-
China Tripping
- Encountering the Everyday in the People’s Republic
- Narrated by: Jeremy A. Murray, Perry Link
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
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China Tripping
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Publisher's summary
This unique book is the first to bring together a group of influential China experts to reflect on their cultural and social encounters while travelling and living in the People’s Republic.
Filling an important gap, it allows scholars, journalists, and businesspeople to reflect on their personal memories of China. Private experiences — vivid and often entirely unanticipated — often teach more about how a society actually works than a planned course of study can. Such experiences can also expose the sometimes naïve misconceptions visitors often bring with them to China. China experts relate stories that are always interesting but also more: They tell not just anecdotes but telling anecdotes. Why are there no campus maps? (Because, if you don’t know where you’re going and why, you don’t need to be here.) What’s the allure of Mickey Mouse? (He could break all sorts of rules and get away with it.) What’s a sworn brother in China? (Somebody who fights for your honor even when you’re not looking.)
Covering nearly a half-century from 1971 to the present, these stories open a vivid window on a rapidly evolving China and on the zigzag learning curve of the China trippers themselves.
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- By Jefferson on 07-23-19
By: Peter Hessler
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My Father's Paradise
- A Son's Search For His Family's Past
- By: Ariel Sabar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 40
In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great story, poorly narrated
- By Oren Kessler on 09-10-24
By: Ariel Sabar
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Oracle Bones
- A Journey Through Time in China
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 18 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 371
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 288
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 287
A century ago, outsiders saw China as a place where nothing ever changes. Today, the country has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. In Oracle Bones, Peter Hessler explores the human side of China's transformation, viewing modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world through the lives of a handful of ordinary people.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great Book, except for the narration.
- By DMH on 11-09-10
By: Peter Hessler
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1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
- A Memoir
- By: Ai Weiwei, Allan H. Barr - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 182
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 152
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 151
Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as “Little Siberia,” where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol and the artworks of Marcel Duchamp.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This book changed my life
- By Johnny Nopolis on 08-16-22
By: Ai Weiwei, and others
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Factory Girls
- From Village to City in a Changing China
- By: Leslie T. Chang
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 14 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 421
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 265
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Story4 out of 5 stars 261
A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America's shores remade our own country a century ago.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Living in Shenzhen - and What A Disappointment
- By Abstraction on 03-01-10
By: Leslie T. Chang
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The Art of Resistance
- My Four Years in the French Underground: A Memoir
- By: Justus Rosenberg
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 131
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 119
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Story5 out of 5 stars 118
In 1937, as the Nazis gained control and anti-Semitism spread in the Free City of Danzig, a majority German city on the Baltic Sea, 16-year-old Justus Rosenberg was sent to Paris to finish his education in safety. Three years later, France fell to the Germans. Alone and in danger, penniless and cut off from contact with his family in Poland, Justus fled south.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Rosenberg, Please focus
- By Jess on 03-20-22
By: Justus Rosenberg
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From Miniskirt to Hijab
- A Girl in Revolutionary Iran
- By: Jacqueline Saper
- Narrated by: Vaneh Assadourian
- Length: 6 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 338
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 311
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 313
Jacqueline Saper, named after Jacqueline Kennedy, was born in Tehran to Iranian and British parents. At 18 she witnessed the civil unrest of the 1979 Iranian revolution and continued to live in the Islamic Republic during its most volatile times, including the Iran-Iraq War. In a deeply intimate and personal story, Saper recounts her privileged childhood in prerevolutionary Iran and how she gradually became aware of the paradoxes in her life and community - primarily the disparate religions and cultures.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very good
- By Matt on 11-10-21
By: Jacqueline Saper
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On the Plain of Snakes
- By: Paul Theroux
- Narrated by: Joseph Balderrama
- Length: 19 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 154
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 134
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 134
Nogales is a border town caught between Mexico and the United States of America. A 40-foot steel fence runs through its centre, separating the prosperous US side from the impoverished Mexican side. It is a fascinating site of tension, now more than ever, as the town fills with hopeful border crossers and the deportees who have been caught and brought back. And it is here that Paul Theroux will begin his journey into the culturally rich but troubled heart of modern Mexico.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A pedantic, poorly narrated, 20 hour lecture
- By Birdshot on 11-16-19
By: Paul Theroux
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The Cubans
- Ordinary Lives in Extraordinary Times
- By: Anthony DePalma
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean, Anthony DePalma
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 43
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Story5 out of 5 stars 44
Cubans today, most of whom have lived their entire lives under the Castro regime, are hesitantly embracing the future. In his new book, Anthony DePalma, a veteran reporter with years of experience in Cuba, focuses on a neighborhood across the harbor from Old Havana to dramatize the optimism as well as the enormous challenges that Cubans face: a moving snapshot of Cuba with all its contradictions as the new regime opens the gate to the capitalism that Fidel railed against for so long.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The real Cuba
- By Tinkerbell on 10-11-20
By: Anthony DePalma
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Midnight in Siberia
- A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia
- By: David Greene
- Narrated by: David Greene
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 176
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 163
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 163
Through the stories of fellow travelers, Greene explores the challenges and opportunities facing the new Russia: a nation that boasts open elections and newfound prosperity yet still continues to endure oppression, corruption, and stark inequality. Set against the wintery landscape of Siberia, Greene’s lively travel narrative offers a glimpse into the soul of 20th century Russia: how its people remember their history and look forward to the future.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Long String of NPR Short Reports
- By Sara on 04-13-15
By: David Greene
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See You Again in Pyongyang
- By: Travis Jeppesen
- Narrated by: Will Collyer
- Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 130
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 115
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 114
From terrifying missile tests, its unmissable Olympic cheering squad, and the war of words between President Trump and Kim Jong Un - not to mention stranger-than-fiction stories of purges and assassinations - news from North Korea has dominated global headlines. But what is life there actually like? In See You Again in Pyongyang, Travis Jeppesen, the first American to complete a university program in North Korea, culls from his experiences living, traveling, and studying in the country to create a multifaceted portrait of the country and its idiosyncratic capital city.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Save me from the hippie millennials with a PhD
- By Verified purchaser on 06-21-18
By: Travis Jeppesen
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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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The Ungrateful Refugee
- What Immigrants Never Tell You
- By: Dina Nayeri
- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 95
Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
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On All Fronts
- The Education of a Journalist
- By: Clarissa Ward
- Narrated by: Clarissa Ward
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 442
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 384
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Story5 out of 5 stars 380
Clarissa Ward is a world-renowned conflict reporter. In this strange age of crisis where there really is no front line, she has moved from one hot zone to the next. With multiple assignments in Syria, Egypt, and Afghanistan, Ward, who speaks seven languages, has been based in Baghdad, Beirut, Beijing, and Moscow. She has seen and documented the violent remaking of the world at close range. With her deep empathy, Ward finds a way to tell the hardest stories. On All Fronts is the riveting account of Ward’s singular career and of journalism in this age of extremism.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Insights gained!
- By J. Harry on 11-10-20
By: Clarissa Ward
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Eat the Buddha
- Life and Death in a Tibetan Town
- By: Barbara Demick
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 213
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 169
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 167
A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the best-selling author of Nothing to Envy.
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4 out of 5 stars
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TIBET
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 08-24-21
By: Barbara Demick
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Light and Shadow
- Memoirs of a Spy's Son
- By: Mark Colvin
- Narrated by: Mark Colvin
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
Mark Colvin is a broadcasting legend. He is the voice of ABC Radio’s leading current affairs program PM; he was a founding broadcaster for the groundbreaking youth station Double J; he initiated The World Today program; and he’s one of the most popular and influential journalists in the twittersphere. Mark has been covering local and global events for more than four decades. He has reported on wars, royal weddings and everything in between. In the midst of all this he discovered that his father was an MI6 spy.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Probably of most interest to Australian readers
- By Robyn on 04-12-17
By: Mark Colvin
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A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves
- One Family and Migration in the 21st Century
- By: Jason DeParle
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 123
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 101
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Story5 out of 5 stars 100
When Jason DeParle moved into the Manila slums with Tita Comodas and her family three decades ago, he never imagined his reporting on them would span three generations and turn into the defining chronicle of a new age - the age of global migration. In a monumental book that gives new meaning to "immersion journalism", DeParle paints an intimate portrait of an unforgettable family as they endure years of sacrifice and separation, willing themselves out of shantytown poverty into a new global middle class.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent and Important
- By Booklover on 03-22-20
By: Jason DeParle