9780060886769
Play Sample

Dreamland audiobook

  • By: Kevin Baker
  • Narrator: John Rubinstein
  • Length: 6 hours 0 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • Publish date: April 04, 2006
  • Language: English
  • (231 ratings)
(231 ratings)
33% Cheaper than Audible
Get for $0.00
  • $9.99 per book vs $14.95 at Audible
    Good for any title to download and keep
  • Listen at up to 4.5x speed
    Good for any title to download and keep
  • Fall asleep to your favorite books
    Set a sleep timer while you listen
  • Unlimited listening to our Classics.
    Listen to thousands of classics for no extra cost. Ever
Loading ...
Regular Price: 21.99 USD

Dreamland Audiobook Summary

This is Dreamland, a uniquely fierce and magical tale that delivers both a sweeping chronicle of America at the turn of the century and an intimate, heart-wrenching portrait of the lives of its denizens. Among the thousands of immigrants who arrive in New York harbor is an Eastern European stowaway called Kid Twist, who soon earns his keep as an enforcer for the ruthless gangster Gyp the Blood. Soon though, Kid brutally splits with Gyp, leaving him bleeding from a shovel wound to the head in a rancid basement on the Lower East Side. His life now in jeopardy, Kid flees to Brooklyn, finding asylum with a Coney Island carny known as Trick the Dwarf.

While hiding out, Kid meets young Esther Abramowitz, a shirtwaist seamstress who labors under inhumane conditions. As their love affair blossoms, Esther emerges from quiet shop worker to foot soldier in the burgeoning labor movement. Changed by love, Kid, too, is no longer the ruthless scavenger he once was, as he prepares for an electrifying showdown with the vengeful Gyp the Blood.

Kevin Baker’s deftly imagined blend of meticulous historical research and assured narrative invention recreates a world bursting at the seams, a world of freak shows, cataclysmic exhibitions, mad dwarves, and bathing beauties. In prose that is at once ferocious and breathtakingly lyrical, Dreamland weaves a richly layered tapestry that captures perfectly the emotional and psychological essence of the American experience at the dawn of a new age.

Other Top Audiobooks

Dreamland Audiobook Narrator

John Rubinstein is the narrator of Dreamland audiobook that was written by Kevin Baker

Kevin Baker is the author of one previous novel, Sometimes You See It Coming, and served as chief historical researcher for the recently published The American Century by Harold Evans. He is married and lives in New York City.

John Rubenstein won a Theater World Award, a Tony, and a Drama Desk Award for his performances in Pippin and Children of a Lesser God.

About the Author(s) of Dreamland

Kevin Baker is the author of Dreamland

More From the Same

Dreamland Full Details

Narrator John Rubinstein
Length 6 hours 0 minutes
Author Kevin Baker
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date April 04, 2006
ISBN 9780060886769

Additional info

The publisher of the Dreamland is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780060886769.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Bandit

November 19, 2013

This book's edition opens with pages of praise from very respectable nationwide sources. Pretty tough to live up to, but Dreamland meets and surpasses every word of them. It's an absolutely awesome (in the purest meaning of the word) novel, an epic, a powerhouse. It is exactly what a work of historical fiction (any book, really) should be like, a perfect, perfectly immersive, magnificent reading experience. As a rule I stay away from large books, something to do with instant gratification or fear of being stuck with a dud, so it took me a while to approach this book, but once I started it, it didn't seem long at all, it read easily, which is a marvel in itself for such an epic work with enough characters to require a dramatis personae and shifting narratives. Kevin Baker creates a world so stunning, so vivid, so magical, that, like the actual visitors to Coney Island in the early 1900s, one is reluctant to leave it at all. Fortunately, with this edition, one doesn't have to, not right away, not when there is a glossary and a historical note from author (highly recommended since it's where Baker lists his subtle manipulations of factual events) and even a lovely and very informative author's tour of Coney Island as it stands currently (at the time of publication). So yes, as far as actual history goes, some facts were rearranged to fit the dramatical narrative better, but Baker captures so much of the flavors and colors and textures of small part of the world and thoughts, hopes and dreams of its inhabitants during a specific time period that this is not only an important book, it's an exceptionally good one. Very well written, smart and moving, with a phenomenal cast of characters including, but not limited to, gangsters, midgets, prostitutes, women's suffrage workers and psychiatrists. This is a story of tenement dwellers, immigrants, fighters, lovers and dreamers, a genuine chronicle of the American experience, the pursuit of an ideal at all costs and from all angles. New York has never held any appeal to me personally, but boy does it make for a great tale, amazing tale of bygone glory. For a while Coney Island shone so brightly against the night sky, that its Ferris Wheel would be the first thing the newcomers to the country would see, before the Statue of Liberty even. This is a story of Coney Island at its shiniest. Highly recommended.

Elizabeth La Lettrice

May 10, 2011

I picked up this book because I love stories of early 1900s especially in New York. Being a native New Yorker, I am somewhat nostalgic towards Coney Island in the face of all the constant attempts at revival and renovation. This book opened my eyes to a Coney Island unlike any I've ever imagined - a world where the concept of being "P.C" didn't exist, where an "amusement" park included a "Midget" Town and where people born with deformities and other unfortunate situations were looked at like "circus" attractions. It also gave very personal insight into the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire which is just an incredibly sad moment in New York City's history.There really is so much to say about this book (and I have so little time!). It's not a book for the light reader as it interweaves multiple character narratives (including Freud!) and it probably is a good idea to have a good general sense of what was going on in New York and the world at the time. However, I assure you that if you give it time and patience, it will be unlike any other historical novel you've ever read.(Ya know, I feel so passionate about this book that I might add more to my review later when I have more time.) :)

Beth

February 01, 2016

A very interesting historical novel set in New York City in the early twentieth century. We see the amusement parks of Coney Island, the gangs, the Jewish tenements, the garment sweatshops, and the Tammany Hall political machine through the eyes of both real and fictional characters involved, such as a dwarf who works on Coney Island, a young Jewish woman who tries to mobilize workers in the garment sweatshops to demand better conditions, and even Sigmund Freud during a visit to the city. It's meticulously researched and realistic and gives a fascinating look at conditions in the raw, corrupt, young city.

Ron

November 11, 2013

In dreamland, even America was possible.Kevin Baker’s spectacular new novel is often more a nightmare than a dream, but I didn’t want to wake up.Trick the Dwarf, a Coney Island circus performer, opens the novel by claiming, “I know a story,” and does he ever. “It is a story about a great city, and a little city, and a land of dreams. And always, above all, it is a story about fire.” Over the next 500 pages, we descend into the controlled and uncontrolled flames of New York in 1911. This isn’t the city Edith Wharton described in her novels. Baker has turned that luxurious portrayal of the Big Apple on its stem. His New York is an explosive furnace in which gangsters, prostitutes, politicians-all recent immigrants-vie for survival.In a seedy bar where the patrons bet on rat fights, Gyp the Blood is showing off: He can break a man’s back over his knees. When Gyp reaches for a young boy, Kid Twist bravely-foolishly!-intervenes. After beaning Gyp with a shovel, Kid and the boy are marked for death and flee to Dreamland, an amusement park on Coney Island.Here, Kid Twist discovers that the boy he saved is actually Trick the Dwarf, who disguises himself as a boy to snatch a few moments of normalcy from his life of ridicule.The phantasmagoric amusement park provides a perfect metaphor for the city itself. Staffed by the mentally or physically handicapped, Dreamland is an ever-expanding complex of bone-crushing rides, shocking freak shows, and reenactments of disasters.As Gyp the Blood seeks revenge on the man who beaned him with a shovel and the “boy” who got away, we meet his indomitable sister Esther and their cruel father, a rabbi so strict that his congregation has abandoned him.Trapped in the crippling labor of the garment district, Esther is saved from despair by her friendship with a young socialist. Together they begin the almost hopeless task of organizing a women’s union and striking for better hours. But their modest requests are met with horrifying brutality from the city’s police and gangsters, two groups distinguished only by uniform.Above the fray, but thoroughly in control of it, strides Big Tim, a state senator and city crime boss who owns more bars, gambling rings, and flop houses than he can count. Big Tim enjoys such prosperity and power that he’s beginning to dabble in a new luxury: compassion for the people in his city. Why should so many children be killed by thoughtless carriage drivers, he wonders. How many women will be lost in factory fires because the bosses lock them in?These questions are just starting to break through a lifetime of corruption, but they’re in harmony with the liberal reform movements driven by shrill newspapers and the persistent lobbying of the city’s high society ladies. That the New York we know today could have evolved from such social chaos should give us hope about modern-day Russia.Woven throughout these stories of escape, revenge, survival, and reform is a remarkable, often comic narrative of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung coming to America. It’s the culmination of Freud’s attempt to legitimize his cause, but the founder of psychoanalysis finds himself haunted by anxieties. New York’s explosive energy and sensuality overwhelm him. Abused and humiliated in a ghastly Coney Island funhouse, Freud finally concludes, “America is a mistake.”Dreamlandis a richer symphony of life than E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime(1975), to which it’s being compared. Baker, the chief historical researcher for Harry Evans’s recent American Century,has perfectly captured the messy, complex, inefficient nature of social development. Thick with the gritty details of unforgettable characters, this is literature-and history-at its best.

Carl

May 15, 2012

By virtue of a tour of The Tenement Museum (highly recommended, by the way) on NYC’s lower east side, I came in contact with Kevin Baker’s historical novel (1910) of Coney Island. There were (I found out) three big amusement parks there--Luna Beach, Steeplechase, and Dreamland.) Baker’s narrative starts off like a bullet and seldom lets up. He prefaces Book One with a list of “Dramatis Personae, like a Playbill, and it helps set the historical tone. We hear first from Trick the Dwarf, whose first words are I know a story. And does he ever. We’re transported from uptown to downtown in an instant, from Coney Island’s sand and water to rat-baiting in a Bowery cellar, and to an incident that will haunt every character in the story from then on. And there are a lot of characters. As huge a cast, fictional and historical, as you’d ever want to meet. And every single one as fascinating as the city in which Baker sets us down. This world is not a melting pot, but a stew--lots of different ingredients, each with its own distinct texture and flavor--but all in the same pot, swimming in the same gravy. As you might expect in this time of Ellis Island, this is a world of immigrants--first or second generation. Jews, Italians, Germans, Irish, all striving for survival and/or dominance. Often violently. It’s a mixed bag of pushcarts and automobiles, manure and petrochemicals, oppressive bosses and exploited workers, crooked politicians and ward bosses. It’s a crowded world that smells bad, one where even the virtuous need to watch their backs. But it’s also a world where affection and solidarity rule even in the worst circumstances. We see a lot of our friend Trick the Dwarf. We see a lot of Tammany Hall boss Big Tim Sullivan. We see a lot of--really--Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung on their first journey to America. And there are many others, each drawn sharply and feelingly. But the central story is that of Esther (Esse) Abramoitz and her lover Josef Kolyika, a.k.a. Kid Twist, coming of age and following a circuitous path to they’re not sure where. We move uptown, downtown, midtown through many different plot lines, but always, that incident in the beginning drives everything else, turns the book into a revenge drama of the first order, a hunter-hunted tale that keeps you going, going, going till there are no more pages left and you wish there were more.

Gregory

July 05, 2014

Fascinating account of New York and Coney Island circa 1909-1911, a period when many influences were growing, such as the labor movement, along with the exuberance and immaturity of a new country, which shoved so many cultures together so ambitiously in such a short period of time. It could only have happened how it did - with gangsters, Trammany Hall society, graft, prostitution, ridiculously bad working conditions, and unrestrained demonstrations of wealth and self-satisfied projects such as Dreamland with a million incandescent lightbulbs beckoning newly transplanted immigrants to the new country. An amusement park that also hosted "Little City", full of dwarfs and midgets, and incubators for the public to see tiny babies struggling for life.I was a little put off by the knowledge that some of the events were off by a few years, but the author acknowledges this in the end, saying that he used some license, but his true aim was to get human nature right at that time in history, and he's done that very well. A worthwhile read!

Jay

February 25, 2008

turn of the century new york city (it's "wild west period") as told from the perspective of two jewish gangsters, a female sweatshop worker in the triangle shirtwaist factory, a jewish prostitute and a midget who works in various coney island freak shows. my favorite non-harry potter novel that i have read in the past few years. fucking fantastic, and so much yiddish.

Kij

August 22, 2007

Coney Island in the early party of the Twentieth century, A city of Midgets, the seamy underworld of New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire , a love story. What more do you need from a book?

George

November 17, 2018

I love stories about old-time amusement parks.

Tracey

December 23, 2012

Really loved it. Great characters and wildly interesting history

Susan

November 26, 2013

The images in this book linger on....kaleidoscopic, heartbreaking; Times so full of struggle and misery all towards a better future in which we live now.

Lora

December 22, 2016

Dreamland is a long book with a complicated plot. Parts of it go in circles, looping back around to come up again. But in the end, everything, or almost everything wraps up into one tight plot. Except for the Great Head Doctors from Vienna – Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and a couple of others. They apparently did make a journey to America in the general time period, and the story has them wandering by, sightseeing, at a couple of the scenes of action of the main story. But primarily they are doing their own thing neither affect nor are affected by the main events of the story to any great extent.It is a story of the early twentieth century. There are gangsters, Tammany politicians, sweatshop workers, whores, and Coney Island freaks. There are drinking and gambling in the most disgusting of Bowery bars, shows in the Coney Island amusement parks, murder, an opium den, abuse – physical and sexual – of young girls in garment factories, and several fires.The story or at least part of it is narrated by a character called Trick the Dwarf who lived for a time in the Dreamland amusement park, one of at least three amusement parks on Coney Island. But the main characters are Esther Abromowitz and her boyfriend, Kid Twist. I liked the description of Esther’s early work experience, from being virtually sold to work in a cramped attic hand-sewing coats when she was still practically a child through several other equally demeaning sorts of sewing jobs to finally working at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. There is a long stretch about union activities during her time at the Triangle factory. After the worst of the drama between Kid Twist and Gyp the Blood (who is really Esther’s brother Lazar) is finished, Trick the Dwarf professes not to know what happened to Esther and Kid. But if they did not leave the city, and if Esther did not take up working professionally for the union, she was set up perfectly to return to the Triangle factory. If that happened, she was then in a perfect position to die in the famous fire that subsequently struck that establishment killing over a hundred people due in large part to the foolish policies of the owners.The book was a little difficult to get into at first, but as the relationship between the characters became clearer, it got better.

Linda

August 15, 2019

Well this is a giant of a book, a book fit for the big top. I’d never heard of Dreamland, the place, the book, or author Kevin Baker. I think I picked this copy up from a Little Free Library in my neighborhood. It sat on my shelf for a long time. Then I cracked it open and read 10 or 15 pages, but got distracted by other books, other responsibilities and it sat neglected for several more months. I returned to it with few expectations and due to its physical heft, little hope of finishing it. However, I found myself drawn into a dreamworld like no other I’ve experienced. Baker has created a fantastic example of historical fiction, a genre that can be puzzling and often suffers from lack of respect. Set on a Brooklyn peninsula, amidst the rough and rollicking Coney Island amusement park culture of the early 1900s, Dreamland, takes readers into a surreal world of desperate immigrants exploited at every turn by employers, street thugs, gangs, and a manipulative political system.The rich cast of characters is comprised of real historical figures as well as fictional rubes struggling to make a go of life in a new and unkind country. Character names provide insight into what I’m trying to describe: Kid Twist, Gyp the Blood, Trick the Dwarf, Mad Carlotta, Big Tim Sullivan, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Francis Perkins, Mary Dreier, Louie the Lump—I think you get the picture.Baker’s achievement is in making us root for these characters, even the most despicable ones. There is pride, outright evil, graft, animal cruelty, child abuse, violence against men, women, children, and animals. There are scenes that made me want to flee. But, the matter of fact way in which they are presented lends a horrifying credence to them. These things, or things much like these things, really happened. Think the garment industry and the Triangle Fire, for example.This book will suck you in, perhaps against you better judgement. I think it will echo in my head for a long time.

Jean

September 03, 2012

I found this book in a library in our son's apartment building in New Jersey (found out later that the author is from the same town in NJ). When I started reading it, I thought I might not finish it. The beginning describes some very violent, horrific scenes - a rat-dog fight, innocent bystanders being snatched up and having their backs broken by a gangster for the amusement of the crowd. But I kept reading because the writing is good, the author is reputable and does meticulous research, and I am interested in the history. I am so glad I did not stop reading! The gory, horrific scenes are not common throughout the book; they are mostly in the start. The times and conditions reported in the book are depressing, but the characters are well fleshed out so that they are real and multi-dimensional human beings. And, indeed, most of the characters ARE REAL PEOPLE. The story is so outlandish and bizarre that I kept saying to myself, "can this be true? How much of this historical fiction is really not fiction?" So, of course, I looked it up. OMG Truth really is stranger than fiction. So many of the characters are actual people from history; so many events are accurately reported; the parks: Dreamland, Luna Park, the dwarf city, the elephants, etc. - it's all true. The author does mix up dates some. For instance, Freud and Jung's visit to the U.S. was a little earlier than the other events in the book. But they did visit and have the experiences in the book, at least many of them. I wasn't too thrilled with the ending, but it made sense. I won't say more in order not to alert readers to the ending. This is a book I think we all should read, especially in this political environment when unions are being busted and the corporations are re-gaining all the power. We have been down that road and need to be reminded of why we have workers rights and government intervention.

Liz

January 03, 2017

Dreamland, Coney Island -- outwardly it was a glittering paradise, but scratch the surface and you find an inner core of cruelty and corruption. Baker meticulously researched Coney Island for this work of historical fiction and did a masterful job of bringing it back to life -- the sights, the smells, the noise. Despite all its tawdriness, Dreamland was quite literally a dream land -- where ordinary people could temporarily forget their daily burdens.The cover art depicts a Ferris wheel, which is an apt metaphor for the story. Coney Island is the hub, and the stories of the immigrants, carny workers, Tammany Hall, garment union, gangsters, prostitutes, etc. are all spokes on that wheel.Baker details the grinding hardship of the NYC immigrant experience, with a particular focus on Jews and the garment trade. The author was especially effective at capturing the plight of women workers; his portrayal of the union strike and its ramifications is particularly gripping. I was surprised to learn how many of the colorful characters (particularly the gangsters) were based on real people. Some characters, like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, are well known. The two visited Coney Island prior to speaking at Clark University. Some readers may find the Freud/Jung sections a bit ponderous. (Having graduated from Clark with a major in psychology, I was more engaged by this part of the plot than others might be.)

Anna

March 01, 2010

I thoroughly enjoyed Dreamland. Although the characters are basically archetypes of gangsters, whores, corrupt policemen, corrupt politicians, factory workers, Socialists, etc., Baker has developed the main characters into believable - if not terribly likable - individuals. Through these characters, Baker does an excellent job at portraying the brutality of life in turn-of-the-century New York City. He describes the futility felt by the working poor, women, disillusioned immigrants, and the outcasts so well that you're thankful that you live at the turn of this century rather than the last.At the same time, Coney Island represents an escape from that life. It gives the poor somewhere to go that is a spectacular distraction from their lives, and provides a type of excitement that is relatively harmless - unlike the excitement generally offered by gang turf wars. Coney Island also provides the poor with a brief feeling of superiority, as they jeer at other people being zapped by cattle prods and otherwise made to look like fools.However, I wasn't attached to any of the characters. I sympathized with the women, but didn't actually like any of them. I could have done without the great head doctors entirely. The only character I liked at all was Kid Twist - and I'm not really sure why.

Frank

May 27, 2012

I've had this book on my shelf for several years and just now got around to reading it. When the book first came out in 1999, I read a review of it in the Washington Post and put it on my wish list then. I eventually found a paperback copy and I'm sorry I didn't delve into this fascinating novel sooner. The novel takes place around 1910 in New York City and Coney Island. It's a long sprawling story of Coney Island freaks, New York gangs, prostitutes, politicians, cops, Jewish immigrants, sweatshop workers, and the other myriad social classes that inhabited New York at the time. The book goes into details of the brutality and cruelty of life in the slums and the day-to-day existence of the people. This includes cruelty to both people and animals - some of this is really hard to read. It tells of the horrible 14-hour-day drudgery of women working in sweatshops sewing shirtwaists, the awful living conditions of the common people being crammed into small tenements and renters buying shifts to sleep in a spare bed, and it details the life of the dwarfs and other side-show freaks who populated Coney Island. This is a must read if you are interested in New York City history and life during the early 1900s. High recommendation!Entrance to Coney Island Dreamland circa 1908:

Jess

July 07, 2010

An excellent novel! Dreamland skirts the edges of melodrama but is saved by excellent writing. Baker sometimes waxes poetic but most often the plot and the character's lives just take over and one is less aware of the author and his messages and you're just involved in the story. It's an extremely sensory book that pulls you in and makes you forget your own reality for a while. There are a two drawbacks that should be noted though. First, this book is not for those with weak stomachs: there are a couple of gross out scenes (which I don't mind, but they're really, really gross.). Second, this book is extremely violent especially toward it's female characters. There is one particularly gratuitous scene of sexual violence that seems stilted and thrown in for weird effect. It's supposed to provide back story and show us that the character is the whore with a heart of gold, but it goes on for pages. Also, there are a number of gangsters who get names and bit parts, but the whores just get called whores and barely say a word. So, aside from the endemic sexism that can be found in many "meaty" novels, this book is worth a read.

Frequently asked questions

Listening to audiobooks not only easy, it is also very convenient. You can listen to audiobooks on almost every device. From your laptop to your smart phone or even a smart speaker like Apple HomePod or even Alexa. Here’s how you can get started listening to audiobooks.

  • 1. Download your favorite audiobook app such as Speechify.
  • 2. Sign up for an account.
  • 3. Browse the library for the best audiobooks and select the first one for free
  • 4. Download the audiobook file to your device
  • 5. Open the Speechify audiobook app and select the audiobook you want to listen to.
  • 6. Adjust the playback speed and other settings to your preference.
  • 7. Press play and enjoy!

While you can listen to the bestsellers on almost any device, and preferences may vary, generally smart phones are offer the most convenience factor. You could be working out, grocery shopping, or even watching your dog in the dog park on a Saturday morning.
However, most audiobook apps work across multiple devices so you can pick up that riveting new Stephen King book you started at the dog park, back on your laptop when you get back home.

Speechify is one of the best apps for audiobooks. The pricing structure is the most competitive in the market and the app is easy to use. It features the best sellers and award winning authors. Listen to your favorite books or discover new ones and listen to real voice actors read to you. Getting started is easy, the first book is free.

Research showcasing the brain health benefits of reading on a regular basis is wide-ranging and undeniable. However, research comparing the benefits of reading vs listening is much more sparse. According to professor of psychology and author Dr. Kristen Willeumier, though, there is good reason to believe that the reading experience provided by audiobooks offers many of the same brain benefits as reading a physical book.

Audiobooks are recordings of books that are read aloud by a professional voice actor. The recordings are typically available for purchase and download in digital formats such as MP3, WMA, or AAC. They can also be streamed from online services like Speechify, Audible, AppleBooks, or Spotify.
You simply download the app onto your smart phone, create your account, and in Speechify, you can choose your first book, from our vast library of best-sellers and classics, to read for free.

Audiobooks, like real books can add up over time. Here’s where you can listen to audiobooks for free. Speechify let’s you read your first best seller for free. Apart from that, we have a vast selection of free audiobooks that you can enjoy. Get the same rich experience no matter if the book was free or not.

It depends. Yes, there are free audiobooks and paid audiobooks. Speechify offers a blend of both!

It varies. The easiest way depends on a few things. The app and service you use, which device, and platform. Speechify is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks. Downloading the app is quick. It is not a large app and does not eat up space on your iPhone or Android device.
Listening to audiobooks on your smart phone, with Speechify, is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks.

footer-waves