Try free for 30 days
-
Never Say You've Had a Lucky Life
- Especially If You've Had a Lucky Life
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $21.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
The End of Everything
- How Wars Descend into Annihilation
- By: Victor Davis Hanson
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
War can settle disputes, topple tyrants, and bend the trajectory of civilization—sometimes to the breaking point. From Troy to Hiroshima, moments when war has ended in utter annihilation have reverberated through the centuries, signaling the end of political systems, cultures, and epochs. Though much has changed over the millennia, human nature remains the same. In The End of Everything, military historian Victor Davis Hanson narrates a series of sieges and sackings that span the age of antiquity to the conquest of the New World to show how societies descend into barbarism and obliteration.
-
The Age of Grievance
- By: Frank Bruni
- Narrated by: Frank Bruni
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The twists and turns of American politics are unpredictable, but the tone is a troubling given. It’s one of grievance. More and more Americans are convinced that they’re losing because somebody else is winning. More and more tally their slights, measure their misfortune, and assign particular people responsibility for it. The blame game has become the country’s most popular sport and victimhood its most fashionable garb. How did we get here? What does it say about us, and where does it leave us? The Age of Grievance examines these critical questions and charts a path forward.
-
The Oceans and the Stars
- A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story; The Seven Battles and Mutiny of Athena, Patrol Coastal Ship 15
- By: Mark Helprin
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 21 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Navy captain near the end of a decorated career, Stephen Rensselaer is disciplined, intelligent, and determined always to do what’s right. In defending the development of a new variant of warship, he makes an enemy of the president of the United States, who assigns him to command the doomed line’s only prototype—Athena, Patrol Coastal 15—with the intent to humiliate a man who should have been an admiral. Rather than resign, Rensselaer takes the new assignment in stride.
-
Bugsy Siegel
- The Dark Side of the American Dream (Jewish Lives Series)
- By: Michael Shnayerson
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a brief life that led to a violent end, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (1906-1947) rose from desperate poverty to ill-gotten riches, from an early-20th-century family of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side to a kingdom of his own making in Las Vegas. In this captivating portrait, author Michael Shnayerson sets out not to absolve Bugsy Siegel but rather to understand him in all his complexity.
-
On the Couch
- Writers Analyze Sigmund Freud
- By: Siri Hustvedt, Andre Aciman, Jennifer Finney Boylan, and others
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman, Perry Daniels
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The controversial father of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud charted the human unconscious, brought us the talking cure, and wrote books that now rank among the classics of world literature. In On the Couch, the great analyst is analyzed by some of today's great writers and thinkers, who help us understand the man who has helped us understand ourselves as much, if not more, than anyone else, ever. The result is a fresh, multifaceted reassessment of Freud's continuing relevance and influence on ideas, literature, culture, science, and more.
-
Second Class
- How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women
- By: Batya Ungar-Sargon
- Narrated by: Batya Ungar-Sargon
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Second Class, working-class Americans of all races, political orientations, and occupations share their stories—cleaning ladies, health care aides, cops, truck drivers, fast food workers, electricians, and more. In their own words, these working-class Americans explain the struggles and triumphs of their increasingly precarious lives—as well as what policies they think would improve them.
-
The End of Everything
- How Wars Descend into Annihilation
- By: Victor Davis Hanson
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
War can settle disputes, topple tyrants, and bend the trajectory of civilization—sometimes to the breaking point. From Troy to Hiroshima, moments when war has ended in utter annihilation have reverberated through the centuries, signaling the end of political systems, cultures, and epochs. Though much has changed over the millennia, human nature remains the same. In The End of Everything, military historian Victor Davis Hanson narrates a series of sieges and sackings that span the age of antiquity to the conquest of the New World to show how societies descend into barbarism and obliteration.
-
The Age of Grievance
- By: Frank Bruni
- Narrated by: Frank Bruni
- Length: 9 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The twists and turns of American politics are unpredictable, but the tone is a troubling given. It’s one of grievance. More and more Americans are convinced that they’re losing because somebody else is winning. More and more tally their slights, measure their misfortune, and assign particular people responsibility for it. The blame game has become the country’s most popular sport and victimhood its most fashionable garb. How did we get here? What does it say about us, and where does it leave us? The Age of Grievance examines these critical questions and charts a path forward.
-
The Oceans and the Stars
- A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story; The Seven Battles and Mutiny of Athena, Patrol Coastal Ship 15
- By: Mark Helprin
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 21 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Navy captain near the end of a decorated career, Stephen Rensselaer is disciplined, intelligent, and determined always to do what’s right. In defending the development of a new variant of warship, he makes an enemy of the president of the United States, who assigns him to command the doomed line’s only prototype—Athena, Patrol Coastal 15—with the intent to humiliate a man who should have been an admiral. Rather than resign, Rensselaer takes the new assignment in stride.
-
Bugsy Siegel
- The Dark Side of the American Dream (Jewish Lives Series)
- By: Michael Shnayerson
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a brief life that led to a violent end, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (1906-1947) rose from desperate poverty to ill-gotten riches, from an early-20th-century family of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side to a kingdom of his own making in Las Vegas. In this captivating portrait, author Michael Shnayerson sets out not to absolve Bugsy Siegel but rather to understand him in all his complexity.
-
On the Couch
- Writers Analyze Sigmund Freud
- By: Siri Hustvedt, Andre Aciman, Jennifer Finney Boylan, and others
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman, Perry Daniels
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The controversial father of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud charted the human unconscious, brought us the talking cure, and wrote books that now rank among the classics of world literature. In On the Couch, the great analyst is analyzed by some of today's great writers and thinkers, who help us understand the man who has helped us understand ourselves as much, if not more, than anyone else, ever. The result is a fresh, multifaceted reassessment of Freud's continuing relevance and influence on ideas, literature, culture, science, and more.
-
Second Class
- How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women
- By: Batya Ungar-Sargon
- Narrated by: Batya Ungar-Sargon
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Second Class, working-class Americans of all races, political orientations, and occupations share their stories—cleaning ladies, health care aides, cops, truck drivers, fast food workers, electricians, and more. In their own words, these working-class Americans explain the struggles and triumphs of their increasingly precarious lives—as well as what policies they think would improve them.
-
Ghost Dogs
- On Killers and Kin
- By: Andre Dubus III
- Narrated by: Andre Dubus III
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Ghost Dogs, Dubus’s nonfiction prowess is on full display in his retelling of his own successes, failures, triumphs, and pain. In his longest essay, “If I Owned a Gun,” Dubus reflects on the empowerment and shame he felt in keeping a gun, and his decision, ultimately, to give it up. Elsewhere, he writes of a violent youth and of settled domesticity and fatherhood, about the omnipresent expectations and contradictions of masculinity, about the things writers remember and those they forget.
-
Everywhere an Oink Oink
- An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood
- By: David Mamet
- Narrated by: Jim Frangione
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Mamet went to Hollywood on top—a super successful playwright summoned west in 1980 to write a vehicle for Jack Nicholson. He arrived just in time to meet the luminaries of old Hollywood and revel in the friendship of giants like Paul Newman, Mike Nichols, Bob Evans, and Sue Mengers. Over the next forty years, Mamet wrote dozens of scripts, was fired off dozens of movies, and directed eleven himself. In Everywhere an Oink Oink, he revels of the taut and gag-filled professionalism of the film set.
-
Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair
- Jewish Lives Series
- By: Maurice Samuels
- Narrated by: Jason Grasl
- Length: 5 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus's cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting "Death to Judas!" In this book, Maurice Samuels gives listeners new insight into Dreyfus himself—the man at the center of the affair. He tells the story of Dreyfus's early life in Paris, his promising career as a French officer, the false accusation leading to his imprisonment on Devil's Island, the fight to prove his innocence that divided the French nation, and his life of quiet obscurity after World War I.
-
1177 B.C. (Revised and Updated)
- The Year Civilization Collapsed
- By: Eric H. Cline
- Narrated by: Eric H. Cline
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook narrated by acclaimed archaeologist and best-selling author Eric Cline offers a breathtaking account of how the collapse of an ancient civilized world ushered in the first Dark Ages.
-
-
The rise and fall: Two millenniums BC.
- By Amazon Customer on 18-09-2023
-
Charlie Hustle
- The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball
- By: Keith O'Brien
- Narrated by: Ellen Adair, Keith O'Brien
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pete Rose is a legend. A baseball god. He compiled more hits than anyone in the history of baseball, a record he set decades ago, which still stands. At the same time, he was a working-class white guy from Cincinnati who made it; less talented than tough, and rough around the edges. He was everything that America wanted and needed him to be, the American dream personified, until he wasn’t. Charlie Hustle tells the full story of one of America’s most epic tragedies, the rise and fall of Pete Rose, one of the greatest baseball players of all time.
-
How to Butter Toast
- Rhymes in a Book That Help You to Cook
- By: Tara Wigley, Yotam Ottolenghi, Alec Doherty
- Narrated by: Tara Wigley, Yotam Ottolenghi
- Length: 2 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cook, author and Team Ottolenghi writing partner Tara Wigley had been to cookery school, read hundreds of cookbooks and developed recipes for over a decade. Yet she found herself confused. The fewer the ingredients in a recipe, Tara found, the more confusion there was about how best to make it. In How to Butter Toast Tara examines the many ways in which an everyday dish can be made.
Publisher's Summary
A rich and comic portrait of the radical changes in American life and the literary world over the last eighty years.
An autobiography usually requires a justification. The great autobiographies—those by Benvenuto Cellini, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Brooks Adams—were justified by their authors living in interesting times, harboring radically new ideas, or participating in great events. Joseph Epstein qualifies on none of these counts. His life has been quiet, lucky in numerous ways, and far from dramatic. But it has also been emblematic of the great changes in our country since World War II.
He grew up in a petit-bourgeois, Midwestern milieu, and the city of Chicago looms large in his life. He drew a lucky ticket in the parent lottery and his was a happy boyhood spent on playgrounds and hanging around drug stores. At high school dances, he was the rhumba king and at drive-in movies he was never allowed to go as far with girls as he so ardently desired. At twenty-six, after two years in the army, he found himself married, the father or stepfather of four children, and living in New York on the meager salary of a magazine subeditor. He was ablaze with ambition and fettered by frustration. He broke out by moving to Little Rock, Arkansas, to direct the city’s anti-poverty program at the height of the Civil Rights movement. His writing career blossomed, he began teaching at Northwestern University, and, for twenty-five years, edited one of great intellectual magazines.
Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life is an intimate look at one life steeped in radical change: from a traditionally moral culture to a therapeutic one, from an era when the extended family was strong to its current diminished status, from print to digital life featuring the war of pixel on print, and on. But for all the seriousness of Epstein’s themes, this book is memorable for its comic point of view and the constant reminder of how unpredictable, various, and wondrously rich life can be.