Ira Stoll has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators. The most-rated is Samuel Adams.
JFK, Conservative
Summary
John F. Kennedy is lionized by liberals. He inspired Bill Clinton to go into politics and Lyndon B. Johnson to push for landmark civil rights laws. His champions insist he would have done "great liberal things" had he not been killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. But what if we have completely misunderstood him? What if we judge him by the lengthy record of his actual political career? His two great causes were anticommunism and economic growth. His tax cuts, his domestic-spending restraint, his military buildup, his emphasis on free trade and a strong dollar, and his foreign policy all make him, by the standards of both his time and our own, a conservative. Ira Stoll convincingly argues that JFK "had more in common with Ronald Reagan than with LBJ." Not every Republican is a true heir to Kennedy, but hardly any Democrats deserve that mantle. JFK, Conservative is sure to appeal to conservative readers - and will force liberals to reconsider one of their icons.
©2013 Ira Stoll (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Samuel Adams
Summary
"I pity Mr. Sam Adams," his cousin John Adams wrote to his wife, "for he was born a Rebel." At virtually every juncture of the American Revolution, from the Boston Massacre and Tea Party to Lexington and Concord and the ratification of the Constitution, Samuel Adams played a forceful role. With his fiery rhetoric and religious fervor, he was in many respects the moral conscience of the new nation. "The love of liberty," he thundered, "is interwoven in the soul of man, and can never be totally extinguished." And yet history has neglected him; today Samuel Adams is best known as a brand of beer. As relations with Great Britain healed in the 19th century, historians were all too willing to dismiss him as a zealot; Adams's distrust of secularism (he envisioned America as a "Christian Sparta") has not endeared him to many contemporary scholars, either. Ira Stoll's fascinating biography not only restores this figure to his rightful place in history but portrays him as a man of God whose skepticism of a powerful central government, uncompromising support for freedom of the press, concern about the influence of money on elections, voluble love of liberty, and selfless endurance in a war for freedom has enormous relevance to Americans today.
©2008 Ira Stoll (P)2008 Tantor