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This Ordinary Stardust
A Scientist's Path from Grief to Wonder
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Narrated by:
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Alan Townsend PhD
About this listen
"[A] remarkable account of a shifting consciousness” - Publisher’s Weekly, starred review
“An extraordinary, powerful book” - David Quammen, author of The Heartbeat of the Wild and Breathless
A compassionate exploration of scientific wonder that offers “a fresh perspective on life, death, and the bittersweet consequences of impermanence,” (Jon Krakauer) as illuminated through the tragic dual cancer diagnoses of author Dr. Alan Townsend’s wife and daughter.
A decade ago, Dr. Alan Townsend’s family received two unthinkable, catastrophic diagnoses: his 4-year-old daughter and his brilliant scientist wife developed unrelated, life-threatening forms of brain cancer. As he witnessed his young daughter fight during the courageous final months of her mother’s life, Townsend – a lifelong scientist – was indelibly altered. He began to see scientific inquiry as more than a source of answers to a given problem, but also as a lifeboat: a lens on the world that could help him find peace with the painful realities he could not change. Through scientific wonder, he found ways to bring meaning to his darkest period.
At a time when society’s relationship with science is increasingly polarized while threats to human life on earth continue to rise, Townsend offers a balanced, moving perspective on the common ground between science and religion through the spiritual fulfillment he found in his work. Awash in Townsend's electrifying and breathtaking prose, THIS ORDINARY STARDUST offers hope that life can carry on even in the face of near-certain annihilation.
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Critic reviews
"Alan Townsend's This Ordinary Stardust is an immortal monument to one man's daughter and late wife as well as one scientist's impassioned hopes for humanity and the planet. A towering achievement."—Jayson Greene, author of Once More We Saw Stars
“In sharing his own story through searing grief, Alan Townsend shows us—in a way that nobody else could—how scientists are first and foremost people, with hearts both delicate and resilient.”—Hope Jahren, author of National Book Critic’s Circle Award-winning Lab Girl
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Languages of Truth
- Essays 2003-2020
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Raj Ghatak, Salman Rushdie
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Salman Rushdie is celebrated as “a master of perpetual storytelling” (The New Yorker), illuminating truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time.
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SALMAN RUSHDIE
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 07-24-21
By: Salman Rushdie
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Chasing the Thrill
- Obsession, Death, and Glory in America's Most Extraordinary Treasure Hunt
- By: Daniel Barbarisi
- Narrated by: Daniel Barbarisi
- Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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When Forrest Fenn was given a fatal cancer diagnosis, he came up with a bold plan: He would hide a chest full of jewels and gold in the wilderness, and publish a poem that would serve as a map leading to the treasure's secret location. But he didn't die, and after hiding the treasure in 2010, Fenn instead presided over a decade-long gold rush that saw many thousands of treasure hunters scrambling across the Rocky Mountains in pursuit of his fortune.
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Wonderful Adventure!
- By Smartypants on 05-25-21
By: Daniel Barbarisi
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Let Me Not Be Mad
- My Story of Unraveling Minds
- By: A. K. Benjamin
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith
- Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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What do doctors actually think about when you list your problems in the consulting room? Are they really listening to you? Is the connection all in your head? Every day for 10 years - even while his hospital became the set for a reality television series - clinical neuropsychologist A. K. Benjamin confronted these questions, and this book is his attempt to tell the truth about what happens in these rooms in hospitals the world over.
By: A. K. Benjamin
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Once More We Saw Stars
- A Memoir
- By: Jayson Greene
- Narrated by: Jayson Greene
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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As the story opens: Two-year-old Greta Greene is sitting with her grandmother on a park bench on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A brick crumbles from a windowsill overhead, striking her unconscious, and she is immediately rushed to the hospital. But although it begins with this event and with the anguish Jayson and his wife, Stacy, confront in the wake of their daughter's trauma and the hours leading up to her death, Once More We Saw Stars quickly becomes a narrative that is as much about hope and healing as it is about grief and loss.
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It will open your heart if you let it.
- By Rachel on 09-23-19
By: Jayson Greene
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Stronghold
- One Man's Quest to Save the World's Wild Salmon
- By: Tucker Malarkey
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Mountains Beyond Mountains and The Orchid Thief, Stronghold is Tucker Malarkey’s eye-opening account of one of the world’s greatest fly fishermen and his crusade to protect the world’s last bastion of wild salmon. From a young age, Guido Rahr was a misfit among his family and classmates, preferring to spend his time in the natural world. When the salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest began to decline, Guido was one of the few who understood why.
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Breathtakingly Brilliant
- By Stephen Victor on 08-21-21
By: Tucker Malarkey
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Possessed by Memory
- The Inward Light of Criticism
- By: Harold Bloom
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In arguably his most personal and lasting work, America's most daringly original and controversial critic gives us brief, luminous readings of more than 80 texts by canonical authors - texts he has had by heart since childhood.
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What an endowment!
- By Norman on 04-03-21
By: Harold Bloom
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Languages of Truth
- Essays 2003-2020
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Raj Ghatak, Salman Rushdie
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Salman Rushdie is celebrated as “a master of perpetual storytelling” (The New Yorker), illuminating truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time.
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SALMAN RUSHDIE
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 07-24-21
By: Salman Rushdie
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Little Sister
- My Investigation into the Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood
- By: Lana Wood
- Narrated by: Lana Wood
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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On the night of November 29, 1981, Natalie Wood disappeared from her yacht, the Splendour, while visiting Catalina Island with her husband, Robert “R.J.” Wagner and their friend, Christopher Walken. The beloved movie star’s tragic drowning shook America, inspiring troves of magazine covers and media pieces. What was originally believed to be an open-and-shut case of accidental drowning has been called into question over the years, and in 2011 the investigation was reopened. In 2018, at the urging of the public, it was reclassified as “suspicious.”
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I loved this book. Bless Lana Wood
- By Vianne on 11-15-21
By: Lana Wood
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Tales of Two Planets
- Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World
- By: John Freeman - editor
- Narrated by: full cast, Bahni Turpin, Roy Vongtama, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live. In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman's, and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it is experienced.
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A so needed book!
- By Joce on 10-02-20
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All the Lives We Ever Lived
- Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf
- By: Katharine Smyth
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Katharine Smyth was a student at Oxford when she first read Virginia Woolf’s modernist masterpiece To the Lighthouse in the comfort of an English sitting room, and in the companionable silence she shared with her father. After his death - a calamity that claimed her favorite person - she returned to that beloved novel as a way of wrestling with his memory and understanding her own grief. Through her inventive, highly personal reading of To the Lighthouse, Smyth guides us toward a new vision of Woolf’s most demanding and rewarding novel.
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Surprised I Finished This
- By Amazon Customer on 03-25-22
By: Katharine Smyth
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Unsolaced
- Along the Way to All That Is
- By: Gretel Ehrlich
- Narrated by: Gretel Ehrlich
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of the enduring classic The Solace of Open Spaces, here is a wondrous meditation on how water, light, wind, mountain, bird, and horse have shaped her life and her understanding of a world besieged by a climate crisis. Amid species extinctions and disintegrating ice sheets, this stunning collection of memories, observations, and narratives is acute and lyrical, Whitmanesque in breadth, and as elegant as a Japanese teahouse.
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A journey worth taking
- By Jay on 10-30-23
By: Gretel Ehrlich
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The Good Girls
- An Ordinary Killing
- By: Sonia Faleiro
- Narrated by: Sonia Faleiro
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The girls' names were Padma and Lalli, but they were so inseparable that people in the village called them Padma Lalli. Sixteen-year-old Padma sparked and burned. Fourteen-year-old Lalli was an incorrigible romantic. They grew up in Katra Sadatganj, an eye-blink of a village in Western Uttar Pradesh crammed into less than one square mile of land. It was out in the fields, in the middle of mango season, that the rumors started. Then one night in the summer of 2014 the girls went missing; and hours later they were found hanging in the orchard.
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Absolutely heartbreaking
- By Bradley T. Collins on 05-18-21
By: Sonia Faleiro
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Learning by Heart
- An Unconventional Education
- By: Tony Wagner
- Narrated by: Tony Wagner
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Tony Wagner is an eminent education specialist: He has taught at every grade level from high school through graduate school; worked at Harvard; done significant work for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and speaks across the country and all over the world. But before he found his success, Wagner was kicked out of middle school, expelled from high school, and dropped out of two colleges. Learning by Heart is his powerful account of his years as a student and teacher.
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A great story of a great educator
- By Elizabeth on 12-31-24
By: Tony Wagner
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The Wild Silence
- A Memoir
- By: Raynor Winn
- Narrated by: Raynor Winn
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Nature holds the answers for Raynor and her husband, Moth. After walking 630 miles homeless along The Salt Path, the windswept and wild English coastline now feels like their home. And despite Moth's terminal diagnosis, against all medical odds, he seems revitalized in nature - outside, they discover that anything is possible. Now, life beyond The Salt Path awaits. As they return to four walls, the sense of home is illusive and returning to normality is proving difficult - until an incredible gesture by someone who reads their story changes everything.
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Another great book!!
- By Anthony Mayfield on 01-04-23
By: Raynor Winn
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My Life as a Villainess
- Essays
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Laura Lippman
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author Laura Lippman, a journalist for many years, collects here her recent essays exploring motherhood as an older mom, her life as a reader, her relationships with her parents, friendship, and other topics that will resonate with a large audience. Her voice is wry and relatable, her takes often surprising. Meet the woman behind the books....
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Compelling, self-aware, thought-provoking
- By Kate on 02-08-24
By: Laura Lippman
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Sleeping with Strangers
- How the Movies Shaped Desire
- By: David Thomson
- Narrated by: David Thomson
- Length: 17 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In this wholly original work of film criticism, David Thomson, celebrated author of The Biographical Dictionary of Film, probes the many ways in which sexuality has shaped the movies - and the ways in which the movies have shaped sexuality.
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Another good read from David Thomson
- By Boxing Fan on 07-23-23
By: David Thomson
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Golem Girl
- A Memoir
- By: Riva Lehrer
- Narrated by: Riva Lehrer, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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In 1958, Riva is one of the first children born with spina bifida to survive. Her parents and doctors are determined to "fix" her, sending the message over and over again that she is broken. That she will never have a job, a romantic relationship, or an independent life. Enduring countless medical interventions, Riva tries her best to be a good girl and a good patient in the quest to be cured. Everything changes when, as an adult, Riva is invited to join a group of artists, writers, and performers who are building Disability Culture.
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One of the best disability themed books I’ve ever read
- By Justin & Ben on 01-18-23
By: Riva Lehrer
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My Time Will Come
- A Memoir of Crime, Punishment, Hope, and Redemption
- By: Ian Manuel, Bryan Stevenson - foreword
- Narrated by: Ian Manuel
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1991, Ian Manuel, then 14, was sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide crime. In a botched mugging attempt with some older boys, he shot Debbie Baigrie, a young white mother of two, in the face. But as Bryan Stevenson has insisted, none of us should be judged only by the worst thing we have ever done. Capturing the fullness of his humanity, here is Manuel’s powerful testimony of growing up homeless in Central Park Village in Tampa, Florida - a neighborhood riddled with poverty, gang violence, and drug abuse - and of his efforts to rise above his circumstances.
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How Long Will We Let This Go On!
- By Kindle Customer on 05-06-21
By: Ian Manuel, and others
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Beyond the Throne
- Epic Journeys, Enduring Friendships, and Surprising Tales
- By: Kristian Nairn
- Narrated by: Kristian Nairn
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of an unlikely hero who fulfilled his destiny… Fans will be fascinated by Kristian Nairn’s experience on Game of Thrones, from his unlikely audition to his on-the-job training as an actor to his ascendance as one of the most beloved and pivotal characters on the show. Nairn details the camaraderie that develops as the actors face the elements on set, not entirely unlike the ones their characters must endure on screen, as well as the life-altering effects of worldwide stardom.
By: Kristian Nairn
What listeners say about This Ordinary Stardust
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Grace M
- 08-18-24
Inspirational and touching!
I couldn't put the book down. It's very well written, and with every chapter, I felt more invested in the families' struggles with this disease.
I want to thank Allen for sharing their story with us! I want to wish them all peace and happiness.
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- nancy
- 08-05-24
The spirituality of science
Through heartbreak and the scientific understanding that everything is connected and eternal, the author illustrates the power of love
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-04-24
Nothing ordinary about this incredible story
From start to finish this book is deeply engrossing, interesting, inspiring, thoughtful, stimulating and moving. It is written and narrated beautifully and, given the subject matter even heroically. I haven’t experienced loss like the author has (other than the solace I used to feel from the mountains of the west) but I imagine this book would be helpful for those who have.
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- CR
- 09-16-24
Did not like it
Did not like it. I’ve read better stories. Did not find it engaging not invested in any character.
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