Fashion
Extreme Customs
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Fashion
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Narrated by:
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The Staff at Academic Therapy
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By:
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Anne Schraff
About this listen
Everyday you probably wonder what you should wear, whether it's for a date, job interview, or just relaxation. This has been true throughout history, from ancient Egypt to medieval Japan to the roaring 20s and beyond. This book describes the sometimes shocking, sometimes funny, and occasionally unbelievable fashions that were popular in other times and places.
Fashion is part of the Quick Read non-fiction series, Extreme Customs, which will engage readers of all ages. What do customs mean in a given culture? This high-interest nonfiction series takes a look at the origins, practices and meaning of body modification (piercing, scarring, even plastic surgery), tattooing, burial rites, food traditions (everything from scorpions to fermented shark meat), and fashions in clothing and hair decoration. The Extreme Customs Series engages readers of all ages.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Respectful treatment of the archeological record.
- By fiberflair on 02-23-21
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How to Be a Tudor
- A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life
- By: Ruth Goodman
- Narrated by: Heather Wilds
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 572
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 490
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 481
On the heels of her triumphant How to Be a Victorian, Ruth Goodman travels even further back in English history to the era closest to her heart, the dramatic period from the crowning of Henry VII to the death of Elizabeth I. Drawing on her own adventures living in re-created Tudor conditions, Goodman serves as our intrepid guide to 16th-century living. Proceeding from daybreak to bedtime, this charming, illustrative work celebrates the ordinary lives of those who labored through the era.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent book!
- By Kathi on 02-18-16
By: Ruth Goodman
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Victorian Secrets
- What a Corset Taught Me about the Past, the Present, and Myself
- By: Sarah A. Chrisman
- Narrated by: Kristin Kalbli
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 64
On Sarah A. Chrisman's 29th birthday, her husband, Gabriel, presented her with a corset. The material and the design were breathtakingly beautiful, but her mind immediately filled with unwelcome views. Although she had been in love with the Victorian era all her life, she had specifically asked her husband not to buy her a corset - ever. She'd heard how corsets affected the female body and what they represented, and she wanted none of it.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Exploration of Vanity
- By Sara on 09-08-14
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Gods and Kings
- The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano
- By: Dana Thomas
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Sastre
- Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 247
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 219
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Story5 out of 5 stars 221
In February 2011 John Galliano, the lauded head of Christian Dior, imploded with a drunken, anti-Semitic public tirade. Exactly a year earlier, celebrated designer Alexander McQueen took his own life three weeks before his women's wear show. Both were casualties of the war between art and commerce that has raged within fashion for the last two decades.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Captivating
- By kpaige on 04-15-15
By: Dana Thomas
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Red
- A History of the Redhead
- By: Jacky Colliss Harvey
- Narrated by: Jacky Colliss Harvey
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 168
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 151
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 153
Red is a brilliantly told, captivating history of red hair throughout the ages. An audiobook that breaks new ground, dispels myths, and reinforces the special nature of being a redhead, with a look at multiple disciplines, including science, religion, politics, feminism and sexuality, literature, and art. With an obsessive fascination that is as contagious as it is compelling, author Jacky Colliss Harvey (herself a redhead) begins her exploration of red hair in prehistory and traces the redhead gene as it made its way out of Africa with the early human diaspora.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Pushing Past Stereotypes
- By Troy on 06-09-15
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The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England
- A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
- By: Ian Mortimer
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,261
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,941
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,931
Imagine you could travel back to the 14th century. What would you see? What would you smell? More to the point, where are you going to stay? And what are you going to eat? Ian Mortimer shows us that the past is not just something to be studied; it is also something to be lived. He sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking you to the Middle Ages. The result is the most astonishing social history book you are ever likely to read: evolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining in its detail.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Detailed, Interesting and Entertaining
- By Marc-Andr? on 05-13-10
By: Ian Mortimer
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The Fabric of Civilization
- How Textiles Made the World
- By: Virginia I. Postrel
- Narrated by: Caroline Cole
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 193
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 161
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 161
The story of humanity is the story of textiles - as old as civilization itself. Since the first thread was spun, the need for textiles has driven technology, business, politics, and culture. In The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel synthesizes groundbreaking research from archaeology, economics, and science to reveal a surprising history. From Minoans exporting wool colored with precious purple dye to Egypt, to Romans arrayed in costly Chinese silk, the cloth trade paved the crossroads of the ancient world.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Pop journalism article lengthened into a book
- By Anonymous User on 02-05-22
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Pain, Parties, Work
- Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953
- By: Elizabeth Winder
- Narrated by: Xe Sands
- Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4 out of 5 stars 59
On May 31, 1953, 20-year-old Sylvia Plath arrived in New York City for a one-month stint at Mademoiselle to be a guest editor for its prestigious annual college issue. Over the next 26 days, the bright, blond New England collegian lived at the Barbizon Hotel, attended Balanchine ballets, watched a game at Yankee Stadium, and danced at the West Side Tennis Club. This captivating portrait invites us to see Sylvia Plath before she became an icon - a young woman with everything to live for.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Things about Mademoiselle Magazine I never knew
- By S.Batastini on 05-27-16
By: Elizabeth Winder
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The Red Ribbon
- By: Lucy Adlington
- Narrated by: Katy Sobey
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story5 out of 5 stars 28
Rose, Ella, Marta and Carla. In another life we might all have been friends together. But this was Birchwood. As 14-year-old Ella begins her first day at work she steps into a world of silks, seams, scissors, pins, hems and trimmings. She is a dressmaker, but this is no ordinary sewing workshop. Hers are no ordinary clients. Ella has joined the seamstresses of Birkenau-Auschwitz. Every dress she makes could mean the difference between life and death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful story of hope
- By m.webster on 08-04-24
By: Lucy Adlington
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Owls Do Cry
- By: Janet Frame
- Narrated by: Heather Bolton
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 25
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
Owls Do Cry is Janet Frame's first novel. She describes her idea behind it in the second volume of her autobiography: 'Pictures of great treasure in the midst of sadness and waste haunted me and I began to think, in fiction, of a childhood, home life, hospital life, using people known to me as a base for main characters, and inventing minor characters.'
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4 out of 5 stars
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well told but a wee bit depressing.
- By Muzza on 11-03-19
By: Janet Frame
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Knitting Yarns
- Writers on Knitting
- By: Ann Hood - editor
- Narrated by: Ann Hood, Sam Adrain
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 210
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 188
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Story4 out of 5 stars 190
In Knitting Yarns, twenty-seven writers tell stories about how knitting healed, challenged, or helped them to grow. Poignant, funny, and moving, Knitting Yarns is sure to delight knitting enthusiasts and lovers of literature alike.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Love it!!!!
- By Indigo on 01-30-14
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Thieving Forest
- By: Martha Conway
- Narrated by: Soneela Nankani
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 112
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 97
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Story4 out of 5 stars 97
On a humid day in June 1806, on the edge of Ohio's Great Black Swamp, 17-year-old Susanna Quiner watches from behind a maple tree as a band of Potawatomi Indians kidnaps her four older sisters from their cabin. With both her parents dead and all the other settlers out in their fields, Susanna makes the rash decision to pursue them herself. What follows is a young woman's quest to find her sisters and the parallel story of her sisters' new lives.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Skip the audiobook, read the real thing.
- By Kelly on 11-26-15
By: Martha Conway
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The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,089
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,398
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,391
For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
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The Glitter Plan
- How We Started Juicy Couture for $200 and Turned It into a Global Brand
- By: Pamela Skaist-Levy, Booth Moore, Gela Nash-Taylor
- Narrated by: Rose Itzcovitz
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 92
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 85
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
While working together at a Los Angeles boutique, Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor became fast and furious friends over the impossibility of finding the perfect T-shirt. Following their vision of comfortable, fitted T-shirts, they set up shop in Gela’s one-bedroom Hollywood apartment with $200 and one rule: Whatever they did, they both had to be obsessed by it. Pam and Gela eventually sold their company to Liz Claiborne for $50 million, but not before they created a whole new genre of casual clothing that came to define California cool.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Elementary, at best
- By Laura P on 09-19-14
By: Pamela Skaist-Levy, and others
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So Big
- A Novel
- By: Edna Ferber
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 84
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and widely considered to be Edna Ferber’s greatest achievement, So Big is a classic novel of turn-of-the-century Chicago. So Big is the unforgettable story of the indomitable Selina Peake DeJong and her struggles to stay afloat and maintain her dignity in the face of a challenging marriage, widowhood, and single parenthood.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent
- By Jean on 03-10-23
By: Edna Ferber
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The Weight of Feathers
- By: Anna-Marie McLemore
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne, Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 184
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 167
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Story4 out of 5 stars 171
For 20 years, the Palomas and the Corbeaus have been rivals and enemies, locked in an escalating feud for over a generation. Both families make their living as traveling performers in competing shows - the Palomas swimming in mermaid exhibitions, the Corbeaus, former tightrope walkers, performing in the tallest trees they can find. Lace Paloma may be new to her family's show, but she knows as well as anyone that the Corbeaus are pure magia negra - black magic from the devil himself.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A gem of a book
- By incognito on 11-23-15