-
The 42nd Parallel
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $31.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
1919
- By: John Dos Passos
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 16 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With 1919, the second volume of his U.S.A. trilogy, John Dos Passos continues his "vigorous and sweeping panorama of 20th-century America" ( Forum), lauded on publication of the first volume not only for its scope but also for its groundbreaking style. The novel opens to find America and the world at war, and Dos Passos's characters, many of whom we met in the first volume, are thrown into the snarl.
-
-
Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in story form
- By HIYBRID on 02-21-13
By: John Dos Passos
-
Manhattan Transfer
- By: John Dos Passos
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Considered by many to be John Dos Passos' greatest work, Manhattan Transfer is an "expressionistic picture of New York" (New York Times) in the 1920s that reveals the lives of wealthy power brokers and struggling immigrants alike. From 14th Street to the Bowery, Delmonico's to the underbelly of the city waterfront, Dos Passos chronicles the lives of characters struggling to become a part of modernity before they are destroyed by it.
-
-
Classic
- By Anonymous User on 03-18-20
By: John Dos Passos
-
The Adventures of Augie March
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 22 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Augie is a poor but exuberant boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression. While his friends all settle into chosen professions, Augie demands a special destiny. He tests out a wild succession of occupations, proudly rejecting each as too limiting - until he tangles with the glamorous perfectionist Thea.
-
-
Wonderful story, wonderful reader
- By Sarah C on 02-07-11
By: Saul Bellow
-
All the King's Men
- By: Robert Penn Warren
- Narrated by: Michael Emerson
- Length: 20 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The fictionalized account of Louisiana's colorful and notorious governor, Huey Pierce Long, All the King's Men follows the startling rise and fall of Willie Stark, a country lawyer in the Deep South of the 1930s. Beset by political enemies, Stark seeks aid from his right-hand man Jack Burden, who will bear witness to the cataclysmic unfolding of this very American tragedy.
-
-
Beautifully presented
- By Cheimon on 10-12-08
-
The Naked and the Dead
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: John Buffalo Mailer
- Length: 26 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.
-
-
John Buffalo Mailer narrates his father's book
- By J. Larson on 08-11-16
By: Norman Mailer
-
An American Tragedy
- By: Theodore Dreiser
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 34 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An American Tragedy is the story of Clyde Griffiths, who spends his life in the desperate pursuit of success. On a deeper, more profound level, it is the masterful portrayal of the society whose values both shape Clyde's ambitions and seal his fate; it is an unsurpassed depiction of the harsh realities of American life and of the dark side of the American dream.
-
-
Creeping, Creepy Ambition
- By W Perry Hall on 03-05-17
By: Theodore Dreiser
-
1919
- By: John Dos Passos
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 16 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With 1919, the second volume of his U.S.A. trilogy, John Dos Passos continues his "vigorous and sweeping panorama of 20th-century America" ( Forum), lauded on publication of the first volume not only for its scope but also for its groundbreaking style. The novel opens to find America and the world at war, and Dos Passos's characters, many of whom we met in the first volume, are thrown into the snarl.
-
-
Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in story form
- By HIYBRID on 02-21-13
By: John Dos Passos
-
Manhattan Transfer
- By: John Dos Passos
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Considered by many to be John Dos Passos' greatest work, Manhattan Transfer is an "expressionistic picture of New York" (New York Times) in the 1920s that reveals the lives of wealthy power brokers and struggling immigrants alike. From 14th Street to the Bowery, Delmonico's to the underbelly of the city waterfront, Dos Passos chronicles the lives of characters struggling to become a part of modernity before they are destroyed by it.
-
-
Classic
- By Anonymous User on 03-18-20
By: John Dos Passos
-
The Adventures of Augie March
- By: Saul Bellow
- Narrated by: Tom Parker
- Length: 22 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Augie is a poor but exuberant boy growing up in Chicago during the Depression. While his friends all settle into chosen professions, Augie demands a special destiny. He tests out a wild succession of occupations, proudly rejecting each as too limiting - until he tangles with the glamorous perfectionist Thea.
-
-
Wonderful story, wonderful reader
- By Sarah C on 02-07-11
By: Saul Bellow
-
All the King's Men
- By: Robert Penn Warren
- Narrated by: Michael Emerson
- Length: 20 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The fictionalized account of Louisiana's colorful and notorious governor, Huey Pierce Long, All the King's Men follows the startling rise and fall of Willie Stark, a country lawyer in the Deep South of the 1930s. Beset by political enemies, Stark seeks aid from his right-hand man Jack Burden, who will bear witness to the cataclysmic unfolding of this very American tragedy.
-
-
Beautifully presented
- By Cheimon on 10-12-08
-
The Naked and the Dead
- By: Norman Mailer
- Narrated by: John Buffalo Mailer
- Length: 26 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War, The Naked and the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer.
-
-
John Buffalo Mailer narrates his father's book
- By J. Larson on 08-11-16
By: Norman Mailer
-
An American Tragedy
- By: Theodore Dreiser
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 34 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An American Tragedy is the story of Clyde Griffiths, who spends his life in the desperate pursuit of success. On a deeper, more profound level, it is the masterful portrayal of the society whose values both shape Clyde's ambitions and seal his fate; it is an unsurpassed depiction of the harsh realities of American life and of the dark side of the American dream.
-
-
Creeping, Creepy Ambition
- By W Perry Hall on 03-05-17
By: Theodore Dreiser
-
A Distant Mirror
- The Calamitous Fourteenth Century
- By: Barbara W. Tuchman
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 28 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The 14th century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and the exquisitely decorated Books of Hours; and on the other, a time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world of chaos and the plague.
-
-
Gripping, once you get into it
- By E. Smakman on 11-30-09
-
Light in August
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joe Christmas does not know whether he is black or white. Faulkner makes of Joe's tragedy a powerful indictment of racism; at the same time, Joe's life is a study of the divided self and becomes a symbol of 20th century man.
-
-
Simply great.
- By Jamie on 08-18-05
By: William Faulkner
-
The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1929, Faulkner created his "heart's darling", the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story Faulkner told through separate monologues by her three brothers: the idiot Benjy, the neurotic suicidal Quentin, and the monstrous Jason.
-
-
Perfect!
- By Bryan on 12-07-05
By: William Faulkner
-
Underworld
- By: Don DeLillo
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 31 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nick Shay and Klara Sax knew each other once, intimately, and they meet again in the American desert. He is trying to outdistance the crucial events of his early life, haunted by the hard logic of loss and by the echo of a gunshot in a basement room. She is an artist who has made a blood struggle for independence.
-
-
CYBEX burned into my eyes
- By Ruth Ann Orlansky on 07-01-12
By: Don DeLillo
-
The Good Soldier
- By: Ford Madox Ford
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the face of it Captain Edward Ashburnham's life was unimpeachable. But behind the mask where passion seethes, the captain's "good" life was rotting away.
-
-
Heart problems
- By Barry on 09-13-13
By: Ford Madox Ford
-
Pale Fire
- By: Vladimir Nabokov
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor, Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed - according to Nabokov's fiction - by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.
-
-
An amazing feat for such a unique novel
- By AmazonCustomer on 03-27-12
By: Vladimir Nabokov
-
The Human Stain
- By: Philip Roth
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 13 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished even his most virulent accuser.
-
-
HUMAN STAIN
- By CHET YARBROUGH on 12-08-14
By: Philip Roth
-
Invisible Man
- A Novel
- By: Ralph Ellison
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 18 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of 20th-century African-American life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching - yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places.
-
-
Sometimes it is best not to awaken them...
- By Darwin8u on 03-01-20
By: Ralph Ellison
-
Justine
- By: Lawrence Durrell
- Narrated by: Nigel Anthony
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Justine is the first volume in The Alexandria Quartet, four interlinked novels set in the sensuous, hot environment of Alexandria just before the Second World War. Within this polyglot setting of richly idiosyncratic characters is Justine, wild and intense, wife to the wealthy business man Nessim, a mari complaisant.
-
-
A Crime to Abridge
- By Lawrence on 08-12-04
By: Lawrence Durrell
-
Fall of Giants
- Book One of the Century Trilogy
- By: Ken Follett
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 30 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ken Follett's World Without End was a global phenomenon, a work of grand historical sweep beloved by millions of readers and acclaimed by critics. Fall of Giants is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families - American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh - as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage.
-
-
Loved it and learned alot.
- By Louis on 10-19-10
By: Ken Follett
-
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- By: Betty Smith
- Narrated by: Kate Burton
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A moving coming-of-age story set in the 1900s, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the lives of 11-year-old Francie Nolan, her younger brother Neely, and their parents, Irish immigrants who have settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Johnny Nolan is as loving and fanciful as they come, but he is also often drunk and out of work, unable to find his place in the land of opportunity.
-
-
Book: flawless. SKIP THE RECORDED INTRO!!
- By Wild Wise Woman on 09-04-11
By: Betty Smith
-
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Volume I: Visions of Glory 1874-1932
- By: William Manchester
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 41 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Winston Churchill is perhaps the most important political figure of the 20th century. His great oratory and leadership during the Second World War were only part of his huge breadth of experience and achievement. Studying his life is a fascinating way to imbibe the history of his era and gain insight into key events that have shaped our time.
-
-
Superb - Review of Both Volume I & Volume II
- By Wolfpacker on 01-23-09
Publisher's Summary
This first entry in John Dos Passos's celebrated U.S.A. trilogy paints a grand picture of the United States at the dawn of the twentieth century.
More from the same
What listeners say about The 42nd Parallel
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Michael G. Price
- 01-03-13
A Diego Rivera painting in written form
Where does The 42nd Parallel rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
Completely unique. The techniques utilized to fine effect by Dos Passos create a surprisingly modern and cinematic feel, especially considering these books were written 80 years ago! In particular, Dos Passos encapsulates visual and audible elements into his prose. The audible parts of the writing, especially newspaper headlines, radio messages, and popular songs, make this a wonderful choice for a book to be listened to as opposed to being read. It is a gift that narrator David Drummond rises brilliantly to the occasion (God this would be a terrifying book to consider reading - and singing - aloud). All this and the 42nd Parallel happens to be one of the most famous books of the 20th Century.... I have read of Ernest Hemingway's respect for Dos Passos. Since that was an exceedingly small camp, as Hemingway seemed to actively hate most writers, I had looked forward to listening to my first Dos Passos novel. I was not disappointed. Throughout the 42nd Parallel, I heard echos of Hemingway dialog and situations. Other writers and artists also. Joyce in particular. And painters. One might do worse than characterizing this novel as a Diego Rivera painting written in prose.
22 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ryan
- 06-01-13
Powerful document of an all-too-familiar past
Though John dos Passos hasn’t retained the fame of Hemingway or Fitzgerald, his America trilogy still feels like a landmark work of the Jazz Age, a sprawling, panoramic documentary of the US of the early 20th century. Like his contemporaries, Dos Passos writes in a common, everyday vernacular, with an eye and ear for realism, but also mixes in more experimental, modernist passages, such as streams of newspaper headlines and song lyrics, short biopics of various public figures, and the impressionistic, Joyce-ian “camera eye” sequences, which seem to recall scenes from the author’s own mind. Though this flipping-through-the-radio technique has been much-copied, it still feels innovative, especially in audio format. Reader David Drummond, I would add, does a commendable job with a wide range of voices and deliveries -- including the singing.
The main narrative follows several different characters as they make their way through their lives between the turn of the century and World War One. As fiction goes, it’s wandering, nearly plotless stuff, but I found the window into another time fascinating. Along the way, we get an immersion course in cultural attitudes, historical events, people’s daily concerns, and the not-unfamiliar tensions between different layers of society. Then there are all the sights, sounds, smells, sensations, impressions, and emotions of the time -- the raw, intimate, illuminating human stuff that a present-day writer looking back couldn’t hope to replicate.
Yes, some of the themes are dated -- for example, there are no significant non-white characters, and the idea of people having sex (*gasp*) *before* marriage was no doubt more edgy in the ‘30s. Dos Passos seems intent on a soul-baring of his generation through his characters, who are caught between grand ambitions and selfish desires, seemingly unable to make any decisions of lasting consequence. They desert their families and their employers in search of some unknown better thing, and are buffeted about by the indifferent forces of history. Members of the Millennial Generation should read this novel and stop letting older people lecture them with phony-baloney mythology about how everyone had their s--- together back in the day, and America was just honest, happy, patriotic, and swell. It’s a lie.
In fact -- and maybe it’s because I don’t read enough old fiction -- I was taken aback by how many aspects of the world of this novel seem not to have changed much in a hundred years. The way society was divided between the haves and the have-nots -- and the way half of the latter group was sure it would soon be in the ranks of the former, and resented the other half. The same media-fed anti-socialism paranoia. The same naive, flag-waving patriotism around the big war, and the same undercurrent of cynicism that it might have all just been a big scam. The desire for a comfortable, white-picket-fence life versus the fear of selling out. Constant worry about how to pay the bills. Otherness of foreigners. Dating (apparently, the phrase “let’s just be friends” goes way back). Loneliness. Desire. Groping in the dark.
Obviously, a novel of this era and style won’t appeal to all readers, but for those who can embrace its unblinking camera reel view of life, it’s brilliant and definitive. The final chapters generate a palpable atmosphere of anger and unrest, as the US enters the Great War, and the anti-war and pro-war factions square off in New York City, yelling the usual cliches at each other as riot police march in. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
25 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Daniel
- 09-07-11
Advent of the American Century scruitinized
Using 4 different types of narrative devices: biography of famous people, news clipping, streaming consciousness descriptions, and intervening fictional characters to scrutinize the advent of the American Century. Somewhat difficult to get use to at the start, the novel weaves and slides in and out of my grasp, but eventually the brilliance within sank in.
11 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- cmurray
- 08-10-16
Narrator was brilliant
So much range! Male, female, all sorts of accents. Singing and sound effects. So great!
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Francine L. Tchan
- 01-18-16
A view into the past I have never seen.
With today's sensitivities it is hard to hear/read the way people talked about women, races, values. I enjoyed going on this trip back in time and ready to go on with the series.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- W Perry Hall
- 04-29-16
Avant-Garde Mashup
An experimental novel set in the 1920s and 30s with a mash-up of random radio broadcasts of news headlines overlaying lyrics, biographical blurbs and the aimless autobiographical gibberings of a literary sadist.
I am reminded again how my admiration for an artist who attempts to boldly innovate doesn't mean I'll appreciate the end product.
I sometimes wonder though whether it's just me; that I'm unrefined, for instance, because I still cannot see what others recognize in the works of Jackson Pollock.
12 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- NK
- 09-28-11
The 42nd Parallel
I was disappointed at first listen but the more it continued to more it brought me in. Very enjoyable and well worth the time. The narrator did a wonderful job.
6 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Philharmonic
- 08-04-17
Perfect Narrator for this book!
This book is a great American classis and an essential read. Thank you Narrator for doing an impeccable job in bringing the stories and characters to life. I am definitely moving on to 1919 and happy that David Drummond narrates that one too.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- John L. Murphy
- 04-03-16
The other side of WWI and more
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes, but after that friend had read the triogy. It's easier to let the long stories unwind after you have the basics down about the character arcs and the vast plotline the trilogy takes in over so many years
What was one of the most memorable moments of The 42nd Parallel?
Mac's initiation on the road with a traveling salesman in Wisconsin unfolds wonderfully, I wish Dos Passos kept the lighter tone for more of his characters to come in the trilogy; it would have helped.
Have you listened to any of David Drummond’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I liked his reading of the whole USA trilogy. It is part of a whole, and Drummond keeps it flowing,
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
No, I liked it. Dos Passos brought a detached presence to much of his prose, and it shows. It does distance a reader or listener from the events, on the other hand. Drummond does his best to engage you, but it can be difficult as the relentless fates channeled by the trilogy continue on.
Any additional comments?
Probably more valuable, like Sinclair Lewis, for the life of Americans after WWI as recorded, than for the actual stories. Almost a century after the events, it still speaks for the hopes of the little men and women and how they are crushed or warped or abandoned in the rush for survival and wealth
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Janey
- 12-19-11
Individual short stories.
If you could sum up The 42nd Parallel in three words, what would they be?
Stories about the times.
What did you like best about this story?
The individual stories about people who were not spending their lives sitting in one place, moving and each following their own life dealing with what was handed them.
Which scene was your favorite?
That there was at least one story of a person that was following a life that was 'normal' and able to learn from mistakes.
Who was the most memorable character of The 42nd Parallel and why?
There was no particular one character but those who had some sort of goal or path they wanted to take.
4 people found this helpful