Overture of Hope
Two Sisters' Daring Plan That Saved Opera's Jewish Stars from the Third Reich
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Overture of Hope
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Narrated by:
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Liisa Ivary
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By:
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Isabel Vincent
About this listen
A secret aria of courage and suspense
Europe, 1937. Two British sisters: one a dowdy typist, the other a soon-to-be famous romance novelist. One shared passion for opera.
With war clouds gathering and harassment increasing, the stars of Continental opera, many of whom are Jewish, face dark futures under the boot heel of the Nazis. What can two middle-aged British spinsters do about such matters? They can form a secret cabal right under Hitler’s nose and get to work saving lives. The sisters conspire to bring together worldwide opera aficionados and insiders in an international operation to rescue Jews in the opera from the horrific fate that everyone intuits is coming. By the time war does arrive, the Cooks and their operatives have plucked over two dozen Jewish men and women from the looming maw of the Holocaust and spirited them to safety in England.
Packed with original research and vividly told with suspense, hope, and wonder by award-winning New York Post investigative journalist Isabel Vincent, this singular tale reveals many new details of the seemingly naïve and oblivious Cook sisters’ surreptitious bravery, daring, and passionate commitment as the two mount a successful rescue mission that saves dozens of lives and preserves the opera they love for another generation.
©2022 Isabel Vincent (P)2022 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
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- One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany
- By: Steven Pressman
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 52
In early 1939, few Americans were thinking about the darkening storm clouds over Europe. Nor did they have much sympathy for the growing number of Jewish families that were increasingly threatened and brutalized by Adolf Hitler's policies in Germany and Austria. But one ordinary American couple decided that something had to be done. Despite overwhelming obstacles - both in Europe and in the United States - Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus made a bold and unprecedented decision to travel into Nazi Germany in an effort to save a group of Jewish children.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I didn't want it to end
- By David Shear on 05-07-14
By: Steven Pressman
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After the Romanovs
- Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War
- By: Helen Rappaport
- Narrated by: Pearl Hewitt
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 24
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 24
Paris has always been a city of cultural excellence, fine wine and food, and the latest fashions. But it has also been a place of refuge for those fleeing persecution, never more so than before and after the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Romanov dynasty. For years, Russian aristocrats had enjoyed all that Belle Époque Paris had to offer, spending lavishly when they visited. It was a place of artistic experimentation, such as Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. But the brutality of the Bolshevik takeover forced Russians of all types to flee their homeland.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Mildly interesting story of Russians exiles
- By Conrad Hastler on 05-20-22
By: Helen Rappaport
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Stalin's Daughter
- The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva
- By: Rosemary Sullivan
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 19 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 208
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 187
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 187
The award-winning author of Villa Air-Bel returns with a painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history's most monstrous dictators—her father, Josef Stalin. Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy—the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Insightful and thoroughly researched
- By Jean on 06-16-15
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In the Garden of Beasts
- Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
- By: Erik Larson
- Narrated by: Stephen Hoye
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 9,037
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7,638
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Story4 out of 5 stars 7,625
The time is 1933, the place, Berlin, when William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany in a year that proved to be a turning point in history. A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the “New Germany,” she has one affair after another....
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5 out of 5 stars
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I loved it ... and hated it ... simultaneously
- By History on 11-21-11
By: Erik Larson
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When Paris Sizzled
- The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends
- By: Mary McAuliffe
- Narrated by: Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 97
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 88
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 89
When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, les Annees folles, when Parisians emerged from the horrors of war to find that a new world greeted them - one that reverberated with the hard metallic clang of the assembly line, the roar of automobiles, and the beat of jazz. Mary McAuliffe traces a decade that saw seismic change on almost every front, from art and architecture to music, literature, fashion, entertainment, transportation, and, most notably, behavior.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Informative, but no sizzle
- By OzEnigma on 06-01-17
By: Mary McAuliffe
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Enemies of the People
- My Family's Journey to America
- By: Kati Marton
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 103
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 52
In this true-life thriller, Kati Marton draws on her skill as an investigative reporter to discover who her journalist parents really were---and how they survived the Nazis in Budapest and imprisonment by the Soviets during the Cold War.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Couldn't stop listening
- By Jane on 04-09-10
By: Kati Marton
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The Invitation-Only Zone
- The True Story of North Korea's Abduction Project
- By: Robert S. Boynton
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 50
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Story4 out of 5 stars 50
Throughout the late 1970s and early '80s, dozens of Japanese citizens were abducted from coastal Japanese towns by North Korean commandos. In what proved to be part of a global project, North Korea attempted to reeducate the abductees and train them to spy on the state's behalf. When the project faltered, the abductees were hidden in a series of guarded communities known as "Invitation-Only Zones" - the fiction being that these were exclusive enclaves, not prisons.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Over enthusiastic reader!
- By AJW on 02-14-16
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Sleeping with the Enemy
- Coco Chanel's Secret War
- By: Hal Vaughan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker, Mark Deakins
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 148
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 121
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Story4 out of 5 stars 122
Coco Chanel created the look of the modern woman and was the high priestess of couture. She believed in simplicity, and elegance, and freed women from the tyranny of fashion. She inspired women to take off their bone corsets and cut their hair. She used ordinary jersey as couture fabric, elevated the waistline, and created bell-bottom trousers, trench coats, and turtleneck sweaters. In the 1920s, when Chanel employed more than 2,000 people in her workrooms, she had amassed a personal fortune of $15 million and went on to create an empire.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Wandering account, errors in French
- By Vivien Tarkirk-Smith on 07-04-13
By: Hal Vaughan
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The Sisters
- The Saga of the Mitford Family
- By: Mary S. Lovell
- Narrated by: Annie Wauters
- Length: 18 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 221
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Performance3.5 out of 5 stars 192
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Story4 out of 5 stars 194
This is the story of a close, loving family splintered by the violent ideologies of Europe between the wars. Jessica was a Communist; Debo became the Duchess of Devonshire; Nancy was one of the best-selling novelists of her day; the ethereally beautiful Diana was the most hated woman in England; and Unity Valkyrie, born in Swastika, Alaska, would become obsessed with Adolf Hitler.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Great story, terrible reader
- By Victoria on 02-27-14
By: Mary S. Lovell
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Travelers in the Third Reich
- The Rise of Fascism: 1919-1945
- By: Julia Boyd
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 86
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 77
Travelers in the Third Reich is an extraordinary history of the rise of the Nazis based on fascinating firsthand accounts, drawing together a multitude of voices and stories, including politicians, musicians, diplomats, schoolchildren, communists, scholars, athletes, poets, fascists, artists, tourists, and even celebrities like Charles Lindbergh and Samuel Beckett. Their experiences create a remarkable three-dimensional picture of Germany under Hitler - one so palpable that the listener will feel, hear, even breathe the atmosphere.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Why must I write a review to have my rating count?
- By Saint Exupery on 03-04-23
By: Julia Boyd
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Eva Peron
- By: Nicholas Fraser, Marysa Navarro
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 64
The story begins in a dusty village lost in the Argentine pampas, where a girl, born out of wedlock, scrambles her way to the capital city by the time she is 15. It ends with the embalmed corpse of Eva Perõn being hidden away by nervous politicians for fear that if the working people of Argentina knew where it was buried, it would inspire them to revolution.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well written and researched, and very interesting.
- By Dolce Momento on 10-19-24
By: Nicholas Fraser, and others
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True Believer
- Stalin's Last American Spy
- By: Kati Marton
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 112
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Story4 out of 5 stars 108
True Believer reveals the life of Noel Field, an American who betrayed his country and crushed his family. Field, once a well-meaning and privileged American, spied for Stalin during the 1930s and '40s. Then, a pawn in Stalin's sinister master strategy, Field was kidnapped and tortured by the KGB and forced to testify against his own Communist comrades.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Misplaced Loyalty
- By Joanne on 04-08-18
By: Kati Marton
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The Zhivago Affair
- The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book
- By: Peter Finn, Petra Couvée
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 132
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 118
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 121
In May of 1956, an Italian publishing scout took a train to the Russian countryside to visit the country's most beloved poet, Boris Pasternak. He left concealing the original manuscript of Pasternak's much anticipated first novel, entrusted to him with these words from the author: "This is Doctor Zhivago. May it make its way around the world." Pasternak knew his novel would never be published in the Soviet Union, where the authorities regarded it as an assault on the 1917 Revolution, so he allowed it to be published in translation all over the world.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Read this to understand Doctor Zhivago and Russia
- By KathrynVB on 10-16-14
By: Peter Finn, and others
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Lioness
- Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel
- By: Francine Klagsbrun
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 32 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 209
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 182
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 183
Golda Meir was a world figure unlike any other. Born in tsarist Russia in 1898, she immigrated to America in 1906 and grew up in Milwaukee, where from her earliest years she displayed the political consciousness and organizational skills that would eventually catapult her into the inner circles of Israel's founding generation. Moving to mandatory Palestine in 1921 with her husband, the passionate socialist joined a kibbutz but soon left and was hired at a public works office by the man who would become the great love of her life.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The persistent mispronunciations of Hebrew and Yiddish words ruined this performance
- By YH-O on 12-30-18
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A Kim Jong-Il Production
- The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power
- By: Paul Fischer
- Narrated by: Stephen Park
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 425
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 358
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 362
Before becoming the world's most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea's Ministry for Propaganda and its film studios. Conceiving every movie made, he acted as producer and screenwriter. Despite this control, he was underwhelmed by the available talent and took drastic steps, ordering the kidnapping of Choi Eun-Hee (Madam Choi) - South Korea's most famous actress - and her ex-husband Shin Sang-Ok, the country's most famous filmmaker.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely terrifying
- By Anonymous on 02-19-15
By: Paul Fischer
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Americans in Paris
- Life and Death under Nazi Occupation
- By: Charles Glass
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 52
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Story4 out of 5 stars 51
In Americans in Paris, tales of adventure, intrigue, passion, deceit, and survival unfold season by season as renowned journalist Charles Glass tells the story of a remarkable cast of expatriates and their struggles in Nazi Paris. Before the Second World War began, approximately thirty thousand Americans lived in Paris, and when war broke out in 1939 almost five thousand remained.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Informative, but average engagement
- By Leann on 05-09-17
By: Charles Glass
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Prague Winter
- A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 435
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 384
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 382
Before Madeleine Albright turned twelve, her life was shaken by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia—the country where she was born—the Battle of Britain, the near total destruction of European Jewry, the Allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War. Albright's experiences, and those of her family, provide a lens through which to view the most tumultuous dozen years in modern history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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History from a Personal Perspective
- By Jeanette Finan on 02-22-13
What listeners say about Overture of Hope
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- feigie
- 01-21-24
memorable
I appreciate learning about such courageous people whose heroism I had not known about. this is well researched and also narrated very well.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- BarbieAlaska
- 09-16-22
Thank you
Each person can do something to help someone . History has shown that ordinary people can do extraordinary deeds.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Jim Hatfield
- 01-15-23
A Great Book!
Wonderfully written and narrated. I never thought a book about two English spinsters would never have a dull moment. I learned a lot and was given even more to think about. Get this book, you won't be dissapointed!
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