Audibly Speaking: Listening to History

This is a tour of Chapter 6 from "The American Yawp" on The American Revolution. You need to read the chapter after listening to this. This audio tour is no substitute for reading the chapter.

Twitter/X Facebook I have had the pleasure of recording nearly all of the Sherlock Holmes short stories for this podcast, but one stands out among all the others, both as a recording effort and as a story by the great Conan Doyle. That is THIS story, a BRAND NEW RE-READING of “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange.” I first recorded this in the summer of 2022, in the early stages of my recovery from my first bout with COVID-19. You can still listen to that version, if you go back through my episodes to that one recorded in mid-2022. My raspy voice is unmistakable, but I soldiered on and did what I always do when I record these short stories: act the parts with all the fervor and ability that I can possibly muster. And why not make the effort even as I gasped for breath? Conan Doyle was the master mystery structuralist, and a writer without peer in melding mystery with wit. Never has the Holmes character seemed so keen or brilliantly drawn by the author. The clues are parceled out just well enough that the reader feels he is on the path to a solution right alongside Holmes, although of course it is all a conceit that Doyle’s character Holmes (if he was just a character) shows is impossibly pretentious. In this NEW READING AND RECORDING, I have tried to create as sonically and theatrically perfect a rendering of the story as possible, befitting its pride of place as first in the Sherlock Homes canon. It represents my learning as an audio narrator of the past six years. If you listen to no other of my recordings, LISTEN to this one.  And, if you do, I dare you to stop listening then.  Congratulations for chancing upon this rare opportunity to listen to the nearly-perfect recording of a nearly-perfect tale. Twitter/X Facebook

Twitter/X Facebook “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,” by Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, was one of two stories in the canon which was told not in the voice of Dr. John Watson but in third-person.  Intended as the basis of a play, a one-act drama, it consists mainly of dialogue between two individuals at a time. Most of the time Holmes is one of the two persons, but not always.  The device was necessary to make the surprise of the story possible.  The story was published in the UK and in the US in 1921.  It is one of Doyle’s later compositions, but it is a crackerjack story all the same.  Narrated by Dr. Rick Reiman. Twitter/X Facebook

Twitter/X Facebook In this year of 2025, we celebrate the centennial of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.  I have recorded the first three chapters of the heartbreaking novel, and the latest chapter is out today!  I have links to all three chapters below should you wish to listen to them in order.  Perhaps you, too, admire the green light on the far horizon.  Watch out, because it may be the chimera of the “American Dream,” an apparition best left in quotation marks as airy as the cocktails on Gatsby’s West Egg veranda. Chapter One of The Great Gatsby Chapter Two of The Great Gatsby Chapter Three of The Great Gatsby (Below!) Twitter/X Facebook

Twitter/X Facebook Some readers, who are avid fans of the atmosphere of the story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes tale, “The Adventure of Shoscomb Old Place,” may be disappointed with the hastily wrapped conclusion that Doyle sought fit to conclude the story. As a pastiche, a different ending concludes this audio narration of the tale. Will Sir Robert Norburton get his just deserts after all. Listen and learn to find out. Twitter/X Facebook

Twitter/X Facebook What a whimsical tale Dr. Watson has to tell of Jabez Wilson and “The Red-Headed League!” Between the laughter and the mirth that Holmes teases out of the tale, there emerges a dastardly crime so cunning that only Holmes himself could solve it. John Clay, the “fourth smartest man in London,” according to Holmes, and probably a man working for Moriarty, the second smartest man, is plotting to bankrupt a vital English bank. But the narrator should not reveal the plot. He simply takes the part of the players, in this narration by your audio interpreter of all things Holmesian, Rick Reiman. He hopes, and knows that, thanks to the brilliant writing of Arthur Conan Doyle, that you will enjoy it. Twitter/X Facebook