Edward Lewis has narrated 10 audiobooks on Listento.it by 9 authors, with an average listener rating of 3.8★ across 6 ratings. The most-rated is Embracing Defeat.
Embracing Defeat
Summary
Pulitzer Prize, General Nonfiction, 2000 National Book Award, Nonfiction, 1999In this illuminating study, Dower explores the ways in which the shattering defeat of the Japanese in World War II, followed by over six years of American military occupation, affected every level of Japanese society. He describes the countless ways in which the Japanese met the challenge of "starting over", from top-level manipulations concerning the fate of Emperor Hirohito to the hopes, fears, and activities of ordinary men and women in every walk of life. He shows us the intense and turbulent interplay of conqueror and conquered, West and East, in a way no Western historian has done before. This is a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary moment in history, when new values warred with the old, and early ideals of demilitarization and radical reform were soon challenged by the United States' decision to incorporate Japan into the Cold War Pax Americana.
©1999 John W. Dower (P)1999 Blackstone Audio Inc.
The Beatles
Summary
In this behind-the-scenes look at the most famous musical group in history, Hunter Davies gives the complete story of the Beatles. First published in 1968, this second revised edition from 1996 has added information including a new introduction and three updated appendices: Beatles Places, Beatles Memorabilia, and Beatles Books. As the only authorized biographer, Davies had full access to the Fab Four, as well as their help and ecouragement. He spent 18 months with them when they were at the peak of their musical genius and at the pinnacle of their popularity, making a mark on history and popular culture that would never fade. Davies stayed on with the Beatles through their breakup and remained friends with the individual members afterward, enabling him to write the continuing story of their solo careers. His is the inside story that "does not shy away from any mean and gritty little facts" ( The New Yorker). This is a book no Beatles junkie - or any fan of rock music - should be without.
©1996 by Hunter Davies (P)1998 by Blackstone Audiobooks
Looking Backward
Summary
The hero is anyone who has ever longed for escape to a better life. The time is tomorrow. The place is a Utopian America. This is the backdrop for Edward Bellamy's prophetic novel about a young Boston gentleman who is mysteriously transported from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, from a world of war and want to a world of peace and plenty. Translated into more than twenty languages, and the most widely read novel of its time, Looking Backward is more than a brilliant visionary's view of the future. It is a blueprint of the "perfect society," a guidebook that stimulated some of the prominent thinkers of our age. John Dewey, Charles Beard, and Edward Weeks, in separate surveys conducted in 1935, listed Edward Bellamy's novel as the most influential work written by an American in the preceding fifty years.
(P)2000 Blackstone Audiobooks
Hard Tack and Coffee
Summary
Throughout history, from antiquity to the present, service in the armed forces of one's country has provided an almost endless source of material to entertain and even enlighten listeners. Military life has usually been a unique and peculiar experience for most civilians exposed to it. Originally published in 1888, Hard Tack and Coffee is the fascinating account of the everyday life of a foot soldier in the U.S. Army of 100 years ago. John Billings describes all aspects of a soldier's life, including living quarters, foraging, wagon trains, offenses and punishments, equipment, transportation, food, hospitals, and much more. This is a detailed, comprehensive, and highly absorbing resource on the common soldier's life in the Civil War army.
Public Domain (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Lees of Virginia
Summary
The descendants of Richard and Anne Lee have occupied a preeminent place in American history. They were among the first families of Virginia. Two were signers of the Declaration of Independence; several others distinguished themselves during the Revolutionary War; and one, Robert E. Lee, remains widely known. In The Lees of Virginia, Paul Nagel chronicles seven generations of Lees, from the family founder, Richard, to General Robert E. Lee, covering over 200 years of American history. We meet the dreamers and the nonconformists, the controversial and tempestuous personalities, as well as the disgracers of the family name. Then, of course, we meet the son who was the family's redeeming figure, Robert E. Lee, a brilliant military tactician whose ruling motto was self-denial and who saw God's hand in all things. In these and numerous other portraits, Paul Nagel discloses how, from 1640 to 1870, a family spirit united the Lees, making them a force in Virginian and American affairs.
©1990 Paul C. Nagel (P)1999 Blackstone Audio Inc.
Abraham Lincoln
Summary
This unique intellectual portrait explores the role of ideas in Lincoln’s life. Guelzo presents Lincoln as a serious thinker deeply involved in the problems of 19th-century thought, including those of classical liberalism, the Lockean Enlightenment, Victorian unbelief, and Calvinist spirituality. Lincoln emerges as a philosophical man who appropriates certain religious values without adhering to any religion, who insists on the pre-eminence of self-interest in spite of becoming the Great Emancipator, and who appeals to natural law and natural theology in politics while remaining a classical 19th-century liberal in principle. Based on primary materials from a wide variety of archives, this insightful work sheds light on the intellectual conflicts that led to civil war and that still influence today’s “culture wars.”
©1999 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Steven Spielberg
Summary
The most successful director in movie history, Steven Spielberg has been responsible for such box-office blockbusters as Jurassic Park, Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the Indiana Jones trilogy. And yet throughout much of his career, Spielberg's work has been undervalued by critics who have questioned his emotional maturity and intellectual seriousness. It was not until he made Schindler's List in 1993 that he was widely recognized as a serious filmmaker. Until now, much about Steven Spielberg's personality and the forces that shaped it has remained enigmatic, in large part because of his tendency to obscure and mythologize his own past. In this full-scale, in-depth biography, Joseph McBride reveals hidden dimensions of the filmmaker's personality and explains how deeply personal even his most commercial work has been. With the same breadth of research and clarity of insight that characterized his acclaimed biography of Frank Capra, McBride has gone in search of the true Steven Spielberg, interviewing more than 300 of the director's friends and associates, many of whom had never spoken about him before.
©1997 McBride (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Uncle Daddy
Summary
Rivers' real father left him and his mom six years ago, and Uncle Daddy has been taking care of Rivers in all the ways a dad cares for a son, even teaching him how to play baseball. When his real father returns, Rivers is confused and angry. He had always thought that he'd express his anger at his father by socking him in the stomach. Now, face-to-face with his father, Rivers experiences feelings that are more complicated than he'd imagined. Will the reappearance of his dad affect his relationship with Uncle Daddy? This heartfelt story, told from the point of view of a nine-and-a-half-year-old boy, is filled with insight and touches of humor.
©2002 Ralph Fletcher (P)2002 Blackstone Audiobooks
The Tale of Troy
Summary
"It is in my mind," said Zeus, "to cause the great and glorious war of Troy, that shall be famous to the end of time." The Tale of Troy tells of the last great adventure of the Heroic Age. It is the story of Helen and the judgment of Paris; of the gathering of the heroes and the siege of Troy; of Achilles, reared by the centaur on wild honey and the marrow of lions; of Odysseus, his great strategy of the Wooden Horse, and of his many adventures on his long journey home to Greece. These legends have been told again and again, passed down for over three thousand years. This masterly retelling makes them as vivid and exciting as they were all those years ago.
©1958 Roger Lancelyn Green (P)2002 Blackstone Audiobooks
Tales of the Greek Heroes
Summary
Gods and heroes are brought to life in this masterly retelling of the legends and tales of ancient Greece. Here are the great stories of the Heroic Age, from the myths of the making of the universe to the death of Heracles. Set against the colorful background of Greece and the Aegean, the adventures of heroes such as Perseus the Gorgon-slayer, Dionysus, Theseus, and Jason and the Argonauts once again come to life. In this skillful retelling, these tales are as vivid and exciting as when they were first told 3,000 years ago. The story of ancient Greece is continued in The Tale of Troy.
©1958 Roger Lancelyn Green (P)2002 Blackstone Audiobooks