Why Not the Best?
The First Fifty Years
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Why Not the Best?
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Narrated by:
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Donnie Sipes
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By:
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Jimmy Carter
About this listen
In this autobiography, Jimmy Carter details the youth and experiences that led him to seek the highest office in the land. He describes his idyllic childhood, his naval career, his strong Christian underpinnings, and the values of his mother and father.
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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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Union
- The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood
- By: Colin Woodard
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 98
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 81
Union tells the story of the struggle to create a national myth for the United States, one that could hold its rival regional cultures together and forge an American nationhood.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Required Reading
- By Ben Brafford on 08-30-20
By: Colin Woodard
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A Nation of Nations
- A Story of America After the 1965 Immigration Law
- By: Tom Gjelten
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 28
In 1950, Fairfax County, Virginia, was 90 percent white, 10 percent African American, with a little more than 100 families who were "other". Currently the African American percentage of the population is about the same, but the Anglo white population is less than 50 percent, and there are families of Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American origin living all over the county. A Nation of Nations follows the lives of a few immigrants to Fairfax County over recent decades as they gradually "Americanize".
By: Tom Gjelten
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American-Made
- The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work
- By: Nick Taylor
- Narrated by: James Boles
- Length: 20 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 81
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4 out of 5 stars 38
When President Roosevelt took the oath of office in March 1933, he was facing a devastated nation. Four years into the Great Depression, a staggering 13 million American workers were jobless and many millions more of their family members were equally in need. Desperation ruled the land. In 1935, after a variety of temporary relief measures, a permanent nationwide jobs program was created.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The true spirit of America.
- By Helen on 07-01-08
By: Nick Taylor
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Song in a Weary Throat
- Memoir of an American Pilgrimage
- By: Pauli Murray, Patricia Bell-Scott - Introduction by
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 19 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 91
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 81
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Story5 out of 5 stars 81
Poet, memoirist, labor organizer, and Episcopal priest, Pauli Murray helped transform the law of the land. Arrested in 1940 for sitting in the whites-only section of a Virginia bus, Murray propelled that life-defining event into a Howard law degree and a fight against "Jane Crow" sexism. Now Murray is finally getting long-deserved recognition: The first African American woman to receive a doctorate of law at Yale, her name graces one of the university's new colleges.
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4 out of 5 stars
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great American shero
- By Coisge F Mccullough on 04-13-24
By: Pauli Murray, and others
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Coolidge
- By: Amity Shlaes
- Narrated by: Terence Aselford
- Length: 21 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 929
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 819
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 811
Calvin Coolidge, president from 1923 to 1929, never rated highly in polls, and history has remembered the decade in which he served as an extravagant period predating the Great Depression. Now Amity Shlaes provides a fresh look at the 1920s and its elusive president, showing that the mid-1920s was in fact a triumphant period that established our modern way of life: The nation electrified, Americans drove their first cars, and the federal deficit was replaced with a surplus.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Silent Cal
- By Jean on 02-19-13
By: Amity Shlaes
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Mitch, Please!
- How Mitch McConnell Sold Out Kentucky (and America Too)
- By: Matt Jones, Chris Tomlin - contributor
- Narrated by: Matt Jones, Chris Tomlin
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 370
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 339
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Story5 out of 5 stars 335
They say all politics is local. In 2020, Mitch McConnell will have served five full terms as a US Senator. Thirty years. The Senate Majority leader's power is as undeniable as it is infuriating, and the people of Kentucky have had enough. Led by Matt Jones, they (and they alone) have the power to oust him from office. How did Jones, a local boy turned attorney turned sports radio host come to shine the brightest light on McConnell's ineptitude?
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing
- By Danielle Purcell on 04-10-20
By: Matt Jones, and others
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Great Society
- A New History
- By: Amity Shlaes
- Narrated by: Terence Aselford
- Length: 17 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 380
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 327
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 323
In Great Society, Shlaes offers a powerful companion to her legendary history of the 1930s, The Forgotten Man, and shows that in fact there was scant difference between two presidents we consider opposites: Johnson and Nixon. Just as technocratic military planning by "the Best and the Brightest" made failure in Vietnam inevitable, so planning by a team of the domestic best and brightest guaranteed fiasco at home. At once history and biography, Great Society sketches moving portraits of the characters in this transformative period.
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5 out of 5 stars
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How have we forgotten how bad these ideas were?
- By Robert S. Allen on 02-09-20
By: Amity Shlaes
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The Redemption of Bobby Love
- A Story of Faith, Family, and Justice
- By: Bobby Love, Cheryl Love
- Narrated by: Harvey Reaves, Cheri VandenHeuvel
- Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 77
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 71
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 71
Bobby and Cheryl Love were living in Brooklyn, happily married for decades, when the FBI and NYPD appeared at their door and demanded to know from Bobby, in front of his shocked wife and children: “What is your name? No, what’s your real name?” Bobby’s thirty-eight-year secret was out. As a Black child in the Jim Crow South, Bobby found himself in legal trouble before his 14th birthday. Sparked by the desperation he felt in the face of limited options and the pull of the streets, Bobby became a master thief.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Heart Wrenching and Heart Warming
- By ArizonaBorn on 01-01-22
By: Bobby Love, and others
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The Hour of Fate
- Theodore Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, and the Battle to Transform American Capitalism
- By: Susan Berfield
- Narrated by: Jennifer Woodward
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Story4 out of 5 stars 56
A riveting narrative of Wall Street buccaneering, political intrigue and two of American history’s most colossal characters, struggling for mastery in an era of social upheaval and rampant inequality. Today, as the country again asks whether saving democracy means taming capital, the lessons of Roosevelt and Morgan’s time are more urgent than ever.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Engaging
- By Jean on 06-08-20
By: Susan Berfield
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The Black Cabinet
- The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt
- By: Jill Watts
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 19 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 33
In the early 20th century, most African Americans still lived in the South, disenfranchised, impoverished, terrorized by white violence, and denied the basic rights of citizenship. As the Democrats swept into the White House on a wave of Black defectors from the Party of Lincoln, a group of African-American intellectuals - legal minds, social scientists, media folk - sought to get the community's needs on the table.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant, important, and little known history
- By Barry on 06-21-20
By: Jill Watts
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Panama Fever
- By: Matthew Parker
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman, William Dufris
- Length: 17 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 130
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
The building of the Panama Canal was one of the greatest engineering feats in human history. A tale of exploration, conquest, money, politics, and medicine, Panama Fever charts the challenges that marked the long, labyrinthine road to the building of the canal. Drawing on a wealth of new materials and sources, Matthew Parker brings to life the men who recognized the impact a canal would have on global politics and economics.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good book, marginal narrator
- By CmH - HB, CA on 06-02-08
By: Matthew Parker
What listeners say about Why Not the Best?
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- John A.
- 01-19-22
A perfectly written book
A really outstanding book that I found to be increasingly maturation. I have developed as a young man coming of age, and found increasing moral and general motivation from the words written in this book. I highly recommend this perfectly written book.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Glenn Posniack
- 01-26-23
A mantra for sure
Being a Submariner myself I knew the legends and exploits of ADM Rickover.
That President Carter chose these words for the title drew me in. Known not to be the best president, this book shows the true heart of one of our greatest humanitarians.
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