A Tale of a Tub
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A Tale of a Tub
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Narrated by:
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Peter Wickham
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By:
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Jonathan Swift
About this listen
Swift's allegorical satire about religion and politics follows the lives of three brothers, Martin, Peter, and Jack, each of who represents a faction of the Christian faith - Anglicanism, Roman Catholicism, and the dissenting faiths, respectively. Each brother inherits a coat (representing religious practice) from their father (God) on the condition that they do not change it. But instead the three quarrelsome youths disobey their father and change their coats beyond recognition. A Tale of a Tub was Swift's first major work and was considered a personal favorite by the author.
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-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
"Nothing more strangely indicates an enormous and silent evil of modern society than the extraordinary use which is made nowadays of the word orthodox. In former days the heretic was proud of not being a heretic. It was the kingdoms of the world and the police and the judges who were heretics. He was orthodox. He had no pride in having rebelled against them; they had rebelled against him. The armies with their cruel security, the kings with their cold faces, the decorous processes of State, the reasonable processes of law - all these like sheep had gone astray...."
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4 out of 5 stars
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Like having Steven Hawking read poetry
- By J. Gorton on 02-29-16
By: G. K. Chesterton
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The Wisdom of Life, Counsels and Maxims
- By: Arthur Schopenhauer
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 99
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 78
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Story5 out of 5 stars 77
'The two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.' Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was one of the most influential philosophers of the 19th century because his humanistic, atheistic, if pessimistic views chimed with a new secularism that was emerging from a Western society dominated by religion. Despite his rather forbidding image (and a few outdated views), he is one of the most approachable German philosophers, and this is certainly evident in these two key works, The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims.
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5 out of 5 stars
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depressingly hopeful
- By Sebastian huerta on 06-22-17
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The Gay Science (The Joyful Wisdom)
- By: Friedrich Nietzsche
- Narrated by: Michael Lunts
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 161
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 136
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 138
The Gay Science (The Joyful Wisdom) is one of Nietzsche's greatest books. His wonderfully fertile mind roams over mankind, his thoughts, his emotions, his behaviour and his weaknesses with remarkable clarity, with insight - but also with humour!In this work are 383 separate paragraphs, some short, some long, but all singular observations - the epitome of his famous aphoristic style. 'Morality is the herd instinct in the individual.'
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5 out of 5 stars
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I am now a full-fledged fan of Nietzsche
- By RS on 02-24-18
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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- By: Benjamin Franklin
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,730
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,497
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,493
Left unfinished at the time of his death, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin has endured as one of the most well-known and influential autobiographies ever written. From his early years in Boston and Philadelphia to the publication of his Poor Richard's Almanac to the American Revolution and beyond, Franklin's autobiography is a fascinating, personal exploration into the life of America's most interesting founding father.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Egregious omission of important passage.
- By Walking Man on 02-14-19
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Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
- By: Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
- Length: 14 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 116
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 105
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
Here in one volume are both the Essays: First Series and Essays: Second Series from one of the most influential philosophers in American history. Although Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps America’s most famous philosopher, did not wish to be referred to as a transcendentalist, he is nevertheless considered the founder of this major movement of nineteenth-century American thought. Emerson was influenced by a liberal religious training; theological study; personal contact with the Romanticists Coleridge, Carlyle, and Wordsworth; and a strong indigenous sense of individualism and self-reliance.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Riggenbach's Essays, Not Emerson's
- By Jake Behm on 12-01-15
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Plato's Phaedrus
- By: Plato
- Narrated by: Ray Childs
- Length: 2 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 114
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 99
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 99
Phaedrus lures Socrates outside the walls of Athens, where he seldom goes, by promising to share a new work by his friend and mentor, Lysias, a famous writer of speeches. This dialogue provides a powerful example of the dialectical writing that Plato uses to manifest ideas that are essential to human existence and to living a good life. Phaedrus shows how oral and written forms of language relate to each other and to philosophy.
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1 out of 5 stars
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six pages (Hackett Complete Works edition) missing
- By S. Lee on 01-17-19
By: Plato
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Gulliver's Travels
- By: Jonathan Swift
- Narrated by: John Tatlock
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 69
Jonathan Swift's classic novel about the loveable Lemuel Gulliver is one that is taught in high schools around the country, and for good reason. Gulliver, who is a surgeon aboard a ship, thinks that he is about to embark on a run-of-the-mill voyage to different ports. Throughout his journey, however, there are a few events that take place that redirect his ship to unfamiliar islands. Not only are they unfamiliar to him, but they are inhabited by natives who are shaped and sized much differently than he is.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book gets a great narrator a MUST listen
- By Amazon Customer on 07-12-19
By: Jonathan Swift
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Tristram Shandy
- By: Laurence Sterne
- Narrated by: Anton Lesser
- Length: 19 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 221
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 201
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Story4 out of 5 stars 196
Laurence Sterne’s most famous novel is a biting satire of literary conventions and contemporary 18th-century values. Renowned for its parody of established narrative techniques, Tristram Shandyis commonly regarded as the forerunner of avant-garde fiction. Tristram’s characteristic digressions on a whole range of unlikely subjects (including battle strategy and noses!) are endlessly surprising and make this one of Britain’s greatest comic achievements.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Like discovering Frank Zappa in 250 years
- By Darwin8u on 01-02-14
By: Laurence Sterne
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A Sentimental Journey
- By: Laurence Sterne
- Narrated by: Anton Lesser
- Length: 4 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4 out of 5 stars 35
Published just months before his death in 1768, A Sentimental Journey is Sterne's lightly fictionalised account of his own European travels; and being Sterne, it is more about digressions, misunderstandings and risqué jokes than the places he visits. Narrated by the (apparently) innocent Parson Yorick, who appeared in Sterne's other masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, it is full of anecdote and incident, and is far more about the people than the landscapes on the road from Calais.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Glad I Listened, But…
- By SandyK on 09-03-24
By: Laurence Sterne
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Notes from the Underground (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Constance Garnett - translator
- Narrated by: Pete Simonelli
- Length: 4 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 294
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 248
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 246
Isolated from society in a tenement basement in St. Petersburg, a malicious former civil servant vents his resentments. In the rambling notes that follow, we are exposed to the inner turmoil of the Underground Man, who represents the voice of his generation. An emotional, paranoid knot of contradictions, the spiteful narrator is also desperate to join a society he loathes, if only to prove his superiority to it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing
- By Bryan on 02-19-19
By: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and others
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The Life of Samuel Johnson
- By: James Boswell
- Narrated by: David Timson
- Length: 51 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 147
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 134
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 129
Charming, vibrant, witty and edifying, The Life of Samuel Johnson is a work of great obsession and boundless reverence. The literary critic Samuel Johnson was 54 when he first encountered Boswell; the friendship that developed spawned one of the greatest biographies in the history of world literature. The book is full of humorous anecdote and rich characterization, and paints a vivid picture of 18th-century London, peopled by prominent personalities of the time.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful!
- By Tad Davis on 02-02-18
By: James Boswell
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Plato's Republic
- By: Plato
- Narrated by: Ray Childs
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,535
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,335
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,316
The Republic poses questions that endure: What is justice? What form of community fosters the best possible life for human beings? What is the nature and destiny of the soul? What form of education provides the best leaders for a good republic? What are the various forms of poetry and the other arts, and which ones should be fostered and which ones should be discouraged? How does knowing differ from believing?
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1 out of 5 stars
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BEWARE: shortened version
- By Dranu on 03-08-20
By: Plato
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Dead Souls
- By: Nikolai Gogol, C. J. Hogarth - translator
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 144
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 129
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Story4 out of 5 stars 129
Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in a provincial town and visits a succession of landowners to make each a strange offer. He proposes to buy the names of dead serfs still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them, and to use these "souls" as collateral to reinvent himself as a gentleman. In this ebullient masterpiece, Nikolai Gogol created a grotesque gallery of human types.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Captures absurdity of mid 19th century Russia
- By Darwin8u on 10-26-12
By: Nikolai Gogol, and others
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Flatland
- A Romance of Many Dimensions
- By: Edwin A Abbott
- Narrated by: Philip Harburgh
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 95
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 82
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 82
In Flatland, originally published in 1884, a humble square describes his two-dimensional world to benefit the inhabitants of Spaceland, the three-dimensional realm he discovers when he is visited by a being from beyond his plane. With dry wit and wild imagination, author Edwin Abbott Abbott builds a meticulous fantasy world rooted in an astute apprehension of psychology, politics, and social structures, as well as basic geometry. The story of Flatland, at once ridiculous and profound, delivers an incisive satire of social discourse that remains remarkably relevant today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Philip Harburgh is a much better narrator
- By Joy Owleyes on 12-08-22
By: Edwin A Abbott
What listeners say about A Tale of a Tub
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- mICHELLE bACON
- 11-28-23
Where's the satire?
if you are a Latin, philosophy scholar then maybe this work will interest you and you will understand it. I find some literature to be enjoyable and sometimes challenging, but this one went way above and beyond my level of intellect. Swift was indeed a very smart man.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- TiffanyD
- 10-14-18
Sometimes drifted into background noise
I tried really hard to pay attention through all of this but the truth is that I had many moments where my eyes started to glaze over (or what's the equivalent for ears?) and A Tale of a Tub just became background noise. Then I'd rewind an try again and the same thing would happen. I don't think that's the narrator's fault. I thought he was pretty good.
But I think my historical knowledge is not comprehensive enough to get all of the satire without significant annotations and an audiobook version doesn't really lend itself to copious footnotes. I have enjoyed Jonathan Swift in the past, but I kept getting lost in this. The "tale" itself was challenging to keep track of (Peter and Martin were obvious enough stand ins for Catholics and Lutherans but I confess I needed google to get who Jack was) and the digressions were even harder. Still a fan of Swift, and I bet audiobooks of Gulliver's Travels are great, but I couldn't make the format plus the content work for me here.
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1 person found this helpful