History & Culture Audiobooks | Biography & Memoir

Mayor of the Tenderloin: Del Seymour's Journey from Living on the Streets to Fighting Homelessness i

The unforgettable account of Del Seymour, who overcame 18 years of homelessness and addiction to become one of the most respected advocates in San Francisco In the Mayor of Tenderloin, journalist Alison Owings slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding San Francisco's Tenderloin to reveal a harrowing and life-affirming account of Del Seymour-whose addiction led him into eighteen years of homelessness, pimping, and drug dealing. Once sober, he started Tenderloin Walking Tours and later Code Tenderloin, the remarkable organization teaching homeless, recovering addicts, sex workers, dealers, ex-felons, and other marginalized people how to get and keep a job. Owings traces Del's story and those in his orbit: from his daughters, sobriety buddy, and ex-girlfriend, to a police captain and a psychiatric social worker, housing activists and corporate philanthropists, and Del's Code Tenderloin students. In the Tenderloin, in a city known for its beauty and currently infamous for its divide between haves and have-nots, Owings highlights how Del gives back to people struggling with the same daunting setbacks-including a criminal record-he once faced. Honest and compelling, The Mayor of Tenderloin follows homelessness in one of America's toughest neighborhoods as it was lived-in the words of someone who lived it and is now fighting to solve it.

Alison Owings (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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The Last Para

John Humphreys, Stuart Tootal (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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I Am Maroon: The True Story of an American Political Prisoner

A cinematic memoir of justice and redemption that traces a former Black Panther's tumultuous life from gang member to Black liberation leader. Russell Shoatz was a gang member from age 11, battling for territory and dignity amid the white flight of 1950s Philadelphia. But at 23, after hearing Malcolm X speak on a street corner in Harlem, his life changed course. Shoatz would become a lifelong crusader for justice, a soldier in the most militant units of the Black Liberation Army, and a Black Panther fighting the notorious Frank Rizzo and his Blue Guards. The fight turned increasingly violent, and as one of the "Philly Five," Shoatz was convicted to life in prison after a coordinated attack on a police station, which left one officer dead. The prison walls, however, could not deter Shoatz's battle for personal and collective freedom. He escaped maximum security facilities twice, making him a living legend, and endowed him with the moniker "Maroon," once used to honor runaways from plantations. He survived 22 years in solitary confinement, prompting an international campaign for his freedom. And he radicalized his prison communities, working to resolve racial tensions, and collectively organize against mistreatment by guards. In October 2021, after 49 years in prison, Maroon was released into hospice care, reuniting briefly with his children before he passed away. But for nine years before his death, he worked furiously with Sri Lankan writer Kanya D'Almeida, whom he recognized as a comrade despite their vastly different backgrounds, to record his life's work in print. I Am Maroon charts a life of dizzying intrigue, a real-life Shawshank Redemption, set during the height of the struggle for Black liberation. With an unforgettable voice and a personality that comes off the page, Maroon reminds us that we too are capable of radical change, and leaves us a blueprint for how we might dedicate our lives and minds to the ongoing fight for freedom.

Russell Shoatz (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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The Criminal Mind

Brought to you by Penguin. An edge-of-your-seat journey into the darkest depths of the human mind from forensic psychiatrist Dr Duncan Harding - A likeable young girl who’s burnt her family home to the ground - A man with no memory of the night he killed his wife - A teenager whose visions and voices have had murderous effect One question binds these and others from the casebook of Britain’s leading forensic psychiatrist: Why? What drives a person to commit seemingly inexplicable crimes? Dr Duncan Harding is the person the police and the courts turn to for answers. An expert witness, he must try to establish a defendant’s mental state and motivation. And their fitness to stand trial. Growing up in a broken, violent home, Harding became a doctor because he wanted to be good and kind. It led him on a journey that has brought him face to face with psychopaths, taken him to the limits of his compassion and to the darkest corners of his own troubled past. But he’s never turned away nor given up hope. Mesmerising, insightful and redemptive, The Criminal Mind is his unforgettable story. ©2024 Duncan Harding (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Duncan Harding (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady

Heath Hardage Lee (Author), Jane Oppenheimer, TBD (Narrator)

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Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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Revolutionary Suicide

The searing, visionary memoir of founding Black Panther Huey P. Newton, in a dazzling graphic package Tracing the birth of a revolutionary, Huey P. Newton's famous and oft-quoted autobiography is as much a manifesto as a portrait of the inner circle of America's Black Panther Party. From Newton's impoverished childhood on the streets of Oakland to his adolescence and struggles with the system, from his role in the Black Panthers to his solitary confinement in the Alameda County Jail, Revolutionary Suicide is unrepentant and thought-provoking in its portrayal of inspired radicalism. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Huey P. Newton (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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The Traitor's Daughter: Captured by Nazis, Pursued by the KGB, My Mother's Odyssey to Freedom from H

The masterful narration of a daughter's decades-long quest to understand her extraordinary mother, who was born in Lenin's Soviet Union, served as a combat soldier in the Red Army, and endured three years of Nazi captivity-but never revealed her darkest secrets. As a child, Roxana Spicer would sometimes wake to the sound of the Red Army choir. She would tip-toe downstairs to find her mother, cigarette in one hand and Black Russian in the other, singing along. Roxana would keep her company, and wonder.... Everyone in their village knew Agnes Spicer was Russian, that she had been a captive of the Nazis. And that was all they knew, because Agnes kept her secrets close: how she managed to escape Germany, what the tattoo on her arm meant, even her real name. Discovering the truth about her beloved, charismatic, volatile mother became Roxana's obsession. Throughout her career as a journalist and documentarian, between investigations across Canada and around the world, she always went home to ask her mother more questions, often while filming. Roxana also took every chance to visit the few places that she did know played a role in her mother's story: Bad Salzuflen, Germany, home to POW slave labourers during the war; notorious concentration camps; and Russia. Under Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the early years of Putin, she was able to find people, places, and documents that are now-perhaps forever-lost again. The Traitor's Daughter is intimate and exhaustively researched, vividly conversational, and shot through with Agnes Spicer's irrepressible, fiery personality. It is a true labour of love as well as a triumph of blending personal biography with sweeping history.

Roxana Spicer (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich

Brought to you by Penguin. Why did so many Germans take part in the crimes of Nazi Germany? How did they come to support Hitler and follow him almost to the very end? For too long, the Nazis have been presented as little more than psychopaths or criminals. In his major new work, renowned historian Richard J. Evans makes use of a mass of recently unearthed new evidence to strip away the veneer of myth and legend from the faces of the Third Reich and present a more realistic view of Nazi perpetrators as human beings who were disturbingly like us. Evans offers rounded, fresh and often startling new portraits of the men and women who created and served Nazi Germany, beginning with Hitler himself and going on to encompass leading figures like Göring, Goebbels and Himmler, enforcers of Hitler’s orders such as Eichmann and Heydrich, propagandists like Leni Riefenstahl, low-level perpetrators such as the notorious Irma Grese and unknown sympathizers and fellow-travellers who helped the regime in myriad ways. Hitler’s People is a chilling, brilliantly written work which allows the reader to understand the texture and values of the Third Reich and just how far individuals will go when so many normal moral constraints have disappeared. ©2024 Richard J. Evans (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Richard J. Evans (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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To Be a Problem: A Black Woman's Survival in the Racist Disability Rights Movement

A searing critique of the disability rights movement from within, and a call for collective liberation that is pro-Black and centers disabled people of color For over twenty years, Dara Baldwin has often been the only person of color in the room when significant disability policy decisions are made. Disenfranchisement of people of color and multi-marginalized communities within the disability rights community is not new and has left many inside the community feeling frustrated and unheard. In To Be a Problem, Baldwin candidly shares her journey to becoming a disability activist and policymaker in DC while critiquing the disability rights community. She reveals the reality of erasure for many Black people and people of color in the disability community and argues that, in turn, many white disabled people center themselves within the movement without addressing their own white privilege. Disability rights groups have been centering white, straight, cisgender people while racial justice groups often fail to center disabled people, leading many Black and Brown disabled people to start their own Disability Justice organizations. Drawing from her unique vantage point, Baldwin calls readers to understand the shortcomings of the disability rights movement while inspiring us to push all movements towards a more inclusive and authentic liberation.

Dara Baldwin (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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Just About Coping: A real life drama from the psychotherapist's chair

At the psychologist's clinic of an NHS hospital, Noah needs help with procrastination, Bill compulsively lies, Steph is coping with rejection and their therapist, Dr Natalie, is dealing with her own emotional crisis, breathing into a paper bag between patient sessions. In this lively and honest memoir of training to be a psychotherapist, we meet the patients grappling with mental health issues, from OCD and addiction to self-deception and self-harming, and see how Dr Natalie helps them understand and change these attempts to self-soothe. Funny, poignant and full of 'aha' moments, Just About Coping is a journey into our inner worlds, where the drama of our break-ups, breakdowns and breakthroughs takes place. In times of stress and suffering, Dr Natalie reveals, we are all just about coping. None of us is immune - not even your therapist.

Natalie Cawley (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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Every Kind of People: A Journey into the Heart of Care Work

Brought to you by Penguin. A luminous, uplifting and deeply moving memoir by a care worker, told through her funny, heartbreaking, sometimes frustrating, and always eye-opening encounters with the often overlooked and marginalised people she cares for. 'Being as close as this to someone is a uniquely precious place to be. It is a place where secrets are revealed and fears are shared and outrageous jokes are made that could not be told to anyone else. It is a coal face of human experience' Kate never expected to become a home care worker. But when she left her senior role in the NHS, burnt-out and disheartened, she thought caring for people in their own homes would be a simpler job. But despite being determined not to become too involved with her 'customers', she soon found herself developing firm friendships, forging deep connections and bearing witness to the extraordinary drama to be found in ordinary lives. With energy, compassion and clarity her memoir gives an astonishing insight into this unsung - and often maligned - profession, and into the hidden lives of the housebound and infirm. From Beryl who screams like a banshee whenever Kate tries to wash her, but collapses in giggles when her toes are tickled, to bawdy Mr Radbert who 'promised to give me his car when he can remember where he left it'. Every Kind of People is clear-eyed about the challenges facing the NHS and the care system. But it is above all a celebration of humanity and of the life-changing impact of caring, on those who offer it and those who receive it. ©2024 Kathryn Faulke (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Kathryn Faulke (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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History & Culture Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir