The Making of Americans: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Making of Americans, credited to Gertrude Stein, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein. Read in English by Martha H. Weller. The Making of Americans is a novel written by Gertrude Stein over a long period of time (1906-1911) and finally published in 1925. It is subtitled “Being a History of a Family’s Progress.” In many places in the work, Stein expresses her desire to know everything about everything! She also tells the reader that she loves the repeating that everyone does. She demonstrates this love by repeating, with only slight variations, her most important themes. In some passages, she is convinced that she really does understand all of the different kinds there are in men and women. In other passages, she is not sure that she has or will ever have a complete understanding of anything or anyone. She laments the fact that few people are willing to listen to her. While exploring the “being” of others, she frequently presents as a conflicted individual who is happy yet sometimes despairing. In addition to her use of repetition, Stein loves lists and the reader can sense the exuberance with which she plays with her text. The text is generally challenging. It does not fit into our typical expectations of either a novel or a history. Bit by bit, we learn a few details about the lives of the members of the Dehning and Hersland families and some of the people they knew. Stein, however, seems to present details only in support of her classification of kinds and kinds within kinds of men and women. Many of her observations are fascinating, if you can accept the unusual style of presentation. This is an experimental work and is not something for a casual read. There are only a few divisions in the text and no chapters. Stein has a style of writing that is frequently tedious to the modern ear. I think I hear a Germanic sentence structure. She loves long sentences and is inconsistent in the use of punctuation. In narrating this work, I frequently had to reread a passage several times in order to speak the text so that it could be understood. It is likely that I have misinterpreted some sentences, but since she repeats herself again and again, overall the meaning comes through. I recommend listening to or reading at least part of this very long work. In case someone is studying Stein and her works, I have included page numbers for each section recorded. They refer to the version available at archive.org. Summary by Martha Weller

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Making of Americans
• Author credits: Gertrude Stein
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 60
• Listed recording duration: 53:19:11

Catalogue topics

• novel
• historical
• modernist
• philosophical
• experimental

Opening tracks: first 24 of 60

1. 01 - Part 01 (3-20) — 54:14
2. 02 - Part 02 (20-38) — 56:18
3. 03 - Part 03 (38-56) — 55:16
4. 04 - Part 04 (56-74) — 58:12
5. 05 - Part 05 (74-92) — 59:46
6. 06 - Part 06 (92-110) — 58:27
7. 07 - Part 07 (110-128) — 59:38
8. 08 - Part 08 (128-149) — 1:10:27
9. 09 - Part 09 (150-168) — 1:05:33
10. 10 - Part 10 (168-186) — 1:03:16
11. 11 - Part 11 (186-204) — 1:02:27
12. 12 - Part 12 (204-220) — 55:44
13. 13 - Part 13 (221-236) — 52:18
14. 14 - Part 14 (236-250) — 48:20
15. 15 - Part 15 (250-261) — 38:13
16. 16 - Part 16 (261-272) — 36:30
17. 17 - Part 17 (272-285) — 43:17
18. 18 - Part 18: Martha Hersland (287-305) — 59:41
19. 19 - Part 19 (305-322) — 59:25
20. 20 - Part 20 (322-336) — 54:24
21. 21 - Part 21 (336-351) — 56:03
22. 22 - Part 22 (351-367) — 58:37
23. 23 - Part 23 (367-381) — 53:39
24. 24 - Part 24 (382-396) — 51:43

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.