Eva March Tappan
44 episodes listed below
Antique travel, court wit, and historical narration.
This LibriVox series presents selections from Eva March Tappan’s edited historical anthology, moving from Mecca pilgrimage accounts to Arabian court anecdotes. Its appeal lies in old narrative texture: formal introductions, vivid description, moral reversals, and compact stories built around wit, hospitality, power, and risk.
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World’s Story Volume III- Egypt, Africa and Arabia is an archival listening experience drawn from an Eva March Tappan-edited anthology. It is not a conversational history show. It is a sequence of public-domain readings, section by section, with the formality and unevenness that come with older recorded texts. The recent episodes concentrate on Arabia and nearby historical imagination. Sir Richard F Burton’s pilgrimage account supplies one kind of drama: disguise, sacred geography, danger, and minute observation. The Mecca episode lingers on gateways, colonnades, minarets, lamps, cloth, stone, and the charged boundary between reverence and trespass. Other selections shift into compact anecdote. Colonel L Du Couret’s “Wit from Arabia” centers on Nassir ad-Dinafendi and turns a pulpit exchange into a verbal trap. “Justice in Arabia nineteenth century” presents a tribunal where the Naguib hears cases in public, surrounded by chiefs, retainers, and petitioners. The E H Palmer episodes bring a different rhythm. They favor courtly reversals, sharp answers, hungry guests, rulers, and performers trying to survive royal taste. Harun al-Rashid appears as a sleepless caliph and a source of both threat and reward. In these stories, wit is never merely decorative. It can save someone from punishment, redirect blame, win money, expose vanity, or turn a painful bargain into a joke. The narration can be stiff, and some source language reflects the period it comes from. That stiffness is part of the artifact. The reward is close contact with historical prose as it was anthologized: ornate, moralizing, descriptive, comic, and occasionally startling. The show works best for patient listeners who enjoy old travel literature, Arabian court tales, and historical storytelling without modern commentary constantly smoothing the edges.
Made for: For listeners drawn to public-domain history, nineteenth-century travel literature, Arabian court tales, and older prose read aloud without modern panel discussion. It fits patient listening more than quick news-style history.
What sets it apart: The show preserves anthology texture: formal credits, period diction, travel accounts, comic reversals, and story-song-art framing in one continuous public-domain series. Its interest is the source material itself, not a contemporary host’s interpretation.
Dive into the rich tapestry of history with Volume III of The World’s Story, a remarkable 15-volume series edited by Eva March Tappan. This volume brings together a captivating selection of prose, poetry, and art that chronicles the vibrant cultures of Egypt, Northern, Western, and Central Africa, South Africa, and Arabia. Experience the stories, songs, and artworks that have shaped our understanding of the world from ancient times to the dawn of the 20th century. - Summary by Sonia. Cast list for The Death of Cleopatra Dolabella Tomas Peter, Charmian Monika M.C., Cleopatra Sandra Schmit, Iras Eva Davis, Gu...
Trollope's diamond dust gives your history appetite something grittier than royal dates and polished monuments.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A battlefield advance turns into a close test of thirst, nerve, and survival as wounded men call for water.
An advance stalls under fire, and the episode keeps its attention close to the men caught in that pause. Wounded soldiers call for help and water, a former officer drags one stricken man back, and the line waits with guns raised while orders and rumors pass from mouth to mouth.
A dust-choked account of the diamond mines, with scale and labor economics emerging through close observation.
This review frames the diamond mines as a hard physical place first: heat, dust, pits, walls, and roadways, with earth hauled off to be washed and examined. At Dutoit's Pan and Bolt Fontaine, the setting feels close and airless.
Northern Ohio history, remembered out loud.
Phoebe Judge narrates true crime history and interviews the authors who uncovered it.
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Dana Schwartz narrates the violent lives of monarchs, warlords, and queens.
This episode recounts Sir Richard F.
This episode presents humorous anecdotes from Arabia, featuring the witty preacher Nassir ad-Dinafendi who cleverly evades giving sermons through paradoxical questions and interactions with his audience.
This episode describes a 19th-century Arabian justice system where the Naguib holds public tribunal sessions after evening prayers to render equitable decisions for all residents.
This episode recounts a historical anecdote from eighth-century Arabia about Caliph Haroun al-Rashid's court, where his wife advocates for their son Imin's succession, leading to a conflict involving poetry criticism by the jester Abu Nawas.
This episode recounts an 8th-century anecdote where Ibrahim el-Moseli, after a drinking bout, encounters a hospitable household and shares a meal with its master, illustrating themes of generosity and social interaction in historical Arabia.
Gustav Frenssen’s “Advancing Upon the Enemy, 1903-1904” follows a 90-man company entering dense bush after an overnight advance toward enemy forces.
Gustav Frenssen's account follows roughly 300 German marines, sailors, and home guards across Southwest Africa during the 1903-1904 campaign.
["Anthony Trollope traces South Africa's diamond boom from the 1867 stone found at Jacobs's house to Dr.
An explorer in 1870 Africa discusses with Ashango elders about a village of dwarfs in the forest and plans an expedition to see them.
Gilbert Watson’s “The Music of the Desert,” recorded by T.J.
Edmondo de Amicis recounts a nineteenth-century journey through Morocco toward Fez, including military escorts, rural settlements, and the caravan's arrival at Zagota.
This episode recounts how the Barbary pirates came to respect the American flag in 1815, based on historical accounts by John Bach McMaster.