Sidney Blumenthal has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is A Self-Made Man.
This Town
Summary
Sidney Blumenthal, White House presidential adviser, renowned journalist and author of numerous books on American politics, takes us inside the well-groomed Washington Press Corps, who yawn when they hear about peace treaties - but snap to attention at the chance to uncover a little dirt on the First Dog. An on-the-money political satire! Presented by a full cast starring Richard Kind, Gates McFadden, John Randolph, Roy Leonard, and more!
(P)1996 L.A. Theatre Works, All Rights Reserved
All the Powers of Earth
Summary
In All the Powers of Earth, Lincoln's incredible ascent to power in a world of chaos is newly revealed through the great biographer's extraordinary research and literary style. After a period of depression that he would ever find his way to greatness, Lincoln takes on the most powerful demagogue in the country, Stephen Douglas, in the debates for a Senate seat. He sidelines the front-runner William Seward, a former governor and senator for New York, to cinch the new Republican Party's nomination. All the Powers of Earth is the political story of all time. Lincoln achieves the presidency by force of strategy, of political savvy and determination. This is Abraham Lincoln, who indisputably becomes the greatest president and moral leader in the nation's history. But he must first build a new political party, brilliantly state the anti-slavery case, and overcome shattering defeat to win the presidency. In the years of civil war to follow, he will show mightily that the nation was right to bet on him. He was its preserver, a politician of moral integrity.
©2019 Sidney Blumenthal (P)2019 Tantor
A Self-Made Man
Summary
The first of a multivolume history of Lincoln as a political genius - from his obscure beginnings to his presidency, his assassination, and the overthrow of his post-Civil War dreams of Reconstruction. This first volume traces Lincoln from his painful youth, describing himself as "a slave", to his emergence as the man we recognize as Abraham Lincoln. From his youth as a "newsboy", a voracious newspaper reader, Lincoln became a freethinker, reading Tom Paine as well as Shakespeare and the Bible and studying Euclid to sharpen his arguments as a lawyer. Lincoln's antislavery thinking began in his childhood amid the primitive Baptist antislavery dissidents in backwoods Kentucky and Indiana, the roots of his repudiation of Southern Christian proslavery theology. Intensely ambitious, he held political aspirations from his earliest years. Obsessed with Stephen Douglas, his political rival, he battled him for decades. Successful as a circuit lawyer, Lincoln built his team of loyalists. Blumenthal reveals how Douglas and Jefferson Davis, acting together, made possible Lincoln's rise. Blumenthal describes a socially awkward suitor who had a nervous breakdown over his inability to deal with the opposite sex. His marriage to the upper-class Mary Todd was crucial to his social aspirations and his political career. Blumenthal portrays Mary as an asset to her husband, a rare woman of her day, with strong political opinions. He discloses the impact on Lincoln's antislavery convictions when handling his wife's legal case to recover her father's fortune, in which he discovered her cousin was a slave. Blumenthal's robust portrayal is based on prodigious research of Lincoln's record and of the period and its main players. It reflects both Lincoln's time and the struggle that consumes our own political debate.
©2016 Sidney Blumenthal (P)2016 Simon & Schuster, Inc.