Around the World in Seventy-Two Days
Read by Mary Reagan.
Running Time:6:05:31 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
This is a true account by an American woman journalist who, in 1889, set out to see whether she could beat the fictional journey in Jules Verne’s 1873 novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. Wearing one dress and carrying one handbag, Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman (pen name “Nellie Bly”), reported her travels back to avid readers in America.
Six Months In Mexico
Read by James K. White
Running Time:8:13:20 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
This is an account of Nellie Bly's travels through Mexico in 1885. The book was originally a series of individual articles that she submitted to the Pittsburgh Dispatch newspaper for publication. In them she described the conditions of the people and the political system she found in Mexico. Her narratives focused mostly on the impoverished and disadvantaged in a country whose government was extremely corrupt.
Bly was perhaps what we now term a feminist, striving for the empowerment and independence of women. She certainly pioneered the field of investigative reporting. Nevertheless, Bly's journalistic objectivity is often tainted by an uninformed, 19th-century, "gringo" world view.
Bly's travels in Mexico ended abruptly after the Dispatch published an article, she wrote exposing that government's ill treatment of another journalist who criticized the regime of President Porfirio Diaz. Bly's Mexico articles were later published in book form in 1888.
Ten Days in a Madhouse
Read by Alice
Running Time:2:41:47 in 1 MP3 Audio CD
In 1887 Nellie Bly, one of the first female newspaper writers, and a young reporter who would soon go on to make a career for herself as an investigative journalist and "stunt" reporter, had herself committed to the Blackwell's Island Insane Asylum in New York. Her purpose was to discover what life was like for those who had been deemed insane. She was surprised to discover the depth of mistreatment of the patients. Partially as a result of her reporting, more money was allocated to the asylum and reforms were put into place.