The Confidence-Man - His Masquerade by Herman Melville ~ Full Audiobook [philosophy]

The Confidence-Man - His Masquerade by Herman Melville audiobook. Genre: philosophy On April Fool's Day, a steamboat pushes off from St. Louis and heads down the Mississippi, carrying a cross-section of antebellum America: merchants, widows, gamblers, clerks, reformers, and dreamers, all enclosed together in a floating marketplace of stories and schemes. As the day unfolds, a series of persuasive strangers appears among the passengers, each offering a different pitch - charity for the afflicted, investment opportunities, moral causes, miracle cures, and friendly counsel - and each demanding, in one form or another, an act of belief. Faces blur and identities shift as conversations turn into contests of trust, and small social rituals become high-stakes negotiations. Herman Melville builds the novel as a restless masquerade of voices: sharp satire, philosophical debate, and darkly comic encounters that expose how easily language can flatter, confuse, or compel. At its center is an unsettling question: what is confidence, and what happens to a society that treats it as both currency and weapon? As the steamboat drifts onward, the passengers must decide whom to believe, what their convictions are worth, and whether sincerity can survive in a world of performance. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:16:51) Chapter 02 (00:55:36) Chapter 03 (01:24:50) Chapter 04 (01:54:49) Chapter 05 (02:20:39) Chapter 06 (02:35:22) Chapter 07 (02:56:21) Chapter 08 (03:30:20) Chapter 09 (03:53:14) Chapter 10 (04:26:24) Chapter 11 (05:31:30) Chapter 12 (05:59:29) Chapter 13 (06:55:23) Chapter 14 (07:47:41) Chapter 15 (08:27:45) Chapter 16 (08:53:37) Chapter 17 (09:39:16) Chapter 18 (10:15:58) Chapter 19 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices