Lady Icarus
Balloonomania and the Brief, Bold Life of Sophie Blanchard
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Lady Icarus
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Narrated by:
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Suzanne Toren
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By:
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Deborah Noyes
About this listen
A riveting middle-grade biography about Sophie Blanchard, the first woman to work as a professional aeronaut in France in the late 1700s, set against the thrilling backdrop of early flight.
Before Amelia Earhart, there was Sophie Blanchard, the first woman to earn her living in the air. While no one knows the fate of Earhart, a terrified crowd of thousands looked on as French aeronaut Sophie Blanchard met her end in a tragic blaze of glory over the streets of Paris in 1819.
But first, Blanchard made nearly 70 spectacular flights, survived a revolution, and become a court favorite of the emperor Napoleon (who gave her the title, "Aeronaut of the Official Festivals") and later of the King of France. Set against the backdrop of the history of flight, watch as Balloonmania - a phenomenon that riveted all of Europe - took hold and inspired a great many artists authors, and dreamers.
This lively biography introduces a frightened, nervous girl who became a fearless legend in the skies.
©2022 Deborah Noyes (P)2022 Listening LibraryListeners also enjoyed...
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By: Thomas Kessner
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Eiffel's Tower
- And the World's Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris
- By: Dr. Jill Jonnes
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 142
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4 out of 5 stars 88
Reminiscent of Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, this fascinating account from acclaimed author Jill Jonnes recaptures the 1889 Paris World's Fair. Casting vehement criticism aside, Gustave Eiffel built his tower to be the fair's centerpiece. Perched at the top all summer, he hosted a string of dignitaries.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Just read the first half
- By Julie W. Capell on 11-08-09
By: Dr. Jill Jonnes
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Lost Kingdom
- Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure
- By: Julia Flynn Siler
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 173
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 153
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Story4 out of 5 stars 150
A thriving monarchy had ruled over Hawaii for generations. Taro fields and fish ponds had long sustained native Hawaiians but sugar plantations had been gradually subsuming them. This fractured, vulnerable Hawaii was the country that Queen Lili‘uokalani, or Lili‘u, inherited when she came to power at the end of the nineteenth century.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating story, sparsely told
- By Great Tutu Kona on 01-17-12
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Race to Hawaii
- By: Jason Ryan
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 188
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 167
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 165
Almost a century ago, the first flights to Hawaii required a nerve-racking and uncertain 26-hour journey to isolated and elusive islands located in the middle of the world's largest ocean. Pilots prayed they would encounter land after flying a full day and night across 2,400 miles of the open Pacific. Race to Hawaii chronicles the thrilling first flights to Hawaii in the 1920s, during the Golden Age of Aviation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Calm winds and Clear Skies
- By Anonymous User on 04-05-22
By: Jason Ryan
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When Hitler Took Cocaine and Lenin Lost His Brain
- History's Unknown Chapters
- By: Giles Milton
- Narrated by: Giles Milton
- Length: 4 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 323
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 280
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Story4 out of 5 stars 278
The first installment in Giles Milton's outrageously entertaining series, History's Unknown Chapters: colorful and accessible, intelligent and illuminating, Milton shows his customary historical flair as he delves into the little-known stories from the past. There's the cook aboard the Titanic, who pickled himself with whiskey and survived in the icy seas where most everyone else died. There's the man who survived the atomic bomb in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And there's many, many more.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Quite entertaining
- By Gunther on 08-05-16
By: Giles Milton
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Josephine
- By: Carolly Erickson
- Narrated by: S. Patricia Bailey
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 706
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 572
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 571
Josephine's life story was as turbulent as the age, an era of revolution and social upheaval, of the guillotine and of frenzied hedonism. With telling psychological depth and compelling literary grace, Carolly Erickson brings the complex, charming, ever resilient Josephine to life in this memorable portrait, one that carries the reader from the sensual richness of her childhood in the tropics to her final lonely days at Malmaison.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Engaging
- By DPM on 03-07-08
By: Carolly Erickson
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Freedom at Midnight
- By: Dominique Lapierre, Larry Collins
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 22 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 116
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 99
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 97
This is the story of the eclipse of the British Raj and the birth of an independent India and Pakistan. The fabled India of the maharajas, with their palaces and harems, their gold-caparisoned elephants and their glittering private armies—the India of Kipling’s legendary army, with its young British officers commanding troops of a dozen races, religions, and castes—the India of tiger hunts and pigsticking.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Awful - Need for diversity
- By RNS on 02-01-20
By: Dominique Lapierre, and others
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My Thoughts Be Bloody
- The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth
- By: Nora Titone, Doris Kearns Goodwin - introduction/notes
- Narrated by: John B. Lloyd
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 250
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 199
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 198
My Thoughts Be Bloody, a sweeping family saga, revives an extraordinary figure whose name has been missing, until now, from the story of President Lincoln's death. Edwin Booth, John Wilkes's older brother by four years, was in his day the biggest star of the American stage. Without an account of Edwin Booth, author Nora Titone argues, the real story of Lincoln's assassin has never been told.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful!
- By Tad Davis on 11-30-10
By: Nora Titone, and others
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Lords of the Horizons
- A History of the Ottoman Empire
- By: Jason Goodwin
- Narrated by: Grahame Edwards
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 63
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4 out of 5 stars 57
The Ottoman Empire has long exerted a strong pull on Western minds and hearts. For over 600 years the empire swelled and declined, rising from a dusty fiefdom in the foothills of Anatolia to a power which ruled over the Danube and the Euphrates with the richest court in Europe. But its decline was prodigious, protracted and total.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good introduction to the Ottomans, bad narration
- By Skeptical on 06-06-18
By: Jason Goodwin
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The Wright Brothers
- By: David McCullough
- Narrated by: David McCullough
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 13,982
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 12,474
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 12,436
Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize David McCullough tells the dramatic story behind the story about the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly: Wilbur and Orville Wright.
On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur and Orville Wright's Wright Flyer became the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard. The Age of Flight had begun. How did they do it? And why?
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1 out of 5 stars
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Disappointing
- By Sara on 07-10-16
By: David McCullough
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When Churchill Slaughtered Sheep and Stalin Robbed a Bank
- History's Unknown Chapters
- By: Giles Milton
- Narrated by: Giles Milton
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 122
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 112
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 111
In When Churchill Slaughtered Sheep and Stalin Robbed a Bank, the second installment in his outrageously entertaining series, History's Unknown Chapters, Giles Milton shows his customary historical flair as he delves into the little-known stories from history, like when Stalin was actually assassinated with poison by one of his inner circle; the Russian scientist, dubbed the "Red Frankenstein", who attempted to produce a human-ape hybrid through ethically dubious means; and much more.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Great Trivia Source
- By Jean on 11-14-16
By: Giles Milton
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To Conquer the Air
- The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight
- By: James Tobin
- Narrated by: Boyd Gaines
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
To Conquer the Air is a hero's tale of overcoming obstacles within and without that plumbs the depths of creativity and character. With a historian's accuracy and a novelist's eye, Tobin has captured the interplay of remarkable personalities at an extraordinary moment in our history. In the centennial year of human flight, To Conquer the Air is itself a heroic achievement.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A great story
- By Jere on 05-30-03
By: James Tobin
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Fly Girls
- How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History
- By: Keith O'Brien
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,311
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,157
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,154
Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi-day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Fly Girls recounts how a cadre of women banded together to break the original glass ceiling: the entrenched prejudice that conspired to keep them out of the sky.
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5 out of 5 stars
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For women, and dads
- By Cecilia Avanelle on 08-08-18
By: Keith O'Brien
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The Immortal Irishman
- The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero
- By: Timothy Egan
- Narrated by: Gerard Doyle
- Length: 14 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,418
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,082
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,063
The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York - the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Yes, but....
- By Dale and Carol on 04-01-16
By: Timothy Egan
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Mirage
- Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt
- By: Nina Burleigh
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4 out of 5 stars 47
Little more than 200 years ago, only the most reckless or eccentric Europeans had dared traverse the unmapped territory of the modern-day Middle East. Its history and peoples were the subject of much myth and speculation: and no region aroused greater interest than Egypt.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A lesson in history
- By —- on 01-05-10
By: Nina Burleigh
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Heaven’s Ditch
- God, Gold, and Murder on the Erie Canal
- By: Jack Kelly
- Narrated by: Andrew Reilly
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 61
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4 out of 5 stars 49
The technological marvel of its age, the Erie Canal grew out of a sudden fit of inspiration. Proponents didn't just dream; they built a 360-mile waterway entirely by hand and largely through wilderness. As excitement crackled down its length, the canal became the scene of the most striking outburst of imagination in American history. Zealots invented new religions and new modes of living. The Erie Canal made New York the financial capital of America and brought the modern world crashing into the frontier.
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5 out of 5 stars
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An under told story of the United States.
- By JayHey on 08-28-16
By: Jack Kelly
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The Millionaires' Unit
- By: Marc Wortman
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 45
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 28
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
The Millionaires' Unit is the story of a gilded generation of young men from the zenith of privilege: a Rockerfeller; the son of the head of the Union Pacific Railroad; several who counted friends and relatives among presidents and statesmen of the day. They had it all and, remarkably by modern standards, they were prepared to risk it all to fight a distant war in France.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Hard story to get into.
- By Craig Walker on 01-14-15
By: Marc Wortman