An Emancipation of the Mind
Radical Philosophy, the War Over Slavery, and the Refounding of America
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Narrated by:
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Mike Chamberlain
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By:
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Matthew Stewart
About this listen
How a band of antislavery leaders recovered the radical philosophical inspirations of the first American Revolution to defeat the slaveholders' oligarchy in the Civil War.
In their struggle against the slaveholding oligarchy of their time, America's antislavery leaders found their way back to the rationalist, secularist, and essentially atheist inspiration for the first American Revolution. Frederick Douglass's unusual interest in radical German philosophers and Abraham Lincoln's buried allusions to the same thinkers are but a few of the clues that underlie this propulsive philosophical detective story.
With fresh takes on forgotten thinkers like Theodore Parker, the excommunicated Unitarian minister who is the original source of some of Lincoln's most famous lines, Matthew Stewart tells the story of the battle between America's philosophical radicals and the conservative counterrevolution that swept the American republic in the first decades of its existence and persists in new forms up to the present day.
In exposing the role of Christian nationalism and the collusion between northern economic elites and slaveholding oligarchs, An Emancipation of the Mind demands a significant revision in our understanding of the origins and meaning of the struggle over slavery in America-and offers a fresh perspective on struggles between democracy and elite power today.
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it's Nearly perfect
- By Kerry on 09-16-20
By: Malcolm X, and others
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MOVE: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy
- By: Curtis Bryant, Kevin Arbouet
- Narrated by: Tariq Trotter
- Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
- Original Recording
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This searing audio documentary brings listeners deep inside the unforgettable story of MOVE, gaining unprecedented access to surviving MOVE members, elected officials from the era, eyewitnesses, and historians to create an indelible portrait of an American tragedy.
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Balanced Examination of History
- By James Peacock on 08-14-24
By: Curtis Bryant, and others
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Caffeine
- How Caffeine Created the Modern World
- By: Michael Pollan
- Narrated by: Michael Pollan
- Length: 2 hrs and 2 mins
- Original Recording
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Michael Pollan, known for his best-selling nonfiction audio, including The Omnivores Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, conceived and wrote Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World as an Audible Original. In this controversial and exciting listen, Pollan explores caffeine’s power as the most-used drug in the world - and the only one we give to children (in soda pop) as a treat.
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Leaves much to be desired
- By Melody H on 02-02-20
By: Michael Pollan
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Mythology: Mega Collection
- Classic Stories from the Greek, Celtic, Norse, Japanese, Hindu, Chinese, Mesopotamian and Egyptian Mythology
- By: Scott Lewis
- Narrated by: Madison Niederhauser, Oliver Hunt
- Length: 31 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Do you know how many wives Zeus had? Or how the famous Trojan War was caused by one beautiful lady? Or how Thor got his hammer? Give your imagination a real treat. This Mega Mythology Collection of eight audiobooks is for you....
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An interesting set of introductions.
- By Kevin Potter on 05-30-19
By: Scott Lewis
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I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t)
- Telling the Truth about Perfectionism, Inadequacy, and Power
- By: Brené Brown
- Narrated by: Lauren Fortgang
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on seven years of ground-breaking research and hundreds of interviews, I Thought It Was Just Me shines a long-overdue light on an important truth: Our imperfections are what connect us to each other and to our humanity. Our vulnerabilities are not weaknesses; they are powerful reminders to keep our hearts and minds open to the reality that we're all in this together.
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I'm sure its great if you are a mother ....
- By Leslie A Hill on 08-09-11
By: Brené Brown
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The Strange Death of Europe
- Immigration, Identity, Islam
- By: Douglas Murray
- Narrated by: Robert Davies
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The Strange Death of Europe is a highly personal account of a continent and culture caught in the act of suicide. Declining birth rates, mass immigration, and cultivated self-distrust and self-hatred have come together to make Europeans unable to argue for themselves and incapable of resisting their own comprehensive alteration as a society and an eventual end.
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Fear-mongering
- By Kat Cat on 01-22-19
By: Douglas Murray
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In 21st century America, the top 0.1 percent of the wealth distribution have walked away with the big prizes even while the bottom 90 percent have lost ground. What’s left of the American Dream has taken refuge in the 9.9 percent that lies just below the tip of extreme wealth. Collectively, the members of this group control more than half of the wealth in the country - and they are doing whatever it takes to hang on to their piece of the action in an increasingly unjust system.
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The Courtier and the Heretic
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Once upon a time, philosophy was a dangerous business-and for no one more so than for Baruch Spinoza, the seventeenth-century philosopher vilified by theologians and political authorities everywhere as "the atheist Jew." As his inflammatory manuscripts circulated underground, Spinoza lived a humble existence in The Hague, grinding optical lenses to make ends meet. Meanwhile, in the glittering salons of Paris, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was climbing the ladder of courtly success.
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A Fascinating and Surprisingly Comprehensive Work
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On Politics
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Both a history and an examination of human thought and behavior spanning three thousand years, On Politics thrillingly traces the origins of political philosophy from the ancient Greeks to Machiavelli in Book I and from Hobbes to the present age in Book II. Whether examining Lord Acton's dictum that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" or explicating John Stuart Mill's contention that it is "better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied," Alan Ryan evokes the lives and minds of our greatest thinkers in a way that makes hearing about them a transcendent experience.
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Simply no book quite like this
- By Jack Raineri on 12-21-22
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Illiberal America
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If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That's not us,' think again: in Illiberal America, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian uncovers a powerful illiberalism as deep seated in the American past as the founding ideals.
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Comprehensive American History
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Where did the ideas come from that became the cornerstone of American democracy? Not only the erudite Thomas Jefferson, the wily and elusive Ben Franklin, and the underappreciated Thomas Paine, but also Ethan Allen, the hero of the Green Mountain Boys, and Thomas Young, the forgotten Founder who kicked off the Boston Tea Party. These radicals who founded America set their sights on a revolution of the mind. Derided as "infidels" and "atheists" in their own time, they wanted to liberate us not just from one king but from the tyranny of supernatural religion.
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Excellent exploration of this subject
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The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic
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A sweeping narrative that remakes our understanding of perhaps the most consequential period in American history, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic shows how the great contest of that age is also the great contest of our age—and serves as a necessary reminder of how young and fragile our democracy truly is.
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Managing through narration
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The 9.9 Percent
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In 21st century America, the top 0.1 percent of the wealth distribution have walked away with the big prizes even while the bottom 90 percent have lost ground. What’s left of the American Dream has taken refuge in the 9.9 percent that lies just below the tip of extreme wealth. Collectively, the members of this group control more than half of the wealth in the country - and they are doing whatever it takes to hang on to their piece of the action in an increasingly unjust system.
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Fantastic
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A Fascinating and Surprisingly Comprehensive Work
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On Politics
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Both a history and an examination of human thought and behavior spanning three thousand years, On Politics thrillingly traces the origins of political philosophy from the ancient Greeks to Machiavelli in Book I and from Hobbes to the present age in Book II. Whether examining Lord Acton's dictum that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" or explicating John Stuart Mill's contention that it is "better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied," Alan Ryan evokes the lives and minds of our greatest thinkers in a way that makes hearing about them a transcendent experience.
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When it appeared in 1670, Baruch Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise was denounced as the most dangerous book ever published. In A Book Forged in Hell, Steven Nadler tells the fascinating story of this extraordinary book: its radical claims and their background in the philosophical, religious, and political tensions of the Dutch Golden Age, as well as the vitriolic reaction these ideas inspired.
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Well researched, comprehensive intro to Spinoza’s work.
- By Tom on 01-27-22
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A Great Disorder
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A Great Disorder is a bold, urgent work that helps us make sense of today's culture wars through a brilliant reconsideration of America's foundational myths and their use in contemporary politics. Richard Slotkin identifies five myths, born of different eras, that have shaped our conception of what it means to be American: the myths of the Frontier, the Founding, the Civil War (which he breaks into two opposing camps, Emancipation and the Lost Cause), and the Good War, embodied by the multiethnic platoon fighting for freedom.
By: Richard Slotkin
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Heart of American Darkness
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We are divided over the history of the United States, and one of the central dividing lines is the frontier. Was it a site of heroism? Or was it where the full force of an all-powerful empire was brought to bear on Native peoples? In this startlingly original work, historian Robert Parkinson presents a new account of ever-shifting encounters between white colonists and Native Americans.
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The Enlightenment That Failed
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The Enlightenment That Failed explores the growing rift between those Enlightenment trends and initiatives that appealed exclusively to elites and those aspiring to enlighten all of society by raising mankind's awareness, freedoms, and educational level generally. Jonathan I. Israel explains why the democratic and radical secularizing tendency of the Western Enlightenment, after gaining some notable successes during the revolutionary era (1775-1820) in numerous countries, especially in Europe, North America, and Spanish America, ultimately failed.
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Enlightened radical
- By Anonymous User on 07-02-22
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The Management Myth
- Why the 'Experts' Keep Getting It Wrong
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Alongside his devastating critique of management "philosophy" from Frederick Taylor to Tom Peters, Stewart provides a bitingly funny account of his own days in a management consulting firm. Combining hands-on experience with the theoretical underpinnings of contemporary fads in efficiency improvement, empowerment, and strategy, Stewart knows his stuff, and thus he lays bare how consultants really have done very little for the business of others - while making a killing for themselves.
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Just started an MBA program....
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By: Matthew Stewart
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The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself
- The Power of Rhetoric in Polarized Times
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In this book, renowned rhetorical scholar Robin Reames argues that, in today's polarized political climate, we should all care deeply about learning rhetoric. Drawing on examples ranging from the destructive ancient Greek demagogue Alcibiades to modern-day conspiracists like Alex Jones, Reames breaks down the major techniques of rhetoric, pulling back the curtain on how politicians, journalists, and "journalists" convince us to believe what we believe—and to talk, vote, and act accordingly.
By: Robin Reames
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Every Living Thing
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In the eighteenth century, two men—exact contemporaries and polar opposites—dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Each began his task believing it to be difficult but not impossible: How could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species—or as many could fit on Noah’s Ark?
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Fascinating history of scientific thought
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The Invention of Prehistory
- Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins
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Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, our current era is no different from any other in the last three hundred years. In this coruscating work, acclaimed historian Stefanos Geroulanos demonstrates how claims about the earliest humans not only shaped Western intellectual culture, but gave rise to our modern world.
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Too much judgement
- By Historic Philosopher on 04-23-24
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The Great Debate
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- By: Yuval Levin
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Author Yuval Levin explores the roots of the left/right political divide in America by examining the views of the men who best represented each side at its origin: Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. Striving to forge a new political path in the tumultuous age of the American and French revolutions, these two ideological titans sparred over moral and philosophical questions about the nature of political life and the best approach to social change: radical and swift, or gradual and incremental. The division they articulated continues to shape our political life today.
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absolutely worth your time
- By Coffin Family on 10-30-22
By: Yuval Levin
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The Rediscovery of America
- Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (The Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity)
- By: Ned Blackhawk
- Narrated by: Jason Grasl
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- Unabridged
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The most enduring feature of US history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America.
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Interesting book marred by poor reading
- By Nathaniel Sterling on 03-04-24
By: Ned Blackhawk
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Keeping the Faith
- God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation
- By: Brenda Wineapple
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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The dramatic story of the 1925 Scopes trial, which captivated the nation and exposed profound divisions in America that still resonate today—divisions over the meaning of freedom, religion, education, censorship, and civil liberties in a democracy.
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A retelling but with more detail
- By WH Griesar on 09-14-24
By: Brenda Wineapple
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The Enlightenment
- The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790
- By: Ritchie Robertson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 40 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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This magisterial history - sure to become the definitive work on the subject - recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness.
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The quickest 40 hour audio book I’ve listen to
- By Joey Caster on 04-02-21
What listeners say about An Emancipation of the Mind
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- James H. McDonald
- 07-14-24
Powerful revisionist history on race, racism, and the American past (and present)
This is a fine-grained exploration of the American use of race to champion property over labor (put another way, capital over people and their humanity).
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- Caroline Pufalt
- 06-17-24
Refreshing viewpoint
An interesting look at the theology and philosophy among notable figures in the fight against slavery.
A bit too much about Hegel. ( even a little is hard to take) but don’t let that keep you from listening to this intriguing book
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-01-24
Spectacular and inspiring
Stewart accomplishes through energetic and excited prose the most difficult task of any author of a history of ideas: making it a page-turner (or whatever the audiobook equivalent would be). This was enthralling and indispensable to anyone with an interest in American history and abolitionism. Chamberlain is an excellent narrator.
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