Science & Technology Audiobooks | Biography & Memoir

The Darkest Jungle: The True Story of the Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect

"Commit yourself to the Virgin Mary, for in her hands is the way into the Darién-and in God's is the way out." The Darkest Jungle tells the harrowing story of America's first ship canal exploration across a narrow piece of land in Central America called the Darién, a place that loomed large in the minds of the world's most courageous adventurers in the nineteenth century. With rival warships and explorers from England and France days behind, the 27-member U.S. Darién Exploring Expedition landed on the Atlantic shore at Caledonia Bay in eastern Panama to begin their mad dash up the coast-hugging mountains of the Darién wilderness. The whole world watched as this party attempted to be the first to traverse the 40-mile isthmus, the narrowest spot between the Atlantic and Pacific in all the Americas. Later, government investigators would say they were doomed before they started. Amid the speculative fever for an Atlantic and Pacific ship canal, the terrain to be crossed had been grossly misrepresented and fictitiously mapped. By January 27, 1854, the Americans had served out their last provisions and were severely footsore but believed the river they had arrived at was an artery to the Pacific, their destination. Leading them was the charismatic commander Isaac Strain, an adventuring 33-year-old U.S. Navy lieutenant. The party could have turned back except, said Strain, they were to a man "revolted at the idea" of failing at a task they seemed destined to accomplish. Like the first men to try to scale Everest or reach the North Pole, they felt the eyes of their countrymen upon them. Yet Strain's party would wander lost in the jungle for another sixty nightmarish days, following a tortuously contorted and uncharted tropical river. Their guns rusted in the damp heat, expected settlements never materialized, and the lush terrain provided little to no sustenance. As the unending march dragged on, the party was beset by flesh-embedding parasites and a range of infectious tropical diseases they had no antidote for (or understanding of). In the desperate final days, in the throes of starvation, the survivors flirted with cannibalism and the sickest men had to be left behind so, as the journal keeper painfully recorded, the rest might have a chance to live. The U.S. Darién Exploring Expedition's 97-day ordeal of starvation, exhaustion, and madness-a tragedy turned "triumph of the soul" due to the courage and self-sacrifice of their leader and the seamen who devotedly followed him-is one of the great untold tales of human survival and exploration. Based on the vividly detailed log entries of Strain and his junior officers, other period sources, and Balf's own treks in the Darién Gap, this is a rich and utterly compelling historical narrative that will thrill readers who enjoyed In the Heart of the Sea, Isaac's Storm, and other sagas of adventure at the limits of human endurance.

Todd Balf (Author), Scott Brick (Narrator)

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Isaac Newton

James Gleick has long been fascinated by the making of science -- how ideas order visible appearances, how equations can give meaning to molecular and stellar phenomena, how theories can transform what we see. In Chaos, he chronicled the emergence of a new way of looking at dynamic systems; in Genius, he portrayed the wondrous dimensions of Richard Feymnan's mind. Now, in Isaac Newton, he gives us the story of the scientist who, above all others, embodied humanity's quest to unveil the hidden forces that constitute the physical world. In this original, sweeping, and intimate biography, Gleick moves between a comprehensive historical portrait and a dramatic focus on Newton's significant letters and unpublished notebooks to illuminate the real importance of his work in physics, in optics, and in calculus. He makes us see the old intuitive, alchemical universe out of which Newton's mathematics first arose and shows us how Newton's ideas have altered all forms of understanding from history to philosophy. And he gives us a moving account of the conflicting impulses that pulled at this man's heart: his quiet longings, his rage, his secrecy, the extraordinary subtleties of a personality that were mirrored in the invisible forces he first identified as the building blocks of science. More than biography, more than history, more than science, Isaac Newton tells us how, through the mind of one man, we have come to know our place in the cosmos.

James Gleick (Author), Allan Corduner (Narrator)

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To Conquer The Air

"For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life." So wrote a quiet young Ohioan in 1900, one in an ancient line of men who had wanted to fly -- wanted it passionately, fecklessly, hopelessly. But at the turn of the twentieth century, Wilbur Wright and a scattered handful of other adventurers conceived a conviction that the dream lay at last within reach, and in a headlong race across ten years and two continents, they competed to conquer the air. James Tobin, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in biography, has at last given this inspiring story its definitive telling. For years Wright and his younger brother, Orville, experimented in utter obscurity. Meanwhile, the world watched as the imperious Samuel Langley, armed with a rich contract from the U.S. War Department and all the resources of the Smithsonian Institution, sought to create the first manned flying machine. While Langley became obsessed with flight as a problem of power, the Wrights grappled with it as a problem of balance. Thus their machines took two very different paths -- one toward oblivion, the other toward the heavens. To Conquer the Air is a hero's tale of overcoming obstacles within and without. It is the story of mankind's most wondrous technological achievement; and it is an account of the mystery of creativity and character. Years later, Orville Wright would remark to Charles Lindbergh: "No one quite understands the spirit and conditions of those times." In the centennial year of human flight, To Conquer the Air is itself a heroic achievement.

James Tobin (Author), Boyd Gaines (Narrator)

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Taking Hold: My Journey Into Blindness

Sally Hobart Alexander is a writer of considerable talent and resourcefulness. Taking Hold: My Journey Into Blindness is her powerful autobiography of tragic illness and spiritual triumph. At 24, Sally Hobart was a schoolteacher, engaged to be married, and living a happy, active life in southern California. Waking up one morning, she discovered that a gray cloud had descended upon everything around her. A trip to the opthamologist's office revealed that she was suffering from a retinal hemorrhage. Several treatments later, her sight steadily deteriorating, Sally began to understand that soon she would be completely blind. With courage and conviction, Sally has struggled to overcome her visual impairment, and her story is one of great inspiration. With Suzanne Toren's sensitive narration, Sally's story overflows with emotion and determination.

Sally Hobart, Sally Hobart Alexander (Author), Suzanne Toren (Narrator)

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A Beautiful Mind

"How could you, a mathematician, believe that extraterrestrials were sending you messages?" the visitor from Harvard asked the West Virginian with the movie-star looks and Olympian manner. Thus begins the true story of John Nash, the mathematical genius who was a legend by age thirty when he slipped into madness, and who -- thanks to the selflessness fo a beautiful woman and the loyalty of the mathematics community -- emerged after decades of ghostlike exixstence to win a Nobel Prize and world acclaim, the inspiration for a major motion picutre. Sylvia Nasar's award-winning biography is a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over incredivble adversity, and the healing power of love.

Sylvia Nasar (Author), Edward Herrmann (Narrator)

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Map That Changed the World CD : William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology

From the author of the bestselling The Professor and the Madman comes the fascinating story of the father of modern geology In 1793, William Smith, the orphan son of a village blacksmith, made a startling discovery that was to turn the science of geology on its head. While surveying the route for a canal near Bath, he noticed that the fossils found in one layer of the rocks he was excavating were very different from those found in another. And out of that realization came an epiphany: that by following these fossils one could trace layers of rocks as they dipped, rose and fell -- clear across England and clear across the world. Obsessed with creating a map that would showcase his discovery, Smith spent the next twenty years traveling England alone, studying rock outcroppings and gathering information. In 1815 he published a hand-painted map more than eight feet tall and six feet wide. But four years later, swindled out of his profits, Smith ended up in debtors' prison. His wife went mad. He lived as a homeless man for ten long years. Eventually a kindly aristocrat discovered him; Smith, the quiet genius and 'father of geology' was brought back to London and showered with the honors that he rightly deserved. Here now is his astounding story.

Simon Winchester (Author), Simon Winchester (Narrator)

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“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character

Richard Feynman, one of the world's greatest theoretical physicists, thrived on adventure. His outrageous exploits once shocked a Princeton dean's wife to exclaim: "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" In this phenomenal national bestseller, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist recounts in his inimitable voice his experiences trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador, accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums, and much else of an eyebrow-raising and hilarious nature. Woven together with his views on science, Feynman's life story is a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, eternal skepticism, and raging chutzpah.

Richard P. Feynman (Author), Raymond Todd (Narrator)

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Down from Troy

Dr. Richard Selzer, the writer and surgeon whose best-selling works have enthralled millions of literary critics and discriminating readers, returns to his boyhood in 1930s Troy, New York in this powerful memoir of medicine, dreams, and death. Down from Troy evokes the distinct character of Depression-era Troy-the sooty streets, horse-drawn hearses, saloons and brothels-and reveals how a poor boy like Selzer rose to become a professor at Yale Medical School.

Richard Selzer (Author), Sam Gray (Narrator)

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Among School Children

Tracy Kidder (Author), George Guidall (Narrator)

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Science & Technology Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir