Richard White has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is The Republic for Which It Stands.
The Republic for Which It Stands
Summary
The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multivolume history of the American nation. In the newest volume in the series, The Republic for Which It Stands, acclaimed historian Richard White offers a fresh and integrated interpretation of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age as the seedbed of modern America. At the end of the Civil War the leaders and citizens of the victorious North envisioned the country's future as a free-labor republic, with a homogenous citizenry, both Black and White. The South and West were to be reconstructed in the image of the North. Thirty years later Americans occupied an unimagined world. The unity that the Civil War supposedly secured had proved ephemeral. The country was larger, richer, and more extensive but also more diverse. Life spans were shorter, and physical well-being had diminished, due to disease and hazardous working conditions. Independent producers had become wage earners. The country was Catholic and Jewish as well as Protestant and increasingly urban and industrial. The "dangerous" classes of the very rich and poor expanded, and deep differences - ethnic, racial, religious, economic, and political - divided society. The corruption that gave the Gilded Age its name was pervasive. These challenges also brought vigorous efforts to secure economic, moral, and cultural reforms. Real change - technological, cultural, and political - proliferated from below more than emerging from political leadership. Americans, mining their own traditions and borrowing ideas, produced creative possibilities for overcoming the crises that threatened their country. In a work as dramatic and colorful as the era it covers, White narrates the conflicts and paradoxes of these decades of disorienting change and mounting unrest, out of which emerged a modern nation whose characteristics resonate with the present day.
©2017 Richard White (P)2018 Audible, Inc.
California Exposures
Summary
"This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." This indelible quote from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance applies especially well to California, where legend has so thoroughly become fact that it is visible in everyday landscapes. Our foremost historian of the West, Richard White, never content to "print the legend," collaborates here with his son, a talented photographer, in excavating the layers of legend built into California's landscapes. Together they expose the bedrock of the past, and the history they uncover is astonishing. Jesse White's evocative photographs illustrate the sites of Richard's historical investigations. A quiet riverside park in the Tulare Lake Basin belies scenes of horror from when settlers in the 1850s transformed native homelands into American property. Near the lake bed stands a small marker commemorating the Mussel Slough massacre, the culmination of a violent struggle over land titles between local farmers and the Southern Pacific Railroad in the 1870s. Tulare is today a fertile agricultural county, but its population is poor and unhealthy. The California Dream lives elsewhere. The lake itself disappeared when tributary rivers were rerouted to deliver government-subsidized water to big agriculture and cities. But climate change ensures that it will be back-the only question is when.
©2020 Richard White and Jesse Amble White (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Charles Boeckman Presents Johnny Nickle, Volume 1
Summary
From the imagination of a classic pulp author come new stories featuring his characters! Prolific pulp author Charles Boeckman gave the world unforgettable tales in the days of the pulps and through the age of digests and into the modern era as well! And now characters created by Boeckman from the golden age of pulps live again in new tales written by today's best authors! Charles Boeckman Presents, a new imprint from Pro Se Productions licensed through Mr. Boeckman himself debuts with Charles Boeckman Presents Johnny Nickle, Volume One! Charles Boeckman presents Johnny Nickle in a return engagement more than 50 years overdue! Join Johnny as he performs Notes in the Fog written by Richard White and The Devil You Know penned by Brad Mengel! Grab a backstage pass to see Johnny tackle mystery and murder with a soundtrack that cooks with red hot women, ice cold killers, triple time thrills, and smokin' jazz! Featuring a stunning cover by Adam Shaw, Charles Boeckman Presents Johnny Nickle delivers like a cool jazz ensemble on the hottest night of any year!
©2013 Pro Se Productions, Richard White, Brad Mengel (P)2016 RadioArchives.com
Railroaded
Summary
The transcontinental railroads of the late 19th century were the first corporate behemoths. Their attempts to generate profits from proliferating debt sparked devastating panics in the US economy. Their dependence on public largess drew them into the corridors of power, initiating new forms of corruption. Their operations rearranged space and time, and remade the landscape of the West. As wheel and rail, car and coal, they opened new worlds of work and ways of life. Their discriminatory rates sparked broad opposition and a new antimonopoly politics. With characteristic originality, range, and authority, Richard White shows the transcontinentals to be pivotal actors in the making of modern America. But the triumphal myths of the golden spike, robber barons larger than life, and an innovative capitalism all die here. Instead we have a new vision of the Gilded Age, often darkly funny, that shows history to be rooted in failure as well as success.
©2011 Richard White (P)2018 Tantor