-
Rule and Ruin
- The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party
- Narrated by: Michael Bulter Murray
- Length: 21 hrs and 12 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 $39.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
The chaotic events leading up to Mitt Romney's defeat in the 2012 election indicated how far the Republican Party had rocketed rightward away from the center of public opinion. Republicans in Congress threatened to shut down the government and force a U.S. debt default. Tea Party activists mounted primary challenges against Republican officeholders who appeared to exhibit too much pragmatism or independence. Moderation and compromise were dirty words in the Republican presidential debates. The GOP, it seemed, had suddenly become a party of ideological purity.
Except this development is not new at all. In Rule and Ruin, Geoffrey Kabaservice reveals that the moderate Republicans' downfall began not with the rise of the Tea Party but about the time of President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address. Even in the 1960s, when left-wing radicalism and right-wing backlash commanded headlines, Republican moderates and progressives formed a powerful movement, supporting pro-civil rights politicians like Nelson Rockefeller and William Scranton, battling big-government liberals and conservative extremists alike. But the Republican civil war ended with the overthrow of the moderate ideas, heroes, and causes that had comprised the core of the GOP since its formation. In hindsight, it is today's conservatives who are "Republicans in Name Only".
Writing with passionate sympathy for a bygone tradition of moderation, Kabaservice recaptures a time when fiscal restraint was matched with social engagement; when a cohort of leading Republicans opposed the Vietnam war; when George Romney - father of Mitt Romney - conducted a nationwide tour of American poverty, from Appalachia to Watts, calling on society to "listen to the voices from the ghetto". Rule and Ruin is an epic, deeply researched history that reorients our understanding of our political past and present.
Today, following the Republicans' loss of the popular vote in five of the last six presidential contests, moderates remain marginalized in the GOP and progressives are all but nonexistent. In this insightful and elegantly argued book, Kabaservice contends that their decline has left Republicans less capable of governing responsibly, with dire consequences for all Americans. He has added a new afterword that considers the fallout from the 2012 elections.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Fall
- The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty
- By: Michael Wolff
- Narrated by: Michael Wolff - introduction, Holter Graham
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For almost three decades, Fox News has not only made political careers (see: President Donald J. Trump) but also fundamentally altered the political landscape of the United States. It is a truism: as Fox goes, so goes the nation—into further divisiveness and awash in fake news, a gleefully polarizing company. But just as Fox has pushed America apart, now it too is coming apart. As is the family dynasty behind it.
-
-
Terrific rundown of Fox
- By Iread on 10-05-23
By: Michael Wolff
-
To Make Men Free
- A History of the Republican Party
- By: Heather Cox Richardson
- Narrated by: Heather Cox Richardson
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Republican Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession. While progressive Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower revived Lincoln’s vision and expanded the government, their opponents appealed to Americans’ latent racism and xenophobia to regain political power, linking taxation and regulation to redistribution and socialism. In the modern era, the schism within the Republican Party has grown wider, pulling the GOP ever further from its founding principles.
-
-
Fascinating read!
- By Marsha on 12-27-21
-
American Psychosis
- A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy
- By: David Corn
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 17 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A fast-paced, rollicking, behind-the-scenes account of how the GOP since the 1950s has encouraged and exploited extremism, bigotry, and paranoia to gain power, American Psychosis offers listeners a brisk, can-you-believe-it journey through the netherworld of far-right irrationality and the Republican Party’s interactions with the darkest forces in America.
-
-
Important history poorly read
- By A. Hawley on 09-16-22
By: David Corn
-
Romney
- A Reckoning
- By: McKay Coppins
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, McKay Coppins
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few figures in American politics have seen more and said less than Mitt Romney. An outspoken dissident in Donald Trump’s GOP, he has made headlines in recent years for standing alone against the forces he believes are poisoning the party he once led. Romney was the first senator in history to vote to remove from office a president of his own party. When that president’s supporters went on to storm the US Capitol, Romney delivered a thundering speech from the Senate floor accusing his fellow Republicans of stoking insurrection.
-
-
Political and intellectual biography at its best!
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-23
By: McKay Coppins
-
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
- By: John J. Mearsheimer
- Narrated by: Mark Ashby
- Length: 16 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A decade after the cold war ended, policy makers and academics foresaw a new era of peace and prosperity, an era in which democracy and open trade would herald the "end of history." The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, sadly shattered these idyllic illusions, and John Mearsheimer's masterful new book explains why these harmonious visions remain utopian.
-
-
Exceptional
- By Logical Paradox on 08-19-14
-
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
-
The Fall
- The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty
- By: Michael Wolff
- Narrated by: Michael Wolff - introduction, Holter Graham
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For almost three decades, Fox News has not only made political careers (see: President Donald J. Trump) but also fundamentally altered the political landscape of the United States. It is a truism: as Fox goes, so goes the nation—into further divisiveness and awash in fake news, a gleefully polarizing company. But just as Fox has pushed America apart, now it too is coming apart. As is the family dynasty behind it.
-
-
Terrific rundown of Fox
- By Iread on 10-05-23
By: Michael Wolff
-
To Make Men Free
- A History of the Republican Party
- By: Heather Cox Richardson
- Narrated by: Heather Cox Richardson
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Republican Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession. While progressive Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower revived Lincoln’s vision and expanded the government, their opponents appealed to Americans’ latent racism and xenophobia to regain political power, linking taxation and regulation to redistribution and socialism. In the modern era, the schism within the Republican Party has grown wider, pulling the GOP ever further from its founding principles.
-
-
Fascinating read!
- By Marsha on 12-27-21
-
American Psychosis
- A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy
- By: David Corn
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 17 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A fast-paced, rollicking, behind-the-scenes account of how the GOP since the 1950s has encouraged and exploited extremism, bigotry, and paranoia to gain power, American Psychosis offers listeners a brisk, can-you-believe-it journey through the netherworld of far-right irrationality and the Republican Party’s interactions with the darkest forces in America.
-
-
Important history poorly read
- By A. Hawley on 09-16-22
By: David Corn
-
Romney
- A Reckoning
- By: McKay Coppins
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, McKay Coppins
- Length: 12 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Few figures in American politics have seen more and said less than Mitt Romney. An outspoken dissident in Donald Trump’s GOP, he has made headlines in recent years for standing alone against the forces he believes are poisoning the party he once led. Romney was the first senator in history to vote to remove from office a president of his own party. When that president’s supporters went on to storm the US Capitol, Romney delivered a thundering speech from the Senate floor accusing his fellow Republicans of stoking insurrection.
-
-
Political and intellectual biography at its best!
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-23
By: McKay Coppins
-
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics
- By: John J. Mearsheimer
- Narrated by: Mark Ashby
- Length: 16 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A decade after the cold war ended, policy makers and academics foresaw a new era of peace and prosperity, an era in which democracy and open trade would herald the "end of history." The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, sadly shattered these idyllic illusions, and John Mearsheimer's masterful new book explains why these harmonious visions remain utopian.
-
-
Exceptional
- By Logical Paradox on 08-19-14
-
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
-
On Politics
- A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present
- By: Alan Ryan
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 46 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
Simply no book quite like this
- By Jack Raineri on 12-21-22
By: Alan Ryan
-
The Destructionists
- The Twenty-Five Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party
- By: Dana Milbank
- Narrated by: Dana Milbank
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1994, more than 300 Republicans under the command of obstructionist and rabble-rouser Congressman Newt Gingrich stood outside the U.S. Capitol to sign the Contract with America and put bipartisanship on notice. Twenty-five years later, on January 6, 2021, a bloodthirsty mob incited by President Trump invaded the Capitol.
-
-
Learned things
- By Sue on 08-23-22
By: Dana Milbank
-
American Republics
- A Continental History of the United States 1783-1850
- By: Alan Taylor
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this beautifully written history of America’s formative period, a preeminent historian upends the traditional story of a young nation confidently marching to its continent-spanning destiny.
-
-
Helps the dots of history to today.
- By Tascha F. on 06-26-21
By: Alan Taylor
-
The Great Delusion
- Liberal Dreams and International Realities
- By: John J. Mearsheimer
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this major statement, the renowned international-relations scholar John Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony, the foreign policy pursued by the United States since the Cold War ended, is doomed to fail. It makes far more sense, he maintains, for Washington to adopt a more restrained foreign policy based on a sound understanding of how nationalism and realism constrain great powers abroad.
-
-
Dense, fact filled, sober analysis and prescription
- By John Brynjolfsson on 12-15-18
-
The Conspiracy to End America
- Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy
- By: Stuart Stevens
- Narrated by: Jeff Bottoms
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Today’s Republican party is not a “normal” political party in the American tradition. It has become an autocratic movement masquerading as a political party. As Stuart Stevens argues in The Conspiracy to End America, if we look away from that truth, we greatly increase the likelihood that the America we love will slip away, never to return.
-
-
Required Reading
- By Arturo Zendejas on 10-27-23
By: Stuart Stevens
-
Why We Did It
- A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell
- By: Tim Miller
- Narrated by: Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As one of the strategists behind the famous 2012 RNC “autopsy,” Miller conducts his own forensic study on the pungent carcass of the party he used to love, cutting into all the hubris, ambition, idiocy, desperation, and self-deception for everyone to see. In a bracingly honest reflection on both his own past work for the Republican Party and the contortions of his former peers in the GOP establishment, Miller draws a straight line between the actions of the 2000s GOP to the Republican political class's Trumpian takeover, including the horrors of January 6th.
-
-
No, Tim!
- By Lori Renard on 06-30-22
By: Tim Miller
-
The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
- By: Francis Fukuyama
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 22 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.
-
-
Few forests, but lots of trees
- By Steve Pagano on 10-05-15
By: Francis Fukuyama
-
The Undertow
- Scenes from a Slow Civil War
- By: Jeff Sharlet
- Narrated by: Jeff Sharlet
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.
-
-
I'm just not feeling this one....
- By J. Richmond on 08-04-23
By: Jeff Sharlet
-
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
-
-
Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By John on 10-06-11
-
Nixonland
- The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
- By: Rick Perlstein
- Narrated by: Stephen R. Thorne
- Length: 36 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From one of America's most talented historians and winner of a LA Times Book Prize comes a brilliant new account of Richard Nixon that reveals the riveting backstory to the red state/blue state resentments that divide our nation today. Told with urgency and sharp political insight, Nixonland recaptures America's turbulent 1960s and early 1970s and reveals how Richard Nixon rose from the political grave to seize and hold the presidency.
-
-
A 5-Star Book Injured by the Narrator
- By Frank on 08-12-09
By: Rick Perlstein
-
A History of America in Ten Strikes
- By: Erik Loomis
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Powerful and accessible, A History of America in Ten Strikes challenges all of our contemporary assumptions around labor, unions, and American workers. In this brilliant book, labor historian Erik Loomis recounts ten critical workers’ strikes in American labor history that everyone needs to know about (and then provides an annotated list of the 150 most important moments in American labor history in the appendix).
-
-
great read
- By Perscors on 03-17-19
By: Erik Loomis
-
Capital and Ideology
- By: Thomas Piketty, Arthur Goldhammer - translator
- Narrated by: Rick Adamson
- Length: 48 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Thomas Piketty’s best-selling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system.
-
-
Big thinking at its finest
- By Amazon Customer on 03-20-20
By: Thomas Piketty, and others
Related to this topic
-
Why the Right Went Wrong
- Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond
- By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why the Right Went Wrong offers a historical view of the right since the 1960s. Its core contention is that American conservatism and the Republican Party took a wrong turn when they adopted Barry Goldwater's worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. Since 1968, no conservative administration could live up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater movement that began to reshape American politics 50 years ago.
-
-
Outstanding, refreshing, inspiring
- By James Adams on 03-19-16
By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
-
The Fierce Urgency of Now
- Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society
- By: Julian E. Zelizer
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Fierce Urgency of Now animates the full spectrum of forces at play during these turbulent years, including religious groups, the media, conservative and liberal political action groups, unions, and civil rights activists. Above all, the great character in the audiobook whose role rivals Johnson's is Congress - indeed, Zelizer argues that our understanding of the Great Society program is too Johnson-centric.
-
What It Took to Win
- A History of the Democratic Party
- By: Michael Kazin
- Narrated by: Lee Goettl
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In What It Took to Win, the eminent historian Michael Kazin identifies and assesses the Democratic Party's long-running commitment to creating "moral capitalism" - a system that mixed entrepreneurial freedom with the welfare of workers and consumers. And yet the same party that championed the rights of the white working man also vigorously protected or advanced the causes of slavery, segregation, and Indian removal.
-
-
Timely and informative History Book
- By Asha Sceanca on 03-24-22
By: Michael Kazin
-
Into the Bright Sunshine
- Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights (Pivotal Moments in American History Series)
- By: Samuel G. Freedman
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During one sweltering week in July 1948, the Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia for its national convention. The most pressing and controversial issue facing the delegates was not whom to nominate for president—the incumbent, Harry Truman, was the presumptive candidate—but whether the Democrats would finally embrace the cause of civil rights and embed it in their official platform. On the convention's final day, Hubert Humphrey, the relatively obscure mayor of the midsized city of Minneapolis, ascended the podium.
-
-
Civil Rights for All not just limited segments of society.
- By Patricia A Gustafson on 06-02-24
-
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
-
-
Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By John on 10-06-11
-
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents
- From Wilson to Obama
- By: Steven F. Hayward
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Academics, journalists, and popular historians agree: our greatest presidents are the ones who confronted a national crisis and mobilized the entire nation to face it. That’s the conventional wisdom. The chief executives who are celebrated in textbooks and placed in the top echelon of presidents in surveys of experts are the bold leaders - the Woodrow Wilsons and Franklin Roosevelts - who reshaped the United States in line with their grand “vision” for America. Unfortunately, along the way, these “great” presidents inevitably expanded government - and shrank our liberties.
-
-
Really enjoyed it
- By Jkc-007 on 02-15-17
-
Why the Right Went Wrong
- Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond
- By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why the Right Went Wrong offers a historical view of the right since the 1960s. Its core contention is that American conservatism and the Republican Party took a wrong turn when they adopted Barry Goldwater's worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. Since 1968, no conservative administration could live up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater movement that began to reshape American politics 50 years ago.
-
-
Outstanding, refreshing, inspiring
- By James Adams on 03-19-16
By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
-
The Fierce Urgency of Now
- Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society
- By: Julian E. Zelizer
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Fierce Urgency of Now animates the full spectrum of forces at play during these turbulent years, including religious groups, the media, conservative and liberal political action groups, unions, and civil rights activists. Above all, the great character in the audiobook whose role rivals Johnson's is Congress - indeed, Zelizer argues that our understanding of the Great Society program is too Johnson-centric.
-
What It Took to Win
- A History of the Democratic Party
- By: Michael Kazin
- Narrated by: Lee Goettl
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In What It Took to Win, the eminent historian Michael Kazin identifies and assesses the Democratic Party's long-running commitment to creating "moral capitalism" - a system that mixed entrepreneurial freedom with the welfare of workers and consumers. And yet the same party that championed the rights of the white working man also vigorously protected or advanced the causes of slavery, segregation, and Indian removal.
-
-
Timely and informative History Book
- By Asha Sceanca on 03-24-22
By: Michael Kazin
-
Into the Bright Sunshine
- Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights (Pivotal Moments in American History Series)
- By: Samuel G. Freedman
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 17 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During one sweltering week in July 1948, the Democratic Party gathered in Philadelphia for its national convention. The most pressing and controversial issue facing the delegates was not whom to nominate for president—the incumbent, Harry Truman, was the presumptive candidate—but whether the Democrats would finally embrace the cause of civil rights and embed it in their official platform. On the convention's final day, Hubert Humphrey, the relatively obscure mayor of the midsized city of Minneapolis, ascended the podium.
-
-
Civil Rights for All not just limited segments of society.
- By Patricia A Gustafson on 06-02-24
-
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
-
-
Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By John on 10-06-11
-
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents
- From Wilson to Obama
- By: Steven F. Hayward
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Academics, journalists, and popular historians agree: our greatest presidents are the ones who confronted a national crisis and mobilized the entire nation to face it. That’s the conventional wisdom. The chief executives who are celebrated in textbooks and placed in the top echelon of presidents in surveys of experts are the bold leaders - the Woodrow Wilsons and Franklin Roosevelts - who reshaped the United States in line with their grand “vision” for America. Unfortunately, along the way, these “great” presidents inevitably expanded government - and shrank our liberties.
-
-
Really enjoyed it
- By Jkc-007 on 02-15-17
-
Working Class Republican
- Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism
- By: Henry Olsen
- Narrated by: Derek Shetterly
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Conventional political wisdom views the two most consequential presidents of the 20th century - FDR and Ronald Reagan - as ideological opposites. FDR is hailed as the champion of big-government progressivism manifested in the New Deal. Reagan is seen as the crusader for conservatism dedicated to small government and free markets. But Henry Olsen argues that this assumption is wrong.
-
-
Refreshing and insightful
- By Thomas Marks on 12-16-19
By: Henry Olsen
-
Fault Lines
- A History of the United States Since 1974
- By: Kevin M. Kruse, Julian E. Zelizer
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
If you were asked when America became polarized, your answer would likely depend on your age: You might say during Barack Obama’s presidency, or with the post-9/11 war on terror, or the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, or the “Reagan Revolution” and the the rise of the New Right. How did the US become so divided? Fault Lines offers a richly told, wide-angle history view toward an answer.
-
-
Good overview of the past 45 years
- By Adam Shields on 02-26-19
By: Kevin M. Kruse, and others
-
Invisible Hands
- The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan
- By: Kim Phillips-Fein
- Narrated by: Lorna Raver
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before the "culture wars" usually associated with the rise of conservative politics, driven individuals funded think tanks, fought labor unions, and formed organizations to market their views.These nearly unknown, larger-than-life, and sometimes eccentric personalities - such as General Electric's zealous, silver-tongued Lemuel Ricketts Boulware and the self-described "revolutionary" Jasper Crane of DuPont - make for a fascinating, behind-the-scenes view of American history.
-
-
The Conservative battle for taking back the New Deal
- By Dr Joseph Borreggine on 05-13-24
-
Pivotal Tuesdays
- Four Elections That Shaped the Twentieth Century
- By: Margaret O'Mara
- Narrated by: James Killavey
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Pivotal Tuesdays looks back at four pivotal presidential elections of the past 100 years to show how they shaped the 20th century. During the rowdy, four-way race in 1912 between Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Eugene Debs, and Woodrow Wilson, the candidates grappled with the tremendous changes of industrial capitalism and how best to respond to them. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt's promises to give Americans a "New Deal" to combat the Great Depression helped him beat the beleaguered incumbent, Herbert Hoover.
-
-
Important book...especially this year.
- By Jim on 07-31-16
By: Margaret O'Mara
-
The Shadow Party
- How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party
- By: David Horowitz, Richard Poe
- Narrated by: Gregg Rizzo
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America is under attack. Its institutions and values are under daily assault. But the principal culprits are not foreign terrorists. They are influential and powerful Americans secretly stirring up disunion and disloyalty in the shifting shadows of the Democratic Party. Radical infiltrators have been quietly transforming America's societal, cultural, and political institutions for more than a generation. Now, backed by George Soros, they are ready to make their move.
-
-
Best introduction to the Democrat party in 2019
- By Larry on 06-12-19
By: David Horowitz, and others
-
To Make Men Free
- A History of the Republican Party
- By: Heather Cox Richardson
- Narrated by: Heather Cox Richardson
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Acclaimed historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Republican Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession. While progressive Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower revived Lincoln’s vision and expanded the government, their opponents appealed to Americans’ latent racism and xenophobia to regain political power, linking taxation and regulation to redistribution and socialism. In the modern era, the schism within the Republican Party has grown wider, pulling the GOP ever further from its founding principles.
-
-
Fascinating read!
- By Marsha on 12-27-21
-
American Heritage History of the Presidents
- By: Michael R. Beschloss
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 25 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From George Washington's reluctant oath-taking through George W. Bush's leadership challenges after September 11, 2001, we view ambitious and fallible men through the new lens of the 21st century. Where did they succeed? Where did they fail? And what do we know now that we could not have known at the time?
-
-
Good but Far from Great
- By Michael on 07-11-20
-
Machine Made
- Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics
- By: Terry Golway
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, history has considered Tammany Hall, New York's famous political machine, shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft, crime, and patronage personified by notoriously corrupt characters. Infamous crooks like William "Boss" Tweed dominate traditional histories of Tammany, distorting our understanding of a critical chapter of American political history. In Machine Made, historian and New York City journalist Terry Golway convincingly dismantles these stereotypes.
-
-
A missed opportunity
- By Kathy on 05-27-15
By: Terry Golway
-
The Corrosion of Conservatism
- Why I Left the Right
- By: Max Boot
- Narrated by: Max Boot
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Warning that the Trump presidency presages America’s decline, Max Boot, the political commentator, recounts his extraordinary journey from lifelong Republican to vehement Trump opponent. As nativism, xenophobia, vile racism, and assaults on the rule of law threaten the very fabric of our nation, The Corrosion of Conservatism presents an urgent defense of American democracy.
-
-
Not an intellectual tour de force!
- By Wayne on 07-14-19
By: Max Boot
-
Kill Switch
- The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy
- By: Adam Jentleson
- Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Every major decision governing our diverse, majority-female, and increasingly liberal country bears the stamp of the US Senate, yet the Senate allows an almost exclusively White, predominantly male, and radically conservative minority of the American electorate to impose its will on the rest of us. How did we get to this point? In Kill Switch, Adam Jentleson argues that shifting demographics alone cannot explain how Mitch McConnell harnessed the Senate and turned it into a powerful weapon of minority rule.
-
-
Don't bother, narration intolerable!
- By Joseph on 03-08-21
By: Adam Jentleson
-
Fear Itself
- The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time
- By: Ira Katznelson
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 22 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Redefining our traditional understanding of the New Deal, Fear Itself finally examines this pivotal American era through a sweeping international lens that juxtaposes a struggling democracy with enticing ideologies like Fascism and Communism. Ira Katznelson, "a towering figure in the study of American and European history" (Cornel West), boldly asserts that, during the 1930s and 1940s, American democracy was rescued yet distorted by a unified band of southern lawmakers who safeguarded racial segregation as they built a new national state to manage capitalism and assert global power.
-
-
History in Context of Political Science Analysis
- By zsuzsanna on 08-27-15
By: Ira Katznelson
-
The Black History of the White House
- By: Clarence Lusane
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 16 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Black History of the White House presents the untold history, racial politics, and shifting significance of the White House as experienced by African Americans, from the generations of enslaved people who helped to build it or were forced to work there to its first black first family, the Obamas.
-
-
From Quarries to the Oval Office - Unforgettable
- By Susie on 07-14-16
By: Clarence Lusane
What listeners say about Rule and Ruin
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Easton Reader
- 03-05-16
Excellent and important history and insightful discussion
This is a fairly thorough discussion of the history, causes, and consequences of the right-wing seizure of the Republican Party from Eisenhower to the present.
Narration is excellent except for a few mispronunciations.
Highly recommended.
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
- Tamengua
- 12-13-19
Interesting, but could be half as long
Interesting history and very thorough. Honestly it could be about half as long and It’d be more engaging.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- MJE
- 01-22-16
Kabaservice doesn't make the case
This is a superb chronological exposition of the history of the GOP from the time of Eisenhower - but his failure to counterbalance the narrative by discussing the Democrat's lurch to the left of the political spectrum diminishes a well told albeit history of politics over the last 60 years. Blaming the GOP for the dysfunction in DC is totally disingenuous. Both party's lurch away from the center are equally culpable. However, since the conservatives want less government they will probably be more content with the idea that nothing gets done anymore.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sheila Bryan
- 09-06-21
excellent explanation of the crazy train clown car
Thorough review of how centrism in the GOP failed this country and lead to crazy town in the GOP. I hope he does an update of how they went off the rails since 2012 to 2021 and straight into alternative reality land.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Linda Blake
- 09-09-22
Rule and Ruin
I note that this was published in 2014. I shall be looking this author up to see what he has to say about 2026- 2021. What he proposes has indeed come to pass. I have only voted Republican once in my voting life. I shall NEVER make that error again.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Carol Kurtz
- 10-30-22
Tedious
Far too much to read to get the essence of the book, really a miasma.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!