Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma
    Unavailable
    A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma
    Unavailable
    A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma
    Audiobook6 hours

    A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma

    Written by Alan Deutschman

    Narrated by Michael Cerveris

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    When acclaimed journalist Alan Deutschman came to the California wine country as the lucky house guest of very rich friends, he was surprised to discover a raging controversy. A civil war was being fought between the Napa Valley, which epitomized elitism, prestige and wealthy excess, and the neighboring Sonoma Valley, a rag-tag bohemian enclave so stubbornly backward that rambunctious chickens wandered freely through town. But the antics really began when new-money invaders began pushing out Sonoma's poets and painters to make way for luxury resorts and trophy houses that seemed a parody of opulence. A Tale of Two Valleys captures these stranger-than-fiction locales with the wit of a Tom Wolfe novel and uncorks the hilarious absurdities of life among the wine world's glitterati.
    Deutschman found that on the weekends the wine country was like a bunch of gracious hosts smiling upon their guests, but during the week the families feuded with each other and their neighbors like the Hatfields and McCoys. Napa was a comically exclusive club where the super-rich fought desperately to get in. Sonoma's colorful free spirits and iconoclasts were wary of their bohemia becoming the next playground for the rapacious elite. So, led by a former taxicab driver and wine-grape picker, a cheese merchant, and an artist who lived in a barn surrounded by wild peacocks, they formed a populist revolt to seize power and repel the rich invaders.
    Deutschman's cast of characters brims with eccentrics, egomaniacs, and a mysterious man in black who crashed the elegant Napa Valley Wine Auction before proceeding to pay a half-million dollars for a single bottle. What develops is nothing less than a battle for the good life, a clash between old and new, the struggle for the soul of one of America's last bits of paradise. A dishy glimpse behind the scenes of a West Coast wonderland, A Tale of Two Valleys makes for intoxicating reading.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 13, 2003
    ISBN9780739304976
    Unavailable
    A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma
    Author

    Alan Deutschman

    Alan Deutschman is a senior writer at Fast Company and the author of two previous books, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs and A Tale of Two Valleys. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife.

    Related to A Tale of Two Valleys

    Related audiobooks

    United States Travel For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Francis Spufford Vividly Recreates an 18th-Century New York in ‘Golden Hill’

      Jul 26, 2018

      Dear Reader, envision that Village which grew upon the southern strand of that isle of Manhattoes: a Lenape settlement purchased for 60 guilders and named for Amsterdam, later to be acquired by gunships of King James, and her wooden-legged governor r

      7 min read

    • Article

      Buying Greenland? That's Nothing To Gabriel García Márquez

      Aug 24, 2019

      Gabriel García Márquez's intricate, confusing, magnificent novel centers around a monstrous, nameless dictator — known only as the General or the Patriarch — who sells the entire Caribbean Sea.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Folks’ Tale

      Nov 20, 2023

      Folks’ Tale
      3 min read

    • Article

      Dice Roll: Madame Mustache

      Apr 2, 2019

      Dice Roll: Madame Mustache
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Choice

      Jun 28, 2023

      The Choice
      3 min read

    • Article

      Reviews

      Nov 23, 2023

      Reviews
      6 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reads

      Apr 21, 2020

      Bubble in the Sun Christopher Knowlton This nonfiction narrative examines how the wealth and excess of Florida’s 1920s land boom, concentrated in South Florida, brought on the Great Depression. Naked Came the Florida Man: A Novel Tim Dorsey You’ll la

      1 min read

    • Article

      Autumn Book Reviews

      Mar 8, 2022

      by Raynor Winn Published by Penguin Books ISBN 9781405937184 $22.99 Rendered homeless and penniless by an ill-advised investment with a friend, abetted by an unblinking court system, a couple in their fifties face profound economic and social upheava

      4 min read

    • Article

      Trading Place$

      May 10, 2018

      As eminent author and satirist Mark Twain once quipped, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” To wit: with the US beset by disastrous drug crises, record income inequality, rampant culture wars, and a senile television personality insta

      1 min read

    • Article

      Life Of A Ghost Town

      Jan 7, 2020

      Life Of A Ghost Town
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Heir

      Sep 9, 2019

      The Heir
      32 min read

    • Article

      Heat Of The Night

      May 3, 2019

      Heat Of The Night
      12 min read

    • Article

      Mexico City

      Dec 15, 2020

      AT THE BEGINNING OF JULY, the streets of Mexico City were quiet. Restaurants had just been given the permission to offer indoor dining, and my friends and I walked through the Roma Norte neighborhood in search of seafood. We skipped across multilane

      1 min read

    • Article

      Behind the Curtain

      Nov 21, 2023

      Behind the Curtain
      2 min read

    • Article

      Imperial Dreamer

      Apr 1, 2023

      Imperial Dreamer
      16 min read

    • Article

      Books That Celebrate Multicultural London

      Jul 4, 2022

      by Zadie Smith An epic story told through the eyes of complex and compelling characters, mostly first and second-generation immigrants from the Commonwealth. It has cross-cultural friendship at its heart and will make you laugh out loud. by Kamila Sh

      1 min read

    • Article

      No, California isn't 'done'

      Jan 4, 2018

      No, California isn't 'done'
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Moveable Feast

      Mar 20, 2021

      A Moveable Feast
      3 min read

    • Article

      'Aloha Rodeo' Offers Alternative To The Cowboy Cliché

      Jun 27, 2019

      Journalists David Wolman and Julian Smith chronicle the history of Hawaii's cattle trade and profile a number of "paniolos" — every bit as tenacious and resourceful as their mainland cohorts.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Klondike!

      May 23, 2023

      The Klondike!
      10 min read

    • Article

      Cultural Prescription

      Oct 22, 2021

      Guardian critics explore art that captures a mood or moment. This week, how to contemplate extreme wealth – from Rihanna to Belshazzar’s Feast Bitch Better Have My Money Hell hath no fury like a pop icon scorned, and nobody does indignant financial r

      2 min read

    • Article

      Robber Soul

      Sep 13, 2021

      Double Pulitzer winner Colson Whitehead’s name has a cultural presence few of his peers can match. Io it’s something of a surprise that The Underground Railroad author and revered social historian’s new novel Harlem Shuffle treads such ostensibly li

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Mani, Greece

      Dec 15, 2020

      THERE’S SOMETHING hallucinatory and steadying about Greece’s landscape, the elemental wind and dazzled light, its scoured crags and wine-dark sea (to use Homer’s phrase). My husband and I used to make regular pilgrimages to the Cyclades; then came th

      1 min read

    • Article

      All That Glitters

      Apr 16, 2020

      All That Glitters
      9 min read

    Reviews for A Tale of Two Valleys

    4/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words