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The Missing Thread
- A Women's History of the Ancient World
- Narrated by: Daisy Dunn, Jenny Funnell
- Length: 16 hrs
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Publisher's summary
A dazzlingly ambitious history of the ancient world that places women at the center—from Cleopatra to Boudica, Sappho to Fulvia, and countless other artists, writers, leaders, and creators of history
Around four thousand years ago, the mysterious Minoans sculpted statues of topless women with snakes slithering on their arms. Over one thousand years later, Sappho wrote great poems of longing and desire. For classicist Daisy Dunn, these women—whether they were simply sitting at their looms at home or participating in the highest echelons of power—were up to something much more interesting than other histories would lead us to believe. Together, these women helped to make antiquity as we know it.
In this monumental work, Dunn reconceives our understanding of the ancient world by emphasizing women's roles within it. The Missing Thread never relegates women to the sidelines and is populated with well-known names such as Cleopatra and Agrippina, as well as the likes of Achaemenid consort Atossa and Olympias, a force in Macedon. Spanning three thousand years, the story moves from Minoan Crete to Mycenaean Greece, from Lesbos to Asia Minor, from the Persian Empire to the royal court of Macedonia, and concludes with Rome and its growing empire. The women of antiquity are undeniably woven throughout the fabric of history, and in The Missing Thread they finally take center stage.
Critic reviews
“A brilliant concept, executed with enviable elegance. People will go to college to study the ancient world because of this book. Brava, Daisy Dunn!”—Lucy Worsley, author of Agatha Christie
“I loved this radical new take on the familiar stories of the ancient world we all think we know but clearly only know the half. Dunn succeeds magnificently not in erasing men but in bringing out of the shadows some extraordinary women and giving them much more than merely reflected glory. The book sparkles with fresh ideas.”―Anne Sebba, author of Ethel Rosenberg
“Daisy Dunn is the real deal. No thread is left hanging, let alone missing, in her closely woven tapestry of ancient women's history. Brilliantly conceived and written, The Missing Thread unerringly fingers the (chiefly male) ancients' inability to understand women and view them in the round.”―Professor Paul Cartledge, University of Cambridge, author of The Spartans
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Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party
- How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World
- By: Edward Dolnick
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the first half of the 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; and moves to a brilliant, eccentric geologist named William Buckland.
By: Edward Dolnick
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Catullus' Bedspread
- The Life of Rome's Most Erotic Poet
- By: Daisy Dunn
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Born to one of Verona's leading families, Catullus spent most of his young adulthood in Rome, mingling with the likes of Caesar and Cicero and chronicling his life through his poetry. Famed for his lyrical and subversive voice, his poems about his friends were jocular, often obscenely funny, while those who crossed him found themselves skewered in raunchy verse, sudden objects of hilarity and ridicule. These bawdy poems were disseminated widely throughout Rome.
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Wonderful exciting historical
- By Architecto on 03-19-23
By: Daisy Dunn
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Lessons in Liberty
- Thirty Rules for Living from Ten Extraordinary Americans
- By: Jeremy S. Adams
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 7 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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America is full of inspiring heroes. Greatness is not a chance—it is a choice. George Washington didn’t simply wake up as one of the greatest men in human history. His greatness was the sum of a lifetime of difficult and consequential choices. In Lessons in Liberty, Jeremy S. Adams distills inspiring advice from the lives of extraordinary Americans from our past.
By: Jeremy S. Adams
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The Incorruptibles
- A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld
- By: Dan Slater
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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In the early 1900s, prior to World War I, New York City was a vortex of vice and corruption. On the Lower East Side, then the most crowded ghetto on earth, Eastern European Jews formed a dense web of crime syndicates. Gangs of horse poisoners and casino owners, pimps and prostitutes, thieves and thugs, jockeyed for dominance while their family members and neighbors toiled in the unregulated garment industry. But when the notorious murder of a gambler attracted global attention, a coterie of affluent German-Jewish uptowners decided to take matters into their own hands.
By: Dan Slater
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America's Deadliest Election
- The Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History
- By: Dana Bash, David Fisher
- Narrated by: Dana Bash
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The election of 1872 was the most contentious in American history. After both parties complained of corruption, neither candidate would concede, two governors claimed office and chaos erupted. Rival newspapers engaged in a bitter war of words, politicians plotted to overthrow the government and their supporters fought in the streets and attempted assassinations. The entire country watched in grim fascination as the wounds of the Civil War were ripped open and the promise of President Grant’s Reconstruction faltered in the face of violent resistance and the birth of the Ku Klux Klan.
By: Dana Bash, and others
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Silencing the Past
- Power and the Production of History
- By: Michel-Rolph Trouillot
- Narrated by: Shaun Scott
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Placing the West's failure to acknowledge the most successful slave revolt in history alongside denials of the Holocaust and the debate over the Alamo, Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers a stunning meditation on how power operates in the making and recording of history.
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How to Start a War
- The Rise of Extremism, the Fall of Democracy, and the Lead Up to World War II
- By: Michael Trapani
- Narrated by: Michael Trapani
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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How to Start a War is unlike any audiobook you’ve ever listened to. Adapted from the popular podcast miniseries of the same name, Michael Trapani immerses listeners in the dramatic events that led to the crime of the century – World War II and the Holocaust – documenting the actions of the criminals who carried it out. Listeners will feel like they are in the room as some of history’s most villainous characters plot to overthrow democracy, impose tyranny, and outmaneuver those who had the power to stop them.
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Captivating Don’t miss this
- By Donna on 05-01-24
By: Michael Trapani
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Massacre in the Clouds
- An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History
- By: Kim A. Wagner
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In March 1906, American soldiers on the island of Jolo in the southern Philippines surrounded and killed 1000 local men, women, and children, known as Moros, on top of an extinct volcano. The so-called ‘Battle of Bud Dajo’ was hailed as a triumph over an implacable band of dangerous savages, a “brilliant feat of arms” according to President Theodore Roosevelt. Some contemporaries, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Mark Twain, saw the massacre for what it was, but they were the exception and the U.S. military authorities successfully managed to bury the story.
By: Kim A. Wagner
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Autocracy, Inc.
- The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Anne Applebaum
- Length: 7 hrs
- Unabridged
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From the Pulitzer-prize winning, New York Times bestselling author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them.
By: Anne Applebaum
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The Infernal Machine
- A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective
- By: Steven Johnson
- Narrated by: Steven Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Steven Johnson’s engrossing account of the epic struggle between the anarchist movement and the emerging surveillance state stretches around the world and between two centuries—from Alfred Nobel’s invention of dynamite and the assassination of Czar Alexander II to New York City in the shadow of World War I.
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Very enjoyable and very informative
- By FocusOnWildlife on 06-08-24
By: Steven Johnson
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