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Executing Democracy
- Volume One: Capital Punishment & the Making of America, 1683-1807 (Rhetoric & Public Affairs)
- Narrated by: Kenneth Lee
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
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Executing Democracy
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Publisher's summary
Executing Democracy: Capital Punishment & the Making of America, 1683-1807 is the first volume of a rhetorical history of public debates about crime, violence, and capital punishment in America. This examination begins in 1683, when William Penn first struggled to govern the rowdy indentured servants of Philadelphia, and continues up until 1807, when the Federalists sought to impose law-and-order upon the New Republic.
This volume offers a lively historical overview of how crime, violence, and capital punishment influenced the settling of the New World, the American Revolution, and the frantic post-war political scrambling to establish norms that would govern the new republic.
By presenting a macro-historical overview, and by filling the arguments with voices from different political camps and communicative genres, Hartnett provides readers with fresh perspectives for understanding the centrality of public debates about capital punishment to the history of American democracy.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
In this groundbreaking work, Kwame Anthony Appiah, hailed as "one of the most relevant philosophers today" (New York Times Book Review), changes the way we understand human behavior and the way social reform is brought about. In brilliantly arguing that new democratic movements over the last century have not been driven by legislation from above, Appiah explores the end of the duel in aristocratic England, the tumultuous struggles over foot binding in 19th-century China, the uprising of ordinary people against Atlantic slavery, and much more.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Horribly Boring
- By Merle N. Savedow on 02-10-21
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Free Speech
- A History from Socrates to Social Media
- By: Jacob Mchangama
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Story5 out of 5 stars 61
Hailed as the “first freedom”, free speech is the bedrock of democracy. But it is a challenging principle, subject to erosion in times of upheaval. Today, in democracies and authoritarian states around the world, it is on the retreat. In Free Speech, Jacob Mchangama traces the riveting legal, political, and cultural history of this idea.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great review of free speech and history
- By Anonymous User on 02-22-22
By: Jacob Mchangama
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The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
- By: Bernard Bailyn
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 72
To the original text of what has become a classic of American historical literature, Bernard Bailyn adds a substantial essay, "Fulfillment", as a postscript. Here he discusses the intense nationwide debate on the ratification of the Constitution, stressing the continuities between that struggle over the foundations of the national government and the original principles of the Revolution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Bernard Bailyn is a genius!
- By John M. Crean on 04-21-19
By: Bernard Bailyn
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Why the Jews?
- The Reason for Anti-Semitism, the Most Accurate Predictor of Human Evil
- By: Dennis Prager, Joseph Telushkin
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 328
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 288
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 287
In this seminal work that has spent more than 30 years in print, Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin explain the reasons behind anti-Semitism, the world's preoccupation with the Jews and Israel, and why now more than ever the world needs to confront anti-Jewish sentiment. Prager and Telushkin examine in detail how anti-Semitism is a unique hatred - no other prejudice has been as universal, deep, or permanent - and how the concept of the "chosen people" spawned that hatred.
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4 out of 5 stars
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It answers the question!
- By MarissaB on 10-01-16
By: Dennis Prager, and others
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Freethinkers
- A History of American Secularism
- By: Susan Jacoby
- Narrated by: Rich Miller
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 52
At a time when the separation of church and state is under attack as never before, Freethinkers offers a powerful defense of the secularist heritage that gave Americans the first government in the world founded not on the authority of religion but on the bedrock of human reason. In impassioned, elegant prose, celebrated author Susan Jacoby traces more than 200 years of secularist activism, beginning with the fierce debate over the omission of God from the Constitution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Essential history of free thought in America
- By Clark Savage on 11-27-17
By: Susan Jacoby
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Founding Faith
- Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America
- By: Steven Waldman
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 137
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4 out of 5 stars 63
The culture wars have distorted the dramatic story of how Americans came to worship freely. Many activists on the right maintain that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation". Many on the left contend that the Founders were secular or Deist and that the First Amendment was designed to boldly separate church and state throughout the land. None of these claims are true, argues Beliefnet.com editor in chief Steven Waldman.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Eye-opening
- By Michael on 06-28-08
By: Steven Waldman
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Stony the Road
- Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 388
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 339
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 336
A profound new rendering of the struggle by African Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counterrevolution that resubjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain on the American mind.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Valuable examination of Jim Crow and Rise of White Supremacy in America
- By William J Brown on 05-14-19
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Liberty's First Crisis
- Adams, Jefferson, and the Misfits Who Saved Free Speech
- By: Charles Slack
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story5 out of 5 stars 31
When the United States government passed the Bill of Rights in 1791, its uncompromising protection of speech and of the press were unlike anything the world had ever seen before. But by 1798, the once-dazzling young republic of the United States was on the verge of collapse. Suddenly, the First Amendment, which protected harsh commentary of the weak government, no longer seemed as practical. So that July, President John Adams and the Federalists in control of Congress passed an extreme piece of legislation that made criticism of the government and its leaders a crime.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Marvelous Book....
- By Douglas on 01-07-17
By: Charles Slack
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The N Word
- Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why
- By: Jabari Asim
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 310
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 265
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 266
In 2003, the book Nigger started an intense conversation about the uses and implications of that epithet. The N Word moves beyond that short, provocative book by revealing how the word has both reflected and spread the scourge of bigotry in America.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Good points, long winded
- By Amazon Customer on 02-06-21
By: Jabari Asim
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God of Liberty
- A Religious History of the American Revolution
- By: Thomas S. Kidd
- Narrated by: Mark Coffin
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
Before the Revolutionary War, America was a nation divided by different faiths. But when the war for independence sparked in 1776, colonists united under the banner of religious freedom. Evangelical frontiersmen and Deist intellectuals set aside their differences to defend a belief they shared, the right to worship freely. Inspiring an unlikely but powerful alliance, it was the idea of religious liberty that brought the colonists together in the battle against British tyranny.
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4 out of 5 stars
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The founding has a complicated religious history
- By Adam Shields on 03-24-16
By: Thomas S. Kidd
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Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul
- Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty
- By: John M. Barry
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 198
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 177
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 176
This is a story of power, set against Puritan America and the English Civil War. Williams's interactions with King James, Francis Bacon, Oliver Cromwell, and his mentor Edward Coke set his course, but his fundamental ideas came to fruition in America, as Williams, though a Puritan, collided with John Winthrop's vision of his "City upon a Hill."
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating Story and Legacy
- By Bruce on 04-11-12
By: John M. Barry
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Sacred Scripture, Sacred War
- The Bible and the American Revolution
- By: James P. Byrd
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 24
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 21
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Story5 out of 5 stars 21
In Sacred Scripture, Sacred War, James Byrd offers the first comprehensive analysis of how American revolutionaries defended their patriotic convictions through scripture. Byrd shows that the Bible was a key text of the American Revolution. Indeed, many colonists saw the Bible as primarily a book about war. They viewed God as not merely sanctioning violence but actively participating in combat, playing a decisive role on the battlefield.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent!
- By Iska George on 06-19-20
By: James P. Byrd
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Embracing Defeat
- By: John W. Dower
- Narrated by: Edward Lewis
- Length: 21 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 426
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 293
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Story4 out of 5 stars 298
This illuminating study explores the ways in which the shattering defeat of the Japanese in World War II, followed by over six years of American military occupation, affected every level of Japanese society. The author describes the countless ways in which the Japanese met the challenge of "starting over", from top-level manipulations concerning the fate of Emperor Hirohito to the hopes, fears, and activities of ordinary men and women in every walk of life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Pulitzer Prize Winner!
- By KF on 10-09-07
By: John W. Dower
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Strange Gods
- A Secular History of Conversion
- By: Susan Jacoby
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 19 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 37
In this original and riveting exploration, Susan Jacoby argues that conversion - especially in the free American "religious marketplace" - is too often viewed only within the conventional and simplistic narrative of personal reinvention and divine grace. Instead, the author places conversions within a secular social context that has, at various times, included the force of a unified church and state, desire for upward economic mobility, and interreligious marriage.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Our own fabrications
- By David E. Felker on 01-03-17
By: Susan Jacoby
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Anti-Judaism
- The Western Tradition
- By: David Nirenberg
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 17 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
This incisive history upends the complacency that confines anti-Judaism to the ideological extremes in the Western tradition. With deep learning and elegance, David Nirenberg shows how foundational anti-Judaism is to the history of the West. Questions of how we are Jewish and, more critically, how and why we are not have been churning within the Western imagination throughout its history. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; Christians and Muslims of every period; even the secularists of modernity have used Judaism in constructing their visions of the world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great Book: Terrible Narrator
- By LB on 12-29-16
By: David Nirenberg
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Thomas Jefferson
- A Biography of Spirit and Flesh
- By: Thomas S. Kidd
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
Thomas Jefferson was arguably the most brilliant and inspiring political writer in American history. But the ethical realities of his personal life and political career did not live up to his soaring rhetoric. Indeed, three tensions defined Jefferson’s moral life: democracy versus slavery, republican virtue versus dissolute consumption, and veneration for Jesus versus skepticism about Christianity. In this book, Thomas S. Kidd tells the story of Jefferson’s ethical life through the lens of these tensions.
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3 out of 5 stars
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This version is the standard non in depth bio
- By Fred F on 03-28-24
By: Thomas S. Kidd