19 Best South Books
South is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top South audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 19 South audiobooks below.
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Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
- By: Sean Dietrich
- Length: 7 hours 7 minutes
- Publisher: Zondervan
- Publish date: March 10, 2020
- Language: English
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4.51(826 ratings)
4.51(826 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0021.99 USDFrom celebrated storyteller “Sean of the South” comes an unforgettable memoir of love, loss, the friction of family memories, and the unlikely hope that you’re gonna be alright. Sean Dietrich was twelve years old when he scatteredFrom celebrated storyteller “Sean of the South” comes an unforgettable memoir of love, loss, the friction of family memories, and the unlikely hope that you’re gonna be alright.
Sean Dietrich was twelve years old when he scattered his father’s ashes from the mountain range. His father was a man who lived for baseball, a steel worker with a ready wink, who once scaled a fifty-foot tree just to hang a tire swing for his son. He was also the stranger who tried to kidnap and kill Sean’s mother before pulling the trigger on himself. He was a childhood hero, now reduced to a man in a box.
Will the Circle Be Unbroken? is the story of what happens after the unthinkable, and the journey we all must make in finding the courage to stop the cycles of the past from laying claim to our future.
Sean was a seventh-grade drop-out, a dishwasher then a construction worker to help his mother and sister scrape by, and a self-described “nobody with a sad story behind him.” Yet he cannot deny the glimmers of life’s goodness even amid its rough edges. Such goodness becomes even harder to deny when Sean meets the love of his life at a fried chicken church potluck, and harder still when his lifelong love of storytelling leads him to stages across the southeast, where he is known and loved as “Sean of the South.”
A story that will stay with you long after the final page, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? testifies to the strength that lives within us all to make our peace with the past and look to the future with renewed hope and wonder.
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Where the Devil Don’t Stay
- By: Stephen Deusner
- Narrator: John McLain
- Length: 10 hours 56 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.51(171 ratings)
4.51(171 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.95 USDIn 1996, Patterson Hood recruited friends and fellow musicians in Athens, Georgia, to form his dream band: a group with no set lineup that specialized in rowdy rock and roll. The Drive-By Truckers, as they named themselves, grew into one of the bestIn 1996, Patterson Hood recruited friends and fellow musicians in Athens, Georgia, to form his dream band: a group with no set lineup that specialized in rowdy rock and roll. The Drive-By Truckers, as they named themselves, grew into one of the best and most consequential rock bands of the twenty-first century, a great live act whose songs deliver the truth and nuance rarely bestowed on Southerners, so often reduced to stereotypes.
Where the Devil Don’t Stay tells the band’s unlikely story not chronologically but geographically. Seeing the Truckers’ albums as roadmaps through a landscape that is half-real, half-imagined, their fellow Southerner Stephen Deusner travels to the places the band’s members have lived in and written about. Tracking the band from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, to the author’s hometown in McNairy County, Tennessee, Deusner explores the Truckers’ complex relationship to the South and the issues of class, race, history, and religion that run through their music. Drawing on new interviews with past and present band members, including Jason Isbell, Where the Devil Don’t Stay is more than the story of a great American band; it’s a reflection on the power of music and how it can frame and shape a larger culture.
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Moon Baseball Road Trips
- By: Timothy Malcolm
- Narrator: George Newbern
- Length: 18 hours 19 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: May 18, 2021
- Language: English
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4.36(22 ratings)
4.36(22 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0038.99 USDSunshine, hot dogs, friends, and the excitement of the game: Baseball is called America’s pastime for a reason. Experience the best of the MLB cities and stadiums with Moon Baseball Road Trips. Flexible Itineraries: Explore the 30 majorSunshine, hot dogs, friends, and the excitement of the game: Baseball is called America’s pastime for a reason. Experience the best of the MLB cities and stadiums with Moon Baseball Road Trips.
- Flexible Itineraries: Explore the 30 major league cities with a variety of road trip options, including a Boston to DC route, a loop through the Midwest, a dip into Toronto, a cruise along the West Coast, and more
- Visit all the Ballparks: From the ivy walls of Wrigley to Fenway’s Green Monster and Dodger Stadium’s gorgeous mountain views, experience every ballpark in the league and dive into local fan culture
- Catch a Game: Find valuable tips for snagging tickets and get the inside scoop on the best places to park or catch public transit, where to eat and drink nearby, and events like music festivals, the Hall of Fame Weekend, Fourth of July celebrations, and more
- Explore the Major League Cities: Get to know the MLB hometowns with full chapters on each city. Pay respects to Babe Ruth in Baltimore, visit Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and stroll through the Boston Common. Find the best local craft breweries, and chow down on chili dogs, barbecue, fresh crab, and more foodie specialties. Hold back a tear at the Field of Dreams, grab a seat for a Spring Training game, or rent a kayak on the bay and try to catch a fly ball from San Francisco’s Oracle Park
- Expertise and Know-How: Former baseball writer and avid Phillies fan Timothy Malcolm shares his advice for planning the perfect baseball road trip
- Maps and Driving Tools: Easy-to-use maps, along with mileages, driving times, and directions, with full-color photos throughout
- Helpful resources on COVID-19
- Planning Tips: Where to stay, when and where to get gas, how to avoid traffic, and tips for driving in different road and weather conditions, plus suggestions for seniors, families with kids, and more
With Moon Baseball Road Trips’ practical tips, local expertise, and flexible itineraries, you’re ready to step up to the plate and hit the road.
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Long Walk to Freedom
- By: Nelson Mandela
- Narrator: Michael Boatman
- Length: 27 hours 10 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: August 28, 2018
- Language: English
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4.34(71534 ratings)
4.34(71534 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0031.98 USDThe autobiography of global human rights icon Nelson Mandela is “riveting . . . both a brilliant description of a diabolical system and a testament to the power of the spirit to transcend it” (Washington Post).Long Walk to Freedom: TheThe autobiography of global human rights icon Nelson Mandela is “riveting . . . both a brilliant description of a diabolical system and a testament to the power of the spirit to transcend it” (Washington Post).Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! *Nelson Mandela was one of the great moral and political leaders of his time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. After his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela was at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa’s antiapartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule. He is still revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.Long Walk to Freedom is his moving and exhilarating autobiography, destined to take its place among the finest memoirs of history’s greatest figures. Here for the first time, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela told the extraordinary story of his life — an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph.
The book that inspired the major motion picture Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.... Read more*Booktrack is an immersive format that pairs traditional audiobook narration to complementary music. The tempo and rhythm of the score are in perfect harmony with the action and characters throughout the audiobook. Gently playing in the background, the music never overpowers or distracts from the narration, so listeners can enjoy every minute. When you purchase this Booktrack edition, you receive the exact narration as the traditional audiobook available, with the addition of music throughout. -
The Inheritors
- By: Eve Fairbanks
- Narrator: Janina Edwards
- Length: 12 hours 4 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.27(127 ratings)
4.27(127 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.99 USDLonglisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction A dozen years in the making, The Inheritors weaves together the stories of three ordinary South Africans over five tumultuous decades in a sweeping and exquisite look at what reallyLonglisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction
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A dozen years in the making, The Inheritors weaves together the stories of three ordinary South Africans over five tumultuous decades in a sweeping and exquisite look at what really happens when a country resolves to end white supremacy.
Dipuo grew up on the south side of a mine dump that segregated Johannesburg’s black townships from the white-only city. Some nights, she hiked to the top. To a South African teenager in the 1980s—even an anti-apartheid activist like Dipuo—the divide that separated her from the glittering lights on the other side appeared eternal. But in 1994, the world’s last explicit racial segregationist regime collapsed to make way for something unprecedented.
With penetrating psychological insight, intimate reporting, and bewitching prose, The Inheritors tells the story of a country in the throes of a great reckoning. Through the lives of Dipuo, her daughter Malaika, and Christo—one of the last white South Africans drafted to fight for the apartheid regime—award-winning journalist Eve Fairbanks probes what happens when people once locked into certain kinds of power relations find their status shifting. Observing subtle truths about race and power that extend well beyond national borders, she explores questions that preoccupy so many of us today: How can we let go of our pasts, as individuals and as countries? How should historical debts be paid? And how can a person live an honorable life in a society that—for better or worse—they no longer recognize? -
All the Agents and Saints
- By: Stephanie Elizondo Griest
- Narrator: Frankie Corzo
- Length: 13 hours 4 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2017
- Language: English
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4.21(143 ratings)
4.21(143 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDAfter a decade of chasing stories around the globe, intrepid travel writer Stephanie Elizondo Griest followed the magnetic pull home–only to discover that her native South Texas had been radically transformed in her absence. Ravaged by drugAfter a decade of chasing stories around the globe, intrepid travel writer Stephanie Elizondo Griest followed the magnetic pull home–only to discover that her native South Texas had been radically transformed in her absence.
Ravaged by drug wars and barricaded by an eighteen-foot steel wall, her ancestral land had become the nation’s foremost crossing ground for undocumented workers, many of whom perished along the way. The frequency of these tragedies seemed like a terrible coincidence, before Elizondo Griest moved to the New York-Canada borderlands.
Once she began to meet Mohawks from the Akwesasne Nation, however, she recognized striking parallels to life on the southern border. Having lost their land through devious treaties, their mother tongues at English-only schools, and their traditional occupations through capitalist ventures, Tejanos and Mohawks alike struggle under the legacy of colonialism. Toxic industries surround their neighborhoods while the US Border Patrol militarizes them. Combating these forces are legions of artists and activists devoted to preserving their indigenous cultures. Complex belief systems, meanwhile, conjure miracles. In All the Agents and Saints, Elizondo Griest weaves seven years of stories into a meditation on the existential impact of international borderlines by illuminating the spaces in between and the people who live there.
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The Hidden Magic of Walt Disney World, 3rd Edition
- By: Susan Veness
- Narrator: Andrea Emmes
- Length: 8 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2021
- Language: English
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4.18(72 ratings)
4.18(72 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDThe latest edition to the successful Hidden Magic series features updated information on the latest attractions at Walt Disney World, including Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway! Whether it’s yourThe latest edition to the successful Hidden Magic series features updated information on the latest attractions at Walt Disney World, including Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway!
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Whether it’s your first or fiftieth visit to Walt Disney World, you’ll be surprised at how much you can miss during your trip. But with this guide to Disney’s hidden treasures you’ll learn:
-You can search for more than the usual hidden Mickey. There are other beloved characters like Donald Duck and Minnie Mouse hidden around the parks.
-The book Belle reads in Beauty and the Beast is a real book…and you can find out what it is by heading to Maurice’s cottage.
-Imagineers hide symbols of themselves around the park to “sign” their work.
Including all-new information on Toy Story Land, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, and Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, The Hidden Magic of Walt Disney World, 3rd Edition will inspire you to relive the magic year after year! -
Kaffir Boy
- By: Mark Mathabane
- Narrator: Mark Mathabane
- Length: 18 hours 33 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2012
- Language: English
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4.17(14779 ratings)
4.17(14779 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0033.95 USDThe classic story of life in apartheid South Africa Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa’s most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites ofThe classic story of life in apartheid South Africa
Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa’s most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American university.
This extraordinary memoir of life under apartheid is a triumph of the human spirit over hatred and unspeakable degradation, for Mark Mathabane did what no physically and psychologically battered “Kaffir” from the rat-infested alleys of Alexandra was supposed to do—he escaped to tell about it.
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Chesapeake Requiem
- By: Earl Swift
- Narrator: Tom Parks
- Length: 12 hours 51 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: August 07, 2018
- Language: English
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4.08(1895 ratings)
4.08(1895 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.005.99 USDA brilliant, soulful, and timely portrait of a two-hundred-year-old crabbing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay as it faces extinction. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Washington Post, NPR, Outside, Smithsonian, Popular Science, Bloomberg,A brilliant, soulful, and timely portrait of a two-hundred-year-old crabbing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay as it faces extinction.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Washington Post, NPR, Outside, Smithsonian, Popular Science, Bloomberg, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Review of Books, Science Friday, and Kirkus
“BEAUTIFUL, HAUNTING AND TRUE.” — Hampton Sides * “GORGEOUS. A TRULY REMARKABLE BOOK.” — Beth Macy * “GRIPPING. FANTASTIC.” — Outside * “CAPTIVATING.” — Washington Post * “POWERFUL.” — Bill McKibben * “VIVID. HARROWING AND MOVING.” — Science * “A MASTERFUL NARRATIVE.” — Christian Science Monitor * “THE BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR.” — Stephen L. Carter/Bloomberg
A Washington Post bestseller * An Indie Next List selection *An NPR All Things Considered and Axios “Book Club” pick
Tangier Island, Virginia, is a community unique on the American landscape. Mapped by John Smith in 1608, settled during the American Revolution, the tiny sliver of mud is home to 470 hardy people who live an isolated and challenging existence, with one foot in the 21st century and another in times long passed. They are separated from their countrymen by the nation’s largest estuary, and a twelve-mile boat trip across often tempestuous water–the same water that for generations has made Tangier’s fleet of small fishing boats a chief source for the rightly prized Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and has lent the island its claim to fame as the softshell crab capital of the world.
Yet for all of its long history, and despite its tenacity, Tangier is disappearing. The very water that has long sustained it is erasing the island day by day, wave by wave. It has lost two-thirds of its land since 1850, and still its shoreline retreats by fifteen feet a year–meaning this storied place will likely succumb first among U.S. towns to the effects of climate change. Experts reckon that, barring heroic intervention by the federal government, islanders could be forced to abandon their home within twenty-five years. Meanwhile, the graves of their forebears are being sprung open by encroaching tides, and the conservative and deeply religious Tangiermen ponder the end times.
Chesapeake Requiem is an intimate look at the island’s past, present and tenuous future, by an acclaimed journalist who spent much of the past two years living among Tangier’s people, crabbing and oystering with its watermen, and observing its long traditions and odd ways. What emerges is the poignant tale of a world that has, quite nearly, gone by–and a leading-edge report on the coming fate of countless coastal communities.
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A Rainbow in the Night
- By: Dominique Lapierre
- Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 8 hours 44 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2009
- Language: English
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4.07(588 ratings)
4.07(588 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDIn 1652, a small group of Dutch farmers landed on the southernmost tip of Africa. Sent by the powerful Dutch India Company, their mission was simply to grow vegetables and supply ships rounding the cape. The colonists, however, were convinced byIn 1652, a small group of Dutch farmers landed on the southernmost tip of Africa. Sent by the powerful Dutch India Company, their mission was simply to grow vegetables and supply ships rounding the cape. The colonists, however, were convinced by their strict Calvinist faith that they were among God’s “elect,” chosen to rule over the continent. Their bloody, ferocious, and fervent saga would culminate three centuries later in one of the greatest tragedies of history: the establishment of a racist regime in which a white minority would subjugate and victimize millions of blacks–apartheid. This poisonous system would only end with the liberation of one of the moral giants of our time, Nelson Mandela.
An international bestseller that has been praised throughout Europe,A Rainbow in the Night is Dominique Lapierre’s epic account of South Africa’s tragic history and the heroic men and women–famous and obscure, white and black, European and African–who have, with their blood and tears, brought to life the country that is today known as the Rainbow Nation.
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Witch Queens, Voodoo Spirits, and Hoodoo Saints
- By: Denise Alvarado
- Narrator: Karen Chilton
- Length: 6 hours 53 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.06(94 ratings)
4.06(94 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDA magical mystery tour of the extraordinary historical characters that have defined the unique spiritual landscape of New Orleans New Orleans has long been America’s most magical city, inhabited by a fascinating visible and invisible world,A magical mystery tour of the extraordinary historical characters that have defined the unique spiritual landscape of New Orleans
New Orleans has long been America’s most magical city, inhabited by a fascinating visible and invisible world, full of mysteries, known for its decadence and haunted by its spirits. If Salem, Massachusetts is famous for its persecution of witches, New Orleans is celebrated for its embrace of the magical, mystical, and paranormal. New Orleans is acclaimed for its witches, ghosts, and vampires. Because of its unique history, New Orleans is the historical stronghold of traditional African religions and spirituality in the US. No other city worldwide is as associated with Vodou as New Orleans.
In her new book, author and scholar Denise Alvarado takes us on a magical tour of New Orleans. There is a mysterious spiritual underbelly hiding in plain sight in New Orleans, and in this book Alvarado shows us where it is and who the characters are. She tells where they come from and how they persist and manifest today. Witch Queens, Voodoo Spirits, and Hoodoo Saints shines a light on notable spirits and folk saints such as Papa Legba, Annie Christmas, Black Hawk, African American culture hero Jean St. Malo, St. Expedite, plague saint Roch, and, of course, the mother and father of New Orleans Voudou, Marie Laveau and Doctor John Montenee. Witch Queens, Voodoo Spirits, and Hoodoo Saints serves as a secret history of New Orleans, revealing details even locals may not know.
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The Deepest South of All
- By: Richard Grant
- Narrator: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 7 hours 34 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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4.05(1856 ratings)
4.05(1856 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDBestselling travel writer Richard Grant “sensitively probes the complex and troubled history of the oldest city on the Mississippi River through the eyes of a cast of eccentric and unexpected characters” (Newsweek).Natchez, Mississippi,Bestselling travel writer Richard Grant “sensitively probes the complex and troubled history of the oldest city on the Mississippi River through the eyes of a cast of eccentric and unexpected characters” (Newsweek).
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Natchez, Mississippi, once had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in America, and its wealth was built on slavery and cotton. Today it has the greatest concentration of antebellum mansions in the South, and a culture full of unexpected contradictions. Prominent white families dress up in hoopskirts and Confederate uniforms for ritual celebrations of the Old South, yet Natchez is also progressive enough to elect a gay black man for mayor with 91% of the vote.
Much as John Berendt did for Savannah in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and the hit podcast S-Town did for Woodstock, Alabama, so Richard Grant does for Natchez in The Deepest South of All. With humor and insight, he depicts a strange, eccentric town with an unforgettable cast of characters. There’s Buzz Harper, a six-food-five gay antique dealer famous for swanning around in a mink coat with a uniformed manservant and a very short German bodybuilder. There’s Ginger Hyland, “The Lioness,” who owns 500 antique eyewash cups and decorates 168 Christmas trees with her jewelry collection. And there’s Nellie Jackson, a Cadillac-driving brothel madam who became an FBI informant about the KKK before being burned alive by one of her customers. Interwoven through these stories is the more somber and largely forgotten account of Abd al Rahman Ibrahima, a West African prince who was enslaved in Natchez and became a cause celebre in the 1820s, eventually gaining his freedom and returning to Africa.
With an “easygoing manner” (Geoff Dyer, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition), this book offers a gripping portrait of a complex American place, as it struggles to break free from the past and confront the legacy of slavery. -
Going to the Mountain
- By: Ndaba Mandela
- Narrator: Michael Boatman
- Length: 7 hours 38 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: June 26, 2018
- Language: English
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4.05(321 ratings)
4.05(321 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.98 USDThe first-ever book to tell Nelson Mandela’s life through the eyes of the grandson who was raised by him, chronicling Ndaba Mandela’s life living with, and learning from, one of the greatest leaders and humanitarians the world has everThe first-ever book to tell Nelson Mandela’s life through the eyes of the grandson who was raised by him, chronicling Ndaba Mandela’s life living with, and learning from, one of the greatest leaders and humanitarians the world has ever known.
To the rest of the world, Nelson Mandela was a giant: an anti-apartheid revolutionary, a world-renowned humanitarian, and South Africa’s first black president. To Ndaba Mandela, he was simply “Granddad.” In Going to the Mountain, Ndaba tells how he came to live with Mandela shortly after he turned eleven–having met each other only once, years before, when Mandela was imprisoned at Victor Verster Prison — and how the two of them slowly, cautiously built a relationship that would affect both their lives in extraordinary ways.
It wasn’t an easy transition. Mandela had high expectations for those around him, especially his family, and Ndaba chafed at the strict rules and exacting guidelines in his grandfather’s home. But at the same time — through overheard calls from foreign dignitaries as well as the Xhosa folk wisdom that his grandfather shared with him at every opportunity — Ndaba was learning how to be a man. On a scale both personal and epic, Ndaba’s extraordinary journey mirrors that of South Africa’s coming of age — from the segregated Soweto ghettos into which he was born to the privileged life in which he grew up and the turbulent yet exciting times in which he carries on his grandfather’s legacy.
Going to the Mountain is, in the end, a story about unlocking the power within each of us. It’s a cautionary tale about how a child’s life can go one way or the other, depending upon the intervention of a caring soul–and about the awesome power of love to serve as a catalyst for change.
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Old Glory
- By: Jonathan Raban
- Narrator: James Langton
- Length: 18 hours 46 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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3.94(615 ratings)
3.94(615 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0029.95 USDThe author of Bad Land realizes a lifelong dream as he navigates the waters of the Mississippi River in a spartan sixteen-foot motorboat, producing yet another masterpiece of contemporary American travel writing. In the course of his voyage, RabanThe author of Bad Land realizes a lifelong dream as he navigates the waters of the Mississippi River in a spartan sixteen-foot motorboat, producing yet another masterpiece of contemporary American travel writing.
In the course of his voyage, Raban records the mercurial caprices of the river and the astonishingly varied lives of the people who live along its banks. Whether he is fishing for walleye or hunting coon, discussing theology in Prairie Du Chien or race relations in Memphis, he is an expert observer of the heartland’s estrangement from America’s capitals of power and culture, and its helpless nostalgia for its lost past. Witty, elegiac, and magnificently erudite, Old Glory is as filled with strong currents as the Mississippi itself.
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Best. State. Ever.
- By: Dave Barry
- Narrator: Dave Barry
- Length: 4 hours 49 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: September 06, 2016
- Language: English
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3.82(3635 ratings)
3.82(3635 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0012.99 USDA brilliantly funny exploration of the Sunshine State from the man who knows it best: Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Dave Barry. We never know what will happen next in Florida. We know only that, any minute now,A brilliantly funny exploration of the Sunshine State from the man who knows it best: Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Dave Barry. We never know what will happen next in Florida. We know only that, any minute now, something will. Every few months, Dave Barry gets a call from some media person wanting to know, “What the hell is wrong with Florida?” Somehow, the state’s acquired an image as a subtropical festival of stupid, and as a loyal Floridian, Dave begs to differ. Sure, there was the 2000 election. And people seem to take their pants off for no good reason. And it has flying insects the size of LeBron James. But it is a great state, and Dave is going to tell you why. Join him as he celebrates Florida from Key West at the bottom to whatever it is that’s at the top, from the Sunshine State’s earliest history to the fun-fair of weirdness and gunfire (“Our motto: ‘Come back! We weren’t firing at you!'”) that it is today. It’s the most hilarious book yet from “the funniest damn writer in the whole country” (Carl Hiaasen, and he should know). By the end, you’ll have to admit that whatever else you might think about Florida-you can never say it’s boring.
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South Africa
- By: Joseph Stromberg
- Narrator: Harry Reasoner
- Length: 2 hours 47 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2006
- Language: English
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3.74(31 ratings)
3.74(31 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0011.95 USDSouth Africa has become the world’s symbol of racism. From the moment the Dutch colonists set foot on the Cape in 1652, this nation has steered a straight course toward apartheid, resulting in consistent civil unrest. This presentationSouth Africa has become the world’s symbol of racism. From the moment the Dutch colonists set foot on the Cape in 1652, this nation has steered a straight course toward apartheid, resulting in consistent civil unrest. This presentation explores the economic and social forces that have brought South Africa into the international spotlight.
The World’s Political Hot Spots Series explains the basis of conflicts in some of the world’s most politically sensitive areas. Many of these regions are in today’s headlines, and tensions recently have become violent in virtually all of them. Each presentation covers up to ten centuries of background, revealing how and why today’s problems occur.
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We Are Not Such Things
- By: Justine van der Leun
- Narrator: Erin Bennett
- Length: 19 hours 19 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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3.72(536 ratings)
3.72(536 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0024.95 USDJustine van der Leun reopens the murder of a young American woman in South Africa, an iconic case that calls into question our understanding of truth and reconciliation, loyalty, justice, race, and class. The story of Amy Biehl is well known inJustine van der Leun reopens the murder of a young American woman in South Africa, an iconic case that calls into question our understanding of truth and reconciliation, loyalty, justice, race, and class.
The story of Amy Biehl is well known in South Africa. The twenty-six-year-old white American Fulbright scholar was brutally murdered on August 25, 1993, during the final, fiery days of apartheid by a mob of young black men in a township outside Cape Town. Her parents’ forgiveness of two of her killers became a symbol of the truth and reconciliation process in South Africa. Justine van der Leun decided to introduce the story to an American audience. But as she delved into the case, the prevailing narrative started to unravel. Why didn’t the eyewitness reports agree on who killed Amy Biehl? Were the men convicted of the murder actually responsible for her death? And then Van der Leun discovered another brutal crime committed on the same day, in the very same area. The true story of Amy Biehl’s death, it turned out, was not only a story of forgiveness but also a reflection of the complicated history of a troubled country.
We Are Not Such Things is the result of Van der Leun’s four-year investigation into this strange, knotted tale of injustice, violence, and compassion. The bizarre twists and turns of this case and its aftermath–and the story that emerges of what happened on that fateful day in 1993 and in the decades that followed–come together in an unsparing account of life in South Africa today. Van der Leun immerses herself in the lives of her subjects and paints a stark, moving portrait of a township and its residents. We come to understand that the issues at the heart of her investigation are universal in scope and powerful in resonance.
We Are Not Such Things reveals how reconciliation is impossible without an acknowledgment of the past, a lesson as relevant to America today as to a South Africa still struggling with the long shadow of its history.
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To End a Plague
- By: Emily Bass
- Narrator: Catherine Ho
- Length: 16 hours 19 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: July 06, 2021
- Language: English
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3.71(22 ratings)
3.71(22 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0038.99 USD“Randy Shilts and Laurie Garrett told the story of the HIV/AIDS epidemic through the late 1980s and the early 1990s, respectively. Now journalist-historian-activist Emily Bass tells the story of US engagement in HIV/AIDS control in sub-Saharan“Randy Shilts and Laurie Garrett told the story of the HIV/AIDS epidemic through the late 1980s and the early 1990s, respectively. Now journalist-historian-activist Emily Bass tells the story of US engagement in HIV/AIDS control in sub-Saharan Africa. There is far to go on the path, but Bass tells us how far we’ve come.” –Sten H. Vermund, professor and dean, Yale School of Public Health... Read more
With his 2003 announcement of a program known as PEPFAR, George W. Bush launched an astonishingly successful American war against a global pandemic. PEPFAR played a key role in slashing HIV cases and AIDS deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, leading to the brink of epidemic control. Resilient in the face of flatlined funding and political headwinds, PEPFAR is America’s singular example of how to fight long-term plague–and win.
To End a Plague is not merely the definitive history of this extraordinary program; it traces the lives of the activists who first impelled President Bush to take action, and later sought to prevent AIDS deaths at the whims of American politics. Moving from raucous street protests to the marbled halls of Washington and the clinics and homes where Ugandan people living with HIV fight to survive, it reveals an America that was once capable of real and meaningful change–and illuminates imperatives for future pandemic wars. Exhaustively researched and vividly written, this is the true story of an American moonshot. -
Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia
- By: David Graeber
- Narrator: Roger Davis
- Length: 5 hours 10 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: January 24, 2023
- Language: English
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3.47(59 ratings)
3.47(59 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDThe final posthumous work by the coauthor of the major New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything. Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root ofThe final posthumous work by the coauthor of the major New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything.
Pirates have long lived in the realm of romance and fantasy, symbolizing risk, lawlessness, and radical visions of freedom. But at the root of this mythology is a rich history of pirate societies–vibrant, imaginative experiments in self-governance and alternative social formations at the edges of the European empire.
In graduate school, David Graeber conducted ethnographic field research in Madagascar for his doctoral thesis on the island’s politics and history of slavery and magic. During this time, he encountered the Zana-Malata, an ethnic group of mixed descendants of the many pirates who settled on the island at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, Graeber’s final posthumous book, is the outgrowth of this early research and the culmination of ideas that he developed in his classic, bestselling works Debt and The Dawn of Everything (written with the archaeologist David Wengrow). In this lively, incisive exploration, Graeber considers how the protodemocratic, even libertarian practices of the Zana-Malata came to shape the Enlightenment project defined for too long as distinctly European. He illuminates the non-European origins of what we consider to be “Western” thought and endeavors to recover forgotten forms of social and political order that gesture toward new, hopeful possibilities for the future.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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