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Styles of Radical Will
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
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Styles of Radical Will
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Publisher's summary
Styles of Radical Will, Susan Sontag's second collection of essays, extends the investigations she undertook in Against Interpretation with essays on film, literature, politics, and a groundbreaking study of pornography.
In "The Aesthetics of Silence", Sontag examines how silence mediates the role of art as a form of spirituality in an increasingly secular culture. "The Pornographic Imagination" attempts to define and understand the genre of pornography. "What's Happening in America" muses on the state of the country in 1966, when the essay was written, discussing history, politics, and consumerism. Other essays in Styles of Radical Will are "Thinking Against Oneself: Reflections on Cioran", "Theatre and Film", "Bergman's Persona", "Godard", and "Trip to Hanoi".
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 32
Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe. Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the postpsychological novel.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Informative and Inspiring
- By Mo on 11-27-21
By: Milan Kundera, and others
-
To Show and to Tell
- The Craft of Literary Nonfiction
- By: Phillip Lopate
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 76
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 62
Distinguished author Phillip Lopate, editor of the celebrated anthology The Art of the Personal Essay, is universally acclaimed as “one of our best personal essayists” ( Dallas Morning News). Here, combining more than 40 years of lessons from his storied career as a writer and professor, he brings us this highly anticipated nuts-and-bolts guide to writing literary nonfiction. A phenomenal master class shaped by Lopate’s informative, accessible tone, and immense gift for storytelling.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Not a guide on writing personal essays
- By A. Yoshida on 08-07-13
By: Phillip Lopate
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Culture and Imperialism
- By: Edward Said
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 19 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 189
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 150
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 153
A landmark work from the intellectually auspicious author of Orientalism, this book explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. This classic study, the direct successor to Said's main work, is read by Peter Ganim ( Orientalism).
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5 out of 5 stars
-
BRAVO, AUDIBLE!! WE NEED MORE SAID!! REAL BOOKS!!
- By AnthonyStevens on 02-27-11
By: Edward Said
-
Secular Buddhism
- Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World
- By: Stephen Batchelor
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 72
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 61
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 59
As the practice of mindfulness permeates mainstream western culture, more and more people are engaging in a traditional form of Buddhist meditation. However, many of these people have little interest in the religious aspects of Buddhism, and the practice occurs within secular contexts such as hospitals, schools, and the workplace. Is it possible to recover from the Buddhist teachings a vision of human flourishing that is secular rather than religious without compromising the integrity of the tradition?
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Good, but repetition of old material
- By Ludwig on 02-25-18
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The Courage to Create
- By: Rollo May
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 4 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 201
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 166
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 167
What if imagination and art are not, as many of us might think, the frosting on life but the fountainhead of human experience? What if our logic and science derive from art forms rather than the other way around? In this trenchant volume, Rollo May helps all of us find those creative impulses that, once liberated, offer new possibilities for achievement. A renowned therapist and inspiring guide, Dr. May draws on his experience to show how we can break out of old patterns in our lives.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
May takes on the Creative Act
- By Lowball on 01-16-19
By: Rollo May
-
The Year of Our Lord 1943
- Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis
- By: Alan Jacobs
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 62
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 56
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear the Allies would win the Second World War. Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic thought the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. These Christian intellectuals - Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others - sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The Audible is a Train Wreck
- By John on 09-04-18
By: Alan Jacobs
-
The Western Canon
- The Books and School of the Ages
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: James Armstrong
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 230
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 133
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 135
Harold Bloom explores our Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. He argues against ideology in literary criticism; he laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of aesthetic," Bloom places Shakespeare at the center of the Western Canon.....
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5 out of 5 stars
-
A personal and opinionated book on the Canon
- By Steffen on 07-23-12
By: Harold Bloom
-
Irrationality
- A History of the Dark Side of Reason
- By: Justin E. H. Smith
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 32
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 32
Discovering that reason is the defining feature of our species, we named ourselves the “rational animal”. But is this flattering story itself rational? In this sweeping account of irrationality from antiquity to today - from the fifth-century BC murder of Hippasus for revealing the existence of irrational numbers to the rise of Twitter mobs and the election of Donald Trump - Justin Smith says the evidence suggests the opposite.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
A good brain workout
- By ThomasC on 04-09-19
-
The Long March
- How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America
- By: Roger Kimball
- Narrated by: Raymond Todd
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 118
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 97
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 99
The architects of America's cultural revolution of the 1960s were Beat authors like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and celebrated figures like Norman Mailer, Timothy Leary, Eldridge Cleaver, and Susan Sontag. In examining the lives and works of those who spoke for the 1960s, Roger Kimball conceives a series of cautionary tales, an annotated guidebook of wrong turns, dead-ends, and blind alleys.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
The Long March
- By Suzanne on 05-16-06
By: Roger Kimball
-
The Givenness of Things
- Essays
- By: Marilynne Robinson
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 52
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 48
The spirit of our times can appear to be one of joyless urgency. As a culture we have become less interested in the exploration of the glorious mind, and more interested in creating and mastering technologies that will yield material well-being. But while cultural pessimism is always fashionable, there is still much to give us hope.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Mostly thoughts on religious things
- By Adam Shields on 01-26-16
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What Are We Doing Here?
- By: Marilynne Robinson
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 36
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 27
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 25
Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Alexis de Tocqueville, inform our political consciousness or discussing how beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson's peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Unpersuasive and a bit repetitive
- By Adam Shields on 03-07-18
-
Jewish Comedy
- A Serious History
- By: Jeremy Dauber
- Narrated by: Jeremy Dauber
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 174
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 151
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 151
In a major work of scholarship both erudite and very funny, Jeremy Dauber traces the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from Biblical times to the age of Twitter. Organizing his book thematically into what he calls the seven strands of Jewish comedy - including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar - Dauber explores the ways Jewish comedy has dealt with persecution, assimilation, and diaspora through the ages. He explains the rise and fall of popular comic archetypes such as the Jewish mother, the JAP, and the schlemiel and schlimazel.
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2 out of 5 stars
-
Not funny
- By supermantwo on 08-31-20
By: Jeremy Dauber
-
On Freedom
- Four Songs of Care and Constraint
- By: Maggie Nelson
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 72
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 55
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 54
So often deployed as a jingoistic, even menacing rallying cry, or limited by a focus on passing moments of liberation, the rhetoric of freedom both rouses and repels. Does it remain key to our autonomy, justice, and well-being, or is freedom's long star turn coming to a close? Does a continued obsession with the term enliven and emancipate, or reflect a deepening nihilism (or both)? On Freedom examines such questions by tracing the concept's complexities in four distinct realms: art, sex, drugs, and climate.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Just great
- By Kristi Strong on 12-14-21
By: Maggie Nelson
-
Dark Star Rising
- Magick and Power in the Age of Trump
- By: Gary Lachman
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 149
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 130
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 130
Within the concentric circles of Trump's regime lies an unseen culture of occultists, power-seekers, and mind-magicians whose influence is on the rise. In this unparalleled account, historian Gary Lachman examines the influence of occult and esoteric philosophy on the unexpected rise of the alt-right.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Step Right This Way!
- By Brad on 06-03-18
By: Gary Lachman
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