Ian Frazier has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 12 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Travels in Siberia.
Travels in Siberia
Summary
A Dazzling Russian travelogue from the best-selling author of Great Plains. In Travels in Siberia, Ian Frazier trains his eye for unforgettable detail on Siberia, that vast expanse of Asiatic Russia. He explores many aspects of this storied, often grim region, which takes up one-seventh of the land on earth. He writes about the geography, the resources, the native peoples, the history, the 40-below midwinter afternoons, the bugs. The book brims with Mongols, half-crazed Orthodox archpriests, fur seekers, ambassadors of the czar bound for Peking, tea caravans, German scientists, American prospectors, intrepid English nurses, and prisoners and exiles of every kind - from Natalie Lopukhin, banished by the czarina for copying her dresses; to the noble Decembrist revolutionaries of the 1820s; to the young men and women of the People’s Will movement whose fondest hope was to blow up the czar; to those who met still-ungraspable suffering and death in the Siberian camps during Soviet times. More than just a historical travelogue, Travels in Siberia is also an account of Russia since the end of the Soviet Union and a personal reflection on the all-around amazingness of Russia, a country that still somehow manages to be funny. Siberian travel books have been popular since the 13th century, when monks sent by the pope went east to find the Great Khan and wrote about their journeys. Travels in Siberia will take its place as the 21st century’s indispensable contribution to the genre.
©2010 Ian Frazier (P)2010 Macmillan Audio
Life Stories
Summary
One of art's purest challenges is to translate a human being into words. The New Yorker magazine has met this challenge more often and more successfully than any other modern American journal. Starting with its light fantastic evocations of the glamorous and the idiosyncratic in the '20s and continuing to the present, with complex pictures of such contemporaries as Marlon Brando and Richard Pryor, The New Yorker's Profiles have presented readers with a vast and brilliant portrait gallery of our day and age. These literary-journalistic investigations into character and accomplishment, motive and madness, beauty and ugliness, are unrivaled in their range, variety of style, and embrace of humanity. When they were first published, these biographies brought insight, amusement, understanding, and often, joy or sorrow to those who read them. Gathered here, in Life Stories, they provide an album of our era, a rich and diverse appraisal of some of the most prominent members of an entire century's cast. A Pryor Love (Richard Pryor), by Hilton AlsA Duke in His Domain (Marlon Brando), by Truman CapoteIsadora (Isadora Duncan), by Janet FlannerLady with a Pencil (Katharine White), by Nancy FranklinNobody Better, Better Than Nobody (Heloise), by Ian FrazierThe Coolhunt (Baysie Wightman and DeeDee Gordon), by Michael GladwellWunderkind (Floyd Patterson), by A.J. LieblingMr. Hunter's Grave (George H. Hunter), by Joseph MitchellShow Dog (Biff Truesdale), by Susan OrleanHow Do You Like it Now, Gentlemen? (Ernest Hemingway), by Lillian Ross The Man Who Walks on Air (Philippe Petit), by Calvin TomkinsCovering the Cops (Edna Buchanan), by Calvin Trillin
©2000 The New Yorker magazine (P)2000 Random House, Inc.
Hogs Wild
Summary
"A master of both distilled insight and utter nonsense" (The Believer), Ian Frazier is one of the most gifted chroniclers of contemporary America. Hogs Wild assembles a decade's worth of his finest essays and reportage and demonstrates the irrepressible passions and artful digressions that distinguish his enduring body of work. Part muckraker, part adventurer, and part raconteur, Frazier beholds, captures, and occasionally reimagines the spirit of the American experience. He travels down South to examine feral hogs and learns that their presence in any county is a strong indicator that it votes Republican. He introduces us to a man who, when his house is hit by a supposed meteorite, hopes to "leverage" the space object into opportunity for his family, and a New York City police detective who is fascinated with rap-music-related crimes. Alongside Frazier's delight in the absurdities of contemporary life is his sense of social responsibility: There's an echo of the great reform-minded writers in his pieces on a soup kitchen, opioid overdose deaths on Staten Island, and the rise in homelessness in New York City under Mayor Bloomberg. In each dizzying discovery, Hogs Wild unearths the joys of inquiry without agenda, curiosity without calculation. To listen to Frazier is to become a kind of social and political anthropologist - astute and deeply engaged.
©2016 Ian Frazier (P)2016 Macmillan Audio
Selected Shorts: Funny Business
Summary
From wild and wacky to knee-slapping, laugh-out-loud fun, these humorous tales represent some of the best of recent seasons of the hit public radio series Selected Shorts. Comedian Wyatt Cenac gives a killer performance of Simon Rich’s hilarious tale of woe from the point of view of a condom in a young man’s wallet. Alec Baldwin gives a delightful over-the-top performance of James Thurber’s wonderfully silly classic tale of the day everybody in a small Ohio town thought the dam broke. Joe Meno’s playful and poignant “People Are Becoming Clouds,” slyly performed by Criminal Minds’ Kirsten Vangsness, tells the story of a wife who simply laughs and turns into a puff of soft white vapor every time her husband tries to kiss her. David Rakoff reads Dave Eggers’ sweet, good-humored story in which a father recounts to his son, while making dinner, how his parents saved the world together. Selected Shorts’ founding host Isaiah Sheffer recounts two tales: New Yorker contributor Ian Frazier’s wacky suggestion for young men today in “Dating Your Mom,” and David Schickler’s raucous tale of a family catering company’s crazy and delicious escapades in “Wes Amerigo’s Giant Fear.” With stories that cover all types of humor, this assorted collection of memorable stories is sure to leave listeners grinning.
©2014 Symphony Space (P)2014 Symphony Space