Conquest of the Tropics
The Story of the Creative Enterprises Conducted by the United Fruit Company
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Conquest of the Tropics
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Narrated by:
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Heidi Wall
About this listen
This narrative about the creation and early growth of the United Fruit Company comes across like an adventure novel.
The author whisks the listener to Central America to experience the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of a group of visionaries who carved a commercial empire out of virtually uninhabited Central American tropical jungles.
These American businessmen and the people who worked for them were the early pioneers. They overcame tropical disease, financial problems, weather, and other obstacles by innovation and sheer grit.
All of this is splendidly narrated in this important audiobook about a critical driving force in the history of Central America.
©2019 Heidi Wall (P)2019 Heidi WallListeners also enjoyed...
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Open Veins of Latin America
- Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
- By: Eduardo Galeano, Isabel Allende - Foreward
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,276
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 995
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 985
Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx. Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Please up-date the addition
- By fishrock on 02-20-10
By: Eduardo Galeano, and others
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The Rational Optimist
- How Prosperity Evolves
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,453
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,994
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,999
Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Personal
- By Robert F. Jones on 09-15-17
By: Matt Ridley
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The Conquest of Bread
- By: Peter Kropotkin
- Narrated by: Jim D Johnston
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story5 out of 5 stars 28
Originally written in French, The Conquest of Bread first appeared as a series of articles in the anarchist journal Le Révolté. It was first published in Paris with a preface by Élisée Reclus, who also suggested the title. Between 1892 and 1894, it was serialized in part in the London journal Freedom, of which Kropotkin was a co-founder. In the work, Kropotkin points out what he considers to be the defects of the economic systems of feudalism and capitalism and why he believes they thrive on and maintain poverty and scarcity.
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3 out of 5 stars
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If we were all perfect. That's a big if.
- By DesmoProfundis on 06-07-21
By: Peter Kropotkin
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Fordlandia
- The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City
- By: Greg Grandin
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 205
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 145
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Story4 out of 5 stars 151
Fordlandia by National Book Award finalist Greg Grandin tells the enthralling tale of Henry Ford’s failed attempts to transform a Connecticut-sized chunk of Brazilian rainforest into a homespun slice of American utopia.
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4 out of 5 stars
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An eye-opening account of an arrogant man's folly
- By Melissa on 09-17-13
By: Greg Grandin
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The Conquest of Bread
- By: Pyotr Kropotkin
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 399
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 329
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 323
In The Conquest of Bread, first published in 1892, Kropotkin set out his ideas on how his heightened idealism could work. It was all the more extraordinary because he was born into an aristocratic land-owning family - with some 1,200 male serfs - though from his student years his liberal views and his fixation on the need for social change saw him take a revolutionary path. This led rapidly to decades of exile. It is a passionate, even a fierce polemic for dramatic social change.
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5 out of 5 stars
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“All is for All”
- By Gabriel on 01-02-19
By: Pyotr Kropotkin
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An Edible History of Humanity
- By: Tom Standage
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 567
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 464
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Story4 out of 5 stars 464
Throughout history, food has acted as a catalyst of social change, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict, and economic expansion. An Edible History of Humanity is a pithy, entertaining account of how a series of changes---caused, enabled, or influenced by food---has helped to shape and transform societies around the world.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Flawed, but worthwhile
- By Ary Shalizi on 12-28-17
By: Tom Standage
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Sugar
- The World Corrupted from Slavery to Obesity
- By: James Walvin
- Narrated by: Roger Davis
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Story4 out of 5 stars 40
How did a simple commodity, once the prized monopoly of kings and princes, become an essential ingredient in the lives of millions, before mutating yet again into the cause of a global health epidemic? Prior to 1600, sugar was a costly luxury, the domain of the rich. But with the rise of the sugar colonies in the New World over the following century, sugar became cheap, ubiquitous, and an everyday necessity. Less than 50 years ago, few people suggested that sugar posed a global health problem.
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2 out of 5 stars
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I should have listened to the other reviews
- By L. Bergman on 12-31-18
By: James Walvin
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Land
- How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 13 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 418
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 352
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 351
Land - whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city - is central to our existence. It quite literally underlies and underpins everything. Employing the keen intellect, insatiable curiosity, and narrative verve that are the foundations of his previous bestselling works, Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing - and have done - with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Audiobook Version is the Best!
- By semarla on 01-31-21
By: Simon Winchester
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The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
- Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor
- By: David S. Landes
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 21 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 54
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations is David S. Landes' acclaimed, best-selling exploration of one of the most contentious and hotly debated questions of our time: Why do some nations achieve economic success while others remain mired in poverty? The answer, as Landes definitively illustrates, is a complex interplay of cultural mores and historical circumstance.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A detailed explanation
- By Kaarlis on 12-07-21
By: David S. Landes
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Americana
- A 400-Year History of American Capitalism
- By: Bhu Srinivasan
- Narrated by: Scott Brick, Bhu Srinivasan
- Length: 21 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 634
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 553
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Story5 out of 5 stars 544
From the days of the Mayflower and the Virginia Company, America has been a place for people to dream, invent, build, tinker, and bet the farm in pursuit of a better life. Americana takes us on a 400-year journey of this spirit of innovation and ambition through a series of Next Big Things - the inventions, techniques, and industries that drove American history forward: from the telegraph, the railroad, guns, radio, and banking, to flight, suburbia, and sneakers, culminating with the Internet and mobile technology at the turn of the 21st century.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent history!
- By L. Maranto on 10-14-17
By: Bhu Srinivasan
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Slavery's Capitalism
- A New History of American Economic Development
- By: Sven Beckert - editor, Seth Rockman - editor
- Narrated by: William Hughes, Kevin Kenerly, Bahni Turpin, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 432
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 367
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 367
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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1 out of 5 stars
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The volume is so low I can't hear it.
- By Anonymous User on 01-30-18
By: Sven Beckert - editor, and others
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Collapse
- How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 27 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,703
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,470
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,462
In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Jared Diamond Downs You in Explanation
- By Rob on 07-20-18
By: Jared Diamond
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A Perfect Red
- By: Amy Butler Greenfield
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 109
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 100
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
A Perfect Red recounts the colorful history of cochineal, a legendary red dye that was once one of the world's most precious commodities. Treasured by the ancient Mexicans, cochineal was sold in the great Aztec marketplaces, where it attracted the attention of the Spanish conquistadors in 1519. Shipped to Europe, the dye created a sensation, producing the brightest, strongest red the world had ever seen. Soon Spain's cochineal monopoly was worth a fortune. Desperate to find their own sources of the elusive dye, the English, French, Dutch, and other Europeans tried to crack the enigma of cochineal.
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4 out of 5 stars
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History of a peculiar substance through the ages
- By Tobia on 08-17-16
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Panama Fever
- By: Matthew Parker
- Narrated by: Oliver Wyman, William Dufris
- Length: 17 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 130
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
The building of the Panama Canal was one of the greatest engineering feats in human history. A tale of exploration, conquest, money, politics, and medicine, Panama Fever charts the challenges that marked the long, labyrinthine road to the building of the canal. Drawing on a wealth of new materials and sources, Matthew Parker brings to life the men who recognized the impact a canal would have on global politics and economics.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Good book, marginal narrator
- By CmH - HB, CA on 06-02-08
By: Matthew Parker
What listeners say about Conquest of the Tropics
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Emily
- 10-22-19
Liked this audiobook a lot!
Excellent audiobook with a very interesting subject. Good to listen to when driving in the car.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Sherry Johnson
- 10-31-19
Narrative
Good information I really enjoyed this narrator. She’s clear and very precise in her annunciations.
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