Dolley and James Madison
An Unlikely Love Story That Saved America
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Dolley and James Madison
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Narrated by:
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Kate Burns
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By:
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Rodney K. Smith
About this listen
America’s inspiring first couple.
Physically unimpressive, but intellectually brilliant James Madison had been unlucky in love - heartbroken and betrayed not once, but twice.
Middle-aged and resigned to a life alone, he never dreamed that fate had something astonishing in store for him and for the country he loved: a young widow of exceptional intelligence and poise who was his equal in many ways, and whose warmth and extroversion perfectly complemented his quiet, contemplative nature. She became Dolley Madison, the nation’s “first First Lady”, and this fascinating book proves that truth is more compelling than fiction.
Delve into the personal stories of the couple that led their beloved new country safely through its first generation, surviving and thriving despite serious conflicts at home and abroad, weathering the bitter attacks of their enemies, and remaining dedicated through it all to each other, to the Constitution that James fathered and to the United States.
Facing adversity with unparalleled dignity and civility, they stand as an example worthy of emulation in our times. Their love story, told by a noted constitutional lawyer and historian, is a heart-warming, inspiring, and hopeful tribute to the power of equal partnership in marriage and a beautiful reminder of what America can be, at its best.
©2019 Rodney K. Smith (P)2020 Rodney K. SmithListeners also enjoyed...
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Washington's Farewell
- The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations
- By: John Avlon
- Narrated by: John Avlon
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 281
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 248
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 250
George Washington's Farewell Address was a prophetic letter from a "parting friend" to his fellow citizens about the forces he feared could destroy our democracy: hyper-partisanship, excessive debt, and foreign wars. Once celebrated as civic scripture, more widely reprinted than the Declaration of Independence, the Farewell Address is now almost forgotten. Its message remains starkly relevant. In Washington's Farewell, John Avlon offers a stunning portrait of our first president and his battle to save America from self-destruction.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very well written and performed
- By Michael Reading on 03-02-17
By: John Avlon
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Fears of a Setting Sun
- The Disillusionment of America's Founders
- By: Dennis C. Rasmussen
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 93
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 80
Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them - including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson - came to deem America's constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A different perspective on the founders
- By kpa on 03-04-24
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The Last King of America
- The Misunderstood Reign of George III
- By: Andrew Roberts
- Narrated by: Phillipe Stevens
- Length: 36 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 483
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 419
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 418
Most Americans dismiss George III as a buffoon - a heartless and terrible monarch with few, if any, redeeming qualities. The best-known modern interpretation of him is Jonathan Groff's preening, spitting, and pompous take in Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway masterpiece. But this deeply unflattering characterization is rooted in the prejudiced and brilliantly persuasive opinions of 18th-century revolutionaries. After combing through hundreds of thousands of pages of never-before-published correspondence, award-winning historian Andrew Roberts has uncovered the truth.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fantastic .. a proud defense of George III
- By Wyatt on 11-12-21
By: Andrew Roberts
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Founding Fathers
- A Captivating Guide to Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and James Monroe
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Desmond Manny, Jason R. Gray, David Patton, and others
- Length: 26 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4 out of 5 stars 22
Explore the captivating lives of the Founding Fathers. Eight captivating manuscripts in one audiobook. So if you want to learn more about the life of Founding Fathers, get this audiobook now!
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2 out of 5 stars
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filled with inaccuracies
- By Eben on 04-13-22
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James Madison
- America's First Politician
- By: Jay Cost
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 107
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 89
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 89
How do you solve a problem like James Madison? The fourth president is one of the most confounding figures in early American history; his political trajectory seems almost intentionally inconsistent. He was both for and against a strong federal government. He wrote about the dangers of political parties in the Federalist Papers and then helped to found the Republican Party just a few years later. This so-called Madison problem has occupied scholars for ages.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good listen
- By James Shannon on 06-27-22
By: Jay Cost
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers
- By: Brion McClanahan Ph. D.
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 388
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 304
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 303
Here to rescue the reputations of our Founding Fathers from the plague of modern political correctness is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers. Author and Professor Brion McClanahan shows how patriots like Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton laid the foundations of American civil liberty and had a better understanding of the problems facing us today than our current Congress.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Highly Recommended
- By Colleen H. on 08-13-09
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The Problem of Democracy
- The Presidents Adams Confront the Cult of Personality
- By: Nancy Isenberg, Andrew Burstein
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 22 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 42
John and John Quincy Adams: rogue intellectuals, unsparing truth-tellers, too uncensored for their own political good. They held that political participation demanded moral courage. They did not seek popularity (it showed). They lamented the fact that hero worship in America substituted idolatry for results; and they made it clear that they were talking about Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. When John Adams succeeded George Washington as President, his son had already followed him into public service and was stationed in Europe as a diplomat.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very insightful and rewarding adding understanding
- By William on 05-12-19
By: Nancy Isenberg, and others
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"Most Blessed of the Patriarchs"
- Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination
- By: Annette Gordon-Reed, Peter S. Onuf
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4 out of 5 stars 73
Thomas Jefferson is still presented today as a hopelessly enigmatic figure despite being written about more than any other Founding Father. Lauded as the most articulate voice of American freedom even as he held people in bondage, Jefferson is variably described by current-day observers as a hypocrite, an atheist, and a simple-minded proponent of limited government.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Disappointing
- By Steve on 06-09-16
By: Annette Gordon-Reed, and others
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The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton
- By: Andrew Porwancher
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
In The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Porwancher debunks a string of myths about the origins of this founding father to arrive at a startling conclusion: Hamilton, in all likelihood, was born and raised Jewish. For more than two centuries, his youth in the Caribbean has remained shrouded in mystery. Hamilton himself wanted it that way, and most biographers have simply assumed he had a Christian boyhood. With a detective's persistence and a historian's rigor, Porwancher upends that assumption.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Anti-Semitism and Religious Liberty
- By Detailed Shopper on 12-07-23
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George Washington
- The Political Rise of America's Founding Father
- By: David O. Stewart
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 18 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story5 out of 5 stars 28
Washington's rise constitutes one of the greatest self-reinventions in history. In his mid-20s, this third son of a modest Virginia planter had ruined his own military career thanks to an outrageous ego. But by his mid-40s, that headstrong, unwise young man had evolved into an unassailable leader chosen as the commander in chief of the fledgling Continental Army. By his mid-50s, he was unanimously elected the nation's first president. How did Washington emerge from the wilderness to become the central founder of the United States of America?
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5 out of 5 stars
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The GOAT!
- By Michael N. on 03-26-24
By: David O. Stewart
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Franklin & Washington
- The Founding Partnership
- By: Edward J. Larson
- Narrated by: Andrew Tell
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 132
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 112
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 111
Today the United States is the world’s great superpower, and yet we also wrestle with the government Franklin and Washington created more than two centuries ago - the power of the executive branch, the principle of checks and balances, the electoral college - as well as the wounds of their compromise over slavery. Now, as the founding institutions appear under new stress, it is time to understand their origins through the fresh lens of Larson’s Franklin & Washington, a major addition to the literature of the founding era.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Two together, written about at same time
- By fair & balanced on 03-28-21
By: Edward J. Larson
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James Monroe
- A Life
- By: Tim McGrath
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 28 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 333
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 292
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 289
The extraordinary life of James Monroe: Soldier, senator, diplomat, and the last Founding Father to hold the presidency, a man who helped transform 13 colonies into a vibrant and mighty republic.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Large and inconsistent, much like Monroe himself.
- By Kindle Customer on 01-31-21
By: Tim McGrath
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Friends Divided
- John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: James Lurie
- Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 447
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 399
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 397
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams could scarcely have come from more different worlds or been more different in temperament. Jefferson, the optimist with enough faith in the innate goodness of his fellow man to be democracy's champion, was an aristocratic Southern slave owner while Adams, the overachiever from New England's rising middling classes, painfully aware he was no aristocrat, was a skeptic about popular rule and a defender of a more elitist view of government.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Great Read
- By Jean on 12-22-17
By: Gordon S. Wood
What listeners say about Dolley and James Madison
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- sherri e.
- 11-04-23
Not worth my time
Not pleasant to listen to narrator. Poor writing style. Unfavorable and narrow ideological approach to history.
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