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The Museum of Other People
- From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions
- Narrated by: Marisa Calin
- Length: 12 hrs and 12 mins
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Publisher's summary
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK • From one of the world’s most distinguished anthropologists, an important and timely work of cultural history that looks at the origins and much debated future of anthropology museums
“A provocative look at questions of ethnography, ownership and restitution . . . the argument [Kuper] makes in The Museum of Other People is important precisely because just about no one else is making it. He asks the questions that others are too shy to pose. . . . Required reading.”–Financial Times (UK)
In this deeply researched, immersive history, Adam Kuper tells the story of how foreign and prehistoric peoples and cultures were represented in Western museums of anthropology. Originally created as colonial enterprises, their halls were populated by displays of plundered art, artifacts, dioramas, bones, and relics. Kuper reveals the politics and struggles of trying to build these museums in Germany, France, and England in the mid-19th century, and the dramatic encounters between the very colorful and eccentric collectors, curators, political figures, and high members of the church who founded them. He also details the creation of contemporary museums and exhibitions, including the Smithsonian, the Harvard’s Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, and the famous 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago which was inspired by the Paris World Fair of 1889.
Despite the widespread popularity and cultural importance of these institutions, there also lies a murky legacy of imperialism, colonialism, and scientific racism in their creation. Kuper tackles difficult questions of repatriation and justice, and how best to ensure that the future of these museums is an ethical, appreciative one that promotes learning and cultural exchange.
A stunning, unique, accessible work based on a lifetime of research, The Museum of Other People reckons with the painfully fraught history of museums of natural history, and how curators, anthropologists, and museumgoers alike can move forward alongside these time-honored institutions.
Cover photograph: Noire et Blanche, 1926, by Man Ray © Man Ray 2015 Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2023. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY
Critic reviews
“A nuanced, informative look at the history, development, and future of museums of anthropology and ethnology. . . . This highly recommended work . . . challenges preconceptions and encourages readers to think critically about this complex and important issue.”—Library Journal, starred review
“Authoritative . . . [A] vigorous examination of ethnography and anthropology museums. . . . Kuper’s deeply researched history. . . . advocates for cosmopolitan museums that can transcend ‘ethnic and national identities’ and ‘challenge boundaries.’ A vibrant cultural history.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Kuper’s case is strong and his voice—erudite and elegiac—commands respect as the summation of a long and honourable life in the service of anthropology.”—Times Literary Supplement (UK)
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The Library
- A Fragile History
- By: Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen
- Narrated by: Sean Barrett
- Length: 15 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes, or filled with bean bags and children’s drawings - the history of the library is rich, varied, and stuffed full of incident.
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Stays on point
- By Alex on 04-29-23
By: Andrew Pettegree, and others
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The Beloved Vision
- A History of Nineteenth Century Music
- By: Stephen Walsh
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Beloved Vision links the music history of this singular epoch to the ideas that lay behind Romanticism in all its manifestations. In this account, we come to understand the phase in music history that has become the mainstay of the twentieth and twenty-first century concert and operatic repertoire.
By: Stephen Walsh
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Muse of Fire
- World War I as Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets
- By: Michael Korda
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
With Muse of Fire, Michael Korda, the bestselling author of Alone and Hero, takes a novel approach to World War I by telling its history through the lives of the soldier-poets whose verses memorialize the war's unimaginable horrors. He begins with Rupert Brooke and the halcyon days before violence engulfed his generation—destroying the self-contented world of Edwardian England—and ends with the tragic death of Wilfred Owen, killed only days before the armistice brought an end to a war that took over 25,000,000 lives.
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Very Compelling
- By Fred G on 05-20-24
By: Michael Korda
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Joseph Smith's Gold Plates
- A Cultural History
- By: Richard Lyman Bushman
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
According to Joseph Smith, in September of 1823, an angel appeared to him and directed him to a hill near his home. Buried there, Smith found a box containing a stack of thin metal sheets, gold in color and covered with what appeared to be ancient engravings. Exactly four years later, the angel instructed Smith to translate the plates into English. When the text was published, a new religion was born.
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An unexpectedly comprehensive study of the mystery and marvel of the vehicle that led to the creation of Mormonism.
- By Bob F on 06-05-24
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Freeman's Challenge
- The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit
- By: Robin Bernstein
- Narrated by: Shamaan Casey
- Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the early nineteenth century, as slavery gradually ended in the North, a village in New York State invented a new form of unfreedom: the profit-driven prison. Uniting incarceration and capitalism, the village of Auburn built a prison that enclosed industrial factories. There, “slaves of the state” were leased to private companies. The prisoners earned no wages, yet they manufactured furniture, animal harnesses, carpets, and combs, which consumers bought throughout the North. Then one young man challenged the system.
By: Robin Bernstein
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Triumph of the Yuppies
- America, the Eighties, and the Creation of an Unequal Nation
- By: Tom McGrath
- Narrated by: Stacy Carolan
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
By the time their obituary was being written in the late 1980s, Yuppies—the elite, uber‑educated faction of the Baby Boom generation—had become a cultural punchline. But amidst the Yuppies' preoccupation with money, work, and the latest status symbols, something serious was happening, too, something that continues to have profound ramifications on American culture four decades later.
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Superficial social analysis of baby boomers
- By Antonia on 07-07-24
By: Tom McGrath
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Abolitionist Intimacies
- By: El Jones
- Narrated by: Aiza Ntibarikure
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Abolitionist Intimacies, El Jones examines the movement to abolish prisons through the Black feminist principles of care and collectivity. Understanding the history of prisons in Canada in their relationship to settler colonialism and anti-Black racism, Jones observes how practices of intimacy become imbued with state violence at carceral sites including prisons, policing and borders, as well as through purported care institutions such as hospitals and social work.
By: El Jones
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There Was Nothing You Could Do
- Bruce Springsteen's “Born in the U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland
- By: Steven Hyden
- Narrated by: Steven Hyden
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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On June 4, 1984, Columbia Records issued what would become one of the best-selling and most impactful rock albums of all time. An instant classic, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. would prove itself to be a landmark not only for the man who made it, but rock music in general, and even the larger American culture over the next 40 years.
By: Steven Hyden
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Nostalgia
- A History of a Dangerous Emotion
- By: Agnes Arnold-Forster
- Narrated by: Agnes Arnold-Forster
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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In Nostalgia: A History of a Dangerous Emotion, Agnes Arnold-Forster blends neuroscience and psychology with the history of medicine and emotions to explore the evolution of nostalgia from its first identification in seventeenth-century Switzerland (when it was held to be an illness that could, quite literally, kill you) to the present day (when it is co-opted by advertising agencies and politicians alike to sell us goods and policies).
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The Jews of Summer
- Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America
- By: Sandra Fox
- Narrated by: Sharon Freedman
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Focusing on the lived experience of campers and camp counselors, The Jews of Summer demonstrates how a cultural crisis birthed a rite of passage that remains a significant influence in American Jewish life.
By: Sandra Fox
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Finis Britanniae
- A Military History of Late Roman Britain and the Saxon Conquest
- By: Murray Dahm
- Narrated by: Rupert Bush
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The end of Roman Britain and the arrival of the invading Saxons forms part of the most disruptive period in Britain's history. Centuries of relative stability as a Roman province gave way to an age of conquest and destruction. It is a period which is difficult to comprehend, coming at the end of the Roman era and in the pre-dawn of the Medieval. It is a Dark Age, both in terms of our apparent lack of source material and in our understanding of events.
By: Murray Dahm