Audiobooks by Michael Taylor

Impossible Monsters: Dinosaurs, Darwin and the War Between Science and Religion

Brought to you by Penguin. From fossil-hunting to the end of faith, Impossible Monsters is a gripping narrative history of the culture war that toppled religion and gave birth to our secular age. In 1811, when the self-schooled daughter of a carpenter pulled some strange-looking bones from Britain's southern shoreline, few people dared to question that the Bible told the accurate history of the world. But Mary Anning had discovered the 'first' dinosaur, and over the next seventy-five years - as the science of palaeontology developed, as Charles Darwin posited theories of evolutionary biology, and as religious scholars identified the internal inconsistencies of the Scriptures - everything changed. By the 1850s, dinosaurs were a prominent feature of the second Crystal Palace exhibition. By the 1860s, when Matthew Arnold stood on Dover Beach and saw faith ebbing away, Britain had plunged into a crisis of religious belief. By the 1870s, T.H. Huxley - Darwin's 'bulldog' - was preaching a new history of the world in which mankind was merely an accident of evolution. By 1886, following a six-year battle which had seen him beaten, imprisoned, and forcibly removed from Parliament, Charles Bradlaugh was able to take his seat in the House of Commons as the first openly atheist MP. Told through the lives of the men and women who found these vital fossils and who fought about their meaning, some humble, some eccentric, some utterly brilliant, Impossible Monsters tells the story of the painful, complicated relationship between science and religion over these seventy-five years, of the growth of secularism, and of the role of dinosaurs and their discovery in changing perceptions about the Bible, history and mankind's place in the world. 'As thrilling as it is sweeping, populated by a brilliantly drawn cast of characters' TOM HOLLAND ©2024 Michael Taylor (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Michael Taylor (Author), James Maccallum, TBD (Narrator)

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The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery

Brought to you by Penguin. For two hundred years, the abolition of slavery in Britain has been a cause for self-congratulation - but no longer. In 1807, Parliament outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire, but for the next quarter of a century, despite heroic and bloody rebellions, more than 700,000 people in the British colonies remained enslaved. And when a renewed abolitionist campaign was mounted, making slave ownership the defining political and moral issue of the day, emancipation was fiercely resisted by the powerful 'West India Interest'. Supported by nearly every leading figure of the British establishment - including Canning, Peel and Gladstone, The Times and Spectator - the Interest ensured that slavery survived until 1833 and that when abolition came at last, compensation worth billions in today's money was given not to the enslaved but to the slaveholders, entrenching the power of their families to shape modern Britain to this day. Drawing on major new research, this long-overdue and ground-breaking history provides a gripping narrative account of the tumultuous and often violent battle - between rebels and planters, between abolitionists and the pro-slavery establishment - that divided and scarred the nation during these years of upheaval. The Interest reveals the lengths to which British leaders went to defend the indefensible in the name of profit, showing that the ultimate triumph of abolition came at a bitter cost and was one of the darkest and most dramatic episodes in British history. © Michael Taylor 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Michael Taylor (Author), James Maccallum (Narrator)

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The Cure For Onlyness - A Black Man's Guide To Joy, Passion & Purpose

Discover the secrets of thriving as a black male in a world that is rigged against you with this definitive guide to self-improvement for black men! Do you often find yourself despairing at the abysmal and 'doom-and-gloom' statistics of black men? Are you tired of being forced to conform to noxious societal labels and subscribe to stereotypes that don't serve your ultimate purpose and goals? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this guide might just be what you need. In this powerful guide, Michael Taylor, an accomplished life coach and entrepreneur, shows you how to shatter limiting beliefs peculiar to black men and hands you the blueprint to living a life of joy, happiness, fulfillment and accomplishment. Filled with deeply personal experiences, powerful anecdotes and life-changing advice, The Cure for Onlyness will get you started on your journey to self-enlightenment and help you become the absolute best version of yourself.

Michael Taylor (Author), Michael Taylor (Narrator)

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Adversity Is Your Greatest Ally

Without question, life can be difficult and challenging. But what if all the challenges in your life were really just stepping stones to living the life of your dreams? Join coach Michael Taylor as he shares how he was able to overcome being a high school dropout, divorce, depression, bankruptcy, and foreclosure and is now living his dream as an entrepreneur, author, motivational speaker, and radio and TV show host. In this book, you will learn that adversity really is your greatest ally, and when you learn to accept this fact you can create the life you were born to live.

Michael Taylor (Author), Michael Taylor (Narrator)

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An Independent Empire: Diplomacy & War in the Making of the United States

Foreign policies and diplomatic missions, combined with military action, were the driving forces behind the growth of the early United States. In an era when the Old and New Worlds were subject to British, French, and Spanish imperial ambitions, the new republic had limited diplomatic presence and minimal public credit. It was vulnerable to hostile forces in every direction. The United States could not have survived, grown, or flourished without the adoption of prescient foreign policies, or without skillful diplomatic operations. An Independent Empire shows how foreign policy and diplomacy constitute a truly national story, necessary for understanding the history of the United States. In this lively and well-written book, episodes in American history-such as the writing and ratification of the Constitution, Henry Clay's advocacy of an American System, Pinckney's Treaty with Spain, and the visionary but absurd Congress of Panama-are recast as elemental aspects of United States foreign and security policy. An Independent Empire tells the stories of the people who defined the early history of America's international relationships. Throughout the book are brief, entertaining vignettes of often-overlooked intellectuals, spies, diplomats, and statesmen whose actions and decisions shaped the first fifty years of the United States.

Michael S. Kochin, Michael Taylor (Author), Walter Dixon (Narrator)

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