Elizabeth Finch
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Elizabeth Finch
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Narrated by:
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Justin Avoth
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By:
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Julian Barnes
About this listen
From the award-winning novelist, a compact narrative that turns on the death of a vivid and particular woman and becomes the occasion for a man's deeper examination of love, friendship and biography.
The task of the present is to correct our understanding of the past. And that task becomes the more urgent when the past cannot be corrected.
Elizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an inspiration—always rigorous, always thoughtful. With careful empathy, she guided her students to develop meaningful ideas and to discover their centres of seriousness.
As a former student unpacks her notebooks and remembers her uniquely inquisitive mind, her passion for reason resonates through the years. Her ideas unlock the philosophies of the past and explore key events that show us how to make sense of our lives today. And underpinning them all is the story of J—Julian the Apostate, her historical soulmate and fellow challenger to the institutional and monotheistic thinking that has always threatened to divide us.
This is more than a novel. It's a loving tribute to philosophy, a careful evaluation of history, an invitation to think for ourselves. It's a moment to reflect and to gently explore our own theories and assumptions. It is truly a balm for our times.
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 294
Nietzsche wrote that all philosophy is autobiographical, and in this vividly compelling, myth-shattering biography, Sue Prideaux brings listeners into the world of this brilliant, eccentric, and deeply troubled man, illuminating the events and people that shaped his life and work. I Am Dynamite! is the essential biography for anyone seeking to understand history's most misunderstood philosopher.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating; tragic
- By Cineaste21 on 12-30-18
By: Sue Prideaux
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Kierkegaard
- A Single Life
- By: Stephen Backhouse
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 153
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 138
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 135
An accessible, expert introduction to one of the greatest minds of 19th century. Whether you're completely new to him, or if you're already familiar with his work, Kierkegaard: A Single Life presents a fresh understanding of his life and thought. Kierkegaard was a brilliant and enigmatic loner whose ideas permeated culture, shaped modern Christianity, and influenced people as diverse as Franz Kafka and Martin Luther King Jr. Though few people today have read his work, that lack of familiarity with the real Kierkegaard is changing with this biography by scholar Stephen Backhouse.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great!
- By Will on 07-11-17
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Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World
- By: Leo Damrosch
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 20 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 67
Jonathan Swift is best remembered today as the author of Gulliver’s Travels, the satiric fantasy that quickly became a classic and has remained in print for nearly three centuries. Yet Swift also wrote many other influential works, was a major political and religious figure in his time, and became a national hero, beloved for his fierce protest against English exploitation of his native Ireland. What is really known today about the enigmatic man behind these accomplishments? Can the facts of his life be separated from the fictions?
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5 out of 5 stars
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JOHNATHAN SWIFT AND POWER OF THE PEN
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 09-30-14
By: Leo Damrosch
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The Roman Way
- By: Edith Hamilton
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 199
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 150
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 150
Edith Hamilton shows us Rome through the eyes of the Romans. Plautus and Terence, Cicero and Caesar, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, and Augustus come to life in their ambitions, their work, their loves and hates. In them we see reflected a picture of Roman life very different from that fixed in our minds through schoolroom days, and far livelier.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not so bad
- By steve on 04-25-11
By: Edith Hamilton
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At the Existentialist Café
- Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
- By: Sarah Bakewell
- Narrated by: Antonia Beamish
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,071
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 945
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 939
Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!"
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4 out of 5 stars
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Consistent look at incoherent philosophy
- By Gary on 06-19-16
By: Sarah Bakewell
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Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Colm Toibin
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Eminently re-readable
- By Ellen-A on 01-02-19
By: Colm Toibin
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Heroes
- From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 68
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 45
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
In this enlightening and entertaining work, Johnson presents heroism through examples in history. From Alexander to Joan of Arc and George Washington to Marilyn Monroe, here are men and women from every age and corner of the world who have inspired and transformed their cultures and the world itself.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Interesting, but deeply flawed
- By Kennet on 12-27-07
By: Paul Johnson
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The Fellowship
- The Literary LIves of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams
- By: Philip Zaleski, Carol Zaleski
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 26 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 501
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 454
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 451
C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J. R. R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met weekly in Lewis' Oxford rooms and a nearby pub. They read aloud from works in progress, argued about anything that caught their fancy, and gave one another invaluable companionship, inspiration, and criticism.
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4 out of 5 stars
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If You Love Literature...
- By Ray M on 07-14-16
By: Philip Zaleski, and others
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Angels and Ages
- A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life
- By: Adam Gopnik
- Narrated by: Adam Gopnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4 out of 5 stars 46
Written 200 years after Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln shared a birthday on February 12, 1809, this insightful account sheds new light on two men who changed the way we think about the meaning of life and death. Award-winning journalist Adam Gopnik's unique perspective, combined with previously unexplored stories and figures, reveals two men planted firmly at the roots of modern views and liberal values.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Connecting Darwin and Lincoln
- By Joshua Kim on 06-10-12
By: Adam Gopnik
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Patience with God
- Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism)
- By: Frank Schaeffer
- Narrated by: Frank Schaeffer
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 58
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4 out of 5 stars 47
Frank Schaeffer has a problem with Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett, and the rest of the New Atheists—the self-anointed “Brights.” He also has a problem with the Rick Warrens and Tim LaHayes of the world—the religious fundamentalists. The problem is that he doesn’t see much of a difference between the two camps. As Schaeffer puts it, they “often share the same fallacy: truth claims that reek of false certainties.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A Very Personal Book
- By Thomas on 09-24-10
By: Frank Schaeffer
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Cultural Amnesia
- Notes in the Margin of My Time
- By: Clive James
- Narrated by: Clive James
- Length: 6 hrs and 16 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 149
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 104
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 103
From Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Charlie Chaplin, this varied and unfailingly absorbing book is both story and history, both public memoir and personal record - and provides an essential field-guide to the vast movements of taste, intellect, politics and delusion that helped to prepare the times we live in now.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Very enjoyable and well narrated
- By Larbi on 05-18-08
By: Clive James
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How Proust Can Change Your Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 551
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 461
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Story4 out of 5 stars 461
For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A nice petite primer on Proust
- By Darwin8u on 02-20-13
By: Alain de Botton
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The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve
- By: Stephen Greenblatt
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 179
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 157
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 157
Bolder even than the ambitious books for which Stephen Greenblatt is already renowned, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve explores the enduring story of humanity's first parents. Comprising only a few ancient verses, the story of Adam and Eve has served as a mirror in which we seem to glimpse the whole long history of our fears and desires, as both a hymn to human responsibility and a dark fable about human wretchedness.
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4 out of 5 stars
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For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return
- By Darwin8u on 02-11-18
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The Republic of Imagination
- America in Three Books
- By: Azar Nafisi
- Narrated by: Mozhan Marnò
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Love
- By Rebecca on 05-29-16
By: Azar Nafisi