NEW YORKER Executive Editor Dorothy Wickenden re-creates from rediscovered correspondence and her own investigation the tumultuous and enriching westward journey of her grandmother, Dorothy Woodruff, and her best friend, Rosamond Underwood. Both were Smith College graduates who in 1916 abandoned lives of luxury in Auburn, New York, to teach in Elkhead, Colorado, a desolate mountain settlement. Margaret Nichols’s conversational delivery depicts what the friends referred to as the best year of their lives. Nichols’s voice gets down to the raw core of life in the harsh West and ably interprets the women's enthusiastic interactions with their students. Her precise description of western development under President Woodrow Wilson alongside Wickenden’s self-narrated prologue and epilogue makes this historical audio worth exploring.
Pub Date: July 1, 2011
Duration: 10 hrs
DD ISBN: 9781442347489
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
James Michener tells the real stories behind the man and his books. The recording is read with skill and consistency although the reader does little to enhance the robust, larger-than-life incidents related in the book. Due to the first-person narrative format, there is no opportunity for the narrator to change his voice. This makes some chapters monotonous as they go on and on in the typical Michener style. The listener may also become confused because the stories are not told chronologically. This is not a great choice for the audio format, but Michener fans may stick with it to the end.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 22 hrs
Publisher: Books on Tape
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
In a quest for a sense of inner contentment and self-worth, Gloria Steinem brings the reader on a journey of investigation and discovery. Steinem reads the text herself in a straightforward and friendly, but not intimate, presentation which is so easy to listen to it invites repetition--thus ensuring the painless relearning of the lessons of the book. It's difficult to tell from the reading that this audiobook is abridged; each section can stand alone. Nonetheless, the listener wished the book were unabridged. Steinem left me wanting to learn more.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 3 hrs
Publisher: Dove Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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