The Man Who Painted the Universe
The Story of a Planetarium in the Heart of the North Woods
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The Man Who Painted the Universe
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Narrated by:
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Wes Super
About this listen
As a young boy Frank Kovac Jr. fell deeply in love with stargazing, painting glow-in-the-dark constellations on his bedroom wall and inviting friends to an observatory he built in his Chicago backyard. As he reached adulthood, Kovac did not let go of his childhood dreams of reaching the stars. He began scheming to bring the universe home. While working at a paper mill as a young man, Kovac tirelessly built a 22-foot rotating globe planetarium in the woods. Despite failures and collapses, the amateur astronomer singlehandedly built a North Woods treasure, painting more than 5,000 glowing stars-dot by dot in glowing paints. Today, Kovac and his unique planetarium take visitors to the stars every day.
The Man Who Painted the Universe: The Story of a Planetarium in the Heart of the North Woods introduces listeners to the mild-mannered astronomy enthusiast whose creativity, ingenuity, fervor, and endurance realized a dream of galactic proportions. The story of this stargazer from Wisconsin's North Woods so inspired two newspapermen, authors Ron Legro and Avi Lank, that they sought to document the story of the Kovac Planetarium for a new generation of stargazers and dreamers.
©2015 Ron Legro and Avrum Lank (P)2017 Wisconsin Historical Society PressListeners also enjoyed...
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- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 135
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 109
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Story4 out of 5 stars 109
There are 62 LEGO bricks for every person in the world, and at age 30, Jonathan Bender realized that he didn't have a single one of them. While reconsidering his childhood dream of becoming a master model builder for The LEGO Group, he discovers the men and women who are skewing the averages with collections of hundreds of thousands of LEGO bricks. What is it about the ubiquitous, brightly colored toys that makes them so hard for everyone to put down?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Be careful if you already like Lego
- By Matthew Center on 03-14-11
By: Jonathan Bender
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You Say to Brick
- The Life of Louis Kahn
- By: Wendy Lesser
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 53
Born to a Jewish family in Estonia in 1901 and brought to America in 1906, the architect Louis Kahn grew up in poverty in Philadelphia; by the time of his death in 1974, he was widely recognized as one of the greatest architects of his era. Yet this enormous reputation was based on only a handful of masterpieces, all built during the last 15 years of his life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A book about architect needs pictures
- By Kristin Olson-garewal on 10-15-17
By: Wendy Lesser
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The Great Wall of China and the Salton Sea
- Monuments, Missteps, and the Audacity of Ambition
- By: Russell Rathbun
- Narrated by: Larry Herron
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 25
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 23
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Story5 out of 5 stars 23
We've been building and making things ever since we stumbled out of paradise. Some of those things are incredible continuations of God's creation, while others are nothing but ambitious catastrophes. We continue making, says Russell Rathbun, but we've lost ourselves in the process.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent narrator
- By Tammy on 03-17-18
By: Russell Rathbun
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Explore/Create
- My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark
- By: Richard Garriott, David Fisher
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 73
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 73
An inventor, adventurer, entrepreneur, collector, and entertainer, and son of legendary scientist-astronaut Owen Garriott, Richard Garriott de Cayeux has been behind some of the most exciting undertakings of our time. A legendary pioneer of the online gaming industry - and a member of every gaming Hall of Fame - Garriott invented the multi-player online game, and coined the term "Avatar" to describe an individual's online character. In this fascinating memoir, Garriott invites listeners on the great adventure that is his life.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The Modern Day Explorer
- By Elijah on 04-17-17
By: Richard Garriott, and others
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A Place of My Own
- The Architecture of Daydreams
- By: Michael Pollan
- Narrated by: Michael Pollan
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,059
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 906
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Story4 out of 5 stars 908
With this updated edition of his earlier book, A Place of My Own, listeners can revisit the inspired, intelligent, and often hilarious story of Pollan’s realization of a room of his own—a small, wooden hut, his “shelter for daydreams” — built with his admittedly unhandy hands. Inspired by both Thoreau and Mr. Blandings, A Place of My Own not only works to convey the history and meaning of all human building, it also marks the connections between our bodies, our minds, and the natural world.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Pollan is the master of hipster porn
- By Darwin8u on 02-28-15
By: Michael Pollan
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Fins
- Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit
- By: William Knoedelseder
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
This audiobook chronicles the birth and rise to greatness of the American auto industry through the life of Harley Earl, an eccentric six-foot-five, stuttering visionary who dropped out of college and went on to invent the profession of automobile styling, thereby revolutionized the way cars were made, marketed, and even imagined. Harleys Earl’s story qualifies as a bona fide American family saga. It began in the Michigan pine forest in the years after the Civil War, traveled across the Great Plains on the wheels of a covered wagon, and eventually settled in Hollywood, California.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great report of amazing history but could do without the WOKE lean..
- By joshua Shaw on 07-02-22
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Ingenious
- A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America
- By: Jason Fagone
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4 out of 5 stars 34
In 2007, the X Prize Foundation announced that it would give $10 million to anyone who could build a safe, mass-producible car that could travel one hundred miles on the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. The challenge attracted more than one hundred teams from all over the world, including dozens of amateurs. Many designed their cars entirely from scratch, rejecting decades of thinking about what a car should look like.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels.
- By Shamu from New York on 12-07-13
By: Jason Fagone
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Rust
- The Longest War
- By: Jonathan Waldman
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 221
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 183
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Story4 out of 5 stars 184
In Rust journalist Jonathan Waldman travels from Key West, Florida, to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to meet the colorful and often reclusive people concerned with corrosion. He sneaks into an abandoned steelworks with a brave artist and nearly gets kicked out of Can School. Across the Arctic he follows a massive high-tech robot, hunting for rust in the Alaska pipeline.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Almost too geeky for geeks
- By Norman B. Bernstein on 03-26-15
By: Jonathan Waldman
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Higher
- A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City
- By: Neal Bascomb
- Narrated by: Richard M. Davidson
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 140
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
This riveting, true account of the 1929 race to build New York City's tallest skyscraper evokes the glory of an exciting time long past.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding Audio Book!!!
- By Tim on 11-16-05
By: Neal Bascomb
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House Lessons
- Renovating a Life
- By: Erica Bauermeister
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 87
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 87
In this mesmerizing memoir-in-essays, New York Times best-selling author Erica Bauermeister renovates a trash-filled house in eccentric Port Townsend, Washington, and in the process takes listeners on a journey to discover the ways our spaces subliminally affect us. A personal, accessible, and literary exploration of the psychology of architecture, this book is designed for homeowners, remodelers, and those who are simply curious about how our built environments shape who we become.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful book for anyone home shopping
- By ERICK on 09-04-20
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Land Rover
- The Story of the Car That Conquered the World
- By: Ben Fogle
- Narrated by: Rupert Farley
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
As quintessentially British as a plate of fish and chips or a British bulldog, the boxy, utilitarian Land Rover Defender has become an iconic part of what it is to be British. It is said that for more than half the world's population, the first car they ever saw was a Land Rover Defender. It mirrors many of our national traits, stiff upper-lipped and slightly eccentric.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing! Great sub-stories
- By Daniel Caballero on 04-30-24
By: Ben Fogle
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The End of Night
- Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
- By: Paul Bogard
- Narrated by: Paul Bogard
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 75
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 66
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 68
A deeply panoramic tour of the night, from its brightest spots to the darkest skies we have left. A starry night is one of nature's most magical wonders. Yet in our artificially lit world, three-quarters of Americans' eyes never switch to night vision and most of us no longer experience true darkness. In The End of Night, Paul Bogard restores our awareness of the spectacularly primal, wildly dark night sky and how it has influenced the human experience across everything from science to art.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A little too poetic for my taste
- By Dan B on 03-18-19
By: Paul Bogard
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The Men Who United the States
- America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics, and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,177
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,073
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,067
How did America become “one nation, indivisible”? What unified a growing number of disparate states into the modern country we recognize today? To answer these questions, Winchester follows in the footsteps of America’s most essential explorers, thinkers, and innovators. Introducing the fascinating people who played a pivotal role in creating today’s United States, he ponders whether the historic work of uniting the States has succeeded, and to what degree.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Sarcastic
- By Cynthia Hartman on 06-16-16
By: Simon Winchester
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The Girls of Atomic City
- The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
- By: Denise Kiernan
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,913
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,623
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,612
At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, consuming more electricity than New York City. But to most of the world, the town did not exist. Thousands of civilians - many of them young women from small towns across the South - were recruited to this secret city, enticed by solid wages and the promise of war-ending work. Kept very much in the dark, few would ever guess the true nature of the tasks they performed each day in the hulking factories in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Important story of this secret city
- By CBlox on 11-14-13
By: Denise Kiernan