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The Ambulance Drivers
- Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War
- Narrated by: Dean Temple
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
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Publisher's Summary
After meeting for the first time on the front lines of World War I, two aspiring writers forge an intense 20-year friendship and write some of America's greatest novels, giving voice to a "lost generation" shaken by war. Eager to find his way in life and words, John Dos Passos first witnessed the horror of trench warfare in France as a volunteer ambulance driver retrieving the dead and seriously wounded from the front line. Later in the war, he briefly met another young writer, Ernest Hemingway, who was just arriving for his service in the ambulance corps. When the war was over, both men knew they had to write about it; they had to give voice to what they felt about war and life. Their friendship and collaboration developed through the peace of the 1920s and 1930s, as Hemingway's novels soared to success while Dos Passos penned the greatest antiwar novel of his generation, Three Soldiers.
In war, Hemingway found adventure, women, and a cause. Dos Passos saw only oppression and futility. Their different visions eventually turned their private friendship into a bitter public fight, fueled by money, jealousy, and lust. Rich in evocative detail - from Paris cafes to the Austrian Alps, from the streets of Pamplona to the waters of Key West - The Ambulance Drivers is a biography of a turbulent friendship between two of the century's greatest writers, and an illustration of how war both inspires and destroys, unites, and divides.
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- NMwritergal
- 04-08-17
Morris always delivers interesting biographies...
...that I might not normally read--and this is another one. I first read/listened to The Rose Man of Sing Sing (which remains my favorite), something I'd have never found on my own but it was recommended to me so I listened! Now, if Morris writes it, I'll read it right away.
I knew little about Hemingway (other than reading some of his work) and even less about Dos Passos, so not only did I learn about the two men, but what I always appreciate about Morris is how he puts everything into the wider historical context.
There's a little bit of everything in this book: War, friendship, rivalry, marriage, what it means to be a writer, history, etc. I was really fascinated by the ambulance drivers in general; it's a part of WW1 that I knew nothing about!
2 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Eggs Ackley
- 01-28-18
Lifeless writing, lifeless narration
What disappointed you about The Ambulance Drivers?
Sorry, but I couldn't get past the feeling that the narrator was bored with what he was reading. The longer he read, the more I lost whatever interest I had in the book.
Would you be willing to try another one of Dean Temple’s performances?
Let me put it this way: no.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Marti Timmons
- 08-28-17
Narrator drops the end of each sentence.
Rich stories of two important writers and their tangled friendship spanning two world wars and the Spanish Civil War. Their shifting and conflicting ideology, romances, adventures and writing assignments are set on a world stage.
Enjoyable.
1 person found this helpful
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Performance
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Story
- Scott Free
- 07-15-19
insights into two very important authors
I appreciated the detail and the letters that went into analyzing the relationship between Hemingway and Dos Passos I thought that the description about Hemingway was a little lacking having studied Hemingway more and also Dos Passos. Hemingway Ihad additional associations that were not revealed in this audiobook, Hemingway probably had connections with the OSS and elements of the deep state in the US. government which explains a lot of his politics at the end and possibly also explains his suicide. The account of Dos Passos fleeing from the Stalinists in Spain is actually quite gripping but it was skipped over in this version, otherwise I really enjoyed the book and I thought the reader did an excellent job
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Probably only for die hard Vonnegut fans
- By Watery M on 12-22-12
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Mark Twain
- A Life
- By: Ron Powers
- Narrated by: Ron Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
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Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. His awestruck contemporaries saw him as the representative figure of his times, and his influence has deeply flavored the 20th and 21st centuries.
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Excellent
- By Tad Davis on 01-05-12
By: Ron Powers
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Everybody Behaves Badly
- The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises
- By: Lesley Blume
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 1925, Ernest Hemingway and a clique of raucous companions traveled to Pamplona, Spain, for the town's infamous running of the bulls. Then, over the next six weeks, he channeled that trip's maelstrom of drunken brawls, sexual rivalry, midnight betrayals, and midday hangovers into his groundbreaking novel The Sun Also Rises. This revolutionary work redefined modern literature as much as it did his peers, who would forever after be called the Lost Generation.
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The Birth of a Cult
- By SW Clemens on 06-03-17
By: Lesley Blume
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Mencken
- the American Iconoclast: The Life and Times of the Bad Boy of Baltimore
- By: Marion Elizabeth Rodgers
- Narrated by: Patrick Cullen
- Length: 24 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Rodgers vividly recreates Mencken's era: the glittering tapestry of turn-of-the-century America, the roaring twenties, depressed thirties, and the home front during World War II. But the heart of the book is Mencken.
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Definitive and Holistic Biography of Mencken
- By Amazon Customer on 03-20-18
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Chasing the Last Laugh
- Mark Twain's Raucous and Redemptive Round-the-World Comedy Tour
- By: Richard Zacks
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 16 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Mark Twain, the highest-paid writer in America in 1894, was also one of the nation's worst investors. "There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate," he wrote. "When he can't afford it and when he can." The publishing company Twain owned was failing; his investment in a typesetting device was bleeding red ink. After losing hundreds of thousands of dollars back when a beer cost a nickel, he found himself neck-deep in debt. His heiress wife, Livy, took the setback hard.
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The Master Storyteller
- By Jean on 08-16-16
By: Richard Zacks
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E. E. Cummings
- A Life
- By: Susan Cheever
- Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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E. E. Cummings' radical experimentation with form, punctuation, spelling, and syntax resulted in his creation of a new, idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. And while there was critical disagreement about his work (Edmund Wilson called it "hideous", while Malcolm Cowley called him "unsurpassed in his field"), at the time of his death in 1962, at age 67, he was, after Robert Frost, the most widely read poet in the United States. Now, in this new biography, Susan Cheever traces the development of the poet and his work.
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Very engaging story of the life of e.e.cummings!
- By Kathi on 02-14-14
By: Susan Cheever
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Salinger
- By: David Shields, Shane Salerno
- Narrated by: Peter Friedman, January LaVoy, Robert Petkoff, and others
- Length: 19 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Shields and Salerno illuminate most brightly the last 56 years of Salinger’s life: a period that, until now, had remained completely dark to biographers. Provided unprecedented access to diaries, letters, legal records, and secret documents, listeners will feel they have, for the first time, gotten beyond Salinger’s meticulously built-up wall. The result is the definitive portrait of one of the most fascinating figures of the 20th century.
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Good biographical details marred by over analysis
- By Rich S. on 09-16-13
By: David Shields, and others
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But Enough About You
- Essays
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrated by: Bob Walter
- Length: 16 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Christopher Buckley at his best: an extraordinary, wide-ranging selection of essays both hilarious and poignant, irreverent and delightful. In his first book of essays since his 1997 best seller, Wry Martinis, Buckley delivers a rare combination of big ideas and truly fun writing. Listening to these essays is the equivalent of being in the company of a tremendously witty and enlightening companion.
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Generally interesting
- By Chief of Staff, ChowChow on 03-23-15
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Joy
- Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. Lewis
- By: Abigail Santamaria
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Joy Davidman is known, if she is known at all, as the wife of C. S. Lewis. Their marriage was immortalized in the film Shadowlands and Lewis' memoir, A Grief Observed. Now, through extraordinary new documents as well as years of research and interviews, Abigail Santamaria brings Joy Davidman Gresham Lewis to your ears in the fullness and depth she deserves. A poet and radical, Davidman was a frequent contributor to the communist vehicle New Masses and an active member of New York literary circles in the 1930s and '40s.
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A tough life for a tough woman
- By Christine on 06-25-16
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Cast of Characters
- Wolcott Gibbs, E. B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of the New Yorker
- By: Thomas Vinciguerra
- Narrated by: Tony Pasqualini
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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From its birth in 1925 to the early days of the Cold War, The New Yorker slowly but surely took hold as the country's most prestigious, entertaining, and informative general-interest periodical. In Cast of Characters, Thomas Vinciguerra paints a portrait of the magazine's cadre of charming, wisecracking, driven, troubled, and brilliant writers and editors. He introduces us to Wolcott Gibbs, theater critic, all-around wit, and author of an infamous 1936 parody of Time magazine.
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But...Where's Dorothy Parker
- By Constant Reader on 06-05-18
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The Last Love Song
- A Biography of Joan Didion
- By: Tracy Daugherty
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 26 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.
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Riveted for 1591 miles
- By Kaysi12 on 04-11-16
By: Tracy Daugherty