsarist Russia in 1898, she immigrated to America in 1906 and grew up in Milwaukee, where from her earliest years she displayed the political consciousness and organizational skills that would eventually catapult her into the inner circles of Israel's founding generation. Moving to mandatory Palestine in 1921 with her husband, the passionate socialist joined a kibbutz but soon left and was hired at a public works office by the man who would become the great love of her life.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The persistent mispronunciations of Hebrew and Yiddish words ruined this performance
- By YH-O on 12-30-18
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Year Zero
- A History of 1945
- By: Ian Buruma
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 136
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 122
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 119
Year Zero is a landmark reckoning with the greatdrama that ensued after war came to an end in 1945. One world had ended and anew, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come across Asia and all of continental Europe. It was the greatest global powervacuum in history, and out of the often vicious power struggles thatensued emerged the modern world as we know it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great historical overview
- By marykk on 10-14-13
By: Ian Buruma
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Latino Americans
- The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation
- By: Ray Suarez
- Narrated by: Ray Suarez
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
As the largest minority in the country, Latino Americans make up an integral part of American history and continue to make major social, cultural, and political contributions. Latino Americans, vividly and candidly tells how the story of Latino Americans is the story of the United States, revealing the personal struggles and successes of immigrants, poets, soldiers, and others who have made an impact on history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Unknown Latino History
- By Lou on 11-27-18
By: Ray Suarez
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Forged in Crisis
- The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times
- By: Nancy Koehn
- Narrated by: Nancy Koehn
- Length: 16 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 267
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 233
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 233
An enthralling historical narrative filled with critical leadership insights that will be of interest to a wide range of listeners - including those in government, business, education, and the arts - Forged in Crisis, by celebrated Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn, spotlights five masters of crisis: polar explorer Ernest Shackleton, President Abraham Lincoln, legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Nazi-resisting clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and environmental crusader Rachel Carson.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Authors are not always the best narrators
- By experimenting on 12-14-17
By: Nancy Koehn
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Ben-Gurion
- A Political Life
- By: Shimon Peres, David Landau
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
Shimon Peres was in his early 20s when he first met David Ben-Gurion. Although the state that Ben-Gurion would lead through war and peace had not yet declared its precarious independence, the "Old Man", as he was called even then, was already a mythic figure. Peres, who came of age in the cabinets of Ben-Gurion, is uniquely placed to evoke this figure of stirring contradictions - a prophetic visionary and a canny pragmatist who early grasped the necessity of compromise for national survival.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great Perfomance, Less than Stellar Story
- By Alexander on 01-02-12
By: Shimon Peres, and others
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The Future Is History
- How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,061
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 930
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 926
Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own - as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The author is an international treasure
- By ThreeGems on 10-16-17
By: Masha Gessen
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1946
- The Making of the Modern World
- By: Victor Sebestyen
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 119
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 104
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
In 1946, Victor Sebestyen creates a taut, panoramic narrative and takes us to meetings that changed the world: to Berlin in July 1945, when Truman tells Stalin that we have successfully tested the bomb; to Ye'nan, China, in January 1946, when General George Marshall tells the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong that Americans won't send troops to China, assuring that the Communists will attain power.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An education. Somber, detailed, many-faceted
- By Philo on 08-20-16
By: Victor Sebestyen
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The Holocaust
- A New History
- By: Laurence Rees
- Narrated by: Eric Vale
- Length: 19 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 370
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 314
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Story5 out of 5 stars 311
Laurence Rees has spent 25 years meeting the survivors and perpetrators of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. In this sweeping history, he combines this testimony with the latest academic research to investigate how history's greatest crime was possible. Rees argues that while hatred of the Jews was at the epicenter of Nazi thinking, we cannot fully understand the Holocaust without considering Nazi plans to kill millions of non-Jews as well.
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5 out of 5 stars
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FANTASTIC BOOK, BUT HORRIBLE READING
- By Aspen on 08-31-17
By: Laurence Rees
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Citizens of London
- The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour
- By: Lynne Olson
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 17 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,589
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,198
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,206
Here is the behind-the-scenes story of how the United States forged its wartime alliance with Britain, told from the perspective of three key American players in London: Edward R. Murrow, Averell Harriman, and John Gilbert Winant. Drawing from a variety of primary sources, Olson skillfully depicts the dramatic personal journeys of these men who, determined to save Britain from Hitler, helped convince a cautious Franklin Roosevelt and a reluctant American public to support the British at a critical time.
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4 out of 5 stars
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If we are together nothing is impossible
- By Susan on 03-06-10
By: Lynne Olson
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The Whisperers
- Private Life in Stalin's Russia
- By: Orlando Figes
- Narrated by: John Telfer
- Length: 29 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 203
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 170
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 169
Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. The Whisperers recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it: a society in which everyone spoke in whispers - whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends - or to inform on them.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Real Life Dystopian Nightmare
- By Timothy on 08-31-18
By: Orlando Figes