Listen free for 30 days
-
The Ambulance Drivers
- Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War
- Narrated by: Dean Temple
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, Art & Literature
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for £27.19
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Rose Man of Sing Sing
- A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism
- By: James McGrath Morris
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles E. Chapin, the notorious editor-tyrant of Joseph Pulitzer's New York Evening World during America's Gilded Age, made headlines himself after murdering his wife of 39 years. This extensively researched biography brings to life Chapin's tragic story, from his childhood to his days spent cultivating a beautiful rose garden in Sing Sing prison to the last moments of his life.
-
-
A good version of events surrounding the Rose Man
- By Shaheen on 20-12-13
-
A Christmas Carol
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Hugh Grant
- Length: 2 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1843, it tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a mean and unpleasant man who dislikes people generally and Christmas especially. One Christmas Eve he is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come and given a glimpse of the many homes and lives which Scrooge has touched in his wretched life to date. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.
-
-
Just delightful. Perfect.
- By Brocklette on 23-12-20
-
Rebel Souls
- Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians
- By: Justin Martin
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rebel Souls is the first book ever written about the colorful group of artists - regulars at Pfaff's Saloon in Manhattan - rightly considered America's original Bohemians. Besides a young Whitman, the circle included actor Edwin Booth; trailblazing stand–up comic Artemus Ward; psychedelic drug pioneer and author Fitz Hugh Ludlow; and brazen performer Adah Menken, famous for her Naked Lady routine. Central to their times, the artists managed to forge connections with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, and even Abraham Lincoln.
-
The Lost Detective
- Becoming Dashiell Hammett
- By: Nathan Ward
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before he became a household name in America as perhaps our greatest hard-boiled crime writer, before his attachment to Lillian Hellman and blacklisting during the McCarthy era, and his subsequent downward spiral, Dashiell Hammett led a life of action. The tuberculosis he contracted during the war forced him to leave the Pinkertons - but it may well have prompted one of America's most acclaimed writing careers.
-
Wolf: The Lives of Jack London
- By: James L. Haley
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jack London was born a working-class, fatherless San Franciscan in 1876. In his youth, he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling west coast—by and by playing the role of hobo, sailor, and oyster pirate. From his vantage point at the margins of Gilded Age America, he witnessed such iniquity and abuses that he became a life long socialist and advocate for reform. Award-winning western historian James L. Haley paints a vivid portrait of London—adventurer, social reformer, and the most well-known American writer of his generation.
-
-
Insufficient
- By Albert T on 11-05-22
-
Beautiful Exile
- The Life of Martha Gellhorn
- By: Carl Rollyson
- Narrated by: John Stamper
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Martha Gellhorn died in February 1998, just shy of her 90th birthday. Well before her death, she had become a legend. She reported on wars from Spain in the 1930s to Panama in the 1980s, and her travel books have become classics. Her marriage to Ernest Hemingway and affairs with legendary lovers like H. G. Wells, and her relationship with two presidents, Roosevelt and Kennedy, reflect her campaigns against tyranny and deprivation, and her outrage at the corruption and cruelty of modern governments.
-
The Rose Man of Sing Sing
- A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism
- By: James McGrath Morris
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Charles E. Chapin, the notorious editor-tyrant of Joseph Pulitzer's New York Evening World during America's Gilded Age, made headlines himself after murdering his wife of 39 years. This extensively researched biography brings to life Chapin's tragic story, from his childhood to his days spent cultivating a beautiful rose garden in Sing Sing prison to the last moments of his life.
-
-
A good version of events surrounding the Rose Man
- By Shaheen on 20-12-13
-
A Christmas Carol
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Hugh Grant
- Length: 2 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First published in 1843, it tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a mean and unpleasant man who dislikes people generally and Christmas especially. One Christmas Eve he is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come and given a glimpse of the many homes and lives which Scrooge has touched in his wretched life to date. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.
-
-
Just delightful. Perfect.
- By Brocklette on 23-12-20
-
Rebel Souls
- Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians
- By: Justin Martin
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Rebel Souls is the first book ever written about the colorful group of artists - regulars at Pfaff's Saloon in Manhattan - rightly considered America's original Bohemians. Besides a young Whitman, the circle included actor Edwin Booth; trailblazing stand–up comic Artemus Ward; psychedelic drug pioneer and author Fitz Hugh Ludlow; and brazen performer Adah Menken, famous for her Naked Lady routine. Central to their times, the artists managed to forge connections with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, and even Abraham Lincoln.
-
The Lost Detective
- Becoming Dashiell Hammett
- By: Nathan Ward
- Narrated by: Brian Holsopple
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Before he became a household name in America as perhaps our greatest hard-boiled crime writer, before his attachment to Lillian Hellman and blacklisting during the McCarthy era, and his subsequent downward spiral, Dashiell Hammett led a life of action. The tuberculosis he contracted during the war forced him to leave the Pinkertons - but it may well have prompted one of America's most acclaimed writing careers.
-
Wolf: The Lives of Jack London
- By: James L. Haley
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jack London was born a working-class, fatherless San Franciscan in 1876. In his youth, he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling west coast—by and by playing the role of hobo, sailor, and oyster pirate. From his vantage point at the margins of Gilded Age America, he witnessed such iniquity and abuses that he became a life long socialist and advocate for reform. Award-winning western historian James L. Haley paints a vivid portrait of London—adventurer, social reformer, and the most well-known American writer of his generation.
-
-
Insufficient
- By Albert T on 11-05-22
-
Beautiful Exile
- The Life of Martha Gellhorn
- By: Carl Rollyson
- Narrated by: John Stamper
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Martha Gellhorn died in February 1998, just shy of her 90th birthday. Well before her death, she had become a legend. She reported on wars from Spain in the 1930s to Panama in the 1980s, and her travel books have become classics. Her marriage to Ernest Hemingway and affairs with legendary lovers like H. G. Wells, and her relationship with two presidents, Roosevelt and Kennedy, reflect her campaigns against tyranny and deprivation, and her outrage at the corruption and cruelty of modern governments.
-
Road to Tara: The Life of Margaret Mitchell
- By: Anne Edwards
- Narrated by: Karen Commins
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Margaret Mitchell was as complex and compelling as her legendary heroine, Scarlett O'Hara, and her story is as dramatic as anything out of her own imagination. Indeed, it is the basis for the legend she created. Gone with the Wind took the American reading public by storm and went on to become one of the most popular books and motion pictures of all time. The book was a phenomenon whose success has never been equaled, but it shattered Margaret Mitchell's private life.
-
Reading My Father
- A Memoir
- By: Alexandra Styron
- Narrated by: Alexandra Styron
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written with humor, compassion, and grace.
-
But Enough About You
- Essays
- By: Christopher Buckley
- Narrated by: Bob Walter
- Length: 16 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Christopher Buckley at his best: an extraordinary, wide-ranging selection of essays both hilarious and poignant, irreverent and delightful. In his first book of essays since his 1997 best seller, Wry Martinis, Buckley delivers a rare combination of big ideas and truly fun writing. Listening to these essays is the equivalent of being in the company of a tremendously witty and enlightening companion.
-
A Curious Man
- The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert 'Believe It or Not!' Ripley
- By: Neal Thompson
- Narrated by: Marc Cashman
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A Curious Man is the marvelously compelling biography of Robert “Believe It or Not” Ripley, the enigmatic cartoonist turned globetrotting millionaire who won international fame by celebrating the world's strangest oddities, and whose outrageous showmanship taught us to believe in the unbelievable. As portrayed by acclaimed biographer Neal Thompson, Ripley’s life is the stuff of a classic American fairy tale. Buck-toothed and cursed by shyness, Ripley turned his sense of being an outsider into an appreciation for the strangeness of the world.
-
Hemingway Lives!
- Why Reading Ernest Hemingway Matters Today
- By: Clancy Sigal
- Narrated by: Kevin Free
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With the release of a flurry of feature and TV films about his life and work, and the publication of new books looking at his correspondence, his boat, and even his favorite cocktails, Ernest Hemingway is once again center stage of contemporary culture. Now, in this concise and sparkling account of the life and work of America's most storied writer, Clancy Sigal, himself a National Book Award runner-up, presents a persuasive case for the relevance of Ernest Hemingway to readers and listeners today.
-
-
Enjoyable summary of Hemingway's life
- By Edwin Pottle on 15-10-15
-
My Dear Boy
- A World War II Story of Escape, Exile, and Revelation
- By: Joanie Holzer Schirm
- Narrated by: Kate Mulligan, Traber Burns
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this posthumous memoir, Joanie Holzer Schirm elegantly recreates her father's youthful voice as he comes of age as a Jew in interwar Prague, escapes from a Nazi-held army unit, practices medicine in China's war-ravaged interior, and settles in the United States to start a family. Introducing us to a diverse cast of characters ranging from the humorous to the menacing, Holzer's life story is an inspirational account of survival during wartime, a cinematic epic spanning multiple continents, and ultimately a tale with a twist-a book that will move listeners for generations to come.
-
The Secret History of Costaguana
- By: Juan Gabriel Vasquez
- Narrated by: Armando Duran
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On the day of Joseph Conrad's death, in 1924, the Colombian-born José Altamirano begins to write and cannot stop. Many years before, he confessed to Conrad his life's every delicious detail - from his country's heroic revolutions to his darkest solitary moments. Those intimate recollections became Nostromo, a novel that solidified Conrad’s fame and turned Altamirano’s reality into a work of fiction. Now Conrad is dead, but the slate is by no means clear. Nostromo will live on and Altamirano must write himself back into existence.
-
The Last Englishmen
- Love, War and the End of the Empire
- By: Deborah Baker
- Narrated by: Cameron James Stewart
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Auden was a pioneering geologist of the Himalayas. Michael Spender was the first to survey the northern approach to the summit of Mount Everest. While their younger brothers - W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender - achieved literary fame, they vied for a place on an expedition that would finally conquer Everest, a quest that had become a metaphor for Britain’s efforts to maintain power over India. To this rivalry was added another: in the summer of 1938 both men fell in love with a painter named Nancy Sharp. Her choice would determine each man’s wartime loyalties.
-
Joy
- Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. Lewis
- By: Abigail Santamaria
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Joy Davidman is known, if she is known at all, as the wife of C. S. Lewis. Their marriage was immortalized in the film Shadowlands and Lewis' memoir, A Grief Observed. Now, through extraordinary new documents as well as years of research and interviews, Abigail Santamaria brings Joy Davidman Gresham Lewis to your ears in the fullness and depth she deserves. A poet and radical, Davidman was a frequent contributor to the communist vehicle New Masses and an active member of New York literary circles in the 1930s and '40s.
-
-
I love Joy Davidman.
- By MamikieMatatso on 28-01-22
-
Harry Harrison!
- A Memoir
- By: Harry Harrison
- Narrated by: Allan Robertson
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Recollections of one of the grand masters of science fiction of his storied career as a celebrated author and his relationships with other luminaries in the field. This memoir is filled with all the humor and irreverence Harry Harrison's readers have come to expect from the New York Times best-selling author of the uproarious Stainless Steel Rat series.
-
In Full Flight
- A Story of Africa and Atonement
- By: John Heminway
- Narrated by: John Heminway
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a member of the renowned Flying Doctors Service, Dr. Anne Spoerry treated hundreds of thousands of people across rural Kenya over the span of 50 years, earning herself the cherished nickname “Mama Daktari” - “Mother Doctor.” Yet few knew that what drove her from post-World War II Europe to Africa was a past marked by rebellion, submission, and personal decisions that earned her another nickname - this one sinister - while working as a “doctor” in a Nazi concentration camp.
-
-
Fascinating Story as regards the Flying Doctor
- By Ben Waddams on 09-03-18
-
Beautiful Exiles
- By: Meg Waite Clayton
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Key West, 1936. Headstrong, accomplished journalist Martha Gellhorn is confident with words but less so with men when she meets disheveled literary titan Ernest Hemingway in a dive bar. Their friendship - forged over writing, talk, and family dinners - flourishes into something undeniable in Madrid while they’re covering the Spanish Civil War.
Summary
After meeting for the first time on the front lines of World War I, two aspiring writers forge an intense 20-year friendship and write some of America's greatest novels, giving voice to a "lost generation" shaken by war. Eager to find his way in life and words, John Dos Passos first witnessed the horror of trench warfare in France as a volunteer ambulance driver retrieving the dead and seriously wounded from the front line. Later in the war, he briefly met another young writer, Ernest Hemingway, who was just arriving for his service in the ambulance corps. When the war was over, both men knew they had to write about it; they had to give voice to what they felt about war and life. Their friendship and collaboration developed through the peace of the 1920s and 1930s, as Hemingway's novels soared to success while Dos Passos penned the greatest antiwar novel of his generation, Three Soldiers.
In war, Hemingway found adventure, women, and a cause. Dos Passos saw only oppression and futility. Their different visions eventually turned their private friendship into a bitter public fight, fueled by money, jealousy, and lust. Rich in evocative detail - from Paris cafes to the Austrian Alps, from the streets of Pamplona to the waters of Key West - The Ambulance Drivers is a biography of a turbulent friendship between two of the century's greatest writers, and an illustration of how war both inspires and destroys, unites, and divides.
Critic reviews
More from the same
Narrator
What listeners say about The Ambulance Drivers
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- NMwritergal
- 08-04-17
Morris always delivers interesting biographies...
...that I might not normally read--and this is another one. I first read/listened to The Rose Man of Sing Sing (which remains my favorite), something I'd have never found on my own but it was recommended to me so I listened! Now, if Morris writes it, I'll read it right away.
I knew little about Hemingway (other than reading some of his work) and even less about Dos Passos, so not only did I learn about the two men, but what I always appreciate about Morris is how he puts everything into the wider historical context.
There's a little bit of everything in this book: War, friendship, rivalry, marriage, what it means to be a writer, history, etc. I was really fascinated by the ambulance drivers in general; it's a part of WW1 that I knew nothing about!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Eggs Ackley
- 28-01-18
Lifeless writing, lifeless narration
What disappointed you about The Ambulance Drivers?
Sorry, but I couldn't get past the feeling that the narrator was bored with what he was reading. The longer he read, the more I lost whatever interest I had in the book.
Would you be willing to try another one of Dean Temple’s performances?
Let me put it this way: no.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Marti Timmons
- 28-08-17
Narrator drops the end of each sentence.
Rich stories of two important writers and their tangled friendship spanning two world wars and the Spanish Civil War. Their shifting and conflicting ideology, romances, adventures and writing assignments are set on a world stage.
Enjoyable.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Scott Free
- 15-07-19
insights into two very important authors
I appreciated the detail and the letters that went into analyzing the relationship between Hemingway and Dos Passos I thought that the description about Hemingway was a little lacking having studied Hemingway more and also Dos Passos. Hemingway Ihad additional associations that were not revealed in this audiobook, Hemingway probably had connections with the OSS and elements of the deep state in the US. government which explains a lot of his politics at the end and possibly also explains his suicide. The account of Dos Passos fleeing from the Stalinists in Spain is actually quite gripping but it was skipped over in this version, otherwise I really enjoyed the book and I thought the reader did an excellent job