Showing results by author "Kurt Andersen" in All Categories

A razor-sharp thinker offers a new understanding of our post-truth world and explains the American instinct to believe in make-believe, from the Pilgrims to P. T. Barnum to Disneyland to zealots of every stripe...to Donald Trump. In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen demonstrates that what's happening in our country today - this strange, post-factual, "fake news" moment we're all living through - is not something entirely new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character and path.

During the 20th century, America managed to make its economic and social systems both more and more fair and more and more prosperous. A huge, secure, and contented middle class emerged. All boats rose together. But then the New Deal gave way to the Raw Deal. Beginning in the early 1970s, by means of a long war conceived of and executed by a confederacy of big business CEOs, the superrich, and right-wing zealots, the rules and norms that made the American middle class possible were undermined and dismantled.

Until Donald Trump publishes the ultimate account of his entire four or eight or one and a half years in the White House, the definitive chronicle will be You Can't Spell America Without Me. Trump was elected because he was the most frank presidential candidate in history, a man eager to tell the unvarnished truth about others' flaws and tout his own amazing excellence. Now he levels his refreshingly compulsive, un-PC candor at his landslide election victory as well as his role as commander in chief and leader of the free world.

In this smart and refreshingly hopeful book, Andersen - a brilliant analyst and synthesizer of historical and cultural trends, as well as a best-selling novelist and host of public radio's Studio 360 - shows us why the current economic crisis is actually a moment of great opportunity to get ourselves and our nation back on track.

During one month in 1848, gold is discovered in California, the United States wins its first foreign war, and an English gentleman named Benjamin Knowles falls in love with actress and part-time prostitute Polly Lucking. He also meets her brother Duff, a damaged veteran of the Mexican War, and befriends the unforgettable Timothy Skaggs. Lured by the prospect of gold, they set off on a transcontinental race west. However, they are unaware that a stranger bent on revenge shadows their every move.

Karen Hollander is a celebrated attorney who recently removed herself from consideration for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her reasons have their roots in 1968 - an episode she’s managed to keep secret for more than 40 years. Now, with the imminent publication of her memoir, she’s about to let the world in on that shocking secret - as soon as she can track down the answers to a few crucial last questions. A resonant coming-of-age story and a thrilling political mystery, True Believers is Kurt Andersen’s most ambitious novel to date, introducing a brilliant, funny, and irresistible new heroine to contemporary fiction.

Fantasy is the USA’s primary product. From the Pilgrim fathers onward, America has been a place where renegades and freaks came in search of freedom to create their own realities with little objectively regulated truth standing in their way. The freedom to invent and believe whatever the hell you like is, in some ways, an unwritten constitutional right. But this do-your-own-thing freedom also is the driving credo of America's current transformation, where the difference between opinion and fact is rapidly crumbling.

As big and exciting as the next century, this is a novel of real life at our giddy, feverish, topsy-turvy edge of the millennium. Turn of the Century is a good old-fashioned novel about the day after tomorrow—an uproarious, exquisitely observed panorama of our world as the twentieth century morphs into the twenty-first, transforming family, marriage, and friendship and propelled by the supercharged global businesses and new technologies that make everyone's lives shake and spin a little faster.

Evil Geniuses is the secret history of how, over the last half century, from even before Ronald Reagan through Donald Trump, America has sharply swerved away from its dream of progress for the many to a system of unfettered profit and self-interest for the few. As the social liberation of the 1960s finally ended in the chaos of Vietnam and Watergate, a cabal of rich industrialists, business chiefs, wide-eyed libertarians and right-wing economic radicals were waiting, determined to claw back everything they saw as rightfully theirs.

How did Richard Ford's cat influence his work as a novelist? Creativity is an elusive subject. We enjoy its fruits - movies, novels, paintings, songs - but rarely are we privy to what happens in the creative process. In Spark, Julie Burstein traces the roots of some of the twenty-first century's most influential and creative thinkers, including Joyce Carol Oates, Yo-Yo Ma, David Milch, Isabel Allende, and Joshua Redman. Burstein pulls back the curtain to reveal the sources of these artists' inspiration and the processes that bring their work into being.

Hasta la Vista, America: Trump’s Farewell Address is an original audiobook written by Kurt Andersen and performed by Alec Baldwin. The duo are the creative team behind 2017’s New York Times best-selling Trump-parody You Can’t Spell America Without Me. In Hasta la Vista, America, we hear Baldwin’s Trump holed up in the White House with only advisor Hope Hicks there to run the recording session. “Trump” endeavors to deliver not only his Farewell Address but also his 2021 State of the Union Address.

"Es gibt gar kein rotes Telefon! Bin sehr enttäuscht." Mit seiner Trump-Darstellung begeistert der Hollywood-Schauspieler und bekennende Trump-Gegner Alec Baldwin regelmäßig Millionen Fans. Seine grandiosen Auftritte bei "Saturday-Night-Live" sind weltweit bekannt und haben inzwischen "absoluten Kultstatus" (Der Tagesspiegel) erreicht. Nun kommt endlich das Audiobuch zur Show! Während er die USA so unfassbar gut regiert wie keiner vor ihm, findet der Präsident trotz allem noch die Zeit seine Memoiren in Echtzeit für die Nachwelt zu diktieren.

Political satire as deeper truth: Donald Trump's presidential memoir, as recorded by two world-renowned Trump scholars and experts on greatness generally. Until Donald Trump publishes his account of his entire four or eight or one-and-a-half years in the White House, the definitive chronicle will be You Can't Spell America Without Me: The Really Tremendous Inside Story of My Fantastic First Year As President.

Die schönsten Märchen von Hans Christian Andersen und den Gebrüdern Grimm - in diesem Hörspiel hört ihr "Das häßliche junge Entlein", "Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot" und "Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse".

Drei bekannte Märchen aus dem Märchenschatz von Hans Christian Andersen und den Gebrüdern Grimm: Schneeweißchen und Rosenrot, Das häßliche Entlein, Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse - in einer Hörspielfassung von Kurt Vethake.

Prinzessin Rosenmund ist hochmütig und schlägt alle Heiratsanträge aus, auch diesen von Prinz Ehrlichherz. Ehrlichherz fasst jedoch einen Plan und kommt als Schweinehirt verkleidet aufs Schloss. Er kreiert Dinge, unter anderem einen Topf, der "O du lieber Augustin" spielen kann, die die Prinzessin unbedingt haben möchte. Als Bezahlung möchte er Küsse von ihr, die sie ihm auch widerstrebend gewährt. Als ihr Vater von den Küssen erfährt, wirft er sie aus seinem Schloss. Ob Prinz Ehrlichherz sie wohl aufnimmt?

Kurt Andersen has one of those careers that makes him the envy of a lot of folks in media. The guy has had a fairly golden touch, starting with the birth of the late great humor magazine, Spy, which he co-founded with Graydon Carter and Tom Phillips. He's also been a columnist for The New Yorker and editor in chief of New York. And he currently hosts public radio's popular Studio 360, which has won a Peabody Award.

"Die schönsten Märchen" - in Folge 23 dieser zauberhaften Hörspielreihe hört ihr "Das tapfere Schneiderlein" nach den Gebrüdern Grimm und "Des Kaisers neue Kleider" nach Hans Christian Andersen.

Die schönsten Märchen - in Folge 10 dieser zauberhaften Hörspielreihe hört ihr Die Prinzessin und der Schweinehirt nach Hans Christian Andersen und Der fliegende Koffer nach Wilhelm Hauff.