Leonardo Leoncavallo has narrated 2 audiobooks on Listento.it by 2 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is Walt Disney.
Walt Disney
Summary
Seven years in the making and meticulously researched - Gabler is the first writer to be given complete access to the Disney archives - this is the full story of a man whose work left an ineradicable brand on our culture but whose life has largely been enshrouded in myth. Gabler shows us the young Walt Disney breaking free of a heartland childhood of discipline and deprivation and making his way to Hollywood. We see the visionary, whose desire for escape honed an innate sense of what people wanted to see on the screen and, when combined with iron determination and obsessive perfectionism, led him to the reinvention of animation. It was Disney, first with Mickey Mouse and then with his feature films - most notably Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi - who transformed animation from a novelty based on movement to an art form that presented an illusion of life. The author also reveals a wounded, lonely, and often disappointed man, who, despite worldwide success, was plagued with financial problems, suffered a nervous breakdown, and at times retreated into pitiable seclusion in his workshop, making model trains. Gabler explores accusations that Disney was a red-baiter, an anti-Semite, and an embittered alcoholic. Yet whatever his personal failings, Disney appealed to millions by demonstrating the power of wish fulfillment and the triumph of the American imagination.
©2006 Neal Gabler (P)2006 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.
One Nation Under God
Summary
In this highly original approach to the history of the US, James Moore focuses on the extraordinary role that prayer has played in every area of American life, from the time of the first settlers to the present day and beyond. A stirring chronicle of the spiritual life of a nation, One Nation Under God shows how the faith of Americans - from the founding fathers to corporate tycoons, from composers to social reformers, from generals to slaves - was an essential ingredient in the formation of American culture, character, commerce, and creed. One Nation Under God brings together the country’s hymns, patriotic anthems, arts, and literature as a framework for telling the story of the innermost thoughts of the people who have shaped the US we know today. Beginning with Native Americans, One Nation Under God traces the prayer lives of Quakers and Shakers, Sikhs and Muslims, Catholics and Jews, from their earliest days in the US through the advent of cyberspace, the aftermath of 9/11, and the 2004 presidential election. It probes the approach to prayer by such diverse individuals as Benjamin Franklin, Elvis Presley, Frank Lloyd Wright, Martha Graham, J. C. Penney, Mary Pickford, Cesar Chavez, P. T. Barnum, Jackie Robinson, and Christopher Columbus. It includes every president of the US as well as America’s farmers, clergy, immigrants, industrialists, miners, sports heroes, and scientists. One Nation Under God shows that without prayer, the political, cultural, social, and even economic and military history of the US would be vastly different from what it is today. It engages in a thoughtful, timely examination of the modern debate over public prayer and how the current approach to prayer bears deep roots in the philosophies of the country’s founding fathers, a subject that remains distinct from the debate over church and state.
©2007 James P. Moore (P)2018 Random House Audio