Susan Orlean has 6 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 60 ratings. The most-rated is The Library Book.
The Library Book
Summary
Susan Orlean, hailed as a “national treasure” by The Washington Post and the acclaimed best-selling author of Rin Tin Tin and The Orchid Thief, reopens the unsolved mystery of the most catastrophic library fire in American history and delivers a dazzling love letter to a beloved institution - our libraries. On the morning of April 29, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As the moments passed, the patrons and staff who had cleared out of the building realized this was not the usual false alarm. As one fireman recounted later, “Once that first stack got going, it was good-bye, Charlie.” The fire was disastrous: It reached 2,000 degrees and burned for more than seven hours. By the time it was extinguished, it had consumed 400,000 books and damaged 700,000 more. Investigators descended on the scene, but more than 30 years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library - and if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading with the fascinating history of libraries and the sometimes eccentric characters who run them, award-winning journalist and New York Times best-selling author Susan Orlean presents a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling story as only she can. With her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, she investigates the legendary Los Angeles Public Library fire to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives. To truly understand what happens behind the stacks, Orlean visits the different departments of the LAPL, encountering an engaging cast of employees and patrons and experiencing alongside them the victories and struggles they face in today’s climate. She also delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from a metropolitan charitable initiative to a cornerstone of national identity. She reflects on her childhood experiences in libraries; studies fire and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the library more than 30 years ago. Along the way, she reveals how these buildings provide much more than just books - and that they are needed now more than ever. Filled with heart, passion, and unforgettable characters, The Library Book is classic Susan Orlean and an homage to a beloved institution that remains a vital part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country and culture.
©2018 Susan Orlean (P)2018 Simon & Schuster
The Orchid Thief
Summary
The orchid thief in Susan Orlean's mesmerizing true story of beauty and obsession is John Laroche, a renegade plant dealer and sharply handsome guy, in spite of the fact that he is missing his front teeth and has the posture of al dente spaghetti. In 1994, Laroche and three Seminole Indians were arrested with rare orchids they had stolen from a wild swamp in south Florida that is filled with some of the world's most extraordinary plants and trees. Laroche had planned to clone the orchids and then sell them for a small fortune to impassioned collectors. After he was caught in the act, Laroche set off one of the oddest legal controversies in recent memory, which brought together environmentalists, Native American activists, and devoted orchid collectors. The result is a tale that is strange, compelling, and hilarious. New Yorker writer Susan Orlean followed Laroche through swamps and into the eccentric world of Florida's orchid collectors, a subculture of aristocrats, fanatics, and smugglers whose obsession with plants is all-consuming. Along the way, Orlean learned the history of orchid collecting, discovered an odd pattern of plant crimes in Florida, and spent time with Laroche's partners, a tribe of Seminole Indians who are still at war with the United States. There is something fascinating or funny or truly bizarre on every page of The Orchid Thief: the story of how the head of a famous Seminole chief came to be displayed in the front window of a local pharmacy; or how 700 iguanas were smuggled into Florida; or the case of the only known extraterrestrial plant crime. Ultimately, however, Susan Orlean's book is about passion itself, and the amazing lengths to which people will go to gratify it. That passion is captured with singular vision in The Orchid Thief, a once-in-a-lifetime story by a truly original journalist.
©1998 Susan Orlean (P)2001 Random House, Inc.
Rin Tin Tin
Summary
"He believed the dog was immortal." So begins Susan Orlean’s sweeping, powerfully moving story of Rin Tin Tin’s journey from orphaned puppy to movie star and international icon. From the moment in 1918 when Corporal Lee Duncan discovers Rin Tin Tin on a World War I battlefield, he recognizes something in the pup that he needs to share with the world. Rin Tin Tin’s improbable introduction to Hollywood leads to the dog’s first blockbuster film and, over time, the many radio programs, movies, and television shows that follow. The canine hero’s legacy is cemented by Duncan and a small group of others who devote their lives to keeping him and his descendants alive. At its heart, Rin Tin Tin is a poignant exploration of the enduring bond between humans and animals. But it is also a richly textured history of 20th-century entertainment and entrepreneurship and the changing role of dogs in the American family and society. Almost 10 years in the making, Susan Orlean’s first original book since The Orchid Thief is a tour de force of history, human interest, and masterful storytelling - the ultimate must-listen for anyone who loves great dogs or great yarns.
©2011 Susan Orlean (P)2011 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
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.
My Kind of Place
Summary
My Kind of Place takes listeners on a series of remarkable journeys in a uniquely witty and sophisticated travel audiobook. In this irresistible collection of adventures far and near, Susan Orlean coducts a tour of the world via its subcultures, from the heart of the African music scene in Paris to the World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield, Illinois, and even into her own apartment, where she imagines a very famous houseguest taking advantage of her hospitality. With Orlean as guide, lucky listeners partake in all manner of armchair activity. They will trawl Icelandic waters with Keiko, everyone's favorite whale, as he tries to make it on his own; stay awhile in Midland, Texas, hometown of George W. Bush, a place where oil time is the only time that matters; and stalk caged tigers in Jackson, New Jersey, a suburban town with one of the highest concentrations anywhere in the world of tigers per square mile. Vivid, humorous, unconventional, and incomparably entertaining, Susan Orlean's writings for The New Yorker have delighted readers for more than a decade. My Kind of Place is an inimitable treat by one of America's premier literary journalists.
©2004 Susan Orlean (P)2004 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
The American Man at Age 10
Summary
He is old enough to begin imagining that he will someday get married, but at 10 he is still convinced that the best thing about being married will be that he will be allowed to sleep in his clothes. His father once observed that living with Colin was like living with a Martian who had done some reading on American culture. As it happens, Colin is not especially sad or worried about the prospect of growing up, although he sometimes frets over whether he should be called a kid or a grown-up; he has settled on the word kid-up. In her classic 1992 Esquire cover story, "The American Man at Age Ten", best-selling author Susan Orlean takes listeners inside the mind of an ordinary 10-year-old boy and attempts to see the world the way he sees it: short on girls but full of pizza, candy, and Nintendo - and shot through with the fleeting magic of childhood. "The American Man at Age Ten" was originally published in Esquire, December 1992.
©2016 Susan Orlean (P)2017 Audible, Inc.