Play Audiobook Sample

The Overstory Audiobook

Name: The Overstory Audiobook
Brand: Recorded Books, Inc.
SKU: cofr
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.50 (4 reviews)
Author: Richard Powers
ISBN: 9781501982026

By: Richard Powers

Play Audiobook Sample

FlexPass™ Price: ~~$12.95~~

$9.95 for new members!

(Includes UNLIMITED podcast listening)

Love your audiobook or we'll exchange it
No credits to manage, just big savings
Unlimited podcast listening

Add to Cart learn more

Regular Price: $29.99 Add to Cart

Read By: Suzanne Toren Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc. Listen Time: 23.00 hours at 1.0x Speed 15.33 hours at 1.5x Speed 11.50 hours at 2.0x Speed Release Date: April 2018 Format: Unabridged Audiobook ISBN: 9781501982026

(4.50) - 4 listener ratings

Wishlist (add) Wishlist (remove) Share

More by Author More by Narrator Similar Audiobooks

Quick Stats About this Audiobook

Total Audiobook Chapters:

Longest Chapter Length:

59:26 minutes

Shortest Chapter Length:

34 seconds

Average Chapter Length:

44:28 minutes

Audiobooks by this Author:

Other Audiobooks Written by Richard Powers: > View All...

The Echo Maker Audiobook, by Richard Powers

Generosity: An Enhancement Audiobook, by Richard Powers

Orfeo: A Novel Audiobook, by Richard Powers

Operation Wandering Soul Audiobook, by Richard Powers

Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance: A Novel Audiobook, by Richard Powers

Listeners Also Enjoyed:

> View All...

Where the Crawdads Sing: Reese's Book Club (A Novel) Audiobook, by

The Lincoln Highway: A Read with Jenna Pick (A Novel) Audiobook, by

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants Audiobook, by

The Last Thing He Told Me: A Novel Audiobook, by

The Vanishing Half: A GMA Book Club Pick (A Novel) Audiobook, by

The Giver of Stars: A Novel Audiobook, by

Before We Were Yours: A Novel Audiobook, by

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine: A Novel Audiobook, by

All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel Audiobook, by

The Midnight Library: A Novel Audiobook, by

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents Audiobook, by

Publisher Description

A monumental novel about reimagining our place in the living world, by one of our most "prodigiously talented" novelists (New York Times Book Review). The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fable that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An air force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing-and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These and five other strangers, each summoned in different ways by trees, are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent's few remaining acres of virgin forest. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

Download and start listening now!

"The Overstory is composed as vignettes that start out with different protagonists, but which soon start to intertwine like the roots of a single organism. We are encouraged to revere the importance of trees in American history, the role of forests as not just a place for recreation or a producer of natural resources, but ultimately, as a powerful metaphor for the interconnectedness of life as we know it--or as is more often the case--for the incredible complexity of life that we still do not understand. Listeners are compelled to see the value of trees in a new light through Powers' fictional re-telling of the late 20th Century environmental movement. The fight over the fabled and fated forest giants of the Pacific Northwest is contextualized with powerful personal experiences, and it delivers enough variety and verisimilitude that you will wholeheartedly believe the characters are on the right side of history, even if they aren't sure of it themselves. The narration was a little slow-paced, but by the end of this rich journey through the spiritual, theoretical, metaphysical, cultural, and literal overstory of North America's woodlands, you will be able to see the forest for the trees, perhaps as never before."
— Marty (4 out of 5 stars)

Quotes

“Monumental…Using the tools of the story, he pulls readers heart-first into a perspective so much longer-lived and more subtly developed than the human purview that we gain glimpses of a vast, primordial sensibility.”
— New York Times Book Review (cover review)
“A rousing, full-throated hymn to Nature’s grandeur.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
“An extraordinary novel…There is something exhilarating, too, in reading a novel whose context is wider than human life. The Overstory leaves you with a slightly adjusted frame of reference…even after I put it down.”
— Guardian (London)
“This ambitious novel soars up through the canopy of American literature and remakes the landscape of environmental fiction.”
— Washington Post
“A masterwork sculpted from sheer awe…The Overstory will convince you that we walk among gods every time we enter a forest.”-
— Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Thoroughly compelling.”
— Boston Globe

Awards

A New York Times bestseller
An Amazon Best Book of the Month
A Newsweek Pick for Summer Reading
A Millions.com Pick of Top Ten Must-Read Books of the Month
Shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
Finalist for the 2019 Indies Choice Book Award
Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
A PBS NewsHour-New York Times Book Club Pick
A Literary Hub Pick of the 20 Best Novels of the Decade
A Midwest Indie Bestseller in Fiction
A London Guardian Pick of the Top 10 Books of Eco-Fiction

The Overstory Listener Reviews

Overall Performance:

(4.67)

5 Stars: 2

4 Stars: 1

3 Stars: 0

2 Stars: 0

1 Stars: 0

Narration:

(5.00)

5 Stars: 2

4 Stars: 0

3 Stars: 0

2 Stars: 0

1 Stars: 0

Story:

(5.00)

5 Stars: 2

4 Stars: 0

3 Stars: 0

2 Stars: 0

1 Stars: 0

Sort reviews by: Write a Review

Overall Performance:
— 6/28/2021
Overall Performance: Narration Rating: Story Rating:
— Sonke Hardersen, 3/2/2021
Overall Performance: Narration Rating: Story Rating:
" An amazing book, so well written, and so well read. Complex sub plots intertwine, with a fascinating and relevant overstory. We read it as part of a book club and discussed the sections. It was interesting that different people got such different perspectives from it. "
— Eleanor, 1/13/2021

About Richard Powers

Richard Powers is the author of a dozen novels, including the New York Times bestseller The Overstory. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the National Book Award, and he has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a four-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. He has received a Lannan Literary Award and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Historical Fiction. He is a fellow of the Academy of Arts and Letters, and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

About Suzanne Toren

Peter Ganim, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an American actor who has appeared on stage, on television, and in film. He has performed voice-over work since 1994.