by James Carroll ; read by Mel Foster ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2011
James Carroll, a former Catholic priest, has written a history of the city of Jerusalem. In presenting its past, James offers reasons that this city of old is so important to so many today. Mel Foster narrates as well as can be expected. The text is dry at times, and the listener can get lost in the author’s didacticism. Foster certainly improves the work as his well-paced voice resonates with authority. Listeners will be rewarded if they persevere as the production is uneven—sometimes driven by its information, sometimes by its narrator.
Pub Date: March 16, 2011
Duration: 17 hrs
Publisher: Tantor Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2026
by Bruce Nichols ; read by Kevin R. Free ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 2026
Listeners will find much worth discovering in the lives of these vanguards of American intellectual life.
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Kevin R. Free’s voice is the perfect vehicle for this fascinating portrait of a remarkable group of artists, philosophers, abolitionists, and social reformers who all happened to live in Concord, Massachusetts in the 19th century. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott and her father, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and many others called themselves transcendentalists and became the first truly American philosophical movement. With his genial delivery, Free is up to the task of narrating this complicated account of many intersecting lives; his inflections add character to the correspondence and inject life into the often formal writings the Circle left behind.
Listeners will find much worth discovering in the lives of these vanguards of American intellectual life.Pub Date: April 28, 2026
Duration: 9 hrs, 53 mins
DD ISBN: 9781668132777
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
by Benjamin Hale ; read by Benjamin Hale ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2026
An interesting Ozark history that doesn’t quite cohere.
Author Hale presents the case of his young cousin Haley's disappearance on Cave Mountain in 2001 and the ensuing search and rescue operation, the largest in Arkansas history. Hale connects this with the murder of 3-year-old Bethany by a small and isolated religious sect decades earlier on the same mountain. Narrating these two stories in a low, slightly gruff tone, Hale weaves together family anecdotes, Ozark lore, local and broader history, and Christian theology. While the two cases are intriguing, the work lacks focus and contains extraneous details.
An interesting Ozark history that doesn’t quite cohere.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
Duration: 11 hrs, 9 mins
DD ISBN: 9780063398153
Publisher: Harper Audio
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2026
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