Audiobooks by Neal Thompson

The First Kennedys: The Humble Roots of an American Dynasty

Based on genealogical breakthroughs and previously unreleased records, this is the first book to explore the inspiring story of the poor Irish refugee couple who escaped famine, created a life together in a city hostile to Irish, immigrants, and Catholics, and launched the Kennedy dynasty in America. Their Irish ancestry was a hallmark of the Kennedys' initial political profile, as JFK leveraged his working-class roots to connect with blue-collar voters. Today, we remember this iconic American family as the vanguard of wealth, power, and style rather than as the descendants of poor immigrants. Here at last, we meet the first American Kennedys, Patrick and Bridget, who arrived as many thousands of others did following the Great Famine-penniless and hungry. Less than a decade after their marriage in Boston, Patrick's sudden death left Bridget to raise their children single-handedly. Her rise from housemaid to shop owner in the face of rampant poverty and discrimination kept her family intact, allowing her only son P.J. to become a successful saloon owner and businessman. P.J. went on to become the first American Kennedy elected to public office-the first of many. Written by the grandson of an Irish immigrant couple and based on first-ever access to P.J. Kennedy's private papers, The First Kennedys is a story of sacrifice and survival, resistance and reinvention: an American story.

Neal Thompson (Author), Arthur Morey (Narrator)

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Kickflip Boys: A Memoir of Freedom, Rebellion, and the Chaos of Fatherhood

"With a dispassionate but tender eye, Thompson captures the ache, fizz, yearning and frustration of being the father of adolescent boys-and of adolescence itself, observed and remembered." -Michael Chabon What makes a good father, and what makes one a failure? Does less-is-more parenting inspire independence and strength, or does it encourage defiance and trouble?Kickflip Boysis the story of a father'sstruggle to understand his willful skateboarder sons, challengers of authority and convention, to accept his role as a vulnerable "skate dad," and to confront his fears that the boys are destined for an unconventional and potentially fraught future. With searing honesty, Neal Thompson traces his sons' progression through all the stages of skateboarding: splurging on skate shoes and boards, having run-ins with security guards, skipping classes and defying teachers, painting graffiti, drinking and smoking, and more. As the story veers from funny to treacherous and back, from skateparks to the streets, Thompson must confront his complicity and fallibility. He also reflects on his upbringing in rural New Jersey, and his own adventures with skateboards, drugs, danger, and defiance. A story of thrill-seeking teens, of hope and love, freedom and failure, Kickflip Boysreveals a sport and a community that have become a refuge for adolescent boys who don't fit in. Ultimately, it's the survival story of a loving modern American family, of acceptance, forgiveness, and letting go.

Neal Thompson (Author), Joe Knezevich (Narrator)

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A Curious Man

A Curious Man is the marvelously compelling biography of Robert "Believe It or Not" Ripley, the enigmatic cartoonist turned globetrotting millionaire who won international fame by celebrating the world's strangest oddities, and whose outrageous showmanship taught us to believe in the unbelievable. As portrayed by acclaimed biographer Neal Thompson, Ripleys life is the stuff of a classic American fairy tale. Buck-toothed and cursed by shyness, Ripley turned his sense of being an outsider into an appreciation for the strangeness of the world. After selling his first cartoon to Time magazine at age eighteen, more cartooning triumphs followed, but it was his "Believe It or Not" conceit and the wildly popular radio shows it birthed that would make him one of the most successful entertainment figures of his time and spur him to search the globes farthest corners for bizarre facts, exotic human curiosities, and shocking phenomena. Ripley delighted in making outrageous declarations that somehow always turned out to be true - such as that Charles Lindbergh was only the sixty-seventh man to fly across the Atlantic or that "The Star Spangled Banner" was not the national anthem. Assisted by an exotic harem of female admirers and by ex-banker Norbert Pearlroth, a devoted researcher who spoke eleven languages, Ripley simultaneously embodied the spirit of Peter Pan, the fearlessness of Marco Polo and the marketing savvy of P. T. Barnum. In a very real sense, Ripley sought to remake the worlds aesthetic. He demanded respect for those who were labeled "eccentrics" or "freaks" - whether it be E. L. Blystone, who wrote 1,615 alphabet letters on a grain of rice, or the man who could swallow his own nose. By the 1930s Ripley possessed a vast fortune, a private yacht, and a twenty-eight room mansion stocked with such "oddities" as shrunken heads and medieval torture devices, and his pioneering firsts in print, radio, and television were tapping into something deep in the American consciousness - a taste for the titillating and exotic, and a fascination with the fastest, biggest, dumbest and most weird. Today, that legacy continues and can be seen in reality TV, YouTube, Americas Funniest Home Videos, Jackass, MythBusters and a host of other pop-culture phenomena. In the end Robert L. Ripley changed everything. The supreme irony of his life, which was dedicated to exalting the strange and unusual, is that he may have been the most amazing oddity of all.From the Hardcover edition.

Neal Thompson (Author), Marc Cashman (Narrator)

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Hurricane Season: A Coach, His Team, and Their Triumph in the Time of Katrina

Hurricane Season is the story of a great high school football coach, his team, his family, and their school---and a remarkable fight back from the shocking tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. It is a story of football and faith and of the transformative power of a team that rises above adversity, and above its own abilities, to come together again and prove what they're made of.

Neal Thompson (Author), David Drummond (Narrator)

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