THE PIONEERS

Those who count the works of David McCullough among their richest listening experiences will welcome what is sure to be one of this year's most popular and lauded audiobooks. As narrator, John Bedford Lloyd possesses many of McCullough's familiar virtues, in particular, a deep-throated calm and a balanced tone free of dogma and bias. Lloyd shows what a skilled narrator can do working with simple pacing, inflection, and moderation of tone. The result is a highly measured performance that's defined by the text, rather than imposed upon it. The history of the post-Revolutionary War drive into the Ohio Territory is an American drama on an epic scale, a reconstruction of events and personalities equal to McCullough's great histories of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Panama Canal--a feast for the ear, the mind, and the heart. D.A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2019]