
Left Adrift
What Happened to Liberal Politics
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
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $15.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Robert Petkoff
-
By:
-
Timothy Shenk
About this listen
A rivalry that remade the political world as we know it today
Politics today doesn’t look much like it did fifty years ago. Electorates that were once divided by economics—with blue-collar workers supporting leftwing parties while the wealthy trended right—are now more likely to split along cultural lines. Campaigns have gone high-tech, hoping to turn electioneering into a science. Meanwhile, a permanent class of political consultants has emerged, with teams of pollsters, message gurus, and field operatives. Taken together, all this amounts to a silent revolution that has transformed politics across much of the globe.
Left Adrift provides a new perspective on this transformation by following the lives of two political strategists who watched it unfold firsthand. Stan Greenberg and Doug Schoen were Zeligs of the international center-left, with an eerie talent for showing up at just the right moment to see history being made. But they could not stand each other. The mutual disdain was, partly, a result of professional jealousy, of decades spent nursing private grievances while competing for the same clients. But it grew out of a deeper conflict, a clash of political visions that raised fundamental questions about democracy itself. Left Adrift is about that battle—and the world it made.
* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF of graphs, charts, and suggested readings.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2024 Timothy Shenk (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
We Have Never Been Woke
- The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite
- By: Musa al-Gharbi
- Narrated by: Musa al-Gharbi
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Society has never been more egalitarian—in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued. At the same time, social and economic inequality have exploded. In We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi argues that these trends are closely related, each tied to the rise of a new elite—the symbolic capitalists.
-
-
Insightful view into “symbolic capitalists”
- By Paul on 10-13-24
By: Musa al-Gharbi
-
A Fabulous Failure
- The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism
- By: Nelson Lichtenstein, Judith Stein
- Narrated by: Tom Campbell
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, he ended twelve years of Republican rule and seemed poised to enact a progressive transformation of the US economy. Yet by the time he left office, the nation's economic and social policies had instead lurched dramatically rightward, exacerbating the inequalities so troubling in our own time. Nelson Lichtenstein and Judith Stein show how the administration's progressive reformers were stymied by a new world of global capitalism that heightened Wall Street influence, undermined domestic manufacturing, and eviscerated the labor movement.
-
-
How We Got Here…
- By D.A. Stone on 11-11-24
By: Nelson Lichtenstein, and others
-
Party of the People
- Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP
- By: Patrick Ruffini
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election shocked the world. Yet his defeat in 2020 may have been even more surprising: he received 12 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016 and his unexpectedly diverse coalition included millions of nonwhite voters, a rarity for the modern Republican party. In 2020, Trump defied expectations and few journalists, strategists, or politicians could explain why Trump had nearly won reelection. Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster and one of the country’s leading experts on political targeting, technology, and demography, has the answers.
-
-
In light of 2024
- By dell992 on 11-13-24
By: Patrick Ruffini
-
Stolen Pride
- Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right
- By: Arlie Russell Hochschild
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel "stolen"? Hochschild's research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation.
-
-
interesting conversations
- By Mark on 03-15-25
-
Fight
- Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House
- By: Jonathan Allen, Amie Parnes
- Narrated by: Joe Knezevich
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fight is the backstage story of bloodsport politics in its rawest form—the clawing, backstabbing, and rabble-rousing that drove Donald Trump into the White House and Democrats into the wilderness. At every turn, the combatants went for the jugular, whether they were facing down rivals in the other party or their own.
-
-
Comprehensive overview of Democrat failures in '24
- By Robert Tapia on 04-07-25
By: Jonathan Allen, and others
-
The Hollow Parties
- The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics
- By: Daniel Schlozman, Sam Rosenfeld
- Narrated by: Tom Beyer
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America's political parties are hollow shells of what they could be, locked in a polarized struggle for power and unrooted as civic organizations. The Hollow Parties takes listeners from the rise of mass party politics in the Jacksonian era through the years of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Today's parties, overbearing and ineffectual, have emerged from the interplay of multiple party traditions that reach back to the Founding.
-
-
Too arcane
- By James Larimer on 07-18-24
By: Daniel Schlozman, and others
-
We Have Never Been Woke
- The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite
- By: Musa al-Gharbi
- Narrated by: Musa al-Gharbi
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Society has never been more egalitarian—in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued. At the same time, social and economic inequality have exploded. In We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi argues that these trends are closely related, each tied to the rise of a new elite—the symbolic capitalists.
-
-
Insightful view into “symbolic capitalists”
- By Paul on 10-13-24
By: Musa al-Gharbi
-
A Fabulous Failure
- The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism
- By: Nelson Lichtenstein, Judith Stein
- Narrated by: Tom Campbell
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, he ended twelve years of Republican rule and seemed poised to enact a progressive transformation of the US economy. Yet by the time he left office, the nation's economic and social policies had instead lurched dramatically rightward, exacerbating the inequalities so troubling in our own time. Nelson Lichtenstein and Judith Stein show how the administration's progressive reformers were stymied by a new world of global capitalism that heightened Wall Street influence, undermined domestic manufacturing, and eviscerated the labor movement.
-
-
How We Got Here…
- By D.A. Stone on 11-11-24
By: Nelson Lichtenstein, and others
-
Party of the People
- Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP
- By: Patrick Ruffini
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election shocked the world. Yet his defeat in 2020 may have been even more surprising: he received 12 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016 and his unexpectedly diverse coalition included millions of nonwhite voters, a rarity for the modern Republican party. In 2020, Trump defied expectations and few journalists, strategists, or politicians could explain why Trump had nearly won reelection. Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster and one of the country’s leading experts on political targeting, technology, and demography, has the answers.
-
-
In light of 2024
- By dell992 on 11-13-24
By: Patrick Ruffini
-
Stolen Pride
- Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right
- By: Arlie Russell Hochschild
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a powerful political appeal that makes it feel "stolen"? Hochschild's research drew her to Pikeville, Kentucky, in the heart of Appalachia, within the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the nation.
-
-
interesting conversations
- By Mark on 03-15-25
-
Fight
- Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House
- By: Jonathan Allen, Amie Parnes
- Narrated by: Joe Knezevich
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Fight is the backstage story of bloodsport politics in its rawest form—the clawing, backstabbing, and rabble-rousing that drove Donald Trump into the White House and Democrats into the wilderness. At every turn, the combatants went for the jugular, whether they were facing down rivals in the other party or their own.
-
-
Comprehensive overview of Democrat failures in '24
- By Robert Tapia on 04-07-25
By: Jonathan Allen, and others
-
The Hollow Parties
- The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics
- By: Daniel Schlozman, Sam Rosenfeld
- Narrated by: Tom Beyer
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America's political parties are hollow shells of what they could be, locked in a polarized struggle for power and unrooted as civic organizations. The Hollow Parties takes listeners from the rise of mass party politics in the Jacksonian era through the years of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Today's parties, overbearing and ineffectual, have emerged from the interplay of multiple party traditions that reach back to the Founding.
-
-
Too arcane
- By James Larimer on 07-18-24
By: Daniel Schlozman, and others
-
The Chile Project
- The Story of the Chicago Boys and the Downfall of Neoliberalism
- By: Sebastian Edwards
- Narrated by: Andrew Joseph Perez
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Chile Project, Sebastian Edwards tells the story of how the neoliberal economic model came to an end in 2021, when Gabriel Boric was elected president, vowing that "If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave." More than a story about one Latin American country, The Chile Project is a behind-the-scenes history of the spread and consequences of the free-market thinking that dominated economic policymaking around the world in the second half of the twentieth century—but is now on the retreat.
-
-
Combining history, ethnography, politic
- By John Murphy on 06-05-23
-
Money, Lies, and God
- Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy
- By: Katherine Stewart
- Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.
-
-
Powerful and Important work.
- By Frank Nance on 02-28-25
-
When the Clock Broke
- Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s
- By: John Ganz
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 15 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated, and U.S. power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a “kinder, gentler America.” Instead, it was a period of rising anger and domestic turmoil, anticipating the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today. In When the Clock Broke, the acclaimed political writer John Ganz tells the story of America’s late-century discontents.
-
-
Amazing history of the early 90s
- By Aaron R. Isaacson on 06-25-24
By: John Ganz
-
A Man of Iron
- The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland
- By: Troy Senik
- Narrated by: Pete Simonelli, Troy Senik
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Grover Cleveland’s political career—a dizzying journey that saw him rise from obscure lawyer to president of the United States in just three years—was marked by contradictions. A politician of uncharacteristic honesty and principle, he was nevertheless dogged by secrets from his personal life. A believer in limited government, he pushed presidential power to its limits to combat a crippling depression, suppress labor unrest, and resist the forces of American imperialism.
-
-
Worth the Wait!
- By Brian S Cunningham on 09-21-22
By: Troy Senik
-
Second Class
- How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women
- By: Batya Ungar-Sargon
- Narrated by: Batya Ungar-Sargon
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Second Class, working-class Americans of all races, political orientations, and occupations share their stories—cleaning ladies, health care aides, cops, truck drivers, fast food workers, electricians, and more. In their own words, these working-class Americans explain the struggles and triumphs of their increasingly precarious lives—as well as what policies they think would improve them.
-
-
Rubbish
- By J. Matthews on 03-23-25
-
Why Nothing Works
- Who Killed Progress—and How to Bring It Back
- By: Marc J. Dunkelman
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America was once a country that did big things—we built the world’s greatest rail network, a vast electrical grid, interstate highways, abundant housing, the Social Security system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and more. But today, even while facing a host of pressing challenges—a housing shortage, a climate crisis, a dilapidated infrastructure—we feel stuck, unable to move the needle. Why?
-
-
Sort of boring
- By Paul on 03-03-25
-
Abundance
- By: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
- Narrated by: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all.
-
-
Advice to the Democratic Party from Klein & Thompson
- By Betsy Fowler on 03-31-25
By: Ezra Klein, and others
-
The Big Myth
- How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market
- By: Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway
- Narrated by: Liza Seneca
- Length: 21 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with 'big government' and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor.
-
-
Refuting the Chicago School
- By Todd W. Laveen on 06-01-23
By: Naomi Oreskes, and others
-
The New Class War
- Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite
- By: Michael Lind
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 5 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In both Europe and North America, populist movements have shattered existing party systems and thrown governments into turmoil. The embattled establishment claims that these populist insurgencies seek to overthrow liberal democracy. The truth is no less alarming but is more complex: Western democracies are being torn apart by a new class war. In this controversial and groundbreaking new analysis, Michael Lind, one of America’s leading thinkers, debunks the idea that the insurgencies are primarily the result of bigotry and reveals the real battle lines.
-
-
Monopoly is good... brought to you by Google
- By David Larson on 01-29-20
By: Michael Lind
-
Where Have All the Democrats Gone?
- The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes
- By: John B. Judis, Ruy Teixeira
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, American politics has been plagued by a breakdown between the Democratic and Republican parties, in which victory has inevitably led to defeat and vice versa. Both parties have lost sight of the people at the center of the American electorate, leading to polarization and paralysis. In Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira reveal the tectonic changes shaping the country’s current political landscape that both pundits and political scientists have missed.
-
-
Tone Deaf Dems
- By SMK on 01-26-24
By: John B. Judis, and others
-
Underground Empire
- How America Weaponized the World Economy
- By: Henry Farrell, Abraham Newman
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A deeply researched investigation that reveals how the United States is like a spider at the heart of an international web of surveillance and control, which it weaves in the form of globe-spanning networks such as fiber optic cables and obscure payment systems.
-
-
Good summary
- By Medz on 01-28-25
By: Henry Farrell, and others
-
Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza
- A Reckoning
- By: Peter Beinart
- Narrated by: Peter Beinart
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Peter Beinart’s view, one story dominates Jewish communal life: that of persecution and victimhood. It is a story that erases much of the nuance of Jewish religious tradition and warps our understanding of Israel and Palestine. After Gaza, where Jewish texts, history, and language have been deployed to justify mass slaughter and starvation, Beinart argues, Jews must tell a new story. After this war, whose horror will echo for generations, they must do nothing less than offer a new answer to the question: What does it mean to be a Jew?
-
-
Profound
- By Michael Halpern on 02-09-25
By: Peter Beinart
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Fifth Risk
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What happens when the President of the United States governs one Tweet at a time? When the elected leader of the free world may not have a firm grasp on the names of government agencies, much less an understanding of their intricate inner-workings? In the days following the 2016 inauguration, government personnel searched for answers that didn’t exist, while White House staff scoured halls for employees who would never be appointed.
-
-
Awkward and Disappointing
- By Amit M on 10-04-18
By: Michael Lewis
-
Where Have All the Democrats Gone?
- The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes
- By: John B. Judis, Ruy Teixeira
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, American politics has been plagued by a breakdown between the Democratic and Republican parties, in which victory has inevitably led to defeat and vice versa. Both parties have lost sight of the people at the center of the American electorate, leading to polarization and paralysis. In Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira reveal the tectonic changes shaping the country’s current political landscape that both pundits and political scientists have missed.
-
-
Tone Deaf Dems
- By SMK on 01-26-24
By: John B. Judis, and others
-
A World After Liberalism
- Philosophers of the Radical Right
- By: Matthew Rose
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this eye-opening book, Matthew Rose introduces us to one of the most controversial intellectual movements of the 20th century, the "radical right", and discusses its adherents' different attempts to imagine political societies after the death or decline of liberalism. Questioning democracy's most basic norms and practices, these critics rejected ideas about human equality, minority rights, religious toleration, and cultural pluralism not out of implicit biases, but out of explicit principle.
-
-
Essential Reading for understanding the Far Right
- By BWA on 08-18-21
By: Matthew Rose
-
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here
- The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
- By: Jonathan Blitzer
- Narrated by: Jonathan Blitzer, André Santana
- Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. For years, the majority came from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, but many more have begun their journey much farther away. Some flee persecution, others crime or hunger. They may have already been deported, but the United States remains their only hope for safety and prosperity. They will take their chances.
-
-
How America Created its Own Border Problem
- By Amazon Customer on 04-19-24
By: Jonathan Blitzer
-
Why Nothing Works
- Who Killed Progress—and How to Bring It Back
- By: Marc J. Dunkelman
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America was once a country that did big things—we built the world’s greatest rail network, a vast electrical grid, interstate highways, abundant housing, the Social Security system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and more. But today, even while facing a host of pressing challenges—a housing shortage, a climate crisis, a dilapidated infrastructure—we feel stuck, unable to move the needle. Why?
-
-
Sort of boring
- By Paul on 03-03-25
-
Realigners
- Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy
- By: Timothy Shenk
- Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar, Timothy Shenk
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These days it seems that nobody is satisfied with American democracy. Critics across the ideological spectrum warn that the country is heading toward catastrophe but also complain that nothing seems to change. At the same time, many have begun to wonder if the gulf between elites and ordinary people has turned democracy itself into a myth. The urge to defend the country’s foundations and to dismantle them coexist—often within the same people. How did we get here? Why does it feel like the country is both grinding to a halt and falling to pieces?
-
-
Not good enough
- By Dwayne on 02-02-25
By: Timothy Shenk
-
The Fifth Risk
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What happens when the President of the United States governs one Tweet at a time? When the elected leader of the free world may not have a firm grasp on the names of government agencies, much less an understanding of their intricate inner-workings? In the days following the 2016 inauguration, government personnel searched for answers that didn’t exist, while White House staff scoured halls for employees who would never be appointed.
-
-
Awkward and Disappointing
- By Amit M on 10-04-18
By: Michael Lewis
-
Where Have All the Democrats Gone?
- The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes
- By: John B. Judis, Ruy Teixeira
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, American politics has been plagued by a breakdown between the Democratic and Republican parties, in which victory has inevitably led to defeat and vice versa. Both parties have lost sight of the people at the center of the American electorate, leading to polarization and paralysis. In Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira reveal the tectonic changes shaping the country’s current political landscape that both pundits and political scientists have missed.
-
-
Tone Deaf Dems
- By SMK on 01-26-24
By: John B. Judis, and others
-
A World After Liberalism
- Philosophers of the Radical Right
- By: Matthew Rose
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 5 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this eye-opening book, Matthew Rose introduces us to one of the most controversial intellectual movements of the 20th century, the "radical right", and discusses its adherents' different attempts to imagine political societies after the death or decline of liberalism. Questioning democracy's most basic norms and practices, these critics rejected ideas about human equality, minority rights, religious toleration, and cultural pluralism not out of implicit biases, but out of explicit principle.
-
-
Essential Reading for understanding the Far Right
- By BWA on 08-18-21
By: Matthew Rose
-
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here
- The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
- By: Jonathan Blitzer
- Narrated by: Jonathan Blitzer, André Santana
- Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. For years, the majority came from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, but many more have begun their journey much farther away. Some flee persecution, others crime or hunger. They may have already been deported, but the United States remains their only hope for safety and prosperity. They will take their chances.
-
-
How America Created its Own Border Problem
- By Amazon Customer on 04-19-24
By: Jonathan Blitzer
-
Why Nothing Works
- Who Killed Progress—and How to Bring It Back
- By: Marc J. Dunkelman
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America was once a country that did big things—we built the world’s greatest rail network, a vast electrical grid, interstate highways, abundant housing, the Social Security system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and more. But today, even while facing a host of pressing challenges—a housing shortage, a climate crisis, a dilapidated infrastructure—we feel stuck, unable to move the needle. Why?
-
-
Sort of boring
- By Paul on 03-03-25
-
Realigners
- Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy
- By: Timothy Shenk
- Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar, Timothy Shenk
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These days it seems that nobody is satisfied with American democracy. Critics across the ideological spectrum warn that the country is heading toward catastrophe but also complain that nothing seems to change. At the same time, many have begun to wonder if the gulf between elites and ordinary people has turned democracy itself into a myth. The urge to defend the country’s foundations and to dismantle them coexist—often within the same people. How did we get here? Why does it feel like the country is both grinding to a halt and falling to pieces?
-
-
Not good enough
- By Dwayne on 02-02-25
By: Timothy Shenk
-
Regime Change
- Toward a Postliberal Future
- By: Patrick J. Deneen
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Notre Dame professor and author of Why Liberalism Failed comes a provocative call for replacing the tyranny of the self-serving liberal elite with conservative leaders aligned with the interests of the working class.
-
-
A New Political Vision
- By SMW on 06-14-23
-
We Have Never Been Woke
- The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite
- By: Musa al-Gharbi
- Narrated by: Musa al-Gharbi
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Society has never been more egalitarian—in theory. Prejudice is taboo, and diversity is strongly valued. At the same time, social and economic inequality have exploded. In We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi argues that these trends are closely related, each tied to the rise of a new elite—the symbolic capitalists.
-
-
Insightful view into “symbolic capitalists”
- By Paul on 10-13-24
By: Musa al-Gharbi
-
Party of the People
- Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP
- By: Patrick Ruffini
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election shocked the world. Yet his defeat in 2020 may have been even more surprising: he received 12 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016 and his unexpectedly diverse coalition included millions of nonwhite voters, a rarity for the modern Republican party. In 2020, Trump defied expectations and few journalists, strategists, or politicians could explain why Trump had nearly won reelection. Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster and one of the country’s leading experts on political targeting, technology, and demography, has the answers.
-
-
In light of 2024
- By dell992 on 11-13-24
By: Patrick Ruffini
-
Middlemarch
- By: George Eliot
- Narrated by: Maureen O'Brien
- Length: 32 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; and the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career.
-
-
Disappointed: this is not a never-ending story
- By M. Leavell on 01-23-16
By: George Eliot
-
The Extinction of Experience
- Being Human in a Disembodied World
- By: Christine Rosen
- Narrated by: Suzie Althens
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Extinction of Experience, Christine Rosen investigates the cultural and emotional shifts that accompany our embrace of technology. In warm, philosophical prose, Rosen reveals key human experiences at risk of going extinct, including face-to-face communication, sense of place, authentic emotion, and even boredom. Considering cultural trends, like TikTok challenges and mukbang, and politically unsettling phenomena, like sociometric trackers and online conspiracy culture, Rosen exposes an unprecedented shift in the human condition, one that habituates us to alienation and control.
-
-
Timely, thought-provoking, and invitational
- By Duncan Idaho on 03-22-25
By: Christine Rosen
-
The Hollow Parties
- The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics
- By: Daniel Schlozman, Sam Rosenfeld
- Narrated by: Tom Beyer
- Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America's political parties are hollow shells of what they could be, locked in a polarized struggle for power and unrooted as civic organizations. The Hollow Parties takes listeners from the rise of mass party politics in the Jacksonian era through the years of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Today's parties, overbearing and ineffectual, have emerged from the interplay of multiple party traditions that reach back to the Founding.
-
-
Too arcane
- By James Larimer on 07-18-24
By: Daniel Schlozman, and others
-
A Fabulous Failure
- The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism
- By: Nelson Lichtenstein, Judith Stein
- Narrated by: Tom Campbell
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, he ended twelve years of Republican rule and seemed poised to enact a progressive transformation of the US economy. Yet by the time he left office, the nation's economic and social policies had instead lurched dramatically rightward, exacerbating the inequalities so troubling in our own time. Nelson Lichtenstein and Judith Stein show how the administration's progressive reformers were stymied by a new world of global capitalism that heightened Wall Street influence, undermined domestic manufacturing, and eviscerated the labor movement.
-
-
How We Got Here…
- By D.A. Stone on 11-11-24
By: Nelson Lichtenstein, and others
-
The Unaccountability Machine
- Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions - and How The World Lost its Mind
- By: Dan Davies
- Narrated by: Peter Dickson
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When we avoid taking a decision, what happens to it? In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies examines why markets, institutions and even governments systematically generate outcomes that everyone involved claims not to want. He casts new light on the writing of Stafford Beer, a legendary economist who argued in the 1950s that we should regard organisations as artificial intelligences, capable of taking decisions that are distinct from the intentions of their members.
-
-
Illuminating.
- By Amazon Customer on 04-12-25
By: Dan Davies
-
Abundance
- By: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
- Narrated by: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all.
-
-
Advice to the Democratic Party from Klein & Thompson
- By Betsy Fowler on 03-31-25
By: Ezra Klein, and others
-
When the Clock Broke
- Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s
- By: John Ganz
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 15 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated, and U.S. power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a “kinder, gentler America.” Instead, it was a period of rising anger and domestic turmoil, anticipating the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today. In When the Clock Broke, the acclaimed political writer John Ganz tells the story of America’s late-century discontents.
-
-
Amazing history of the early 90s
- By Aaron R. Isaacson on 06-25-24
By: John Ganz
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
-
On Tyranny
- Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
- By: Timothy Snyder
- Narrated by: Timothy Snyder
- Length: 1 hr and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.
-
-
History does not repeat, but it does instruct.
- By Darwin8u on 11-19-18
By: Timothy Snyder