The Autobiography of Mother Jones

Good story. But too many people read it

This book is excellent. An unabashedly raw first hand accounting of what it was like to be the 99% during what was referred to as "The Gilded Age" in America. The period of time immediately following emancipation, leading up to the "Roaring Twenties", rapidly brought to an end by the Stock Market Crash of 1929 bringing on the Republican Great Depression (that was what it was ORIGINALLY called lingering into the 1970s until memory died out and it could be "rebranded".) Mother Jones was an authentic hero to humanity, women, children, the poor and exploited wealth creators of every race, creed and gender. Her fight remains relevant today, unfortunately. The subject matter of America's unparalleled violence, and open hostility (to this day), towards its labor forces (the true wealth producers of the world since time and memorial), throughout its history, has always been/is BY DESIGN, and such histories should still be part of core academic civics/government/history studies in this nation. Those outside America know American history far better than Americans do now, en mass. The true failing of our leadership and a national embarrassment to anyone who cares about such things. If civics (and government) alone were not eliminated as a mandated core by the Reagan Administration's Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, and finally what scant districts across the country keeping any remaining programs limping along being, themselves, federally defunded in 2011 as part of a Senate appropriations bill, perhaps America's worst parts of her history would not continue to be repeated. Americans continue falling prey to the Gilded Age big lie of radical free-marketing corporatism (laissez-faire libertarian economics) and its systemic devastation, and plundering, of the 99% wealth PRODUCERS to enrich the upper 1% and corporate wealth EXTRACTORS. All made possible by using the methodically corrupted officials in all levels of authority, enforcement and oversight to metastasize corporate government powers throughout the American systems of industry, governance and policing until there is no line between corporation and government, being they are one and the same, at which point the unbridled violence always begins. As Mother Jones describes abundantly in, this, her own story of living through it...... Most of the narrators were fine, even great from my viewpoint. Two specifically, not so much, hence the rating as they narrated more than one chapter. I offer only one point of unasked for advice, and this is from my point of view only, as others may not agree, which is acknowledged and expected. I simply would offer that if you do this type of work, acting it out emotionally, or like you're in a play doing all the characters, is really distracting to the listener, and unnecessarily time-consuming to the narrative. I prefer a clear, understandable, unemotionally involved, relatively monotone read back for efficiency, if nothing else Some of these books (not this one) can be a real slog through if a narrator reads as though to a child, or adds to the completion time by forgetting its a book, and not a stage play to hone one's acting "skills". When the narrator is getting "lost in the role(s)", so does the narrative's flow to the listener. Hope that didn't seem harsh or whatever, not my intent, just am frustrated by the frequency of this, as the listener is a captive audience, as most books don't have other narrator options, as can be said for many of us listeners (no choice in listening, or we don't get to read it). This is not just the free ones, by the way. That is all. I'm done.