Narrator Rosalyn Coleman Williams delivers this oral history of New York City's ACT UP movement without theatricality. Author Sarah Schulman helped to collect transcripts from the original members, which were recorded in various formats as they recounted how they performed in-your-face protests that revealed gross inequities in law, medicine, and politics in the late '80s and early '90s as AIDS ravaged multiple demographics. Interviewees include women of color, the formerly incarcerated, Latinx, white working-class activists, and those more well known, like Larry Kramer. Schulman delivers her preface in an engaging voice before Williams, setting a steady pace, takes up the interwoven quotations and narrative frames Schulman has crafted. Her pacing begins to flag toward the end, but by then we're hooked.
Pub Date: May 18, 2021
Duration: 27 hrs, 30 mins
DD ISBN: 9781250804761
Publisher: Macmillan 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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