Café Europa Revisited
How to Survive Post-Communism
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Café Europa Revisited
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Narrated by:
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Kathleen Gati
About this listen
"Drakulić’s composite portrait provides a clear-eyed look at European values, and what they really amount to." (The New Yorker)
An evocative and timely collection of essays that paints a portrait of Eastern Europe 30 years after the end of communism.
An immigrant with a parrot in Stockholm, a photo of a girl in Lviv, a sculpture of Alexander the Great in Skopje, a memorial ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the Soviet led army invasion of Prague: these are a few glimpses of life in Eastern Europe today. Three decades after the Velvet Revolution, Slavenka Drakulic, the author of Cafe Europa and A Guided Tour of the Museum of Communism, takes a look at what has changed and what has remained the same in the region in her daring new essay collection.
Totalitarianism did not die overnight, and democracy did not completely transform Eastern European societies. Looking closely at artefacts and day-to-day life, from the health-insurance cards to national monuments, and popular films to cultural habits, alongside pieces of growing nationalism and Brexit, these pieces of political reportage dive into the reality of a Europe still deeply divided.
©2021 Slavenka Drakulic (P)2021 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the US-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul.
-
5 out of 5 stars
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A MUST-READ for all Truth-Seeking American wh
- By Parveen Mehdi-Newton on 12-08-17
By: Suzy Hansen
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Conditional Citizens
- On Belonging in America
- By: Laila Lalami
- Narrated by: Laila Lalami
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 78
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 76
What does it mean to be American? In this starkly illuminating and impassioned book, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Laila Lalami recounts her unlikely journey from Moroccan immigrant to US citizen, using it as a starting point for her exploration of American rights, liberties, and protections.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Blew my mind!
- By Leila Jaafari on 10-20-20
By: Laila Lalami
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The Almost Nearly Perfect People
- Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
- By: Michael Booth
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 663
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 585
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 575
Journalist Michael Booth has lived among the Scandinavians for more than 10 years, and he has grown increasingly frustrated with the rose-tinted view of this part of the world offered up by the Western media. In this timely audiobook, he leaves his adopted home of Denmark and embarks on a journey through all five of the Nordic countries to discover who these curious tribes are, the secrets of their success, and, most intriguing of all, what they think of one another.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Obsessed with bad politics
- By Erik on 09-07-20
By: Michael Booth
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Between Two Fires
- Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia
- By: Joshua Yaffa
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
In this rich and novelistic tour of contemporary Russia, Joshua Yaffa introduces listeners to some of the country’s most remarkable figures - from politicians and entrepreneurs to artists and historians - who have built their careers and constructed their identities in the shadow of the Putin system. Torn between their own ambitions and the omnipresent demands of the state, each walks an individual path of compromise.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Stimulating
- By Amazon Customer on 03-16-20
By: Joshua Yaffa
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Learning from the Germans
- Race and the Memory of Evil
- By: Susan Neiman
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 20 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 139
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 127
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 124
In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights-era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This is an important book.
- By Amazon Customer on 05-29-20
By: Susan Neiman
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Revolt
- The Worldwide Uprising Against Globalization
- By: Nadav Eyal
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
Revolt is an eloquent and provocative challenge to the prevailing wisdom about the rise of nationalism and populism. With a vibrant and informed voice, Nadav Eyal illustrates how modern globalization is not sustainable. He contends that the collapse of the current world order is not so much about the imbalance between technological achievement and social progress or the breakdown of liberal democracy as it is about a passion to upend and destroy power structures that have become hollow, corrupt, or simply unresponsive to urgent needs.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Good observations, very politically biased.
- By P. Bradley on 11-29-23
By: Nadav Eyal
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This Land Is Our Land
- An Immigrant's Manifesto
- By: Suketu Mehta
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 54
A timely argument for why the US and the West would benefit from accepting more immigrants. Impassioned, rigorous, and richly stocked with memorable stories and characters, This Land Is Our Land is a timely and necessary intervention and a literary polemic of the highest order.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Greatly informative. wonderful narrated
- By ADEDZWA Dooyum Sartor on 06-29-19
By: Suketu Mehta
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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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Disintegration
- The Splintering of Black America
- By: Eugene Robinson
- Narrated by: Alan Bomar Jones
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 121
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 101
The African American population in the United States has always been seen as a single entity: a "Black America" with unified interests and needs. In his groundbreaking book Disintegration, longtime Washington Post journalist Eugene Robinson argues that, through decades of desegregation, affirmative action, and immigration, the concept of Black America has shattered.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Written for Popular Consumption
- By Catherine S. Read on 06-03-11
By: Eugene Robinson
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The Address Book
- What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power
- By: Deirdre Mask
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 251
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 203
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 205
An exuberant and insightful work of popular history of how streets got their names, houses their numbers, and what it reveals about class, race, power, and identity. When most people think about street addresses, if they think of them at all, it is in their capacity to ensure that the postman can deliver mail or a traveler won’t get lost. But street addresses were not invented to help you find your way; they were created to find you. In many parts of the world, your address can reveal your race and class.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Simply OK
- By CJFLA on 07-18-20
By: Deirdre Mask
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Israel
- A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth
- By: Noa Tishby
- Narrated by: Noa Tishby
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1,339
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,236
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1,226
Israel. The small strip of arid land is 5,700 miles away but remains a hot-button issue and a thorny topic of debate. But while everyone seems to have a strong opinion about Israel, how many people actually know the facts? Here to fill in the information gap is Israeli American Noa Tishby.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I hope this book will help
- By Wayne on 05-08-21
By: Noa Tishby
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India
- A Portrait
- By: Patrick French
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4 out of 5 stars 77
Second only to China in the magnitude of its economic miracle and second to none in its potential to shape the new century, India is fast undergoing one of the most momentous transformations the world has ever seen. In this dazzlingly panoramic book, Patrick French chronicles that epic change, telling human stories to explain a larger national narrative. Melding on-the-ground reports with a deep knowledge of history, French exposes the cultural foundations of India’s political, economic and social complexities.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An Epic Book by Award-Winning Author
- By morton on 10-31-11
By: Patrick French
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Afropean
- Notes from Black Europe
- By: Johny Pitts
- Narrated by: Johny Pitts
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story5 out of 5 stars 36
In the face of growing racial discrimination, anti-immigrant sentiment and the spectre of terrorism looming large over an economically stricken continent, Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities: too indelibly woven into Europe to identify with Africa and yet struggling with outdated ideas of what it means to be European.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent
- By Suzie M on 04-04-24
By: Johny Pitts
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When We Were Arabs
- A Jewish Family's Forgotten History
- By: Massoud Hayoun
- Narrated by: Massoud Hayoun
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
There was a time when being an "Arab" didn't mean you were necessarily Muslim. It was a time when Oscar Hayoun, a Jewish Arab, strode along the Nile in a fashionable suit, long before he and his father arrived at the port of Haifa to join the Zionist state only to find themselves hosed down with DDT and then left unemployed on the margins of society. In that time, Arabness was a mark of cosmopolitanism, of intellectualism.
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1 out of 5 stars
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painful to read.
- By Eli Cukierman on 03-13-20
By: Massoud Hayoun
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The Italians
- By: John Hooper
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 141
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 126
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Story4 out of 5 stars 126
John Hooper's marvelously entertaining and perceptive new book is ideal for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the unique character of the Italians. Looking at the facts that lie behind and often belie the stereotypes, his revealing book sheds new light on many aspects of Italian life: football and Freemasonry, sex, symbolism, and the reason Italian has twelve words for a coat hanger yet none for a hangover.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Mi piace molto!
- By Adeliese Baumann on 12-30-16
By: John Hooper
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We Don't Know Ourselves
- A Personal History of Modern Ireland
- By: Fintan O'Toole
- Narrated by: Aidan Kelly
- Length: 22 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 480
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 404
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Story5 out of 5 stars 400
In We Don't Know Ourselves, Fintan O'Toole weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society - perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. O'Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Relentlessly Negative
- By John on 06-02-22
By: Fintan O'Toole