Mark Edmundson has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators. The most-rated is Why Teach?.
Why Football Matters
Summary
Acclaimed essayist Mark Edmundson reflects on his own rite of passage as a high school football player to get to larger truths about the ways America's Game shapes its men.
Football teaches young men self-discipline and teamwork. But football celebrates violence. Football is a showcase for athletic beauty and physical excellence. But football damages young bodies and minds, sometimes permanently. Football inspires confidence and direction. But football instills cockiness, a false sense of superiority. The athlete is a noble figure with a proud lineage. The jock is America at its worst.
When Mark Edmundson's son began to play organized football, and proved to be very good at it, Edmundson had to come to terms with just what he thought about the game. Doing so took him back to his own childhood, when as a shy, soft boy growing up in a blue-collar Boston suburb in the sixties, he went out for the high school football team. Why Football Matters is the story of what happened to Edmundson when he tried to make himself into a football player.
What does it mean to be a football player? At first, Edmundson was hapless on the field. He was an inept player and a bad teammate. But over time, he got over his fears and he got tougher. He learned to be a better player and came to feel a part of the team, during games but also on all sorts of escapades, not all of them savory. By playing football, Edmundson became what he and his father hoped he'd be, a tougher, stronger young man, better prepared for life.
©2014 Mark Edmundson (P)2014 Recorded Books
Why Teach?
Summary
We rarely discuss college anymore without bringing up its exorbitant price tag. Is there an education bubble? Is a bachelor's degree worth the investment? If you didn't know better, you'd think universities were only available to us on the stock market. What ever happened to the actual human souls who do the teaching and learning these institutions are rumored to promote? Mark Edmundson, a renowned professor of English at the University of Virginia, has considered the personal meaning of education his whole career. His prose, exacting yet expansive, tough-minded yet optimistic, is that rare breed that reminds us that reading matters after all. He has been writing on this important subject for decades, sometimes in book form and other times in essays that have run in places like Harper's, the New York Times, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Here, Edmundson's writings on the subject are collected and eloquently narrated - including several essays that are new and unpublished elsewhere. What they show, collectively, is that higher learning is not some staid old notion but necessary medicine for our troubled modern selves. Edmundson enlivens his topic, putting parents back in the classrooms perhaps inhabited by their children. His carefully chosen words are filled with the wisdom and inspiration that make learning possible. This audiobook is a must-listen for any teacher, or student, and a refreshing reminder to parents.
©2013 Mark Edmundson (P)2013 Audible, Inc.