-
The Village Labourer 1760-1832
- A Study in The Government of England Before the Reform Bill
- Narrated by: Cole Bolchoz
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
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Publisher's summary
Many histories have been written of the governing class that ruled England with such absolute power during the last century of the old régime. Those histories have shown how that class conducted war, how it governed its colonies, how it behaved to the continental powers, how it managed the first critical chapters of our relations with India, how it treated Ireland, how it developed the Parliamentary system, and how it saved Europe from Napoleon.
One history has only been sketched in outline: it is the history of the way in which this class governed England. The creators of this audiobook have attempted to describe the life of the poor during this period. It is their object to show what was in fact happening to the working classes under a government in which they had no share.
They found, on searching through the material for such a study, that the subject was too large for a single audiobook. They have accordingly confined themselves in this volume to the treatment of the village poor, leaving the town worker for separate treatment. It is necessary to mention this, for it helps to explain certain omissions that may strike the listener.
The growth and direction of economic opinion, for example, are an important part of any examination of this question, but the creators have been obliged to reserve the consideration of that subject for their later volume, to which it seems more appropriate. The creators have also found it necessary to lean entirely on one side to present the movement for Parliamentary Reform, which was alive throughout this period, and very active, of course, during its later stages.
Two subjects are discussed fully in this volume, they believe, for the first time. One is the actual method and procedure of Parliamentary Enclosure, the other the labourers’ rising of 1830. More than one important audiobook has been written on[viii] enclosures during the last few years, but nowhere can the student find a full analysis of the procedure and stages by which the old village was destroyed. The rising of 1830 has only been mentioned incidentally in general histories: it has nowhere been treated as a definite demand for better conditions, and its course, scope, significance, and punishment have received little attention.
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- By: Gordon S. Wood
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Grand in scope, rigorous in its arguments, and elegantly synthesizing 30 years of scholarship, Gordon S. Wood's Pulitzer Prize–winning book analyzes the social, political, and economic consequences of 1776. In The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Wood depicts not just a break with England, but the rejection of an entire way of life: of a society with feudal dependencies, a politics of patronage, and a world view in which people were divided between the nobility and "the Herd."
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Changed the Way I Think
- By Cynthia on 01-04-14
By: Gordon S. Wood
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The Future of the American Negro
- By: Booker T. Washington
- Narrated by: Andrew L. Barnes
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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The Future of the American Negro was written to put more definite and permanent form the ideas regarding the condition of the negro. Booker T. Washington, a prominent African American leader, educator and author, articulates the importance of Industrial education. He emphasized the importance of the development of the Negro in hand and heart training, which would provide the solid foundation necessary to attain the highest form of citizenship.
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A great man wrote this 1899 book...
- By Wayne on 02-11-17
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Reflections on the Revolution in France
- By: Edmund Burke
- Narrated by: Bernard Mayes
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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A good historical perspective
- By CMC on 08-30-14
By: Edmund Burke
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American Slavery, American Freedom
- By: Edmund S. Morgan
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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"If it is possible to understand the American paradox, the marriage of slavery and freedom, Virginia is surely the place to begin," writes Edmund S. Morgan in American Slavery, American Freedom, a study of the tragic contradiction at the core of America. Morgan finds the key to this central paradox in the people and politics of the state that was both the birthplace of the revolution and the largest slaveholding state in the country.
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Explaining the great American contradiction
- By Roger on 09-16-14
By: Edmund S. Morgan
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Edmund Burke
- A Genius Reconsidered
- By: Russell Kirk
- Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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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".
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Narration too Fast for Me
- By K on 01-16-13
By: Russell Kirk
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Oliver Wendell Holmes
- A Life in War, Law, and Ideas
- By: Stephen Budiansky
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 16 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Holmes twice escaped death as a young Union officer in the Civil War when musket balls barely missed his heart and spinal cord. He lived ever after with unwavering moral courage, scorn for dogma, and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. Named to the Supreme Court by Theodore Roosevelt at age 61, he served for nearly three decades, writing a series of famous, eloquent, and often dissenting opinions that would prove prophetic in securing freedom of speech, protecting the rights of criminal defendants, and ending the Court's reactionary resistance to social and economic reforms.
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Top-Notch Biography
- By Jean on 08-01-19
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An Essay on the Principle of Population
- By: Thomas Malthus
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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While millions face hunger, malnutrition, and starvation, the world's population is increasing by over 225,000 people per day, 80 million per year. In many countries, supplies of food and water are inadequate to support the population, so the world falls deeper and deeper into what economists call the "Malthusian trap". Here, Malthus examines the tendency of human numbers to outstrip their resources, and argues that poverty, disease, and starvation are necessary to keep societies from moving beyond their means of subsistence.
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Important historically but still relevant
- By Stef on 01-31-24
By: Thomas Malthus
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Democracy in America
- By: Alexis de Tocqueville
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 34 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and civil servant, made a nine-month journey through the eastern United States. The result was Democracy in America, a monumental study of the strengths and weaknesses of the nation’s evolving politics. His insightful work has become one of the most influential political texts ever written on America.
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Most Listenable, if not the Best Translation
- By Michael Allen on 10-04-13
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Thomas Paine
- Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations
- By: Craig Nelson
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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John Adams told Thomas Jefferson that “history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine.” Thomas Edison called him “the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible.” He was a founder of both the United States and the French Revolution. He invented the phrase, “The United States of America.” He rose from abject poverty in working-class England to the highest levels of the era’s intellectual elite. And yet, by the end of his life, Thomas Paine was almost universally reviled.
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This man should be a household name!
- By Darlene Davis on 11-21-11
By: Craig Nelson