Preview
  • The Great Upheaval

  • America and the Birth of the Modern World 1788-1800
  • By: Jay Winik
  • Narrated by: Sam Tsoutsouvas
  • Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
  • 4.0 out of 5 stars (55 ratings)

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The Great Upheaval

By: Jay Winik
Narrated by: Sam Tsoutsouvas
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Publisher's summary

It is an era that redefined history. As the 1790s began, a fragile America teetered on the brink of oblivion, Russia towered as a vast imperial power, and France plunged into monumental revolution. But none of these remarkable events occurred in isolation. In The Great Upheaval, acclaimed historian Jay Winik masterfully illuminates how their fates combined in one extraordinary moment to change the course of civilization.

Winik brings his vast, meticulous research and narrative genius to the cold, dark battlefields and deadly clashes of ideologies that defined this age. Here is a savage world war, the toppling of a great dynasty, and an America struggling to survive at home and abroad. Here, too, is the first modern Holy War between Islam and a resurgent Christian empire. And here is the richest cast of characters ever to walk upon the world stage: Washington and Jefferson, Louis XVI and Robespierre, Catherine the Great, Adams, Napoleon, and Selim III.

Exquisitely written and utterly compelling, The Great Upheaval vividly depicts an arc of revolutionary fervor stretching from Philadelphia and Paris to St. Petersburg and Cairo, with fateful results. A landmark in historical literature, Winik's gripping, epic portrait of this tumultuous decade will forever transform the way we see America's beginnings and our world.

©2007 Jay Winik (P)2007 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
  • Abridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History
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Editorial reviews

Jay Winik's stirring narrative is filled with high drama and strong verbs - it's a tale whose telling requires the steadiness of an accomplished narrator. Sam Tsoutsouvas's mellow, assured tone establishes the thread of a narrative that roams from the American frontier to the farthest reaches of the Russian Empire under Catherine the Great. The drama of those pivotal final years of the eighteenth century is heightened by Winik's sense of the momentous, a word he himself frequently employs. Tsoutsouvas maintains the necessary pace and consistency to modulate the intensity (and frequent ferocity) of this narrative's many scenes of action. An excellent popular history, this is a perfect match of book and narrator.

Critic reviews

"Buttressed by impeccable research, vividly narrated and deftly organized, this is popular history of the highest order and is sure to create a stir." ( Publishers Weekly)

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    3 out of 5 stars

Does anyone listen to these first?

Briefly-does anyone list to these books before they are become available? Why does a narrator get away with mispronouncing words? I couldn't believe hearing VISA Versa. It's a great book, but I can't be sure what I'm hearing is what's written.

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6 people found this helpful