Too Close to the Sun
Growing Up In the Shadow of My Grandparents, Franklin and Eleanor
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Too Close to the Sun
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Narrated by:
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Jeremy Gage
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By:
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Curtis Roosevelt
About this listen
Curtis Roosevelt was three when he and his sister, Eleanor, arrived at the White House soon after their grandfathers inauguration. The countrys First Grandchildren, a pint-sized double act, they were known to the media as Sistie and Buzzie.
In this rich memoir, Roosevelt brings us into the goldfish bowl, as his family called it - that glare of public scrutiny to which all presidential households must submit. He recounts his misadventures as a hapless kid in an unforgivably formal setting and describes his role as a tiny planet circling the dual suns of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Blending self-abasement, humor, awe and affection, Too Close to the Sun is an intimate portrait of two of the most influential and inspirational figures in modern American history and a thoughtful exploration of the emotional impact of growing up in their irresistible aura.
"Too Close to the Sun leaves the reader in no doubt that The First Grandchildren's grandparents were good as well as great. It is reassuring to know that the two conditions are not incompatible." (The Times)©2008 Curtis Roosevelt (P)2009 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Do not waste an audible credit
- By Sandra B. on 10-15-23
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Royal Sisters
- Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret
- By: Anne Edwards
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 12 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 145
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 126
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 126
In Royal Sisters, Anne Edwards, author of the best-selling Vivien Leigh: A Biography and Matriarch: Queen Mary and the House of Windsor, has written the first dual biography of Elizabeth, the princess who was to become Queen, and her younger sister, Margaret, who was to be her subject. From birth to maturity, they were the stuff of which dreams are made.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Where's The Rest?
- By Simone on 12-19-17
By: Anne Edwards
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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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America's Queen
- The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
- By: Sarah Bradford
- Narrated by: Sandra Burr
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 75
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
Using remarkable new sources, Sarah Bradford has written a timely celebration of a life that was more private than commonly supposed. Revealing new testimony from many of the couple's friends shows the complexities of this apparently very public relationship and of her controversial marriage to Aristotle Onassis. Here is the private Jackie - neglected wife, vigilant mother, and working widow - whose contradictory and fascinating nature is illuminated by all that Bradford has discovered.
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4 out of 5 stars
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American Royalty
- By Kindle Customer on 06-10-16
By: Sarah Bradford
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The Nine of Us
- Growing Up Kennedy
- By: Jean Kennedy Smith
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 5 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 125
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 110
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 110
In this evocative and affectionate memoir, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, the last surviving child of Joe and Rose Kennedy, offers an intimate and illuminating look at a time long ago when she and her siblings, guided by their parents, laughed and learned a great deal under one roof.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Inside the Kennedy Family~ excellent and funny~
- By Molly on 10-30-16
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Lady Catherine, the Earl, and the Real Downton Abbey
- By: The Countess of Carnarvon
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 10 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 172
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 157
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 160
Lady Catherine, the Earl, and the Real Downton Abbey tells the story behind Highclere Castle, the setting for Julian Fellowes’s Emmy Award-winning PBS show Downton Abbey, and the life of one of its most famous inhabitants, Catherine Wendell.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Not what was advertised
- By Jessica C Anderson on 09-10-19
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George & Barbara Bush
- A Great American Love Story
- By: Ellie LeBlond Sosa, Kelly Anne Chase, George W. Bush - foreword
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 52
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story5 out of 5 stars 49
"To begin with I was in love and I am in love so that's not hard," Barbara Bush told her granddaughter Ellie LeBlond Sosa. Sosa had asked for the secret to her and President George H.W. Bush's 77-year love affair that withstood World War II separation, a leap of faith into the oil fields of West Texas, the painful loss of a child, a political climb to the highest office, and after the White House, the transition back to a "normal" life. Sosa and co-author Kelly Anne Chase paint the portrait of the enduring relationship of George and Barbara Bush.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Beautiful, Uplifting Read!
- By Cathi Hughes on 03-18-23
By: Ellie LeBlond Sosa, and others
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Flesh Wounds
- By: Richard Glover
- Narrated by: Richard Glover
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
A mother who invented her past, a father who was often absent, a son who wondered if this could really be his family...Richard Glover's favourite dinner-party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?' It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed toy collector.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Such a Meaningful Reflection
- By Awarenessing on 11-28-15
By: Richard Glover
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The Diana Chronicles
- By: Tina Brown
- Narrated by: Rosalyn Landor
- Length: 21 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 646
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 458
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 454
In The Diana Chronicles, you will meet a formidable female cast and understand as never before the society that shaped them: among them, Diana's sexually charged mother, her bad-girl sister-in-law, Fergie, and, most formidable of them all, her mother-in-law, the Queen. Add Camilla Parker-Bowles, the ultimate "other woman" into this combustible mix, and it's no wonder that Diana broke out of her royal cage into celebrity culture, where she found her own power and used it to devastating effect.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of the best Diana's
- By J F Whitmore on 08-02-12
By: Tina Brown
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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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Jackie, Ethel, Joan
- Women of Camelot
- By: J. Randy Taraborrelli
- Narrated by: Beth Fowler
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 153
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 130
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 130
What does it mean to be a Kennedy? If ever three women would be challenged and changed by marriage into a family, it would be Jacqueline Bouvier, Ethel Skakel, and Joan Bennett. None of these radiant brides could have ever been prepared for the fame, the family, and tragedies that would spring from their lives. As they struggled to cope with their husbands' infidelities, the harsh glare of the media, and the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, these women would learn what it meant to be sisters, reaching out to one another with comfort and consolation.
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3 out of 5 stars
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my first Kennedy book
- By colleen on 06-15-12
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Wait for Me!
- Memoirs
- By: Deborah Mitford Duchess of Devonshire
- Narrated by: Anne Flosnik
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 125
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 92
Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, is the youngest of the famously witty brood that includes the writers Jessica and Nancy, who wrote when Deborah was born, "How disgusting of the poor darling to go and be a girl." Deborah's effervescent memoir chronicles her remarkable life, from an eccentric but happy childhood in the Oxfordshire countryside, to tea with Adolf Hitler and her controversially political sister Unity in 1937, to her marriage to the second son of the Duke of Devonshire.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The last of the Mitford Sisters
- By Irene on 01-11-11
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Diana
- Her True Story - in Her Own Words
- By: Andrew Morton
- Narrated by: Michael Maloney, Caroline Langrishe
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,746
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,532
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,528
The sensational biography of Princess Diana, now revised to commemorate the 20th anniversary of her death. When Diana: Her True Story - in Her Own Words was first published in 1992, it forever changed the way the public viewed the British monarchy.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful overall with one issue...
- By globewest on 07-02-17
By: Andrew Morton
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50 Children
- 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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Marina and Lee
- The Tormented Love and Fatal Obsession Behind Lee Harvey Oswald's Assassination of John F. Kennedy
- By: Priscilla Johnson McMillan
- Narrated by: R.C. Bray, Joseph Finder
- Length: 24 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 79
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
Marina and Lee is one of the best and truest audiobooks about the Kennedy assassination. Priscilla Johnson McMillan came to the story with a unique knowledge of the two main characters. In the 1950s she knew Kennedy well for a time when he was hospitalized with Addison's disease. She talked to him frequently, brought him books, knew his wife, and formed a strong opinion of the sort of man he was. What is astonishing is that she also knew Lee Harvey Oswald.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Now I know why he did it
- By Rodd on 06-09-14
What listeners say about Too Close to the Sun
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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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Debra B
- 04-23-12
Recommended
Any additional comments?
This book comes across as a sincere expression of what it was like to live in the White House as a little boy, and what it was like to be a Roosevelt. It is honest without being complaining and it doesn't gloss over flaws that you might like to know about.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 02-04-10
Absolutely Charming Audiobook
Really enjoyable look into the lives of FDR, Eleanor and the White House, all from the perspective of a very little boy!
The reader Jeremy Gage is crisp, easy on the ears and makes this audiobook a joy to listen to!
Five stars all the way!
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3 people found this helpful