Notes on Democracy
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 $12.11
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Stefan Rudnicki
-
By:
-
H. L. Mencken
About this listen
Written during the 1920s, an era that reflects much of our modern times 100 years later, this book by culture critic and scholar Mencken dissects what democracy is.
The book’s three parts are “Democratic Man,” “The Democratic State” that includes a chapter on popular will and a chapter on politicians, and “Democracy and Liberty” with a section on corruption under democracy, followed by a “Coda” that discusses the future of democracy.
The author places politicians into two camps: the demagogue, who “preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots” and the demi-slave, “who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself.” He depicts politicians as “men who have sold their honor for their jobs.”
Mencken, who covered the 1920s’ Scopes Trial, has been called one of America’s greatest journalists. Here, with his cynical humor, he skewers big government, Puritanism, and sanctimony.
Originally published in 1926.
Public Domain (P)2023 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
-
A Mencken Chrestomathy
- By: H. L. Mencken
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 26 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edited and annotated by H. L. M., this is a selection from his out-of-print writings. They come mostly from books - the six installments of the Prejudices series, A Book of Burlesques, In Defense of Women, Notes on Democracy, Making a President, A Book of Calumny, Treatise on Right and Wrong - but there are also magazine and newspaper pieces that never got between covers (from the American Mercury, the Smart Set, and the Baltimore Evening Sun) and some notes that were never previously published at all.
-
-
His own selection of his writings.
- By Zachary Martin on 06-05-21
By: H. L. Mencken
-
The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
- By: Henry Louis Mencken
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mention the name of Friedrich Nietzsche almost anywhere and you are apt to receive a strong emotional response, either negatively or positively. Few persons will say they have no opinion. And for good reason. Employing some of the most withering attacks and scathing criticism conceivable against, among other things, Christianity, education, government, Wagner, and the judicial systems of his day, Nietzsche was a one-man wrecking ball of European society in the latter half of the 19th century.
-
-
strenuous
- By Tim on 12-12-09
-
The Canceling of the American Mind
- Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All—but There Is a Solution
- By: Greg Lukianoff, Rikki Schlott
- Narrated by: Rikki Schlott, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cancel culture is a new phenomenon, and The Canceling of the American Mind is the first book to codify it and survey its effects, including hard data and research on what cancel culture is and how it works, along with hundreds of new examples showing the left and right both working to silence their enemies.
-
-
Good book, Important information, poorly read
- By pj on 12-08-23
By: Greg Lukianoff, and others
-
Social Justice Fallacies
- By: Thomas Sowell
- Narrated by: Brad Sanders
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The quest for social justice is a powerful crusade of our time, with an appeal to many different people, for many different reasons. But those who use the same words do not always present the same meanings. Clarifying those meanings is the first step toward finding out what we agree on and disagree on. From there, it is largely a question of what the facts are. Social Justice Fallacies reveals how many things that are thought to be true simply cannot stand up to documented facts, which are often the opposite of what is widely believed.
-
-
Timely book by 93 year old Thomas Sowell
- By Wayne on 09-27-23
By: Thomas Sowell
-
Main Street
- By: Sinclair Lewis
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This famous satire of life on Main Street, Gopher Prairie, mirrors with devastating honesty life on Main Streets from Albany to San Diego.
-
-
Timely and timeless
- By Kindle Customer on 05-17-18
By: Sinclair Lewis
-
Tyranny of the Minority
- Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point
- By: Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what can we do to save it?
-
-
Tyranny of the Minority
- By orders on 10-07-23
By: Steven Levitsky, and others
-
A Mencken Chrestomathy
- By: H. L. Mencken
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 26 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edited and annotated by H. L. M., this is a selection from his out-of-print writings. They come mostly from books - the six installments of the Prejudices series, A Book of Burlesques, In Defense of Women, Notes on Democracy, Making a President, A Book of Calumny, Treatise on Right and Wrong - but there are also magazine and newspaper pieces that never got between covers (from the American Mercury, the Smart Set, and the Baltimore Evening Sun) and some notes that were never previously published at all.
-
-
His own selection of his writings.
- By Zachary Martin on 06-05-21
By: H. L. Mencken
-
The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
- By: Henry Louis Mencken
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mention the name of Friedrich Nietzsche almost anywhere and you are apt to receive a strong emotional response, either negatively or positively. Few persons will say they have no opinion. And for good reason. Employing some of the most withering attacks and scathing criticism conceivable against, among other things, Christianity, education, government, Wagner, and the judicial systems of his day, Nietzsche was a one-man wrecking ball of European society in the latter half of the 19th century.
-
-
strenuous
- By Tim on 12-12-09
-
The Canceling of the American Mind
- Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All—but There Is a Solution
- By: Greg Lukianoff, Rikki Schlott
- Narrated by: Rikki Schlott, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cancel culture is a new phenomenon, and The Canceling of the American Mind is the first book to codify it and survey its effects, including hard data and research on what cancel culture is and how it works, along with hundreds of new examples showing the left and right both working to silence their enemies.
-
-
Good book, Important information, poorly read
- By pj on 12-08-23
By: Greg Lukianoff, and others
-
Social Justice Fallacies
- By: Thomas Sowell
- Narrated by: Brad Sanders
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The quest for social justice is a powerful crusade of our time, with an appeal to many different people, for many different reasons. But those who use the same words do not always present the same meanings. Clarifying those meanings is the first step toward finding out what we agree on and disagree on. From there, it is largely a question of what the facts are. Social Justice Fallacies reveals how many things that are thought to be true simply cannot stand up to documented facts, which are often the opposite of what is widely believed.
-
-
Timely book by 93 year old Thomas Sowell
- By Wayne on 09-27-23
By: Thomas Sowell
-
Main Street
- By: Sinclair Lewis
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This famous satire of life on Main Street, Gopher Prairie, mirrors with devastating honesty life on Main Streets from Albany to San Diego.
-
-
Timely and timeless
- By Kindle Customer on 05-17-18
By: Sinclair Lewis
-
Tyranny of the Minority
- Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point
- By: Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what can we do to save it?
-
-
Tyranny of the Minority
- By orders on 10-07-23
By: Steven Levitsky, and others
-
American Prometheus
- The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
- By: Kai Bird, Martin J. Sherwin
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 26 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the iconic figures of the 20th century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb but later confronted the moral consequences of scientific progress. When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s.
-
-
An American Tragedy
- By Edith on 12-13-07
By: Kai Bird, and others
-
The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
- An Experiment in Literary Investigation
- By: Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
- Narrated by: Ignat Solzhenitsyn
- Length: 21 hrs and 53 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Nobel Prize winner’s towering masterpiece of world literature, the searing record of four decades of terror and oppression, in one abridged volume (authorized by the author). Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum.
-
-
Mandatory reading in Russia, not USA. Why?
- By Arlon James on 11-07-20
-
The Rise of Rome
- By: The Great Courses, Gregory S. Aldrete
- Narrated by: Gregory S. Aldrete
- Length: 12 hrs and 16 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Roman Republic is one of the most breathtaking civilizations in world history. Between roughly 500 BCE to the turn of the millennium, a modest city-state developed an innovative system of government and expanded into far-flung territories across Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East. This powerful civilization inspired America's founding fathers, gifted us a blueprint for amazing engineering innovations, left a vital trove of myths, and has inspired the human imagination for 2,000 years.
-
-
Very good, but doesn't stand out
- By Christopher on 02-08-18
By: The Great Courses, and others
-
The White Pill
- A Tale of Good and Evil
- By: Michael Malice
- Narrated by: Michael Malice
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Bolsheviks promised that they were building a new society, a workers’ paradise that would change the nature of mankind itself. What they ended up constructing was the largest prison the world had ever seen: a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that spanned half the globe.
-
-
Do not buy the audio version.
- By Todd on 02-20-23
By: Michael Malice
-
The Wealth of Nations
- By: Adam Smith
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 36 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The foundation for all modern economic thought and political economy, The Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of Scottish economist Adam Smith, who introduces the world to the very idea of economics and capitalism in the modern sense of the words.
-
-
ADAM SMITH
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 01-20-15
By: Adam Smith
-
Breaking Biden
- Exposing the Hidden Forces and Secret Money Machine Behind Joe Biden, His Family, and His Administration
- By: Alex Marlow
- Narrated by: Alex Marlow
- Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Over his 50-year career in Washington, Joe Biden has become known for his wild dishonesty, embarrassing policy failings, and an absolute lack of accountability, culminating in his predictably unpopular presidency. But what has not yet been revealed is the vast web of consultants, bureaucrats, corporate titans, foreign interests, and various extended family members (it’s not just Hunter!) who have achieved unfathomable wealth and power while keeping Biden in charge.
-
-
Nauseating but necessary
- By Issac Singer on 10-04-23
By: Alex Marlow
-
1177 B.C. (Revised and Updated)
- The Year Civilization Collapsed
- By: Eric H. Cline
- Narrated by: Eric H. Cline
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook narrated by acclaimed archaeologist and best-selling author Eric Cline offers a breathtaking account of how the collapse of an ancient civilized world ushered in the first Dark Ages.
-
-
Look past the one-star reviews: this is an enlightening and engaging read.
- By Alonzo Nightjar on 03-07-22
By: Eric H. Cline
-
Live Not by Lies
- A Manual for Christian Dissidents
- By: Rod Dreher
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously said that one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming totalitarianism can't happen in their country. Many American Christians are making that mistake today, sleepwalking through the erosion of our freedoms. Live Not by Lies will wake them and equip them for the long resistance.
-
-
A Must Read For All Christians!
- By Chuck B. on 10-02-20
By: Rod Dreher
-
Essays
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Alex Hyde-White
- Length: 25 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With great originality and wit, Orwell unfolds his views on subjects ranging from a revaluation of Charles Dickens to the nature of Socialism, from a comic yet profound discussion of naughty seaside postcards to a spirited defense of English cooking. Displaying an almost unrivalled mastery of English plain prose, Orwell’s essays created a unique literary manner from the process of thinking aloud and continue to challenge, move, and entertain.
-
-
Great Content; Would benefit from chapter names
- By Laimis on 08-15-20
By: George Orwell
-
Cynical Theories
- How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody
- By: Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay
- Narrated by: Helen Pluckrose
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Have you heard that language is violence and that science is sexist? Have you read that certain people shouldn't practice yoga? Or been told that being obese is healthy, that there is no such thing as biological sex, or that only White people can be racist? Are you confused by these ideas, and do you wonder how they have managed to challenge the logic of Western society? In this probing volume, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay document the evolution of the dogma that informs these ideas, from its coarse origins in French postmodernism to its refinement within activist academic fields.
-
-
Vast Amount of Jargon Lost Me
- By P. Jackson on 10-23-20
By: Helen Pluckrose, and others
-
The New Puritans
- How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World
- By: Andrew Doyle
- Narrated by: Andrew Doyle
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Leading a cultural revolution driven by identity politics and so-called 'social justice', the new puritanism movement is best understood as a religion - one that makes grand claims to moral purity and tolerates no dissent. In The New Puritans, Andrew Doyle powerfully examines the underlying belief-systems of this ideology and how it has risen so rapidly to dominate all major political, cultural and corporate institutions. He reasons that, to move forward, we need to understand where these New Puritans came from and what they hope to achieve.
-
-
Hero speaking truth
- By Victoria Eriksson on 10-12-22
By: Andrew Doyle
-
Beyond Good and Evil
- By: Friedrich Nietzsche
- Narrated by: Alex Jennings, Roy McMillan
- Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Continuing where Thus Spoke Zarathustra left off, Nietzsche's controversial work Beyond Good and Evil is one of the most influential philosophical texts of the 19th century and one of the most controversial works of ideology ever written. Attacking the notion of morality as nothing more than institutionalised weakness, Nietzsche criticises past philosophers for their unquestioning acceptance of moral precepts. Nietzsche tried to formulate what he called "the philosophy of the future".
-
-
Great Book, great Audio Narration
- By Bob H on 01-07-11
Related to this topic
-
Edmund Burke
- A Genius Reconsidered
- By: Russell Kirk
- Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Russell Kirk has ingeniously combined into a living whole the private Burke and the public Burke. He gives us a fresh assessment of Burke, a statesman enjoying even greater influence today than in his own time. He lucidly unfolds Burke's philosophy, showing how it revealed itself in concrete historical situations in the 18th century and how Burke, through his philosophy, "speaks to our age".
-
-
Narration too Fast for Me
- By K on 01-16-13
By: Russell Kirk
-
Eugenics and Other Evils
- By: G. K. Chesterton
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During the first three decades of the 20th century, eugenics, the scientific control of human breeding, was a popular cause within enlightened and progressive segments of the English-speaking world. This prophetic volume counters the intellectual nihilism of Nietzsche, while simultaneously rebuking Western notions of progress - biological or otherwise. Chesterton expands his criticism of eugenics into what he calls "a more general criticism of the modern craze for scientific officialism and strict social organization."
-
-
Truly Great!
- By No to Statism on 07-26-19
By: G. K. Chesterton
-
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind
- By: Gustave Le Bon
- Narrated by: Joseph Gomez
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind is a seminal work on crowd psychology by Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), a French social psychologist. He observes that a crowd forms when an influential idea unites a number of individuals and prompts them to act towards a common goal. In a crowd, the conscious personality of the individual is submerged and dominated by the collective mind. Furthermore, every sentiment becomes contagious to a degree that individuals readily sacrifice their personal interest to the collective.
-
-
A must read in terms of group psychology....
- By Alednam A Uonopk on 08-19-20
By: Gustave Le Bon
-
On Revolution
- By: Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hannah Arendt's penetrating observations on the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, have been fundamental to our understanding of our political landscape. On Revolution is her classic exploration of a phenomenon that has reshaped the globe. From the 18th-century rebellions in America and France to the explosive changes of the 20th century, Arendt traces the changing face of revolution and its relationship to war while underscoring the crucial role such events will play in the future.
-
-
Insightful Analysis of Differing Revolutions
- By Roger on 01-10-18
By: Hannah Arendt
-
What’s Wrong with the World
- By: G. K. Chesterton
- Narrated by: Bernard Mayes
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this important book, G.K. Chesterton offers a remarkably perceptive analysis of social and moral issues, even more relevant today than in his own time. With a light, humorous tone but a deadly serious philosophy, he comments on errors in education, on feminism vs. true womanhood, on the importance of the child, and other issues, using incisive arguments against the trendsetters’ assaults on the common man and the family.
-
-
The mind that finds...
- By Darwin8u on 05-24-17
By: G. K. Chesterton
-
A Thousand Small Sanities
- The Moral Adventure of Liberalism
- By: Adam Gopnik
- Narrated by: Adam Gopnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history.
-
-
Erudite and entertaining!
- By D. A. Vail on 05-20-19
By: Adam Gopnik
-
Edmund Burke
- A Genius Reconsidered
- By: Russell Kirk
- Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Russell Kirk has ingeniously combined into a living whole the private Burke and the public Burke. He gives us a fresh assessment of Burke, a statesman enjoying even greater influence today than in his own time. He lucidly unfolds Burke's philosophy, showing how it revealed itself in concrete historical situations in the 18th century and how Burke, through his philosophy, "speaks to our age".
-
-
Narration too Fast for Me
- By K on 01-16-13
By: Russell Kirk
-
Eugenics and Other Evils
- By: G. K. Chesterton
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 4 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During the first three decades of the 20th century, eugenics, the scientific control of human breeding, was a popular cause within enlightened and progressive segments of the English-speaking world. This prophetic volume counters the intellectual nihilism of Nietzsche, while simultaneously rebuking Western notions of progress - biological or otherwise. Chesterton expands his criticism of eugenics into what he calls "a more general criticism of the modern craze for scientific officialism and strict social organization."
-
-
Truly Great!
- By No to Statism on 07-26-19
By: G. K. Chesterton
-
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind
- By: Gustave Le Bon
- Narrated by: Joseph Gomez
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind is a seminal work on crowd psychology by Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), a French social psychologist. He observes that a crowd forms when an influential idea unites a number of individuals and prompts them to act towards a common goal. In a crowd, the conscious personality of the individual is submerged and dominated by the collective mind. Furthermore, every sentiment becomes contagious to a degree that individuals readily sacrifice their personal interest to the collective.
-
-
A must read in terms of group psychology....
- By Alednam A Uonopk on 08-19-20
By: Gustave Le Bon
-
On Revolution
- By: Hannah Arendt
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hannah Arendt's penetrating observations on the modern world, based on a profound knowledge of the past, have been fundamental to our understanding of our political landscape. On Revolution is her classic exploration of a phenomenon that has reshaped the globe. From the 18th-century rebellions in America and France to the explosive changes of the 20th century, Arendt traces the changing face of revolution and its relationship to war while underscoring the crucial role such events will play in the future.
-
-
Insightful Analysis of Differing Revolutions
- By Roger on 01-10-18
By: Hannah Arendt
-
What’s Wrong with the World
- By: G. K. Chesterton
- Narrated by: Bernard Mayes
- Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this important book, G.K. Chesterton offers a remarkably perceptive analysis of social and moral issues, even more relevant today than in his own time. With a light, humorous tone but a deadly serious philosophy, he comments on errors in education, on feminism vs. true womanhood, on the importance of the child, and other issues, using incisive arguments against the trendsetters’ assaults on the common man and the family.
-
-
The mind that finds...
- By Darwin8u on 05-24-17
By: G. K. Chesterton
-
A Thousand Small Sanities
- The Moral Adventure of Liberalism
- By: Adam Gopnik
- Narrated by: Adam Gopnik
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history.
-
-
Erudite and entertaining!
- By D. A. Vail on 05-20-19
By: Adam Gopnik
-
Rights of Man
- By: Thomas Paine
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rights of Man presents an impassioned defense of the Enlightenment principles of freedom and equality that Thomas Paine believed would soon sweep the world. He boldly claimed, "From a small spark, kindled in America, a flame has arisen, not to be extinguished. Without consuming...it winds its progress from nation to nation."
-
-
By his voice alone he helped transform the West
- By Darwin8u on 12-23-12
By: Thomas Paine
-
The Smallest Minority
- Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics
- By: Kevin D. Williamson
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Listener beware: Kevin D. Williamson - the lively, literary firebrand from National Review who was too hot for The Atlantic to handle - comes to bury democracy, not to praise it. With electrifying honesty and spirit, Williamson takes a flamethrower to mob politics, the “beast with many heads” that haunts social media and what currently passes for real life. It’s destroying our capacity for individualism and dragging us down “the Road to Smurfdom, the place where the deracinated demos of the Twitter age finds itself feeling small and blue.”
-
-
Brutally honest, accurate and relevant
- By Sean on 09-19-19
-
The Age of Reason
- By: Thomas Paine
- Narrated by: Robin Field
- Length: 8 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, published in three parts from 1794, was a best seller in America, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. Promoting a creator-God while advocating reason in the place of revelation, Paine’s controversial pamphlet caused his native British audience, fearing the results of the French Revolution, to receive it with more hostility than their American counterparts.
-
-
Amazed by the energy, originality & bravery
- By Darwin8u on 10-06-12
By: Thomas Paine
-
Twelve Who Ruled
- The Year of the Terror in the French Revolution
- By: R. R. Palmer, Isser Woloch - foreword
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 17 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Reign of Terror continues to fascinate scholars as one of the bloodiest periods in French history, when the Committee of Public Safety strove to defend the first Republic from its many enemies, creating a climate of fear and suspicion in revolutionary France. R. R. Palmer's fascinating narrative follows the Committee's deputies individually and collectively, recounting and assessing their tumultuous struggles in Paris and their repressive missions in the provinces.
-
-
A Warning
- By Josh Rowe on 03-20-21
By: R. R. Palmer, and others
-
We the Fallen People
- The Founders and the Future of American Democracy
- By: Robert Tracy McKenzie
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We the Fallen People presents a close look at the ideas of human nature to be found in the history of American democratic thought. McKenzie, following C. S. Lewis, claims there are only two reasons to believe in majority rule: because we have confidence in human nature - or because we don't. The Founders subscribed to the biblical principle that humans are fallen and their virtue is always doubtful, and they wrote the US Constitution to frame a republic intended to handle our weaknesses.
-
-
Thoughtful reflection and historical perspective, but ultimately no easy answer
- By Brandon on 03-28-23
-
Anarchism and Other Essays
- By: Emma Goldman
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Among the men and women prominent in the public life of early 20th-century America there are but few whose names are mentioned as often as that of Emma Goldman. Yet the real Emma Goldman is almost quite unknown. Here are powerful, penetrating, prophetic essays on direct action, the role of minorities, prison reform, puritan hypocrisy, and violence.
-
-
Critical reading for today's world
- By Darwin on 02-27-17
By: Emma Goldman
-
On the Genealogy of Morals
- A Polemic
- By: Friedrich Nietzsche
- Narrated by: Duncan Steen
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In On the Genealogy of Morals, subtitled "A Polemic", Nietzsche furthers his pursuit of a clarity that is less tainted by imposed prejudices. He looks at the way attitudes towards 'morality' evolved and the way congenital ideas of morality were heavily colored by the Judaic and Christian traditions.
-
-
Be strong, not weak.
- By Wayne on 06-24-13
-
The Enlightenment
- The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790
- By: Ritchie Robertson
- Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
- Length: 40 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
The quickest 40 hour audio book I’ve listen to
- By Joey Caster on 04-02-21
-
The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt
- By: Theodore Roosevelt
- Narrated by: George Doyle
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
"The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses" is a collection of Theodore Roosevelt's published commentaries and public addresses on what is necessary for a vital and healthy political, social and individual life. Roosevelt states the main point of his speech in the opening remarks: "I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife.
-
-
Good book. Poor presentation.
- By Thomas on 01-27-20
-
Reflections on the Revolution in France
- By: Edmund Burke
- Narrated by: Bernard Mayes
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This famous treatise began as a letter to a young French friend who asked Edmund Burke’s opinion on whether France’s new ruling class would succeed in creating a better order. Doubtless the friend expected a favorable reply, but Burke was suspicious of certain tendencies of the Revolution from the start and perceived that the revolutionaries were actually subverting the true "social order". Blending history with principle and graceful imagery with profound practical maxims, this book is one of the most influential political treatises in the history of the world.
-
-
A good historical perspective
- By CMC on 08-30-14
By: Edmund Burke
-
The Story of Philosophy
- The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers
- By: Will Durant
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 19 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Durant lucidly describes the philosophical systems of such world-famous “monarchs of the mind” as Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Spinoza, Kant, Voltaire, and Nietzsche. Along with their ideas, he offers their flesh-and-blood biographies, placing their thoughts within their own time and place and elucidating their influence on our modern intellectual heritage. This book is packed with wisdom and wit.
-
-
Fantastic and insightful book
- By ESK on 01-25-13
By: Will Durant
-
Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey Volume 1
- By: Marcus Garvey
- Narrated by: Rodney Louis Tompkins
- Length: 1 hr and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. (1887-1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (1923) is a collection of his speeches, setting out his vision of a united Africa. As an early proponent of the Back-to-Africa movement, he encouraged a sense of pride and self-worth among Africans and the African diaspora. Garvey deplored the view of poverty as a virtue and encourages Blacks to be empowered in every sphere of their lives.
-
-
Short and Sweet:
- By matthew a. barrett on 07-07-20
By: Marcus Garvey
What listeners say about Notes on Democracy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David
- 12-05-23
If only newsmen wrote as this now
Mencken provides all we need to know in his Chrestomathy and notes. What to do requires other writers and teachers and much character.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!