Had I Known
Collected Essays
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Had I Known
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Narrated by:
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Suzanne Toren
About this listen
Winner of the 2021 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, HAD I KNOWN contains the most provocative, incendiary, and career-making pieces by bestselling author, essayist, political activist, and "veteran muckraker" Barbara Ehrenreich (The New Yorker).
A self-proclaimed "myth buster by trade," Barbara Ehrenreich has covered an extensive range of topics as a journalist and political activist, and is unafraid to dive into intellectual waters that others deem too murky. Now, Had I Known gathers the articles and excerpts from a long-ranging career that most highlight Ehrenreich's brilliance, social consciousness, and wry wit.
From Ehrenreich's award-winning article "Welcome to Cancerland," published shortly after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, to her groundbreaking undercover investigative journalism in Nickel and Dimed, to her exploration of death and mortality in the New York Times bestseller, Natural Causes, Barbara Ehrenreich has been writing radical, thought-provoking, and worldview-altering pieces for over four decades. Her reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review, among others, while her essays, op-eds and feature articles have appeared in the New York Times, Harper's Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, Time, the Wall Street Journal, and many more. Had I Known pulls from the vast and varied collection of one of our country's most incisive thinkers to create one must-have volume.
©2020 Barbara Ehrenreich (P)2020 TwelveListeners also enjoyed...
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Former Property Manager
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5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 755
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 754
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
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5 out of 5 stars
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A testimonial based on facts and witness
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3 out of 5 stars
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5 out of 5 stars
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The best one so far
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5 out of 5 stars
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A wonderful program trying to help the most vulnerable in our city
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Critic reviews
“Barbara Ehrenreich has committed her life to writing in defense of women, immigrants, people of color, people in the LGBTQ+ community, people who are homeless, minimum-wage workers, and those who can’t even aspire to that luxury. Often prescient, her essays in this latest collection span several decades, explaining how we got to where we are today. A brave and brilliant thinker, she is most remarkable for reminding us how to be human in savage times. HAD I KNOWN is a dazzling tribute to Ehrenreich’s unwavering commitment to that cause, her mastery of craft, and an expansive and exceptional career centering on the art of the essay.”—PEN Awards
"The strange and frightening world we suddenly find ourselves living in is one Ehrenreich has warned about for decades...Her scathing take feels all but prophetic now."—The Washington Post
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5 out of 5 stars
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5 out of 5 stars
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- By: Matthew Stewart
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 61
In 21st century America, the top 0.1 percent of the wealth distribution have walked away with the big prizes even while the bottom 90 percent have lost ground. What’s left of the American Dream has taken refuge in the 9.9 percent that lies just below the tip of extreme wealth. Collectively, the members of this group control more than half of the wealth in the country - and they are doing whatever it takes to hang on to their piece of the action in an increasingly unjust system.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Fantastic
- By Davena on 01-05-23
By: Matthew Stewart
-
After America
- Get Ready for Armageddon
- By: Mark Steyn
- Narrated by: Mark Steyn
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 701
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 622
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 622
In his giant New York Times best seller, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, Mark Steyn predicted collapse for the rest of the Western World. Now, he adds, America has caught up with Europe on the great rush to self-destruction. What will a world without American leadership look like? It won’t be pretty—not for you and not for your children. America’s decline won’t be gradual, like an aging Europe sipping espresso at a café until extinction. No, America’s decline will be a wrenching affair marked by violence and possibly secession.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Facts
- By Peter on 11-11-11
By: Mark Steyn
-
Viral Justice
- How We Grow the World We Want
- By: Ruha Benjamin
- Narrated by: Ruha Benjamin
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 55
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 48
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 46
Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Fantastic book!
- By Avie Kearney on 05-21-23
By: Ruha Benjamin
-
Thrive
- Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way
- By: Dan Buettner
- Narrated by: Michael McConnohie
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 106
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 72
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 71
In the first book to identify demographically proven happiness hotspots worldwide, researcher and explorer Dan Buettner documents the happiest people on earth and reveals how we can create our own happy zones. Detailing extraordinary new discoveries and meticulous research on four continents, Buettner observes happiness in unlikely places and gleans surprising insight into what generates contentment and what it means to thrive.
-
4 out of 5 stars
-
Around the world with circular reasoning
- By Andy on 05-17-11
By: Dan Buettner
-
The Almost Nearly Perfect People
- Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
- By: Michael Booth
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 13 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 663
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 585
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 575
Journalist Michael Booth has lived among the Scandinavians for more than 10 years, and he has grown increasingly frustrated with the rose-tinted view of this part of the world offered up by the Western media. In this timely audiobook, he leaves his adopted home of Denmark and embarks on a journey through all five of the Nordic countries to discover who these curious tribes are, the secrets of their success, and, most intriguing of all, what they think of one another.
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2 out of 5 stars
-
Obsessed with bad politics
- By Erik on 09-07-20
By: Michael Booth
-
The Conservative Heart
- How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America
- By: Arthur C. Brooks
- Narrated by: P. J. Ochlan
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 490
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 428
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 429
In The Conservative Heart, Arthur C. Brooks contends that after years of focusing on economic growth and traditional social values, it is time for a new kind of conservatism - one that helps the vulnerable without mortgaging our children's future. In Brooks' daring vision, this conservative movement fights poverty, promotes equal opportunity, celebrates earned success, and values spiritual enlightenment. It is an inclusive movement with a positive agenda to help people lead happier, more hopeful, and more satisfied lives.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Outstanding recitation of conservatism!
- By GLENNO on 08-06-15
By: Arthur C. Brooks
-
The End of Men
- And the Rise of Women
- By: Hanna Rosin
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 161
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 135
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 132
Men have been the dominant sex since - well, the dawn of mankind. And yet, as journalist Hanna Rosin discovered, that long-held truth is no longer true. At this unprecedented moment, women are no longer merely gaining on men; they have pulled decisively ahead by almost every measure. Already "the end of men" - the phrase Rosin coined - has entered the lexicon as indelibly as Simone de Beauvoir’s "second sex", Betty Friedan’s "feminine mystique", Susan Faludi’s "backlash", and Naomi Wolf’s "beauty myth" have.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Great book, don't care for the reader's style
- By Darren on 12-05-12
By: Hanna Rosin
-
One and Only
- The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One
- By: Lauren Sandler
- Narrated by: Lauren Sandler
- Length: 6 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 61
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 57
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
Journalist Lauren Sandler is an only child and the mother of one. After investigating what only children are really like and whether stopping at one child is an answer to reconciling motherhood and modernity, she learned a lot about herself - and a lot about our culture's assumptions. In this heartfelt work, Sandler legitimizes a discussion about the larger societal costs of having more than one.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Data Driven
- By Meghan B on 01-11-22
By: Lauren Sandler
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Coming Apart
- The State of White America, 1960–2010
- By: Charles Murray
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 772
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 631
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 626
In Coming Apart, Charles Murray explores the formation of American classes that are different in kind from anything we have ever known, focusing on whites as a way of driving home the fact that the trends he describes do not break along lines of race or ethnicity.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant & Flawed
- By Douglas C. Bates on 05-15-12
By: Charles Murray
-
The Nordic Theory of Everything
- In Search of a Better Life
- By: Anu Partanen
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,013
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 873
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 867
Moving to America in 2008, Finnish journalist Anu Partanen quickly went from confident, successful professional to wary, self-doubting mess. She found that navigating the basics of everyday life - from buying a cell phone and filing taxes to education and childcare - was much more complicated and stressful than anything she encountered in her homeland. At first she attributed her crippling anxiety to the difficulty of adapting to a freewheeling new culture. But as she got to know Americans better, she discovered they shared her deep apprehension.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A non-radical perspective on two societies
- By kwdayboise (Kim Day) on 06-20-17
By: Anu Partanen
-
Brainwashed
- Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority
- By: Tom Burrell
- Narrated by: Sylvester Brown Jr.
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 120
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 98
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 99
"Black people are not dark-skinned white people", says advertising visionary Tom Burrell. In fact, they are much more. They are survivors of the Middle Passage and centuries of humiliation and deprivation, who have excelled against the odds, constantly making a way out of "No way!" At this pivotal point in history, the idea of Black inferiority should have had a "Going-Out-of-Business Sale." After all, Barack Obama reached America's Promised Land. Yet, as Brainwashed testifies, too many in Black America are still wandering in the wilderness.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Guidance against the odds.
- By Henry Lee Faulkner on 01-05-21
By: Tom Burrell
-
All the Single Ladies
- Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation
- By: Rebecca Traister
- Narrated by: Candace Thaxton, Rebecca Traister - introduction
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,129
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 987
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 979
In a provocative, groundbreaking work, National Magazine Award finalist Rebecca Traister, "the most brilliant voice on feminism in this country" (Anne Lamott), traces the history of unmarried women in America who, through social, political, and economic means, have radically shaped our nation.
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3 out of 5 stars
-
Excellent book, destroyed by narration
- By Theresa Holleran on 03-06-16
By: Rebecca Traister
-
A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves
- One Family and Migration in the 21st Century
- By: Jason DeParle
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 123
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 101
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 100
When Jason DeParle moved into the Manila slums with Tita Comodas and her family three decades ago, he never imagined his reporting on them would span three generations and turn into the defining chronicle of a new age - the age of global migration. In a monumental book that gives new meaning to "immersion journalism", DeParle paints an intimate portrait of an unforgettable family as they endure years of sacrifice and separation, willing themselves out of shantytown poverty into a new global middle class.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Excellent and Important
- By Booklover on 03-22-20
By: Jason DeParle
-
Angry White Men
- American Masculinity at the End of an Era
- By: Michael Kimmel
- Narrated by: Aaron Williamson
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 92
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 78
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 78
One of the enduring legacies of the 2012 Presidential campaign was the demise of the white American male voter as a dominant force in the political landscape. On election night, after Obama was announced the winner, a distressed Bill O'Reilly lamented that he didn't live in "a traditional America anymore". He was joined by others who bellowed their grief on the talk radio airwaves, the traditional redoubt of angry white men. Why were they so angry?
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4 out of 5 stars
-
Interesting book; Wrong reader
- By Carolina A. Miranda on 05-02-18
By: Michael Kimmel
-
One Child
- The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment
- By: Mei Fong
- Narrated by: Janet Song
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 143
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 127
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 127
When Communist Party leaders adopted the one-child policy in 1980, they hoped curbing birthrates would help lift China's poorest and increase the country's global stature. But at what cost? Now, as China closes the book on the policy after more than three decades, it faces a population grown too old and too male, with a vastly diminished supply of young workers. Mei Fong has spent years documenting the policy's repercussions on every sector of Chinese society.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Best Book Club Discussion Ever!!
- By Rachael W. Schettenhelm on 05-01-17
By: Mei Fong
-
Disintegration
- The Splintering of Black America
- By: Eugene Robinson
- Narrated by: Alan Bomar Jones
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 121
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 103
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 101
The African American population in the United States has always been seen as a single entity: a "Black America" with unified interests and needs. In his groundbreaking book Disintegration, longtime Washington Post journalist Eugene Robinson argues that, through decades of desegregation, affirmative action, and immigration, the concept of Black America has shattered.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Written for Popular Consumption
- By Catherine S. Read on 06-03-11
By: Eugene Robinson
-
No Stopping Us Now
- The Adventures of Older Women in American History
- By: Gail Collins
- Narrated by: Gail Collins, Tanya Eby
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 32
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 31
In her lively social history of American women and aging, acclaimed New York Times columnist Gail Collins illustrates the ways in which age is an arbitrary concept that has swung back and forth over the centuries. From Plymouth Rock (when a woman was considered marriageable if "civil and under fifty years of age"), to a few generations later, when they were quietly retired to elderdom once they had passed the optimum age for reproduction, to recent decades, American attitudes towards age have been a moving target.
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4 out of 5 stars
-
amazing
- By Elaine Sharon Davis on 06-09-20
By: Gail Collins
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What listeners say about Had I Known
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
-
Story5 out of 5 stars
- Mapache
- 06-01-24
So funny and prescient
Her satire is beyond compare, had me in stitches, and many of the older pieces are quite prescient in retrospect and aren’t available anywhere on the internet. I know, because I kept trying to find the individual articles to send to friends
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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
- W. Carillion
- 10-13-24
Brilliant, of course
Such a genius. Wealth of empathy and the understanding of the everyday struggles. Many topics are covered. All important.
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