The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps
By: Ben Coates
3.89
Format: 304 pages, Paperback
From rowing the canals of Amsterdam to riding a cow through the Alps, via Cold War nuclear bunkers,…
Want to Read $ 12.99"All along the river, the people I spoke to were hard-working and deeply attached to the mental security blanket of having a decent house, clean car and steady job. They were relatively wealthy, but at the same time quite ambivalent about wealth, and disdainful of anything which smacked of excessive consumption. Family was important, but having expensive jewellery or a fancy haircut usually were not. People considered it essential to be productive and efficient, but would also think it an outrage to be expected to reply to a work email on the weekend. From Rotterdam to Ludwigshafen, they counted pennies and returned empty bottles, avoided running up debts, and were careful to save for rainy days. Food was enjoyed but unimportant, and a 'salad' was anything covered with mayonnaise, preferably fried first."-Ben Coates, The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps
"All along the river, the people I spoke to were hard-working and deeply attached to the mental security blanket of having a decent house, clean car and steady job. They were relatively wealthy, but at the same time quite ambivalent about wealth, and disdainful of anything which smacked of excessive consumption. Family was important, but having expensive jewellery or a fancy haircut usually were not. People considered it essential to be productive and efficient, but would also think it an outrage to be expected to reply to a work email on the weekend. From Rotterdam to Ludwigshafen, they counted pennies and returned empty bottles, avoided running up debts, and were careful to save for rainy days. Food was enjoyed but unimportant, and a 'salad' was anything covered with mayonnaise, preferably fried first."-Ben Coates, The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps
"Several years of living in the Netherlands had reduced my innate English prudishness somewhat, but I still suffered from a typical Englishman's angst at public nudity. Cowering between the changing rooms and the pool, I spent ten anguished minutes trying to decide whether to keep my swimming trunks on or risk taking them off. Would the other patrons run screaming if I stripped off? Or would they run screaming if I didn't? I eventually decided to assimilate as best as I could, and marched to the poolside dressed as God made me, flinging my towel aside with carefree abandon. No one ran screaming, although I did get a big smile and a wink from a bearish, Russian-looking man twice my age, and wondered briefly if I'd strayed into the wrong kind of bathhouse. The biggest surprise was that men and women were mixing freely not just in the pools but in the showers and changing rooms too, all as happily naked as the day they first drew breath. A group of older men sat talking about football in the hot tub, and a pair of middle-aged women were busily planning someone else's wedding while swimming lengths in the icy main pool. Yet despite the mixing of the sexes, the atmosphere was reassuringly chaste. I was almost certainly the only person who wasn't retired, and there were (to put it politely) more raisins on display than grapes. I didn't quite know where to look, and spent a lot of time feigning interest in the ceiling."-Ben Coates, The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps
"Several years of living in the Netherlands had reduced my innate English prudishness somewhat, but I still suffered from a typical Englishman's angst at public nudity. Cowering between the changing rooms and the pool, I spent ten anguished minutes trying to decide whether to keep my swimming trunks on or risk taking them off. Would the other patrons run screaming if I stripped off? Or would they run screaming if I didn't? I eventually decided to assimilate as best as I could, and marched to the poolside dressed as God made me, flinging my towel aside with carefree abandon. No one ran screaming, although I did get a big smile and a wink from a bearish, Russian-looking man twice my age, and wondered briefly if I'd strayed into the wrong kind of bathhouse. The biggest surprise was that men and women were mixing freely not just in the pools but in the showers and changing rooms too, all as happily naked as the day they first drew breath. A group of older men sat talking about football in the hot tub, and a pair of middle-aged women were busily planning someone else's wedding while swimming lengths in the icy main pool. Yet despite the mixing of the sexes, the atmosphere was reassuringly chaste. I was almost certainly the only person who wasn't retired, and there were (to put it politely) more raisins on display than grapes. I didn't quite know where to look, and spent a lot of time feigning interest in the ceiling."-Ben Coates, The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps
If you liked the audiobook plot in The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps by Ben Coates , here is a list of 10 books like this:
1. Cartes Postales from Greece
By: Victoria Hislop
4.00
Format: None pages, Audiobook
Week after week, the postcards arrive, addressed to a name Ellie does not know, with no return addr… read more
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2. Scandinavians: In Search of the Soul of the North
By: Robert Ferguson
4.62
Format: None pages, Hardcover
Scandinavia is the epitome of cool: we fill our homes with Nordic furniture; we envy their humane s… read more
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3. Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider
By: Peter Gay
4.27
Format: 24 pages, Paperback
First published in 1968, Weimar Cultureis one of the masterworks of Peter Gay's distinguished caree… read more
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4. Das Reboot: How German Football Reinvented Itself and Conquered the World
By: Raphael Honigstein
4.42
Format: 718 pages,
July 13th 2014, World Cup Final, the last ten minutes of extra time: Germany forward Mario Gotze, r… read more
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5. Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City
By: Russell Shorto
3.54
Format: 256 pages, Hardcover
An endlessly entertaining portrait of the city of Amsterdam and the ideas that make it unique, by t… read more
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6. Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America
By: John Charles Chasteen
3.91
Format: 528 pages, Paperback
Drawing on the most current scholarship, this concise text presents a direct, compelling narrative … read more
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7. The Shortest History of Germany
By: James Hawes
3.72
Format: 226 pages, Hardcover
Read in an afternoon. Remember for a lifetime. In his acclaimed new bestseller, now in paperback, … read more
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"Anyone who thinks of the Germans as a naturally bellicose people should recall that Prussia-Germany was the only one of the continental powers in the run-up to 1914 whose elite seriously feared that …"-James Hawes, The Shortest History of Germany
8. Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918
By: Katja Hoyer
4.17
Format: 256 pages, Hardcover
Before 1871, Germany was not a nation but an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable… read more
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9. Poland: The First Thousand Years
By: Patrice M. Dabrowski
3.95
Format: 506 pages, Hardcover
Since its beginnings, Poland has been a moving target, geographically as well as demographically, a… read more
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10. Why the Germans Do it Better: Notes from a Grown-Up Country
By: John Kampfner
3.97
Format: 320 pages, Hardcover
A provocative and entertaining exploration of the country that Britons love to hate by one of our m… read more
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11. Germany: A Nation in Its Time: Before, During, and After Nationalism, 1500-2000
By: Helmut Walser Smith
4.04
Format: 608 pages, Hardcover
For nearly a century, historians have depicted Germany as a rabidly nationalist land, born in a sea… read more
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- history
- germany
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12. The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps
By: Ben Coates
3.89
Format: 304 pages, Paperback
From rowing the canals of Amsterdam to riding a cow through the Alps, via Cold War nuclear bunkers,… read more
Want to Read $ 12.99Similar categories in Ben Coates's The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps book and Ben Coates's The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps
- cultural
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- memoir
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- germany
- nonfiction
- france
- european history
- geography
- audiobook
"All along the river, the people I spoke to were hard-working and deeply attached to the mental security blanket of having a decent house, clean car and steady job. They were relatively wealthy, but a…"-Ben Coates, The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps
"Several years of living in the Netherlands had reduced my innate English prudishness somewhat, but I still suffered from a typical Englishman's angst at public nudity. Cowering between the changing r…"-Ben Coates, The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps
13. The Seine: The River that Made Paris
By: Elaine Sciolino
3.92
Format: 370 pages, Hardcover
A vibrant, enchanting tour of the Seine from longtime New York Times foreign correspondent and best… read more
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14. Everything is Everything: A Memoir of Love, Hate & Hope
By: Clive Myrie
4.31
Format: 315 pages, Kindle Edition
As a Bolton teenager with a paper round, Clive Myrie read all the newspapers he delivered from cove… read more
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15. The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats
By: Daniel Stone
3.93
Format: 397 pages, Hardcover
The true adventures of David Fairchild, a late-nineteenth-century food explorer who traveled the gl… read more
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"What would normally be good news instead laid bare a pesky side effect of innovation: greater efficiency required fewer workers, leaving rural communities with little to support themselves."-Daniel Stone, The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats
"He didn't know it, but America had a need for David Fairchild. The bare agricultural landscape at the beginning of his life would transform by its end into a colorful portrait: yellows from tropical …"-Daniel Stone, The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats
"In Naples, where pizza was invented, Fairchild tasted his first cheesy flatbread, a punishing food for first-timers, whose mouths could be scorched with hot, lavalike cheese. He was enchanted by the …"-Daniel Stone, The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats
"The grape, of a variety known as sultanina, would ultimately grow best in the wet and temperate soil of California. America's region most climatically similar to the Mediterranean. Fairchild's sample…"-Daniel Stone, The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats
16. Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil
By: Susan Neiman
4.22
Format: 432 pages, ebook
As an increasingly polarized America fights over the legacy of racism, Susan Neiman, author of the … read more
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"There are pragmatic as well as moral grounds for the United States to follow Germany's lead [in dealing with it's past human rights crimes]. American media may have largely ignored the reasons we dec…"-Susan Neiman, Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil
17. Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country
By: Simon Winder
3.84
Format: 528 pages, Hardcover
Following Germania and Danubia, the third installment in Simon Winder's personal history of Europe … read more
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"John of Bavaria, realizing the game was up and his throwing in the priesthood and marrying had just wasted everyone’s time, made Philip the Good his heir. He was shortly thereafter assassinated in Th…"-Simon Winder, Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe's Lost Country
18. Tutankhamun's Trumpet: Ancient Egypt in 100 Objects from the Boy-King's Tomb
By: Toby Wilkinson
4.21
Format: 496 pages, Hardcover
On 26 November 1922 Howard Carter first peered into the newly opened tomb of an ancient Egyptian bo… read more
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19. Germany: A History
By: Francis Russell
3.53
Format: 338 pages, Kindle Edition
Here, from New York Times bestselling historian Richard Russell, is the dramatic story of Germany -… read more
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20. Map of Another Town
By: M.F.K. Fisher
3.71
Format: 224 pages, Paperback
‘A glowing memoir of Provence’ New York Times M F K Fisher moved to Aix-en-Provence with her dau… read more
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21. The Art of Power: My Story as America's First Woman Speaker of the House
By: Nancy Pelosi
4.10
Format: 352 pages, Hardcover
The most powerful woman in American political history tells the story of her transformation from ho… read more
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