Fire Beyond the Darkness: A Metaphysical Journey
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Narrated by:
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Lawrence Winkler
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By:
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Lawrence Winkler
About this listen
Heraclitus’ fragments come together, to life, and toward its antitheses in this fantastic metaphysical journey.
Forty years after Orion’s Cartwheels hitchhiking circumnavigation of the planet, Steve of the Jacuzzi returns to accompany the good doctor on another series of road trips to Alsace and Central Africa and Tennessee, in a penultimate bucket list Grand Tour.
Together, they experience issues of survival on an interstellar Worldship, the epiphanies of perfect late harvest wine, tracking of gorillas in the Impenetrable Forest, a general who fought too much (while another fought not at all), and the thrill of the world’s most famous barbecue competition.
Catch it, in the air.
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Getting Stoned with the Savages
- A Trip through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu
- By: J. Maarten Troost
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After two grueling years on the island of Tarawa, Troost was in no hurry to return to the South Pacific until he began to feel remarkably out of place in modern America. He knew it was time to set off again for parts unknown. Here he tells the story of his time on Vanuatu, a cluster of islands where he struggles against typhoons, earthquakes, and giant centipedes but finds himself swept up in the laid-back, clothing-optional lifestyle of the islanders.
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My new favorite author!
- By L. Worthington on 08-28-07
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The Longest Road
- Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean
- By: Philip Caputo
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Philip Caputo, who had just turned 70, his wife, and their two English setters took off in a truck hauling an Airstream camper from Key West, Florida, en route via back roads and state routes to Deadhorse, Alaska. The journey took four months and covered 17,000 miles, during which Caputo interviewed more than 80 Americans from all walks of life to get a picture of what their lives and the life of the nation are really about in the 21st century.
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Very Disappointing
- By Amazon Customer on 03-25-18
By: Philip Caputo
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Travels with Charley in Search of America
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Gary Sinise
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America, from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Travels with Charley is animated by Steinbeck’s attention to the specific details of the natural world and his sense of how the lives of people are intimately connected to the rhythms of nature—to weather, geography, the cycles of the seasons. His keen ear for the transactions among people is evident, too, as he records the interests and obsessions that preoccupy the Americans he encounters along the way.
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Gary Sinise is fantastic!
- By C. Wilson on 01-11-17
By: John Steinbeck
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All Things Must Fight to Live
- Stories of War and Deliverance in Congo
- By: Bryan Mealer
- Narrated by: Karl Miller
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In All Things Must Fight to Live, Bryan Mealer takes listeners on a harrowing 2000 mile journey through Congo, where gun-toting militia still rape and kill with impunity. Amidst burnt-out battlefields where armies still wrestle for control, into the dark corners of the forests, and along the high savanna, where thousands have been slaughtered and quickly forgotten, Mealer searches for signs that Africa's most troubled state will soon rise from ruin.
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Outstanding story and narration
- By Cthulhu's slobber on 09-19-19
By: Bryan Mealer
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Freddy and Fredericka
- By: Mark Helprin
- Narrated by: Robert Ian Mackenzie
- Length: 25 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Best-selling, critically acclaimed author Mark Helprin's work has drawn favorable comparisons to an elite group of literary legends, including James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Edgar Allan Poe, and Thomas Mann. Helprin's sheer comic brilliance shines in this ingenious farce.
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Can't rate it high enough (and I'm a tough grader)
- By Annette on 09-06-05
By: Mark Helprin
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China Road
- A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power
- By: Rob Gifford
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
National Public Radio's Beijing correspondent Rob Gifford recounts his travels along Route 312, the Chinese Mother Road, the longest route in the world's most populous nation. Based on his successful NPR radio series, China Road draws on Gifford's 20 years of observing first-hand this rapidly transforming country, as he travels east to west, from Shanghai to China's border with Kazakhstan. As he takes listeners on this journey, he also takes them through China's past and present while he tries to make sense of this complex nation's potential future.
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An Outstanding Book on China
- By Sarda on 08-13-07
By: Rob Gifford
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Sovietistan
- Travels in Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan
- By: Erika Fatland
- Narrated by: Jill Rolls
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan became free of the Soviet Union in 1991. But though they are new to modern statehood, this is a region rich in ancient history, culture, and landscapes unlike anywhere else in the world. Traveling alone, Erika Fatland is a true adventurer in every sense. In Sovietistan, she takes the listener on a compassionate and insightful journey to explore how their Soviet heritage has influenced these countries, with governments experimenting with both democracy and dictatorships.
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Outstanding book
- By George MP on 04-24-22
By: Erika Fatland
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Land of a Thousand Hills
- My Life in Rwanda
- By: Rosamond Halsey Carr, Ann Halsey Howard - contributor
- Narrated by: C. M. Hébert
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Rosamond Halsey Carr first arrived in Africa, she didn't realize that she would spend the rest of her life there. As a young fashion illustrator living in New York City in the 1940s, she seemed the least likely candidate for such a life of adventure. But marriage to a hunter-explorer took her to what was then the Belgian Congo, and divorce left her determined to stay on in neighboring Rwanda as the manager of a flower plantation.
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Wow... just, wow... (not a good wow)
- By Jankow on 01-04-21
By: Rosamond Halsey Carr, and others
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A Russian Journal
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Steinbeck and Capa's account of their journey through Cold War Russia is a classic piece of reportage and travel writing.Just after the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the New York Herald Tribune.
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Extremely Interesting
- By Jean on 12-04-14
By: John Steinbeck
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Golden Bones
- An Extraordinary Journey from Hell in Cambodia to a New Life in America
- By: Sichan Siv
- Narrated by: David Thorn
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Cambodia in the 1960s, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge declared war on their own people, enslaving and slaughtering anybody who disagreed with them. Sichan Siv knew he would soon be a target - ending up, perhaps, as one of the millions of anonymous human skeletons buried in his nation's Killing Fields - so he heeded his mother's pleas and ran. Captured and forced to perform slave labor, Siv feared that he'd be worked to death or killed. But he never abandoned hope or his improbable dream of freedom - a dream that liberated him.
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Misleading Publisher’s Summary
- By Chris on 05-01-18
By: Sichan Siv
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Iranian Rappers and Persian Porn
- A Hitchhiker's Adventures in the New Iran
- By: Jamie Maslin
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
When Jamie Maslin decides to hitchhike the entire length of the Silk Road, he decides to travel first and plan later. Then, unexpectedly stranded in Iran - a country he's only read about in newspapers - he wonders whether he'll make it out alive. After crossing the border on foot from Turkey, Maslin finds himself suddenly plunged into the subversive, contradictory world of Iranian subculture, where he is embraced by locals who are happy to show him the true Iran as they see it....
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Entertaining & Informative
- By Bella Bates on 04-18-14
By: Jamie Maslin