Before You Press Play
- Big ideas: Faith as a force for public compassion, the Good Samaritan as political ethics, reclaiming religious values from partisan misuse
- Atmosphere: Earnest and politically candid, a governor's confession of faith that reads more like a pastoral letter than a campaign document
- Worth it?: Andy Beshear's audiobook is a sincere and specific argument for grounding public life in the ethics of Jesus's teaching rather than its political appropriation, and it's more honest about its targets than most books in this genre.
Governor Andy Beshear structures Go and Do Likewise around the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the choice is deliberate. The audiobook, running eleven hours and eighteen minutes, takes its title and its central argument from the moment in Luke's Gospel where Jesus answers the question "Who is my neighbor?" not with a definition but with a story about a despised outsider who stopped when respectable religious people kept walking. Beshear, the grandson of Baptist lay ministers and a leading Democratic political voice, uses that story as the through-line for a book about what it means to actually practice the faith that American political life claims to represent.
The book is organized around Jesus's teachings, healing, justice, forgiveness, welcome, moral clarity, and Beshear applies each in turn to the conditions of contemporary American public life. This is not incidentally political; it is explicitly and unapologetically engaged with specific policies and specific figures, including extended argument about how faith has been misused by the current administration. The listing does not credit a narrator for this audiobook, which is notable given the book's personal and political tone, self-narration by the governor himself would have been the natural choice, and listeners should verify the format before purchase if the question of who is speaking matters to them.
How Go and Do Likewise Holds Up
The project Beshear is attempting is harder than it sounds. Books that claim to reclaim religion from partisanship usually end up performing a different kind of partisanship rather than transcending it. Beshear is honest enough to own that his argument is partisan in the sense that it names specific targets. What saves it from being merely a political tract with scripture citations is the personal dimension, he writes from inside his own faith formation, from the Baptist tradition he inherited from his grandfather, and from the specific moral weight of governing a state through crises that tested what he believed about public responsibility.
The structure organized around Jesus's teachings is more sophisticated than it first appears. Each chapter takes a specific Gospel text or theme and works outward from it toward contemporary application, which forces Beshear to do the actual interpretive work rather than simply citing scripture in support of pre-formed conclusions. The Good Samaritan framing is particularly well-deployed: the parable's original audience would have found the Samaritan's compassion scandalous precisely because of who he was, and Beshear draws the contemporary parallel carefully, the people we are asked to see as neighbors are often the people we are politically primed to exclude.
At eleven hours and eighteen minutes, this is a substantial listen that suggests Beshear is reaching beyond his existing political audience. The book explicitly addresses readers who don't support organized religion, framing the case in terms of justice and ethical obligation rather than requiring theological commitment. That outreach is genuine rather than rhetorical, the parable of the Good Samaritan is, in its Gospel context, Jesus's answer to a question about legal obligation, and Beshear respects that civic dimension of the story rather than domesticating it into purely private devotional content.
The audiobook format suits the book's homiletic structure well. Beshear's chapters function somewhat like sermons, they have a text, a development, and an application, and sermon form has always been designed for hearing rather than silent reading. Whether or not you share Beshear's theological convictions or his political commitments, the listening experience is shaped by the cadence of that tradition, which is a more emotionally direct format than argument-essay writing.
The book's candor about Beshear's own political life is also more specific and honest than most political memoirs allow. He doesn't present himself as above the fray, he's in it, and he names what he's fighting against and why his faith compels that response. That specificity is what makes Go and Do Likewise more than a generic faith-in-public-life book. It's an account of what a particular tradition's teaching demands of someone who holds a specific kind of public responsibility.
Weak Spots in Go and Do Likewise
Readers who disagree with Beshear's political positions will not find the book diplomatic about its targets. It is a defense of a particular reading of the Christian tradition and a rebuke of a competing reading, and it names that competition directly. The book's claim to transcend partisanship is a claim about the foundations of its ethics, not a claim to even-handedness about current political actors. That's worth knowing before you start an eleven-hour listen.
The missing narrator credit is an unusual note for an audiobook of this scale and political profile. The book's personal testimony, a governor's account of his own faith and public life, is precisely the kind of content that benefits most from the author's own voice, and that gap between what the material calls for and what the listing actually confirms is worth investigating before purchase to ensure you're getting the reading experience you expect.
The Right Listener for Go and Do Likewise
Readers who are wrestling with how faith relates to public responsibility will find Beshear's argument substantive and personally grounded, regardless of whether they share his specific political convictions. Those within the Baptist or broader Protestant tradition will recognize the scriptural framing readily and may find Beshear's application of it either bracing or challenging depending on their own political commitments. Listeners looking for a non-partisan treatment of faith in public life should know this book takes explicit positions, it's better evaluated as an argument than as a neutral survey. At eleven-plus hours, it rewards committed engagement rather than casual listening.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Go and Do Likewise an explicitly political audiobook, or does it focus primarily on spiritual themes?
Both are present and inseparable in Beshear's framing. The book is organized around Gospel teachings about compassion, justice, forgiveness, and welcome, and applies each directly to contemporary political life. Beshear names specific political figures and policies as examples of faith being misused, so readers who prefer spiritual reflection without political content will find the book's directness challenging. The two dimensions are thoroughly integrated throughout the eleven hours.
Do you need to be a Christian or share Beshear's faith tradition to get value from this audiobook?
Beshear explicitly addresses readers who don't support organized religion, framing the ethical argument around justice and obligation rather than requiring theological commitment. The Good Samaritan framework can be read as a story about civic responsibility as much as religious duty, which is how the text functions in its original Gospel context as well. Non-religious readers who are interested in the intersection of ethics and public life will find the argument accessible.
Who is the narrator for this audiobook, and does the narration style suit the book's personal and political tone?
The listing does not specify narrator information, which is an unusual gap for a political audiobook of this profile. Given the book's deeply personal nature, a governor's account of his own faith and public life, listeners for whom author self-narration matters to the experience should verify narrator details before purchasing. The narrative voice Beshear employs in the writing itself is candid and pastoral, which would be most authentically served by his own delivery.
