Michael Blanding
All Books By Michael Blanding
North by Shakespeare
- By: Michael Blanding
- Narrator: Will Collyer
- Length: 15 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: March 30, 2021
- Language: English
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3.96(129 ratings)
A work of gripping non-fiction, North by Shakespeare presents the twinning narratives of rogue scholar Dennis McCarthy, called “the Steve Jobs of the Shakespeare community,” and Sir Thomas North, an Elizabethan courtier whom McCarthy believes to be the undiscovered source for Shakespeare’s plays.
For the last fifteen years, Dennis McCarthy has obsessively pursued the true source of Shakespeare’s works, with fascinating results. Using plagiarism software, he has found direct links between Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and other plays and Thomas North’s published and unpublished writings-as well as Shakespearean plotlines seemingly lifted straight from North’s colorful life.
McCarthy’s wholly original conclusion is this: Shakespeare wrote the plays, but he adapted them from source plays written by North decades before-many of them penned on behalf of North’s patron Robert Dudley, in his efforts to woo Queen Elizabeth. That bold theory answers many lingering questions about the Bard with compelling new evidence, including a newly unearthed journal of North’s travels through France and Italy, filled with locations and details appearing in Shakespeare’s plays.
North by Shakespeare alternates between the dramatic life of Thomas North, the intrigues of the Tudor court, the rivalries of English Renaissance theatre, and academic outsider Dennis McCarthy’s attempts to air his provocative ideas in the clubby world of Shakespearean scholarship. Through it all, Blanding employs his keen journalistic eye to craft a highly readable drama, up-ending our understanding of the beloved playwright and his “singular genius.”
The Coke Machine
- By: Michael Blanding
- Length: 13 hours 0 minutes
- Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
- Publish date: September 16, 2010
- Language: English
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3.35(629 ratings)
Ever since its “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” commercials from the 1970s, Coca-Cola has billed itself as the world’s beverage, uniting all colors and cultures in a mutual love of its caramel-sweet sugar water. The formula has worked incredibly well, making it one of the most profitable companies on the planet and Coca-Cola the world’s second-most-recognized word after hello. However, as the company expands its reach into both domestic and foreign markets, an increasing number of the world’s citizens are finding the taste of Coke more bitter than sweet.
Journalist Michael Blanding’s The Coke Machine probes shocking accusations about the company’s global impact, including:
-Coca-Cola’s history of winning at any cost, even if it meant that its franchisees were making deals with the Nazis and Guatemalan paramilitary squads
-How Coke has harmed children’s health and contributed to an obesity epidemic through exclusive soda contracts in schools
-The horrific environmental impact of Coke bottling plants in India and Mexico, where water supplies have been decimated while toxic pollution has escalated
-That Coke bottlers stand accused of conspiring with paramilitaries to threaten, kidnap, and murder union leaders in their bottling plants in Colombia
A disturbing portrait drawn from an award-winning journalist’s daring, in-depth research, The Coke Machine is the first comprehensive probe of the company and its secret formula for greed.
The Map Thief
- By: Michael Blanding
- Length: 8 hours 36 minutes
- Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
- Publish date: May 29, 2014
- Language: English
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3.62(3330 ratings)
Maps have long exerted a special fascination on viewers-both as beautiful works of art and as practical tools to navigate the world. But to those who collect them, the map trade can be a cutthroat business, inhabited by quirky and sometimes disreputable characters in search of a finite number of extremely rare objects.
Once considered a respectable antiquarian map dealer, E. Forbes Smiley spent years doubling as a map thief-until he was finally arrested slipping maps out of books in the Yale University library. The Map Thief delves into the untold history of this fascinating high-stakes criminal and the inside story of the industry that consumed him.
Acclaimed reporter Michael Blanding has interviewed all the key players in this stranger-than-fiction story, and shares the fascinating histories of maps that charted the New World, and how they went from being practical instruments to quirky heirlooms to highly coveted objects. Though pieces of the map theft story have been written before, Blanding is the first reporter to explore the story in full-and had the rare privilege of having access to Smiley himself after he’d gone silent in the wake of his crimes. Moreover, although Smiley swears he has admitted to all of the maps he stole, libraries claim he stole hundreds more-and offer intriguing clues to prove it. Now, through a series of exclusive interviews with Smiley and other key individuals, Blanding teases out an astonishing tale of destruction and redemption.
The Map Thief interweaves Smiley’s escapades with the stories of the explorers and mapmakers he knew better than anyone. Tracking a series of thefts as brazen as the art heists in Provenance and a subculture as obsessive as the oenophiles in The Billionaire’s Vinegar, Blanding has pieced together an unforgettable story of high-stakes crime.