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The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace
- A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
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Publisher's summary
A heartfelt, and riveting biography of the short life of a talented young African-American man who escapes the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets - and of one's own nature - when he returns home.
When author Jeff Hobbs arrived at Yale University, he became fast friends with the man who would be his college roommate for four years, Robert Peace. Robert's life was rough from the beginning in the crime-ridden streets of Newark in the 1980s, with his father in jail and his mother earning less than $15,000 a year. But Robert was a brilliant student, and it was supposed to get easier when he was accepted to Yale, where he studied molecular biochemistry and biophysics. But it didn't get easier. Robert carried with him the difficult dual nature of his existence, "fronting" in Yale, and at home.
Through an honest rendering of Robert's relationships - with his struggling mother, with his incarcerated father, with his teachers and friends and fellow drug dealers - The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace encompasses the most enduring conflicts in America: race, class, drugs, community, imprisonment, education, family, friendship, and love. It's about the collision of two fiercely insular worlds - the ivy-covered campus of Yale University and Newark, New Jersey, and the difficulty of going from one to the other and then back again. It's about poverty, the challenges of single motherhood, and the struggle to find male role models in a community where a man is more likely to go to prison than to college. It's about reaching one's greatest potential and taking responsibility for your family no matter the cost. It's about trying to live a decent life in America. But most all the story is about the tragic life of one singular brilliant young man. His end, a violent one, is heartbreaking and powerful and unforgettable.
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By: Sudhir Venkatesh
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An Uncomplicated Life
- A Father's Memoir of His Exceptional Daughter
- By: Paul Daugherty
- Narrated by: Robert McCollum
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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A father’s exhilarating and funny love letter to his daughter with Down syndrome whose vibrant and infectious approach to life has something to teach all of us about how we can better live our own. Jillian Daugherty was born with Down syndrome. On the day Paul and Kerry, her parents, brought her home from the hospital they were flooded with worry and uncertainty, but also overwhelming love, which they channeled to “the job of building the better Jillian”. While their daughter had special needs, they refused to allow her to grow up needy - “expect, don’t accept” became their mantra.
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A Story on the Beauties of DS
- By Matthew on 04-16-23
By: Paul Daugherty
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A Hope in The Unseen
- An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
- By: Ron Suskind
- Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
- Length: 17 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling investigative journalist Ron Suskind based this book on his Pulitzer Prize winning articles about Cedric Jennings, a Black youth struggling to survive one of D.C.'s toughest school districts. A moving portrait of inner city life, A Hope in the Unseen offers a view of life through the eyes of someone trying desperately to make his way up from the bottom.
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Great Story
- By Adam Evans on 12-25-10
By: Ron Suskind
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Bluegrass
- A True Story of Murder in Kentucky
- By: William Van Meter
- Narrated by: Ed Sala
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Widely published journalist William Van Meter returned to his hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky to research this harrowing account of a horrifying crime that occurred at Western Kentucky University. In 2003, attractive college student Katie Autry was found dead in her dorm room after being raped, stabbed, and set on fire. As Van Meter delves into the facts of the case, further disturbing information surfaces.
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Excellent!
- By brooke whitehead on 01-09-23
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In the Country We Love
- My Family Divided
- By: Diane Guerrero, Michelle Burford
- Narrated by: Diane Guerrero
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the megahit Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just 14 years old on the day her parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Born in the US, Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family.
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Moves very slowly
- By Laura S. on 07-23-16
By: Diane Guerrero, and others
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Dreams from My Father
- A Story of Race and Inheritance
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a Black African father and a White American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a Black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father - a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man - has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey - first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family.
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Powerful
- By Gene R. on 10-26-21
By: Barack Obama
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What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker
- A Memoir in Essays
- By: Damon Young
- Narrated by: Damon Young
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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For Damon Young, existing while Black is an extreme sport. The act of possessing Black skin while searching for space to breathe in America is enough to induce a ceaseless state of angst where questions such as “How should I react here, as a professional black person?” and “Will this white person’s potato salad kill me?” are forever relevant. What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker chronicles Young’s efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him.
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Reviewed by a B![c# @$$ White Boy
- By netusera on 04-13-19
By: Damon Young
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Wilde Lake
- A Novel
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Kathleen McInerney, Nicole Poole
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Luisa "Lu" Brant is the newly elected - and first female - state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her widower father famously served. Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. It's not the kind of case that makes headlines, but peaceful Howard County doesn't see many homicides.
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In a word saccharine and boring
- By Rena on 05-12-16
By: Laura Lippman
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The Priority List
- A Teacher's Final Quest to Discover Life's Greatest Lessons
- By: David Menasche
- Narrated by: David Menasche
- Length: 4 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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David Menasche lived for his work as a high school English teacher. His passion inspired his students, and between lessons on Shakespeare and sentence structure, he forged a unique bond with his kids, buoying them through personal struggles while sharing valuable life lessons.
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Truly Inspiring!!
- By Trish on 07-13-14
By: David Menasche
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Stories I Tell Myself
- Growing Up with Hunter S. Thompson
- By: Juan F. Thompson
- Narrated by: Juan F. Thompson
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Hunter S. Thompson, "smart hillbilly"; boy of the South; born and bred in Louisville, Kentucky; son of an insurance salesman and a stay-at-home mom; public school-educated; jailed at 17 on a bogus petty robbery charge; member of the US Air Force (airman second class); copy boy for Time; writer for The National Observer; et cetera.
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Hunter Remembered
- By Karen Loucks Rinedollar on 03-31-16
By: Juan F. Thompson
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The 57 Bus
- A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives
- By: Dashka Slater
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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If it weren't for the 57 bus, Sasha and Richard never would have met. Both were high school students from Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in the country, but they inhabited different worlds. Sasha, a white teen, lived in the middle-class foothills and attended a small private school. Richard, a black teen, lived in the crime-plagued flatlands and attended a large public one. Each day, their paths overlapped for a mere eight minutes. But, one afternoon, on the bus ride home from school, a single reckless act left Sasha severely burned.
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An Unusual True-Crime Event...Beautifully Written.
- By Mary Burnight on 02-21-18
By: Dashka Slater
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To the End of June
- The Intimate Life of American Foster Care
- By: Cris Beam
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 12 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Who are the children of foster care? What, as a country, do we owe them? Cris Beam, a foster mother herself, spent five years immersed in the world of foster care looking into these questions and tracing firsthand stories. The result is To the End of June, an unforgettable portrait that takes us deep inside the lives of foster children in their search for a stable, loving family. Beam shows us the intricacies of growing up in the system - the back-and-forth with agencies, the rootless shuffling between homes, the emotionally charged tug between foster and birth parents.
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Good dissertation
- By Nim on 03-13-19
By: Cris Beam
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During the 19th century, the United States entered the ranks of the world's most advanced and dynamic economies. At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery's Capitalism argues for slavery's centrality to the emergence of American capitalism in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War.
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Beautifully written.
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Just Mercy (Movie Tie-In Edition)
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Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.
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Made me question justice, peers and myself.
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Devil in the Grove
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Arguably the most important American lawyer of the 20th century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the US Supreme Court when he became embroiled in a case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and to cost him his life. In 1949, Florida's orange industry was booming, and citrus barons got rich on the backs of cheap Jim Crow labor with the help of Sheriff Willis V. McCall, who ruled Lake County with murderous resolve....
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the fight for civil rights
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Beautiful Boy
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David Sheff's story is a first: a teenager's addiction from the parent's point of view, a real-time chronicle of the shocking descent into substance abuse and the gradual emergence into hope.
Before meth, Sheff's son, Nic, was a varsity athlete, honor student, and award-winning journalist. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who stole money from his eight-year-old brother and lived on the streets. With haunting candor, Sheff traces the first warning signs, the attempts at rehabilitation, and, at last, the way past addiction. He shows us that, whatever an addict's fate, the rest of the family must care for one another, too, lest they become addicted to addiction.
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What listeners say about The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jami
- 07-27-16
I've Heard This Before
I had such high hopes for this book based on the description and reviews and couldn't wait to read it. Wow, was I ever disappointed.
The story itself was not unique; we've heard it before. There are other stories about people who faced similar or worse challenges and made it; unlike Rob, those people didn't have the luxury of a benefactor who gave him a blank check for his education. I could not engage with the main character the way he was depicted: mean to his girlfriends, made $100,000 in tax-free illegal money in college, trying to trick a close friend into illegal gun dealing, dealing drugs, etc. While he was good to his mother and friends, and no doubt extremely intelligent, I just could not get past the other things. It really is too bad that he didn't use his intelligence to benefit people; with his math/science abilities, he could have done some real good for society.
The other issue I had with the book was that it was way too long. This is a book about Rob, not about the author's wedding, their inability to conceive, or his publishing struggles. There were also characters who were not integral to the story and could easily have been left out. Due to this, I found the book very tedious at times and was often tempted to just quit. However, I persevered, waiting for the book to blow me away like it had with others......that just didn't happen for me. While there were thought provoking issues to ponder, this just wasn't the book to bring them to the forefront.
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- Rudy
- 12-05-14
A beautiful, elegiac remembrance of a friend
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Not possible, but yes.
Any additional comments?
Gorgeously written, deeply felt memoir of the author's Yale roommate, the ironically named Robert Peace. Whether he was 'Newark-proofing' himself as DeShaun or 'fronting' as Yalie Rob, Peace was a brilliant, engaging, profoundly conflicted young man. Author Jeff Hobbs writes as though he were born to tell his friend's story. The narrator George Newbern is one of the best I've heard on Audible. No embellishments; just a real understanding of and appreciation for the author's prose.
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56 people found this helpful
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- Diana - Audible
- 06-24-15
Heartbreaking
It's hard not to get hooked into Robert Peace's story, which is so well-written by his friend Jeff Hobbs and performed so elegantly by George Newbern. Even knowing how it'll all end, based on the book's subtitle, you can't help but hope that the brilliant, loyal, but conflicted Peace will still somehow turn it all around. This is very compelling narrative nonfiction, and I'll be looking for more of Newbern's narrations in the future.
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52 people found this helpful
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- oldmanwagner
- 12-02-14
Everyone Should Read this Book
What made the experience of listening to The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace the most enjoyable?
Robert Peace, the main character, is charismatic, driven, focused, and flawed. HIs should've been a life of steady ascension, despite a tough start in life, and instead he ended up driving in literal circles. The book functions not only as a tale of triumph and loss, but also as an object lesson in the problems poor kids face in improving their status/lot in life. And the book does it without wallowing, and in beautiful prose that sidles up to poetry.
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace?
There was no single moment: as this tale is a series of small moments, of how tiny hiccups--which would be totally surmountable by the middle class, and even the lower middle class--are the stuff that derails lives and destroys opportunities, for those who live below the poverty line. But it is not all tragic, in it, Robert's extraordinariness shines through and there joy he experienced in his life is conveyed here too.
Have you listened to any of George Newbern’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I thought he was wonderful, really excellent. The quality of this narration would make me seek out his other projects.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes. I only stopped because I fell asleep.
Any additional comments?
I think anyone who is curious about why poverty is ingrained as a seeming unovercomable obstacle in this country should read this book.
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- Scott
- 01-23-15
A young man with no redeeming qualities
Let me start by saying that I thought the narration was quite good, and the author did a fine job writing this biography. However, it became apparent fairly early on in this book that there was going to be no silver lining or real moral. Which makes me wonder why the author felt that this was a story worth telling. There are plenty of tragic stories out there that would be of more benefit and worthwhile to readers. Robert Peace goes from making one shockingly bad decision to another, no matter how many chances he is given. The best description of him in the book is from the author's speculation as to what one woman in Rob's life might think if she knew what he was up to. Specifically, that he is "selfish, arrogant, and stupid." Bingo. Apart from trying to help his parents, everything Rob does is deeply selfish, which makes the author's attempt to introduce narratives at the end of the novel to suggest Rob was somehow a good role model, at least part of the time, an unsupportable assertion. His mother, Jackie, is just about the only person in this biography that I can muster any respect for. I would've been much more interested in reading about her life, and I'm sure it would've been a more rewarding experience for readers.
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27 people found this helpful
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- Regina-Audible
- 12-02-14
Powerful Narrative Nonfiction
The story of Robert Peace is both heartbreaking and compelling. Written in narrative nonfiction style by Rob’s former Yale roommate Jeff Hobbs, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace documents the life of a brilliant and big-hearted young man that rises from poverty to graduate from the Ivy League – only to struggle to shake the anchor that binds him to the streets of Newark. While the book’s outcome is a given from the title, the gripping narrative voiced by George Newbern leaves you helplessly rooting for Rob throughout every stage.
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24 people found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 10-01-14
Incredible! Could not stop listening....
What did you love best about The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace?
I loved the writing, and how it felt as if you had a seat next to Rob and his friends and family.
Who was your favorite character and why?
Rob's Mom, for her strength and dignity.
What does George Newbern bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
A great story teller! Very easy to listen to his tale.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Every chapter had a moment, the whole life of Rob is an incredible journey.
Any additional comments?
I was stunned how his life ended.
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- katherineannamary
- 12-06-14
Brilliant
What did you love best about The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace?
"The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace" is a tremendous accomplishment. I offer my deepest gratitude to Jeff Hobbs for his unflinching narrative and devotion to detail. Though I cannot agree with the brief criticism (inconsiderable, in my opinion, set side by side with the scope of this work), The New York Times' Anand Giridharadas wrote the following of the book, perhaps the closest and best encapsulation I've found: "It deserves a turn in the nation’s pulpit from which it can beg us to see the third world America in our midst. Robert Peace, who called his mother “my heart,” was her only and beloved son. But he was our son, too. We are the wondrous country that made him a Yale man. We are the wanting country where even that wasn’t enough to spare him."
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- Sarah Muir
- 11-16-15
I'm obviously in the minority here...
Any additional comments?
I had to force myself to finish this book. Once it's revealed that it is Rob's college roommate writing the book, it seemed to me it became very much NOT about Robert Peace, but about Jeff Hobbs and the fact that he knew Robert Peace. I found the writing incredibly self-indulgent and, in parts, the details he chooses to include are just ridiculous. Not only would people he interviewed NOT have been able to provide what Robert Peace was thinking at that particular moment, CERTAINLY Jeff Hobbs cannot presume to know. I would love to know what Robert Peace would think of this book.
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- B.J.
- 07-01-15
I wanted this to be fiction.
Very quickly I became attached to Robert/DeShaun. I cheered for his victories and marveled at that huge brain. About halfway into the book, I hoped the word "tragic" was some kind of trickery on the author's part. I was so engrossed in Robert's world and I desperately wanted him to succeed. I couldn't wait to hit 'play' and find out what he was doing. And yet the word "tragic" kept nagging at me.
This is a great book - but not because of the writing. I'd say the writing is perfectly adequate with a few too many cliches thrown in. What makes this a great book is the heartfelt thought and insight that went into the book and the great man about whom it was written. I felt like it was a bit of a love story written for a friend. In that regard it soars.
I'm so glad I listened to this book. I'm not sure anything else has ever shown just how powerful the pull of surroundings can be. And yet ... I wanted a fairy tale ending. There just are no easy answers - no one line fixes. It's been hours since I finished the book and yet I can't stop thinking about Robert and his particular situation.
As to the narration, I thought the book deserved better. It's listenable, but could have been SO much better.
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14 people found this helpful