Republic of Detours
How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America
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Republic of Detours
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Yen
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By:
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Scott Borchert
About this listen
The plan was as idealistic as it was audacious - and utterly unprecedented. Take thousands of broke writers and put them to work charting a country on the brink of social and economic collapse, with the aim of producing a rich and beguiling series of guidebooks to the 48 states.
All this fell within the singular purview of the Federal Writers' Project - a division of the Works Progress Administration founded to employ jobless writers, from best-selling novelists and acclaimed poets to the more dubiously qualified. It was a predictably eclectic organization, directed by an equally eccentric man, Henry Alsberg. Under Alsberg's direction, the FWP took up the lofty goal of rediscovering America, and soon found itself embroiled in the day's most heated arguments regarding literary representation, radical politics, and racial inclusion - forcing it to reckon with the promises and failures of both the New Deal and the American experiment itself.
Republic of Detours tells the story of this raucous and remarkable undertaking by delving into the stories of several key figures and tracing the FWP from its optimistic early days to its dismemberment by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
©2021 Scott Borchert (P)2021 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 38
The idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants is at the core of the American narrative. But in 1924, Congress instituted a system of ethnic quotas so stringent that it choked off large-scale immigration for decades, sharply curtailing arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe and outright banning those from nearly all of Asia. In a riveting narrative filled with a fascinating cast of characters, Jia Lynn Yang recounts how lawmakers, activists, and presidents from Truman through LBJ worked relentlessly to abolish the 1924 law.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good overview
- By steve thomas on 10-21-20
By: Jia Lynn Yang
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The Chief
- The Life of William Randolph Hearst
- By: David Nasaw
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 30 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 176
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 146
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 144
William Randolph Hearst, known to his staff as the "Chief", was a brilliant business strategist and a man of prodigious appetites. By the 1930s, he controlled the largest publishing empire in the United States, including 28 newspapers, the Cosmopolitan Picture Studio, radio stations, and 13 magazines. He quickly learned how to use this media stronghold to achieve unprecedented political power. In The Chief, David Nasaw presents an intimate portrait of the man famously characterized in the classic film Citizen Kane.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating but
- By Michael on 02-17-22
By: David Nasaw
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Why They Marched
- Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote
- By: Susan Ware
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 81
For far too long, the history of how American women won the right to vote has been told as the tale of a few iconic leaders, all white and native-born. But Susan Ware uncovered a much broader and more diverse story waiting to be told. Why They Marched is a tribute to the many women who worked tirelessly in communities across the nation, out of the spotlight, protesting, petitioning, and insisting on their right to full citizenship.
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5 out of 5 stars
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a needed history lesson
- By Jerseycookie on 05-14-22
By: Susan Ware
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JFK
- Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956
- By: Fredrik Logevall
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 29 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 547
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 482
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Story5 out of 5 stars 480
By the time of his assassination in 1963, John F. Kennedy stood at the helm of the greatest power the world had ever seen, a booming American nation that he had steered through some of the most perilous diplomatic standoffs of the Cold War. Born in 1917 to a striving Irish American family that had become among Boston’s wealthiest, Kennedy knew political ambition from an early age, and his meteoric rise to become the youngest elected president cemented his status as one of the most mythologized figures in American history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Portrait of JFK & His Times
- By John David on 12-14-20
By: Fredrik Logevall
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Soul City
- Race, Equality, and the Lost Dream of an American Utopia
- By: Thomas Healy
- Narrated by: Larry Herron
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 26
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 23
Author Thomas Healy resurrects a forgotten saga of race, capitalism, and the struggle for equality in this fascinating, forgotten story of the 1970s attempt to build a city dedicated to racial equality in the heart of “Klan Country”.
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5 out of 5 stars
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awesome narrator
- By Arthur F. Jackson on 06-23-21
By: Thomas Healy
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Trailblazer
- A Pioneering Journalist's Fight to Make the Media Look More Like America
- By: Dorothy Butler Gilliam
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 67
Dorothy Butler Gilliam, whose 50-year-career as a journalist put her in the forefront of the fight for social justice, offers a comprehensive view of racial relations and the media in the US.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Struggled to finish
- By SL41639 on 04-06-20
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Jane Crow
- The Life of Pauli Murray
- By: Rosalind Rosenberg
- Narrated by: Janina Edwards
- Length: 18 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story5 out of 5 stars 42
A mixed-race orphan, Murray grew up in segregated North Carolina before escaping to New York, where she attended Hunter College and became a labor activist in the 1930s. When she applied to graduate school at the University of North Carolina, where her white great-great-grandfather had been a trustee, she was rejected because of her race. She went on to graduate first in her class at Howard Law School, only to be rejected for graduate study again at Harvard University this time on account of her sex. Undaunted, Murray forged a singular career in the law.
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5 out of 5 stars
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What a legacy!!!
- By Paul on 03-08-21
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Golden Dreams
- California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963
- By: Kevin Starr
- Narrated by: Elijah Alexander
- Length: 29 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 61
Starr brilliantly illuminates the dominant economic, social, and cultural forces in California in these pivotal years. In a powerful blend of telling events, colorful personalities, and insightful analyses, Starr examines such issues as the overnight creation of the postwar California suburb, the rise of Los Angeles as Super City, the reluctant emergence of San Diego as one of the largest cities in the nation, and the decline of political centrism.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Give us more Starr on California!!
- By Roger on 08-24-16
By: Kevin Starr
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1959
- The Year Everything Changed
- By: Fred Kaplan
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 140
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 96
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Story4 out of 5 stars 95
Acclaimed national security columnist and noted cultural critic Fred Kaplan looks past the 1960s to the year that really changed AmericaWhile conventional accounts focus on the 60s as the era of pivotal change that swept the nation, Fred Kaplan argues that it was 1959 that ushered in the wave of tremendous cultural, political, and scientific shifts that would play out in the decades that followed.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Facinating look at a neglected moment in history
- By James on 05-25-11
By: Fred Kaplan
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The Fire Is upon Us
- James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America
- By: Nicholas Buccola
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 153
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 133
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Story5 out of 5 stars 131
On February 18, 1965, an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. The topic was "the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro", and no one who has seen the debate can soon forget it. Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is upon Us is the first book to tell the full story of the event.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Sadly, the story is timeless.
- By Edward P. Cerne on 01-17-20
By: Nicholas Buccola
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The Man in the Glass House
- Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century
- By: Mark Lamster
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
Award-winning architectural critic and biographer Mark Lamster's The Man in the Glass House lifts the veil on Johnson's controversial and endlessly contradictory life to tell the story of a charming yet deeply flawed man. A roller-coaster tale of the perils of wealth, privilege, and ambition, this book probes the dynamics of American culture that made him so powerful and tells the story of the built environment in modern America.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Disappointing!
- By David G Dempsey on 07-12-19
By: Mark Lamster
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The Fifties
- By: David Halberstam
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 34 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 569
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 505
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 500
The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the 10 years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower, Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon; but also of Harley Earl, who put fins on cars; Dick and Mac McDonald and Ray Kroc, who mass-produced the American hamburger; Kemmons Wilson, who placed his Holiday Inns along the nation's roadsides; and more.
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5 out of 5 stars
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one of the very best
- By Chester Chellman on 09-25-18
By: David Halberstam
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Making History
- The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past
- By: Richard Cohen
- Narrated by: Richard Cohen
- Length: 26 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
There are many stories we can spin about previous ages, but which accounts get told? And by whom? Is there even such a thing as “objective” history? In this “witty, wise, and elegant” (The Spectator), book, Richard Cohen reveals how professional historians and other equally significant witnesses, such as the writers of the Bible, novelists, and political propagandists, influence what becomes the accepted record. Cohen argues, for example, that some historians are practitioners of “Bad History” and twist reality to glorify themselves or their country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Missing 20 pages from book
- By Rick, Austin on 04-23-22
By: Richard Cohen
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Tony Hillerman
- A Life
- By: James McGrath Morris
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 44
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story5 out of 5 stars 42
The author of 18 spellbinding detective novels set on the Navajo Nation, Tony Hillerman simultaneously transformed a traditional genre and unlocked the mysteries of the Navajo culture to an audience of millions. His best-selling novels added Navajo Tribal Police detectives Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee to the pantheon of American fictional detectives.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Well written biography of an American legend.
- By Kevin McFarlane on 02-05-22
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The Good Girls Revolt
- How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace
- By: Lynn Povich
- Narrated by: Susan Larkin
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 192
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 163
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Story4 out of 5 stars 167
It was the 1960s - a time of economic boom and social strife. Young women poured into the workplace, but the “Help Wanted” ads were segregated by gender and the “Mad Men” office culture was rife with sexual stereotyping and discrimination. Lynn Povich was one of the lucky ones, landing a job at Newsweek, renowned for its cutting-edge coverage of civil rights and the “Swinging Sixties.” Nora Ephron, Jane Bryant Quinn, Ellen Goodman, and Susan Brownmiller all started there as well. It was a top-notch job - for a girl - at an exciting place. But it was a dead end.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good book read by Ms Robot.
- By careuther on 09-17-16
By: Lynn Povich
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Shakespeare in a Divided America
- What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future
- By: James Shapiro
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 325
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 281
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 278
The plays of William Shakespeare are rare common ground in the United States. For well over two centuries, Americans of all stripes—presidents and activists, soldiers and writers, conservatives and liberals alike—have turned to Shakespeare’s works to explore the nation’s fault lines. In a narrative arching from Revolutionary times to the present day, leading scholar James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare’s four-hundred-year-old tragedies and comedies in illuminating the many concerns on which American identity has turned.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An Entertaining History Lesson
- By David on 08-17-20
By: James Shapiro
What listeners say about Republic of Detours
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Fredericka
- 06-29-21
Narrator Annoying
Fascinating story, well written with humor. However, I couldn't listen to it because the narrator was so annoying! His narration never became the background to the book, and it became impossible to enjoy.
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