-
A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise
- A True Story About Schizophrenia
- Narrated by: Sandy Allen, Pete Simonelli
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $14.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
“Compelling…. A bracing work of art and a loving tribute” (Los Angeles Times), this propulsive, stunning book illuminates the experience of living with schizophrenia like never before.
Sandra Allen did not know their uncle Bob very well. As a child, Sandy had been told Bob was “crazy”, that he had spent time in mental hospitals while growing up in Berkeley in the '60s and '70s. But Bob had lived a hermetic life in a remote part of California for longer than Sandy had been alive, and what little Sandy knew of him came from rare family reunions or odd, infrequent phone calls. Then in 2009, Bob mailed Sandy his autobiography. Typewritten in all caps, a stream of error-riddled sentences more than 60 single-spaced pages, the often-incomprehensible manuscript proclaimed to be a “true story” about being “labeled a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic", and arrived with a plea to help him get his story out to the world.
“Searing” (O, The Oprah Magazine), “enthralling” (Star-Tribune, Minneapolis), and “a marvel” (Esquire), A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise shows how Sandy translated Bob’s autobiography, artfully creating a gripping coming-of-age story while sticking faithfully to the facts as he shared them. Sandy also shares background information about their family, the culturally explosive time and place of their uncle’s formative years, and the vitally important questions surrounding schizophrenia and mental healthcare in America more broadly. The result is a heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious portrait of a young man striving for stability in his life as well as his mind, and an utterly unique lens into an experience that, to most people, remains unimaginable.
“Thrilling.... Gorgeous...a watershed in empathetic adaptation of ‘outsider’ autobiography” (The New Republic), A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise is a dazzlingly, daringly written book that’s poised to change conversations about schizophrenia and mental illness overall.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Surviving Schizophrenia, 6th Edition
- A Family Manual
- By: E. Fuller Torrey MD
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since publication in 1983, Surviving Schizophrenia has become the standard reference book on the disease and has helped thousands of patients, their families, and mental health professionals. In clear language, this much-praised and important book describes the nature, causes, symptoms, treatment, and course of schizophrenia and also explores living with it from both the patient's and the family's point of view. This new, completely updated sixth edition includes the latest research findings on what causes the disease, as well as information about the newest drugs for treatment.
-
-
Bad narrator
- By Amazon Customer on 04-10-18
-
The Collected Schizophrenias
- Essays
- By: Esmé Weijun Wang
- Narrated by: Esmé Weijun Wang
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An intimate, moving book written with the immediacy and directness of one who still struggles with the effects of mental and chronic illness, The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core. Schizophrenia is not a single unifying diagnosis, and Esmé Weijun Wang writes not just to her fellow members of the “collected schizophrenias” but to those who wish to understand it as well.
-
-
Narration way too slow
- By Diane on 04-27-19
By: Esmé Weijun Wang
-
The Quiet Room: A Journey out of the Torment of Madness
- By: Lori Schiller, Amanda Bennett
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley, Gregory Abbey, Cheryl Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moving, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting, Lori Schiller's memoir is a classic testimony to the ravages of mental illness and the power of perseverance and courage. At 17, Lori Schiller was the perfect child - the only daughter of an affluent, close-knit family. Six years later she made her first suicide attempt, then wandered the streets of New York City dressed in ragged clothes, tormenting voices crying out in her mind. Lori Schiller had entered the horrifying world of full-blown schizophrenia.
-
-
Mental Health Care in America
- By Dee Garza on 02-29-20
By: Lori Schiller, and others
-
Divided Minds
- Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia
- By: Pamela Spiro Wagner, Carolyn S. Spiro MD
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Amanda Carlin
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Divided Minds is a dual memoir of identical twins, one of whom faces a life sentence of schizophrenia and the other who becomes a psychiatrist after entering the spotlight that had for so long been focused on her sister.
-
-
intense!
- By Snow Dunn on 09-12-19
By: Pamela Spiro Wagner, and others
-
Good Morning, Monster
- A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery
- By: Catherine Gildiner
- Narrated by: Deborah Burgess
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this fascinating narrative, therapist Catherine Gildiner presents five of what she calls her most heroic and memorable patients. Among them: A successful, first-generation Chinese immigrant musician suffering sexual dysfunction; a young woman whose father abandoned her at age nine with her younger siblings in an isolated cottage in the depth of winter; and a glamorous workaholic whose narcissistic, negligent mother greeted her each morning of her childhood with "Good morning, Monster". Each patient presents a mystery, one that will only be unpacked over years.
-
-
some things shouldn't be consumed
- By Jess on 12-28-22
-
The Ghost Garden
- Inside the Lives of Schizophrenia's Feared and Forgotten
- By: Susan Doherty
- Narrated by: Paula Kaye
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Susan Doherty's groundbreaking book brings us a population of lost souls, ill-served by society, feared, shunted from locked wards to rooming houses to the streets to jail and back again. For the past ten years, some of the people who cycle in and out of the severely ill wards of the Douglas Institute in Montreal have found a friend in Susan, who volunteers on the ward, and then follows her friends out into the world as they struggle to get through their days. With their full cooperation, she brings us their stories, which challenge the ways we think about people with mental illness.
-
-
Very Helpful
- By SS on 09-06-22
By: Susan Doherty
-
Surviving Schizophrenia, 6th Edition
- A Family Manual
- By: E. Fuller Torrey MD
- Narrated by: Matthew Josdal
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since publication in 1983, Surviving Schizophrenia has become the standard reference book on the disease and has helped thousands of patients, their families, and mental health professionals. In clear language, this much-praised and important book describes the nature, causes, symptoms, treatment, and course of schizophrenia and also explores living with it from both the patient's and the family's point of view. This new, completely updated sixth edition includes the latest research findings on what causes the disease, as well as information about the newest drugs for treatment.
-
-
Bad narrator
- By Amazon Customer on 04-10-18
-
The Collected Schizophrenias
- Essays
- By: Esmé Weijun Wang
- Narrated by: Esmé Weijun Wang
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An intimate, moving book written with the immediacy and directness of one who still struggles with the effects of mental and chronic illness, The Collected Schizophrenias cuts right to the core. Schizophrenia is not a single unifying diagnosis, and Esmé Weijun Wang writes not just to her fellow members of the “collected schizophrenias” but to those who wish to understand it as well.
-
-
Narration way too slow
- By Diane on 04-27-19
By: Esmé Weijun Wang
-
The Quiet Room: A Journey out of the Torment of Madness
- By: Lori Schiller, Amanda Bennett
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley, Gregory Abbey, Cheryl Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Moving, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting, Lori Schiller's memoir is a classic testimony to the ravages of mental illness and the power of perseverance and courage. At 17, Lori Schiller was the perfect child - the only daughter of an affluent, close-knit family. Six years later she made her first suicide attempt, then wandered the streets of New York City dressed in ragged clothes, tormenting voices crying out in her mind. Lori Schiller had entered the horrifying world of full-blown schizophrenia.
-
-
Mental Health Care in America
- By Dee Garza on 02-29-20
By: Lori Schiller, and others
-
Divided Minds
- Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia
- By: Pamela Spiro Wagner, Carolyn S. Spiro MD
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr, Amanda Carlin
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Divided Minds is a dual memoir of identical twins, one of whom faces a life sentence of schizophrenia and the other who becomes a psychiatrist after entering the spotlight that had for so long been focused on her sister.
-
-
intense!
- By Snow Dunn on 09-12-19
By: Pamela Spiro Wagner, and others
-
Good Morning, Monster
- A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery
- By: Catherine Gildiner
- Narrated by: Deborah Burgess
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this fascinating narrative, therapist Catherine Gildiner presents five of what she calls her most heroic and memorable patients. Among them: A successful, first-generation Chinese immigrant musician suffering sexual dysfunction; a young woman whose father abandoned her at age nine with her younger siblings in an isolated cottage in the depth of winter; and a glamorous workaholic whose narcissistic, negligent mother greeted her each morning of her childhood with "Good morning, Monster". Each patient presents a mystery, one that will only be unpacked over years.
-
-
some things shouldn't be consumed
- By Jess on 12-28-22
-
The Ghost Garden
- Inside the Lives of Schizophrenia's Feared and Forgotten
- By: Susan Doherty
- Narrated by: Paula Kaye
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Susan Doherty's groundbreaking book brings us a population of lost souls, ill-served by society, feared, shunted from locked wards to rooming houses to the streets to jail and back again. For the past ten years, some of the people who cycle in and out of the severely ill wards of the Douglas Institute in Montreal have found a friend in Susan, who volunteers on the ward, and then follows her friends out into the world as they struggle to get through their days. With their full cooperation, she brings us their stories, which challenge the ways we think about people with mental illness.
-
-
Very Helpful
- By SS on 09-06-22
By: Susan Doherty
-
The Center Cannot Hold
- By: Elyn R. Saks
- Narrated by: Alma Cuervo
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health-care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.
-
-
Schizophrenia Inside Out
- By Pamela Harvey on 07-23-09
By: Elyn R. Saks
-
What My Bones Know
- A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
- By: Stephanie Foo
- Narrated by: Stephanie Foo
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.
-
-
Complex PTSD from a patient's point of view!
- By Howard_a on 05-24-22
By: Stephanie Foo
-
Ben Behind His Voices
- One Family's Journey from the Chaos of Schizophrenia to Hope
- By: Randye Kaye
- Narrated by: Randye Kaye
- Length: 13 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this updated second edition, available only as an audiobook, Randye Kaye tells listeners, in the introduction and epilogue, about what happened in the decade after the initial release of Ben Behind His Voices. Yes, Ben is still here, still living real-life "Chutes and Ladders". When we first meet Ben, he's a sweet, intelligent, seemingly well-adjusted youngster. Fast forward to his teenage years and Ben's life has spun out of control. He's swept along by an illness over which he has no control—one that results in homelessness, hospitalizations, and finally a diagnosis.
-
-
Heartfelt and Informative!
- By Brandon Marshall on 02-01-23
By: Randye Kaye
-
Lives of the Stoics
- The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius
- By: Ryan Holiday, Stephen Hanselman
- Narrated by: Ryan Holiday
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the best-selling authors of The Daily Stoic comes an inspiring guide to the lives of the Stoics, and what the ancients can teach us about happiness, success, resilience, and virtue. In Lives of the Stoics, Holiday and Hanselman present the fascinating lives of the men and women who strove to live by the timeless Stoic virtues of Courage. Justice. Temperance. Wisdom. Organized in digestible, mini-biographies of all the well-known - and not so well-known - Stoics, this book vividly brings home what Stoicism was like for the people who loved it and lived it.
-
-
Awful narration
- By Jordan Bailey on 10-03-20
By: Ryan Holiday, and others
-
We Are Called to Rise
- By: Laura McBride
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Kirby Heyborne, Madeleine Maby, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the predawn hours, a woman's marriage crumbles with a single confession. Across town, an immigrant family struggles to fit in and get by in the land of opportunity. Three thousand miles away, a soldier wakes up in Walter Reed hospital with the vague feeling that he’s done something awful. In a single moment, these disparate lives intersect. Faced with seemingly insurmountable loss, each person must decide whether to give in to despair, or to find the courage and resilience to rise.
-
-
Despair, Disaster & Disappointment Explored
- By Sara on 06-29-15
By: Laura McBride
-
What the Dead Know
- Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator
- By: Barbara Butcher
- Narrated by: Barbara Butcher
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Barbara Butcher was early in her recovery from alcoholism when she found an unexpected lifeline: a job at the Medical Examiner’s Office in New York City. The second woman ever hired for the role of Death Investigator in Manhattan, she was the first to last more than three months. The work was gritty, demanding, morbid, and sometimes dangerous—and she loved it. In What the Dead Know, she writes with the kind of New York attitude and bravado you might expect from decades in the field, investigating more than 5,500 death scenes, 680 of which were homicides.
-
-
Didn’t Want The Book To End
- By Becky Sullivan on 06-29-23
By: Barbara Butcher
-
While You Were Out
- An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
- By: Meg Kissinger
- Narrated by: Meg Kissinger
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up in the 1960s in the suburbs of Chicago, Meg Kissinger’s family seemed to live a charmed life. With eight kids and two loving parents, the Kissingers radiated a warm, boisterous energy. Whether they were spending summer days on the shores of Lake Michigan, barreling down the ski slopes, or navigating the trials of their Catholic school, the Kissingers always knew how to live large and play hard. But behind closed doors, a harsher reality was unfolding.
-
-
Thoughtful and mindful
- By James Thomas McIntyre on 09-11-23
By: Meg Kissinger
-
Corrections in Ink
- A Memoir
- By: Keri Blakinger
- Narrated by: Keri Blakinger
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Keri Blakinger always lived life at full throttle. Growing up, that meant throwing herself into competitive figure skating with an all-consuming passion that led her to nationals. But when her skating career suddenly fell apart, that meant diving into self-destruction with the intensity she once saved for the ice. For the next nine years, Keri ricocheted from one dark place to the next: living on the streets, selling drugs and sex, and shooting up between classes all while trying to hold herself together enough to finish her degree at Cornell.
-
-
Brutal honesty, great listen
- By Enzo G. on 06-12-22
By: Keri Blakinger
-
I Am Not Sick I Don’t Need Help!
- How to Help Someone Accept Treatment (20th Anniversary Edition)
- By: Xavier Amador
- Narrated by: Gary J. Chambers
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dr. Amador's research on poor insight was inspired by his success helping his brother Henry, who had schizophrenia, accept treatment. Like tens of millions of others diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and addictions, Henry did not believe he was ill. In this latest edition, all chapters have been updated with new research on anosognosia (lack of insight) and much more detail on LEAP. Listeners will find expanded guidance on how to learn and use LEAP.
-
-
Very helpful!
- By Laurie O on 10-30-24
By: Xavier Amador
-
Everything Is Fine
- A Memoir
- By: Vince Granata
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Vince Granata remembers standing in front of his suburban home in Connecticut the day his mother and father returned from the hospital with his three new siblings in tow. He had just finished scrawling their names in orange chalk on the driveway: Christopher, Timothy, and Elizabeth. Twenty-three years later, Vince was a thousand miles away when he received the news that would change his life - his younger brother, Tim, propelled by unchecked schizophrenia, had killed their mother in their childhood home.
-
-
Brutal and Beautiful
- By 3dogknits on 07-14-21
By: Vince Granata
-
Kindred
- By: Rebecca Wragg Sykes
- Narrated by: Rebecca Wragg Sykes
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Kindred, Neanderthal expert Becky Wragg Sykes shoves aside the cliché of the shivering ragged figure in an icy wasteland and reveals the Neanderthal you don’t know, who lived across vast and diverse tracts of Eurasia and survived through hundreds of thousands of years of massive climate change. Using a thematic rather than chronological approach, this book will shed new light on where they lived, what they ate and the increasingly complex Neanderthal culture that is being discovered.
-
-
Horrible Recording/Sound Quality
- By Howard Houchen on 11-24-20
-
The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
-
-
excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
Related to this topic
-
The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
-
-
excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
-
The Boy Kings of Texas
- A Memoir
- By: Domingo Martinez
- Narrated by: Emilio Delgado
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.
-
-
It was Okay
- By DebKoo on 05-17-13
By: Domingo Martinez
-
My Lobotomy
- A Memoir
- By: Howard Dully, Charles Fleming
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"In 1960 I was given a transorbital, or 'ice pick' lobotomy. My stepmother arranged it. My father agreed to it. Dr. Walter Freeman, the father of the American lobotomy, told me he was going to do some 'tests'. It took 10 minutes and cost 200 dollars." Assisted by journalist/novelist Charles Fleming, Howard Dully recounts a family tragedy of Sophoclean proportions.
-
-
Freeman's Folly
- By James Gordon on 10-28-07
By: Howard Dully, and others
-
The Ride of Our Lives
- Roadside Lessons of an American Family
- By: Mike Leonard
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mike Leonard is a lucky man. It’s not everyone who gets parents like Jack and Marge. At 87, Jack is a pathological optimist with an inexhaustible gift of gab. Marge, Jack’s bride of 60 years, though cut from the same rough bolt of Irish immigrant cloth, is his polar opposite - pessimistic and proud of it. What was their son, Mike, thinking when he took a sabbatical from his job with NBC News so he could pile these two world-class originals along with three of his grown kids and a daughter-in-law into a pair of rented RVs and hit the road for a month?
-
-
Hilarious!!!
- By TurtlesRMe on 03-06-07
By: Mike Leonard
-
Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
-
-
Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
-
Because I Come from a Crazy Family
- The Making of a Psychiatrist
- By: Edward M. Hallowell
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Edward M. Hallowell was 11, a voice out of nowhere told him he should become a psychiatrist. A mental health professional of the time would have called this psychosis. But young Edward (Ned) took it in stride, despite not quite knowing what "psychiatrist" meant. With a psychotic father, an alcoholic mother, an abusive stepfather, and two so-called learning disabilities of his own, Ned was accustomed to unpredictable behaviour from those around him and to a mind he felt he couldn't always control.
-
-
Love and connection permeates through this book!
- By Steve Steinmetz on 06-29-18
-
The Hour I First Believed
- A Novel
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 25 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When high-school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.
-
-
excellent all around yarn
- By G. on 01-10-09
By: Wally Lamb
-
The Boy Kings of Texas
- A Memoir
- By: Domingo Martinez
- Narrated by: Emilio Delgado
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.
-
-
It was Okay
- By DebKoo on 05-17-13
By: Domingo Martinez
-
My Lobotomy
- A Memoir
- By: Howard Dully, Charles Fleming
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"In 1960 I was given a transorbital, or 'ice pick' lobotomy. My stepmother arranged it. My father agreed to it. Dr. Walter Freeman, the father of the American lobotomy, told me he was going to do some 'tests'. It took 10 minutes and cost 200 dollars." Assisted by journalist/novelist Charles Fleming, Howard Dully recounts a family tragedy of Sophoclean proportions.
-
-
Freeman's Folly
- By James Gordon on 10-28-07
By: Howard Dully, and others
-
The Ride of Our Lives
- Roadside Lessons of an American Family
- By: Mike Leonard
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mike Leonard is a lucky man. It’s not everyone who gets parents like Jack and Marge. At 87, Jack is a pathological optimist with an inexhaustible gift of gab. Marge, Jack’s bride of 60 years, though cut from the same rough bolt of Irish immigrant cloth, is his polar opposite - pessimistic and proud of it. What was their son, Mike, thinking when he took a sabbatical from his job with NBC News so he could pile these two world-class originals along with three of his grown kids and a daughter-in-law into a pair of rented RVs and hit the road for a month?
-
-
Hilarious!!!
- By TurtlesRMe on 03-06-07
By: Mike Leonard
-
Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
-
-
Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
-
Because I Come from a Crazy Family
- The Making of a Psychiatrist
- By: Edward M. Hallowell
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Edward M. Hallowell was 11, a voice out of nowhere told him he should become a psychiatrist. A mental health professional of the time would have called this psychosis. But young Edward (Ned) took it in stride, despite not quite knowing what "psychiatrist" meant. With a psychotic father, an alcoholic mother, an abusive stepfather, and two so-called learning disabilities of his own, Ned was accustomed to unpredictable behaviour from those around him and to a mind he felt he couldn't always control.
-
-
Love and connection permeates through this book!
- By Steve Steinmetz on 06-29-18
-
The Pursuit of Happyness (Abridged)
- By: Chris Gardner
- Narrated by: Andre Blake
- Length: 5 hrs and 42 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the age of 20, Chris Gardner arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. However, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm, Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him part of the city's working homeless with his toddler son.
-
-
Very Good Story!
- By Lito Da Critic on 06-02-06
By: Chris Gardner
-
Thank You for Your Service
- By: David Finkel
- Narrated by: Arthur Bishop
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
No journalist has reckoned with the psychology of war as intimately as David Finkel. In The Good Soldiers, his bestselling account from the front lines of Baghdad, Finkel shadowed the men of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion as they carried out the infamous surge, a grueling fifteen-month tour that changed all of them forever. Now Finkel has followed many of those same men as they’ve returned home and struggled to reintegrate - both into their family lives and into American society at large.
-
-
Wrenching
- By Scott on 01-03-14
By: David Finkel
-
Finding Fish
- A Memoir
- By: Antwone Q. Fisher
- Narrated by: Thomas Penny
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Baby Boy Fisher was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. He ultimately came to live with a foster family, where he endured near-constant verbal and physical abuse. In his midteens he escaped and enlisted in the navy, where he became a man of the world, raised by the family he created for himself. Finding Fish shows how, out of this unlikely mix of deprivation and hope, an artist was born.
-
-
This book will not disappoint you.
- By Joseph on 10-16-16
-
A Girl's Guide to Missiles
- Growing Up in America's Secret Desert
- By: Karen Piper
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The China Lake missile range is located in a huge stretch of the Mojave Desert, about the size of the state of Delaware. It was created during the Second World War, and has always been shrouded in secrecy. But people who make missiles and other weapons are regular working people, with domestic routines and everyday dilemmas, and four of them were Karen Piper's parents, her sister, and - when she needed summer jobs - herself.
-
-
DNF on chapter 10 when Piper is 10
- By NMwritergal on 08-15-18
By: Karen Piper
-
Liner Notes
- On Parents & Children, Exes & Excess, Death & Decay, & a Few of My Other Favorite Things
- By: Loudon Wainwright III
- Narrated by: Loudon Wainwright III
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A memoir by the influential Grammy Award-winning singer and actor - son of journalist Loudon Wainwright, former husband of Kate McGarrigle and Suzzy Roche, and father of Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, Lucy Wainwright Roche, and Lexie Kelly Wainwright - a captivating meditation on relationships and creativity from the patriarch of one of America's great musical families. With a career spanning more than four decades, Loudon Wainwright III has established himself as one of the most enduring singer-songwriters who emerged from the late '60s.
-
-
Best ever book for listening
- By Jeff Bernhardt on 10-29-17
-
After the Eclipse
- A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A fierce memoir of a mother's murder, a daughter's coming-of-age in the wake of immense loss, and her ultimate mission to know the woman who gave her life.
-
-
True crime memoir
- By Julie on 11-03-17
By: Sarah Perry
-
An Abundance of Katherines
- By: John Green
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has $10,000 in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun - but no Katherines.
-
-
struggled to finish listening
- By Daniel on 03-11-20
By: John Green
-
Disgruntled
- By: Asali Solomon
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kenya Curtis is only eight years old, but she knows that she's different, even if she can't put her finger on how or why. It's not because she's black - most of the other students in the fourth-grade class at her West Philadelphia elementary school are, too. Maybe it's because she calls her father - a housepainter-slash-philosopher - "Baba" or because her parents' friends gather to pour out libations "from the Creator, for the Martyrs" and discuss "the community".
-
-
Loved It!!!
- By ayodele higgs on 05-20-15
By: Asali Solomon
-
I'll Be There
- By: Holly Goldberg Sloan
- Narrated by: Laura Jennings
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Emily Bell believes in destiny. To her, being forced to sing a solo in the church choir - despite her average voice - is fate: because it's while she's singing that she first sees Sam. At first sight they are connected. Sam Border wishes he could escape, but there's nowhere for him to run. He and his little brother, Riddle, have spent their entire lives constantly uprooted by their unstable father. As Sam and Riddle are welcomed into the Bells' lives, they witness the warmth and protection of a family for the first time.
-
-
Needs to be a film!
- By TreasureHunter on 06-25-16
-
If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother
- By: Julia Sweeney
- Narrated by: Julia Sweeney
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since her time on Saturday Night Live, where she created the infamous androgynous character "Pat", Julia Sweeney has gone on to establish herself as a witty, captivating performer of one-woman shows, like God Said Ha!, In the Family Way, and Letting Go of God. She gave a TED talk sharing how she explained the birds and the bees to her eight-year-old daughter, Mulan, which ignited an incredible response. Now, when it comes to talking about motherhood, people want to hear what Julia has to say.
-
-
I Love Julia Sweeney
- By Lisa on 04-05-13
By: Julia Sweeney
-
The Death of Cool
- From Teenage Rebellion to the Hangover of Adulthood
- By: Gavin McInnes
- Narrated by: Gavin McInnes
- Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is his story, or, rather, stories - lots of them, and all gut-punchingly hilarious, from that first far reach into a girl's tight jeans to turning forty with a cataclysmic party. In between you’ll hear about acid trips, threesomes, Nazi skinheads, his band Anal Chinook (Inuit for “warm wind”), Martians in northern Canada, throwing pedophiles in jail, dinner with the Clash, what happens when you crash Bill Maher's show wasted, and the true story of Vice magazine.
-
-
if you don't buy this book, the terrorists win
- By Kelsey Gholi on 04-03-17
By: Gavin McInnes
-
Digging Up Mother
- A Love Story
- By: Johnny Depp - foreword, Doug Stanhope
- Narrated by: Doug Stanhope and Friends
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Doug Stanhope is one of the most critically acclaimed and stridently unrepentant comedians of his generation. What will surprise some is that he owes so much of his dark and sometimes uncomfortably honest sense of humor to his mother, Bonnie.
-
-
Not my thing.
- By J. Harral on 01-27-18
By: Johnny Depp - foreword, and others
What listeners say about A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- matt h
- 03-01-19
Beautiful, Empathetic & Fascinating
i loved this book! a tremendous first hand account of mental illness that should be required reading for everyone.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Joe
- 05-21-23
What an amazing gift to the world, thank you Bob and Sandra
I have been riveted and just finished same day I got the audiobook.
Such a wonderfully honest expose and the realness of it all kept me loving riding along to the really eloquently presented and developed expose of this one man’s life and the mental health struggles he and the human race faces.
I’m not typically a biography consumer but hearing Sandra speak of how she found the trees on This American Life this morning I was like “those, those are my people”.
Despite the somewhat intense subject matter it was really eye opening and fun throughout. I for one really appreciated a lot of “Bob’s” succinct prose about his experiences and love how Sandra would jump in with the data and recognition of where the world was at while it was all happening.
Great job, Sandra, and thank you for that journey today. It’s one of those rare gems that since it is so varied but at the same time real I just feel like I know a little bit more what a beautiful, scary, wonderful, and tragic thing it is to be human.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- jash
- 02-26-21
Great!
I really loved the life story about her uncle and his schizophrenia as I have a relative with the same mental illness I think that the author did a great job putting his writing and her riding together to explain what may have happened or not have happened according to his views it was interesting and fast reading
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jill Hogan
- 10-30-23
Engaging
Thank you for telling such a humanistic story about schizophrenia. Told in the words of the man who experienced it. What a great way to honour his life.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Armando
- 02-25-18
Perspective
Instead of looking for what makes someone wrong or different, we should appreciate alternative perspectives for challenging our own and forcing considerations which may not occur in a bleak, one thought society. This book explores this concept and is important in narrating a story which often goes untold.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jessica L
- 05-24-18
Beautifully done
Wonderfully insightful book. Well narrated, kept my attention. Gave a very loving perspective into a family and a person dealing with schizophrenia.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Marissa
- 02-13-18
Intriguing
I listen to audible at my dest at work while I process referrals for people that can be similar to Bob. It was interesting to finally see into other people I hear about everyday and being able to look deeper while reading this. I appreciated this book and am going to send it to a friend who may have an inkling to who Wes couldve been.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- E
- 08-25-19
Unique insight into schizophrenia
I absolutely loved this book. The added commentary and context, the dual narrators, the unique voice of Bob and his view of his world.. all come together in a portrait of a man whose life needed to be written.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Shoaib Fakhri
- 07-18-22
Schizophrenia
Trying to think of words to describe this book, it gives you a definite experience on what someone with mental health problems are going through.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- E. Bass
- 09-21-23
An important story
So glad Bob’s story is out in the world. The author portrayed him in all his human fullness. Bob was a beautiful spirit who learned what his gifts and limitations and needs were. He lived life on his terms, and this story provides a valuable look into the mind of a schizophrenic.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!