On Admiration
Heros, Heroines, Role Models, and Mentors
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On Admiration
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Narrated by:
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Erik Davies
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By:
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W. D. Wetherell
About this listen
In a refreshing departure from today's celebrity worship cultivated by reality television, tabloid photos, and celebrity twittering, award-winning novelist W.D. Wetherell's On Admiration celebrates the heroes and heroines who have peopled his life from his earliest years. Writers, singers, presidents, athletes, cartoonists, artists, activists, and many more are examined here- from Henry David Thoreau to Willa Cather to Albert Camus to Dwight D. Eisenhower to Winston Churchill to Beverly Sills - in this humorous, insightful memoir that speaks powerfully about the state of fame, celebrity culture, and honest admiration.Wetherell skillfully reminds us of the magic and mystery that comes with slow discovery - of that first awareness of those figures who awoke something within us, that inspired us as children, teenagers, and adults - forever altering the landscape of ourselves. From visiting Herman Melville's study where Melville wrote Moby Dick to being a Rangers fan living in NYC - Wetherell examines the meaning of the American cultural landscape - and its remnants - in a candid and personal memoir like no other before him. With this lively and exacting series of pop culture essays, Wetherell joins the ranks of David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Chuck Klosterman.
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Editorial reviews
In On Admiration: Heros, Heroines, Role Models, and Mentors, acclaimed writer W. D. Wetherell approaches a memoir from a different angle: Rather than simply recounting his life, he details the influences that have made him who he is today. Warmly performed by experienced voice actor Erik Davies, Wetherell's candid pop culture essays reference people as diverse as Henry David Thoreau, Albert Camus, and Winston Churchill. A deep, thoughtful collection that distances itself from today's shallow celebrity culture, On Admiration is an enjoyable listen that celebrates truly inspirational cultural icons.
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- Narrated by: Maureen Corrigan
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 240
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 201
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 200
Conceived nearly a century ago by a man who died believing himself a failure, it's now a revered classic and a rite of passage in the reading lives of millions. But how well do we really know The Great Gatsby? As Maureen Corrigan, Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out, while Fitzgerald's masterpiece may be one of the most popular novels in America, many of us first read it when we were too young to fully comprehend its power.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Reading Gatsby as an adult reveals its greatness!
- By Mark on 10-06-14
By: Maureen Corrigan
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Living the Braveheart Life
- Finding the Courage to Follow Your Heart
- By: Randall Wallace
- Narrated by: Matt Baugher
- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 66
Part autobiography, part master class, Living the Braveheart Life invites us to explore five major archetypes in Braveheart that resonate not only in Randall's life but in the modern-day lives of both men and women: the father, teacher, warrior, sage, and outlaw. Join blockbuster film director Randall Wallace on the journey of his creative and personal life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Braveheart has a valable message!
- By Mrs.Bushy on 04-28-21
By: Randall Wallace
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Reading My Father
- A Memoir
- By: Alexandra Styron
- Narrated by: Alexandra Styron
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 65
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4 out of 5 stars 39
Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written with humor, compassion, and grace.
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5 out of 5 stars
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William Styron Ranks...
- By Douglas on 12-22-13
By: Alexandra Styron
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Go Ahead in the Rain
- Notes to A Tribe Called Quest
- By: Hanif Abdurraqib
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 375
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 333
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 331
The seminal rap group A Tribe Called Quest brought jazz into the genre, resurrecting timeless rhythms to create masterpieces. This narrative follows Tribe from their early days as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the Native Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their eventual breakup and long hiatus. Throughout the narrative, poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their street-level impact and draws from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among fans like himself.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful
- By Joshua Lindell on 03-06-19
By: Hanif Abdurraqib
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The Voice is All
- The Lonely Victory of Jack Kerouac
- By: Joyce Johnson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
In The Voice Is All, Joyce Johnson - coauthor of the classic memoir Door Wide Open, about her relationship with Jack Kerouac - brilliantly peels away layers of the Kerouac legend to show how, caught between two cultures and two languages, he forged a voice to contain his dualities. Looking more deeply than previous biographers into how Kerouac's French Canadian background enriched his prose and gave him a unique outsider's vision of America, she tracks his development from boyhood through the phenomenal breakthroughs of 1951 that resulted in the composition of On the Road.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Kerouac's Voice
- By Robert L. Stofel on 09-26-12
By: Joyce Johnson
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Empire of Self
- A Life of Gore Vidal
- By: Jay Parini
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 91
The product of 30 years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's Empire of Self probes behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful life to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truth underlying his celebrity-strewn life. But there is plenty of glittering surface as well - a virtual who's who of the American Century, from Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart through the Kennedys, Princess Margaret, and the creme de la creme of Hollywood.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well done!
- By Christopher on 03-22-16
By: Jay Parini
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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
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Melville in Love
- The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick
- By: Michael Shelden
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
Herman Melville's epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. Because he was neglected by academics for so long, and because he made little effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about Melville, and even less about what he called his "wicked book". Scholars still puzzle over what drove Melville to invent Captain Ahab's mad pursuit of the great white whale.
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4 out of 5 stars
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intriguing
- By Jean on 06-18-16
By: Michael Shelden
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Distant Star
- By: Roberto Bolano
- Narrated by: Walter Krochmal
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
A chilling novel about the nightmare of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship. The star of Roberto Bolano's hair-raising novel Distant Star is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry, a multimedia enterprise involving sky-writing, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions. For our unnamed narrator, who first encounters this "star" in a college poetry workshop, Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Omg
- By Sierra on 08-03-16
By: Roberto Bolano
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Ted Hughes
- The Unauthorized Life
- By: Jonathan Bate
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 25 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
Ted Hughes, poet laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. With an equal gift for poetry and prose, and with a soul as capacious as any poet in history, he was also a prolific children's writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letter writer since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Phenomenal thanks to narrator!
- By equinox14 on 06-26-16
By: Jonathan Bate
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The Ground Beneath Her Feet
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 27 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 123
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Story4 out of 5 stars 88
Salman Rushdie is widely considered one of a handful of truly great living writers. The internationally acclaimed, Booker Prize-winning author's storytelling shines in this epic love story, a modern retelling of the myth of Orpheus.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Okay, Salmon, We get that you're a genious already
- By Julie A Quinn on 04-23-09
By: Salman Rushdie
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Reading Like a Writer
- By: Francine Prose
- Narrated by: Nanette Savard
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 233
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 150
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Story4 out of 5 stars 145
In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters and discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire listeners to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Practical, literate, generous
- By Gare on 04-13-08
By: Francine Prose
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The Last Love Song
- A Biography of Joan Didion
- By: Tracy Daugherty
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 26 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 83
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Riveted for 1591 miles
- By Kaysi12 on 04-11-16
By: Tracy Daugherty
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Catch a Wave
- The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson
- By: Peter Ames Carlin
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 209
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 190
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 188
In Catch a Wave, Peter Ames Carlin pulls back the curtain on Brian Wilson, one of popular music's most revered luminaries, as well as its biggest mystery. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and never-before heard studio recordings, Carlin follows the Beach Boys from their earliest days through Brian's deepening emotional problems to his triumphant re-emergence with the release of Smile, the legendarily unreleased album he had originally shelved.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not great
- By J. Barker on 08-08-16
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The Great Escape
- Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World
- By: Kati Marton
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 80
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 39
The stunning story of the breathtaking journey of nine extraordinary men from Budapest to the New World, what they experienced along their dangerous route, and how they changed America and the world. In a style both personal and historically groundbreaking, acclaimed author Kati Marton (born in Budapest) tells the tale of their youth in Budapest's Golden Age of the early 20th century, their flight, and their lives of extraordinary accomplishment, danger, glamour, and poignancy.
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3 out of 5 stars
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very interesting, well-narrated
- By D. Littman on 12-17-06
By: Kati Marton
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The Secret Life of the American Musical
- How Broadway Shows Are Built
- By: Jack Viertel
- Narrated by: David Pittu
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 256
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 230
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 230
For almost a century, Americans have been losing their hearts and losing their minds in an insatiable love affair with the American musical. It often begins in actors and reaches its passionate zenith when it comes time for love, marriage, and children, who will start the cycle all over again. Americans love musicals. Americans invented musicals. Americans perfected musicals. But what, exactly, is a musical?
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great review lacked music
- By joseph f mcgovern on 10-14-18
By: Jack Viertel