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Amusing Ourselves to Death
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It’s dated but no less relevant to today
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Brave New World
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The Nobel Prize winner’s towering masterpiece of world literature, the searing record of four decades of terror and oppression, in one abridged volume (authorized by the author). Features a new foreword by Anne Applebaum.
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Important context, narrator lacks flow
- By Amazon Customer on 2020-11-13
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Brave New World (Dramatized)
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The CBS Radio Workshop was an experimental series of productions, subtitled "radio's distinguished series to man's imagination" that ran between 27 January 1956 and 22 September 1957. The premiere production was Brave New World, narrated by Huxley himself, with a complicated sound-effects score that evidently took a long time to construct, and comprised a ticking metronome, tom-tom beats, bubbling water, an air hose, a cow's moo, an oscillator, and three kinds of wine glasses clicking together.
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The Doors of Perception
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The critically acclaimed novelist and social critic Aldous Huxley, describes his personal experimentation with the drug mescaline and explores the nature of visionary experience. The title of this classic comes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."
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Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last 15 years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.
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Wow Stephen Fry
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Beyond Good and Evil
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Continuing where Thus Spoke Zarathustra left off, Nietzsche's controversial work Beyond Good and Evil is one of the most influential philosophical texts of the 19th century and one of the most controversial works of ideology ever written. Attacking the notion of morality as nothing more than institutionalised weakness, Nietzsche criticises past philosophers for their unquestioning acceptance of moral precepts. Nietzsche tried to formulate what he called "the philosophy of the future".
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a bit of a dick
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The Madness of Crowds
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In The Madness of Crowds Douglas Murray investigates the dangers of ‘woke’ culture and the rise of identity politics. In lively, razor-sharp prose he examines the most controversial issues of our moment: sexuality, gender, technology and race, with interludes on the Marxist foundations of ‘wokeness’, the impact of tech and how, in an increasingly online culture, we must relearn the ability to forgive.
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Preaching to the choir and little else.
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Island
- Written by: Aldous Huxley
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- Unabridged
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In his final novel - which he considered his most important - Aldous Huxley transports us to the remote Pacific island of Pala, where an ideal society has flourished for 120 years. Inevitably, this island of bliss attracts the envy and enmity of the surrounding world. A conspiracy is underway to take over Pala, and events are set in motion when an agent of the conspirators, a newspaperman named Faranby, is shipwrecked there. What Faranby doesn't expect is how his time with the people of Pala will revolutionize all his values and - to his amazement - give him hope.
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Excellent Writing & Voice Acting
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Modern Man in Search of a Soul
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- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Modern Man in Search of a Soul is the classic introduction to the thought of Carl Jung. Along with Freud and Adler, Jung was one of the chief founders of modern psychiatry. In this book, Jung examines some of the most contested and crucial areas in the field of analytical psychology: dream analysis, the primitive unconscious, and the relationship between psychology and religion.
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This is a dry listen - be prepared to focus
- By Andy on 2019-01-15
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The Man in the High Castle
- Written by: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 9 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war - and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan.
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A Philosophical Foray into an Under-utilized World
- By David.D.Kentie on 2018-02-20
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Slaughterhouse-Five
- Written by: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: James Franco
- Length: 5 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).
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Weird But Enjoyable. Bad Narration
- By Langer on 2020-06-11
Publisher's Summary
On the 75th anniversary of its publication, this outstanding work of literature is more crucial and relevant today than ever before. Cloning, feel-good drugs, anti-aging programs, and total social control through politics, programming, and media: has Aldous Huxley accurately predicted our future? With a storyteller's genius, he weaves these ethical controversies in a compelling narrative that dawns in the year 632 A.F. (After Ford, the deity). When Lenina and Bernard visit a savage reservation, we experience how Utopia can destroy humanity.
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What listeners say about Brave New World
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jackson T.
- 2019-09-30
great book narrator not
book and story are amazing, the narrator is terrible goes from whispering to yelling constantly
5 people found this helpful
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- Colin Postma
- 2019-05-18
My eyes are open
It was just an amazing eye opening experience listening to this excellent book! I think it should be mandatory reading (listening) for anyone looking to challenge there worldview!
4 people found this helpful
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- Ben
- 2019-05-15
Ahead of it's time, but somewhat lacking
There are a lot of thought provoking concepts here. Brave New World would make a great book club choice. But there is very little story and the characters are all very static and flat. Not much happens, there is just a comparison of two different worlds and an examination of happiness, purpose, etc. Michael York is a fine voice actor but there were a number of odd choices in this book and a lot of times where his tone/excitement level seemed to really clash with what the character was actually feeling. Might be worth your time and Aldous Huxley was far ahead of his time, but in the 75+ years since publication there are now other books that explore these themes with much more depth and story to them.
3 people found this helpful
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- John
- 2020-02-28
More relevant for today than 1984
I often hear people making references to 1984 and today, but if you're going to use a piece of literature to accurately describe the short comings of society and the human condition in general, Brave New World is exactly what that is.
1 person found this helpful
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- Sheleigh Ross
- 2020-02-25
Not as revolutionary as remembered
Read this in school and was blown away with it's more accurate prophesy (imho) of the future of society than was 1984. But this next pass, over 15 years later, doesn't give me the same sense. I just didn't enjoy the story very much and surprisingly I really disliked John the Savage. Wonder what that says about me and my growth?
1 person found this helpful
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- Eric V Ross
- 2019-01-21
Essential story
A classic that needs to be heard no matter where in life you find yourself. Especially needed as society seems to flounder in directionality.
1 person found this helpful
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- Jeremy
- 2018-09-13
Not what I was expecting
Everyone told me that since I love 1984 I should read Brave New World, but it doesn't really fit the same vein. It starts off promising with buchanofski principle and all the science, but the story pretty does not have to have had that as a part of it at all. This is not as epix as people made it out to be. I likely would have enjoyed it more if it was not held up with 1984. #Audible1
3 people found this helpful
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- Braden
- 2018-09-13
One if the classic SciFi's
This is a classic sci fi that challenges us to think about how the future may be. This version is narrated exceptionally well. Listening I couldn't help but get lost in the voices and characters. #Audible1
2 people found this helpful
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- Jdean1
- 2017-11-23
Good Performance, but story is uneventful.
Good Performance, but story is uneventful. I found the story line less than fulfilling and thought provoking.
3 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 2020-12-06
Very, very good
Really great book. I finished it in a week. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. The question to ask yourself while listening to it is this: What is wrong with this society?
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- SD
- 2019-08-21
Michael York should stick to the stage and leave narration to the pros.
Do you like having one of your favourite books of all time ruined by a pompous Brit who thinks he’s performing Shakespeare? Do you love having to constantly turn up the volume so you can hear unnecessarily exaggerated whispering, only to have your eardrums blown when the narrator unexpectedly switches to shouting at the top of his lungs like a lunatic? Well then, this beautiful story being ruined by the over the top performance of Michael “Head So Far Up His My Ass” York is for you.
143 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 2019-10-21
Great Story, Distracting Narration
The narrator's large shifts in volume and multiple British accents detracted from the overall experience.
42 people found this helpful
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- Jorge Rodriguez
- 2019-11-01
the narrator sucked
it was a hard listen just because the narrator wasn't my favorite person to listen to. the shot was annoying, but maybe that's what they were shooting for.
25 people found this helpful
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- Jefferson
- 2011-10-03
“Oh, Ford, Ford Ford, I Wish I Had My Soma!”
Brave New World is a bitterly funny and humorously tragic dystopian novel in which Aldous Huxley satirizes modern civilization’s obsession with consumerism, sensual pleasure, popular culture entertainment, mass production, and eugenics. His far future world limits individual freedom in exchange for communal happiness via mass culture arts like “feelies” (movies with sensual immersion), the state-produced feel-good drug soma, sex-hormone gum, popular sports like “obstacle golf,” and the assembly line chemical manipulation of ova and fetuses so as to decant from their bottles babies perfectly suited for their destined castes and jobs, babies who are then mentally conditioned to become satisfied workers and consumers who believe that everyone belongs to everyone. In a way it’s more horrible than the more obviously brutal and violent repression of individuals by totalitarian systems in dystopias like George Orwell’s 1984, because Huxley’s novel implies that people are happy being mindless cogs in the wheels of economic production as long as they get their entertainments and new goods.
Michael York does a great job reading the novel, his voice oozing satire for the long opening tour of the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, and then modifying in timbre and dialect for the various characters, among them the self-centered brooder Bernard Marx, the budding intellectual poet Helmholtz Howard, the sexy, sensitive, and increasingly confused Lenina Crowne, the spookily understanding Resident World Controller of Western Europe Mustapha Mond, and especially the good-natured, sad, and conflicted Shakespearean quoting “savage” John.
I had never read this classic of dystopian science fiction, so I’m glad to have listened to this excellent audiobook, because it is entertaining and devastating in its depiction of human nature and modern civilization, especially timely in our own brave new Facebook world.
299 people found this helpful
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- Bridget C.
- 2017-09-22
I am I, and I wish I weren't.
I read the first page of this book easily 15 times in high school but never got past the buttery light on the microscopes.
I decided to listen to this now after reading an article quoting Neil Postman about how this book was the more apt to happen in our society than 1984. I agree- we' be anesthetized at an orgyporgy choking back Soma long before we give up the free press.
I enjoyed this book especially listening to Michael York read it but docked a star for the interminable polemic sections and how tedious the reservation section became.
14 people found this helpful
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- W Perry Hall
- 2017-03-06
Hedonist Nihilism and the Centrifugal Bumblepuppy
"O brave new world, that has such people in it!"
Shakespeare's The Tempest
I was enraptured while reading this remarkable futuristic fable of a society somberly envisioned as one of hedonist nihilism in which humans are all hatched from incubators, graded, sorted, brainwashed and drugged to accept their position in the social order.
In doing a bit of research about the novel after reading it, I found this candescent passage from the late Neil Postman, a social critic and distinguished professor, comparing 1984 with Brave New World:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. ... Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
N. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.
I found this novel quite frightening in the longer view (compared to 1984) considering, as Christopher Hitchens so rightly pointed out, that 1984's "house of horrors" showed its weakness with the downfall of the Soviet Union, whereas Huxley's type of Brave New World "still beckons toward a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress-free consensus," a "true blissed-out and vacant servitude" for which "you need an otherwise sophisticated society where no serious history is taught." C. Hitchens, "Goodbye to All That: Why Americans Are Not Taught History." Harper's Magazine, Nov. 1998.*
53 people found this helpful
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- Em
- 2012-04-16
Nightmare-Inducing (in a Good Way)
When I first read Brave New World it gave me nightmares. I was hooked. It might be strange to say that a book that gave me bad dreams is a good thing, but I was intrigued that a story could worm its way so powerfully into my psyche. It was really my first encounter with dystopian speculative fiction and I ultimately credit Huxley with sending me on my recent nosedive into YA lit. He probably wouldn’t appreciate this association, or the one I’m about to make, which is that I think this book is one of the most powerful and accessible works of dystopia ever created, and can be seen as a forebear to much of today’s hottest literature.
Sometimes when I’m not sure what I want to listen to next I’ll return to a book that I loved fervently in print and check it out in audio, and that’s what I did with Brave New World. I’m so glad that I did. Michael York is an excellent narrator and he captures the different characters admirably. But what I found most impressive is how he handles dialogue. Brave New World is more than dystopian sci-fi; it’s a novel of ideas and discussion. There’s a lengthy rapid-fire debate that takes place between John the Savage and Mustapha Mond near the end of the book that is generously peppered with obscure Shakespearian references. When reading you can gloss over anything you do not get immediately because you understand the merit of their discussion: is it better to be happy and controlled, or is the freedom to be unhappy the greatest of human liberties? But I found while listening that Michael York carried me along through their debate and the individual Shakespearian references sang clearly. Just as seeing a play acted out on stage is easier than reading it, I really feel that listening to this book was a heightened experience, and an improvement on the print version. Now when I recommend Brave New World to people I suggest they listen to it first.
And I’m going to recommend it again now: There’s a reason this is a classic, and read by most freshman English students. If somehow you’ve missed it, now is the time to pick this one up.
184 people found this helpful
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- Sean
- 2009-04-19
Stick with it!
After only a few chapters into Brave New World, you will be so shocked and appalled that you may feel inclined to emphatically put it down and disconnect yourself from it for the fear that someone else will overhear the spill of your headphones. I challenge you to keep reading; although it never explains itself in a way that eases our consciences, it categorically forces you to reconsider every quantum of morality and ethics you possess. Once done, you will certainly not agree with the hypothetical future set forth by Aldous Huxley, but you will understand why not, and thus have a far more solid foundation for why you believe what you believe.
85 people found this helpful
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- John
- 2013-10-24
Hats Off to Aldous Huxley, Michael York & Audible
Huxley for writing the book, York for reading it and Audible for making books like this available in their Daily Deals. I would never have bought it had it not been on sale—and I would have missed an amazing work of literature as well as a fine audio performance.
Like many people, Brave New World was always one of those books I meant to read. Whenever a new tech marvel hit the scene or a new question of medical ethics made headlines, a news writer somewhere was sure to make an allusion to the title of Aldous Huxley’s masterpiece. But that’s as far as my understanding of the book went: a nebulous sense that it presented a less-than-savory picture of some indefinite, but very possible, future.
But as Mustapha Mond, the World Controller for Western Europe might say, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
In the interest of full disclosure, you need to know I was born and bred in Detroit. Hence, a good deal of my enjoyment of the book stems from the author’s complete agreement with my own estimate of Henry Ford. Yes, he made America mobile. Yes, that mobility was affordable. But delve into some of the man’s writings, sayings and methods and you understand what Huxley is driving at.
One day Ford was walking through his factory when he noticed a pile of short wooden boards. Upon inquiring about them, he learned they were broken up packing cases that had contained auto parts; they were about to be thrown away. In a flash of ingenuity, he ordered the wood to be used as floorboards for his Model T’s.
It’s a story that appeals to all our recycling instincts (that’s the way we’ve been conditioned, right?) But dig a little deeper. Behind Ford’s idea there lurks a sort of maniacal drive for complete and utter efficiency.
It goes hand in hand with Ford housing his workers in barracks. Yes, they were clean, bright places to live. But they were also places where the workers could be supervised. Drinking was frowned upon for obvious reasons. Dancing was encouraged because Ford had some odd theory about its moral benefits. Random inspections were a normal feature of life.
Then there’s the famous $5 a day wage. Accepted now as a humanitarian measure—so much more, we are told, than what other industrialists were offering the downtrodden proletariat. In actuality, the downtrodden proletariat only got $2.50 an hour—the other $2.50 was held back, to be paid at a later date if the workers’ behavior met Mr. Ford’s exacting standards.
If none of this is giving you the chills, then you may not want to bother with Brave New World.
There’s a photograph of Ford relaxing (if that was possible for him) in his home in Dearborn—incidentally, an architectural monstrosity of conflicting styles. In the background a piece of needlework proclaims: “He who chops his own firewood warms himself twice”. Ok, that’s true as far as it goes. But again there’s that maniacal drive for efficiency, an almost Uber-Puritanical focus on work—a focus that excludes all other considerations.
Ford crystalized that focus with the infamous remark, “History is bunk”. The blowback from those words was so widespread he tried to atone by building Greenfield Village, the open-air museum that is as much a monument to himself and his friend Thomas Edison as homage to the past. Nevertheless, the unguarded remark reveals his true thinking.
In Brave New World, Huxley takes that thinking and follows it out to its extreme, “logical” conclusion. I understand that there’s more underpinning the book than just the wit and wisdom of Henry Ford. For example, I sense a critique of our Declaration of Independence (why did Jefferson include “happiness” among our inalienable rights, rather than keep to the classic Whig triumvirate of life, liberty and property?) It’s a piece of our foundational rhetoric that, taken to its “logical” extreme, can be just as culturally destructive as Ford’s hatred of the past.
So much for the roots of the book. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about how much of what Huxley imagined has actually come to pass.
On top of a masterpiece you also get Michael York’s performance, which is simply extraordinary. And again, big kudos to Audible for making literature like this available at sacrifice prices—and here’s hoping they’ll do it again soon. Many of the blockbusting best sellers that usually make the Daily Deal are, as the Savage would point out if he were here, a far cry from Othello.
56 people found this helpful
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- Kayley
- 2008-12-11
still frightening all these years later
i found "brave new world" to be...interesting, interesting in a "make your skin crawl at the reality of how close to home this story hits" kind of way. a disturbing tale, written many years ago, it's tempting to dismiss the possibilites for a future like this as unthinkable, impossible, improbable...an alarmist's view of the future from so far in the past as to be almost laughable. in truth, laughing will be the last thing on the listener's mind. "brave new world" is presented in such a way as to make the listener think long and hard about our own current events and where they could potentially go in the not so distant future. a bit of a stuffy read at times, it may be a bit hard for many to understand due to both the english accent and the multisyllabic words used nearly constantly. find yourself a dictionary and settle in, just don't be surprised at the disturbing bent your dreams may take. use it as an entertaining listen, but be certain to take away the startling glimpses of what could so easily be our own "brave new world" in the not so distant future.
69 people found this helpful
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- David Hache
- 2019-12-09
performance extraordinaire
performance extraordinaire vraiment très bien, histoire bien, un véritable classique qui nous interroge sur le monde actuel