Other editions of book Gulliver's Travels: A Signature Performance by David Hyde Pierce

Featured title on PBS's The Great American Read in 2018Four-time Emmy Award winner David Hyde Pierce is famous for playing the lovably self-important Dr. Niles Crane in the hit TV series Frasier. Now, he brings the same wit and charming arrogance to his Signature Classics performance of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.More than just a mock travel book and fabulous adventure, Gulliver’s Travels is a character study and social satire that skewers politics, science, religion, philosophy, and pretentiousness with a bite and resonance that remains as fresh today as the day it was published. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t been out of print in nearly 300 years.Set sail with David Hyde Pierce for a smart, fun, new Gulliver’s Travels experience that’s unlike any other.

This timeless satirical fantasy hits movie theaters December 22, 2010, starring Jack Black, Emily Blunt, Jason Segal, and Amanda Peet. This enduring classic tells of the fantastic voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, an English ship's surgeon who becomes a castaway in strange and faraway lands. Shipwrecked upon the shores of Lilliput, he encounters the six-inch-high Lilliputians, whose petty wars, civil strife, and vanities are human follies so reduced in scale as to be rendered ridiculous. From there he travels on to Brobdingnag, where he finds himself surrounded by crude giants who cannot appreciate his abstract intellect and prefer to display him as a curiosity. Further voyages take Gulliver to the floating island of Laputa, a land of intellectuals who are ignorant of practical life, and to the Island of Sorcerers, who share with him the lies of history. Finally, he visits the land of the Houyhnhnms, a race of wise and gentle horses served by degenerate human-like creatures. Gulliver's travels are entertaining adventures that also offer him new, bitter insights into human behavior. Both an amusing fantasy and a devastating satire of society, Gulliver's Travels is as witty and relevant in our own age of hypocrisy and irony as it was in Swift's eighteenth century.

Although Gulliver's Travels is a political satire, it is also an adventure tale full of twists and turns and fantastical places and beings. Lemuel Gulliver is a surgeon who aspires to travel the world in order to discover new places. The book is narrated by Gulliver. He gives a detailed account of four different voyages from England to undiscovered parts of the earth where he encounters strange inhabitants and foreign customs. First, he comes upon a land of miniature peoples, who befriend him despite the large amount of food he consumes in comparison to them. Next, he visits a land of giants, who are friendly toward him although he is repulsed by their gigantic imperfections. He journeys to a land of theoreticians and academics whose minds are completely out of touch with real life problems, and takes a side trip to a land where historical figures have been re-created in the flesh, although they are much less impressive than Gulliver imagined they would be. His final journey takes him to a land of intelligent horse-like creatures, ruled by oppressive human-like creatures. Gulliver's Travels was initially received as highly controversial and though full of fantastical creatures, Gulliver's Travels was not intended to be a children's book. The novel is instead a biting criticism of the nature of mankind. It is also a humorous, highly entertaining book, and it occasionally offers beams of hope amidst Swift's trenchant depictions of insufferable beings. Lovingly recreated as an mp3 audio this DVD contains the timeless story of Gulliver's Travels. Now you can enjoy it again and again - MP3 compatible player (or a computer) required to play this DVD Version: Unabridged Language: English Reader: Solo Female Format: MP3 Audio DVD Tracks / Chapters: 40 Chapters Total running time: 11:10:32

In Gulliver's Travels, the narrator represents himself as a reliable reporter of the fantastic adventures he has just experienced. But how far can we rely on a narrator who has been impersonated by someone else? The work purports to be a travel book, and describes the shipwrecked Gulliver's encounters with the inhabitants of four extraordinary places: Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the country of the Houyhnhnms. A consumately skillful blend of fantasy and realism makes Gulliver's Travels by turns hilarious, frightening, and profound. Swift's alter ego plays tricks on us, and our gullibility uncovers one of the world's most disturbing satires of the human condition.

This timeless satirical fantasy hits movie theaters December 22, 2010, starring Jack Black, Emily Blunt, Jason Segal, and Amanda Peet. This enduring classic tells of the fantastic voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, an English ship's surgeon who becomes a castaway in strange and faraway lands. Shipwrecked upon the shores of Lilliput, he encounters the six-inch-high Lilliputians, whose petty wars, civil strife, and vanities are human follies so reduced in scale as to be rendered ridiculous. From there he travels on to Brobdingnag, where he finds himself surrounded by crude giants who cannot appreciate his abstract intellect and prefer to display him as a curiosity. Further voyages take Gulliver to the floating island of Laputa, a land of intellectuals who are ignorant of practical life, and to the Island of Sorcerers, who share with him the lies of history. Finally, he visits the land of the Houyhnhnms, a race of wise and gentle horses served by degenerate human-like creatures. Gulliver's travels are entertaining adventures that also offer him new, bitter insights into human behavior. Both an amusing fantasy and a devastating satire of society, Gulliver's Travels is as witty and relevant in our own age of hypocrisy and irony as it was in Swift's eighteenth century. For children, it is an enchanting fantasy; for adults, it is a satirical masterpiece, a parody of political life in Swift's time, and a scathing send-up of manners and morals in eighteenth-century England.

Four-time Emmy Award winner David Hyde Pierce is famous for playing the lovably self-important Dr. Niles Crane in the hit TV series Frasier. Now, he brings the same wit and charming arrogance to his Signature Classics performance of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.More than just a mock travel book and fabulous adventure, Gulliver’s Travels is a character study and social satire that skewers politics, science, religion, philosophy, and pretentiousness with a bite and resonance that remains as fresh today as the day it was published. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t been out of print in nearly 300 years.Set sail with David Hyde Pierce for a smart, fun, new Gulliver’s Travels experience that’s unlike any other.

This timeless satirical fantasy hits movie theaters December 22, 2010, starring Jack Black, Emily Blunt, Jason Segal, and Amanda Peet. This enduring classic tells of the fantastic voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, an English ship's surgeon who becomes a castaway in strange and faraway lands. Shipwrecked upon the shores of Lilliput, he encounters the six-inch-high Lilliputians, whose petty wars, civil strife, and vanities are human follies so reduced in scale as to be rendered ridiculous. From there he travels on to Brobdingnag, where he finds himself surrounded by crude giants who cannot appreciate his abstract intellect and prefer to display him as a curiosity. Further voyages take Gulliver to the floating island of Laputa, a land of intellectuals who are ignorant of practical life, and to the Island of Sorcerers, who share with him the lies of history. Finally, he visits the land of the Houyhnhnms, a race of wise and gentle horses served by degenerate human-like creatures. Gulliver's travels are entertaining adventures that also offer him new, bitter insights into human behavior. Both an amusing fantasy and a devastating satire of society, Gulliver's Travels is as witty and relevant in our own age of hypocrisy and irony as it was in Swift's eighteenth century. For children, it is an enchanting fantasy; for adults, it is a satirical masterpiece, a parody of political life in Swift's time, and a scathing send-up of manners and morals in eighteenth-century England.