To listeners' good fortune, author Edward Ball narrates as well as many top professionals. His delivery of this fascinating volume, although abridged, offers rewards that the printed version does not. Ball belongs to Southern gentility, a family ensconced in South Carolina since colonial times and once slave-owning plantation farmers. Driven partly by morbid fascination, he traces the descendants of his family's slaves, some of whom turn out to be kin. His account of his search and discoveries is part history, part detective story focusing on the human consequences of "the peculiar institution." All this another reader could have given us with equal clarity and aplomb, except for one thing. In his otherwise Apollonian delivery, Ball gives us the tone of voice, the expressive cadences of his interviewees, thus rendering subtleties of attitude he alone can give us authoritatively--and only in the telling, not the writing. Director Karen Fillman deserves kudos, too, for helping her reader do justice to this true tale with intimacy and taste.
Pub Date: Jan. 22, 1998
Duration: 5 hrs
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
Carol Matthau epitomizes a glamour and lifestyle not associated with the 1990's. Here is a life of privilege, tragedy and worry about what friends would think of her new frock or lover. Matthau possesses a voice and delivery that simply could not be improved on. In her coy whisper, she tells compelling stories involving everyone from William Saroyan (husband #1) and Truman Capote to Carson McCullers, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Walter Matthau (husband #2). This excellent audio presentation will leave you wanting to read the entire book to discover what juicy tidbits were left out.
Pub Date: N/A
Duration: 3 hrs
Publisher: The Publishing Mills
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
More than 35 hours long, this comprehensive biography of Random House founder Bennett Cerf is equal to a workweek for many listeners. Cerf nurtured a roster of the 20th century's most consequential authors and was nationally known as a television panelist. His story is a fascinating panorama of American arts and society over 50 years, scrupulously researched but overburdened and slow. Listeners who've never heard of William Styron or Dorothy Kilgallen or the Famous Writers School will be fully educated here. Narrator Lisa Flanagan keeps a steady, unfussy pace that carries her listeners over the longueurs. But hers is a channel swim rather than a leisurely stroll through Central Park. This paunchy biography needed a stronger editorial hand.
Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
Duration: 35 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9798217346448
Publisher: Random House Audio
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
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