Audiobooks by Christopher De Bellaigue

Flying Green: On the Frontiers of New Aviation

Can flying be green? Everyone loves to travel, and the industry's room for growth seems almost limitless-except that flying will soon be responsible for 19 percent of global emissions. Some people have even decided never to fly. Over the coming decades, aviation will witness more innovation than at any time since the invention of the jet engine in the 1940s, transforming the way planes are powered and the way they look. In Flying Green, Christopher de Bellaigue meets the inventors, visionaries, and entrepreneurs who are at the frontier of new technologies, from a European startup that makes fuel out of thin air, to a California firm using hydrogen to power flight, and an airship called the Flying Whale. What will it take for a new generation of travelers to fly guilt-free? This is the story of the search for a way to fly green.

Christopher De Bellaigue (Author), Christopher De Bellaigue (Narrator)

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The Lion House: The Coming of A King

Brought to you by Penguin. Venice, 1522. Intelligence arrives from the east confirming Europe's greatest fear: the vastly rich Ottoman Sultan has all he needs to wage total war - and his sights are set on Rome. With Christendom divided, Suleyman the Magnificent has his hand on its throat. From the palaces of Istanbul to the blood-soaked fields of central Europe and the scorched coasts of north Africa, The Lion House pioneers a bold new style of eye-witness history to tell a true story of power at its most glittering, personal and perilous: Suleyman's rise to become the most feared and powerful man of the sixteenth century. It is a journey built on brutal choices and intimate relationships - with the Greek slave who becomes his closest friend, the Venetian plutocrat who sells him gems and wins him allies, the Russian consort who steals his heart. Within a decade, Suleyman has mastery over millions of souls, from Baghdad to the walls of Vienna, while his pirate admiral Barbarossa dominates the Mediterranean. And yet the real drama takes place in small rooms and whispered conversations: as the Sultan exchanges love letters with his own vizier; as he awakes in terror after dreaming of his own assassination. The Lion House is not just the story of two civilisations in an existential duel and of one of the most consequential lives in world history. It is a tale of the timeless pull of power, dangerous to live with, deadly to live without. © Christopher de Bellaigue 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Christopher De Bellaigue (Author), Barnaby Edwards (Narrator)

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The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason: 1798 to Modern Times (1st Ed.)

This absorbing account of the political and social reformations that transformed the lands of Islam during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries offers a game-changing assessment of the Middle East. Beginning his account in 1798, de Bellaigue demonstrates how the Middle East has long welcomed modern ideals and practices, including the adoption of modern medicine, the emergence of women from seclusion, and the development of democracy. With trenchant political and historical insight, de Bellaigue further shows how the violence of an infinitesimally small minority is in fact the tragic blowback from that modernization. This revolutionary argument, which completely refutes the misconception that Muslims live in a benighted state of backwardness, reveals the folly of Westerners demanding modernity from their Islamic neighbors.

Christopher De Bellaigue, Christopher Debellaigue (Author), Charles Armstrong (Narrator)

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