Audiobooks narrated by Allyson Johnson

Radical Brown: Keeping the Promise to America’s Children

"In Radical Brown, renowned developmental scholar Margaret Beale Spencer and critical legal analyst Nancy E. Dowd offer a fresh perspective on the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Noting that decades of flawed implementation have subverted Brown's great promise of educational equality for K–12 public school students, Spencer and Dowd propose a bold framework for a new interpretation of the Supreme Court decision, one that is inclusive, identity affirming, and culturally sensitive. Even as they envision a more equitable future for US students, Spencer and Dowd look critically at the historical context of Brown v. Board of Education, examining the roots of the inequality and segregation the ruling attempted to address, the resistance that the resulting school integration met, and the legacy of attempts to enforce the ruling. They trace the ways in which post-Brown policies have reinforced race privilege for white students and race subordination for Black and marginalized students and show how structural and cultural racism in education have impeded youth development and caused collective identity injury for all. Radical Brown offers suggestions for action to help legislators, school boards, scholars, and educators correct course and enact the decision's true intent—of safeguarding rights based on a common humanity."

Margaret Beale Spencer, Nancy E. Dowd (Author), Allyson Johnson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Putin's Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia's Collapse into Mercenary Chaos

"The astonishing inside story of the Wagner Group, the world's deadliest militia. In June 2023, the Wagner Group assembled an armed convoy that included tanks and rocket launchers and set out on what seemed like a journey to take control of Moscow. The last person to attempt such a venture was Adolf Hitler. Wagner's power began from patronage, then grew from international theft and extortion, until it was so great it exposed the weakness of Russia's conventional military and became a threat to the Russian state, one that was not demonstrably eliminated until a private jet containing Wagner's core commanders was blown up in midair. That Yevgeny Prigozhin, a local criminal thug, was able to build a private army that was on the threshold of overwhelming the world's second largest country seems incredible. In fact, it was inevitable following the hollowing out of the Russian military, the creeping use of contract groups for murky foreign missions, power struggles inside the Kremlin, and the ability of the new militias to corner and exploit the black economy. Told with unique inside sourcing and expertise, Putin's Sledgehammer is a gripping and terrifying account of a superpower that contracted its soul to a pitiless militia."

Candace Rondeaux (Author), Allyson Johnson (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Programme of Absolute Disorder: Decolonizing the Museum

"'A complete overhaul of the Western museum tradition' —Publishers Weekly 'An impressive critique of the universal museum as complicit in the damages inflicted by colonial power' —Isaac Julien, artist and filmmaker 'Should fascinate anyone interested in social justice, post-colonialism and the arts' —Euronews 'Powerful and so relevant' —Diacritik The Western museum is a battleground—a terrain of ideological, political, and economic contestation. Almost everyone today wants to rethink the museum, but how many have the audacity to question the idea of the universal museum itself? In A Programme of Absolute Disorder, Françoise Vergès puts the museum in its place. Exploring the Louvre's history, she uncovers the context in which the universal museum emerged: as a product of colonialism, and of Europe's self-appointed claim to be the guardian of global heritage. Vergès outlines a radical horizon: to truly decolonize the museum is to implement a 'programme of absolute disorder', inventing other ways of apprehending the human and non-human world that nourish collective creativity and bring justice and dignity to the dispossessed."

Françoise Vergès (Author), Allyson Johnson (Narrator)

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Toll of Honor

"A NEW SOLO NOVEL IN DAVID WEBER'S NYT BEST-SELLING HONORVERSE “It is our duty to pay for our liberty with our own blood. The freedom that we shall win through our sacrifice and exertions, we shall be able to preserve with our own strength.”—Subhas Chandra Bose Lieutenant Brandy Bolgeo has come home from the Battle of Hancock station wounded in both body and spirit. She will need months to regenerate her lost leg, but how long will it take to heal her heart? She’s come home to find that her wounds, her ship’s brutal damage, the deaths of so many friends, were the fault of an arrogant, aristocratic coward who broke and ran in the face of the enemy. Who left her ship to pay the price for his craven desertion under fire. And whose powerful political allies are determined to protect and preserve him at any price. They have held hostage the declaration of war until Lord Pavel Young escaped the consequences of his cowardice. They didn’t care what it cost the Navy. They didn’t care what it cost the entire Star Kingdom of Manticore. Their tactics have cost the Royal Navy the priceless initiative as revolution and military purges wrack the People’s Republic of Haven, and that lost window of opportunity will cost the Star Kingdom seventeen years of bloody warfare and hundreds of thousands of deaths. Now Young is free to seek vengeance on the people he feels have “wronged” him. People like Paul Tankersley and Honor Harrington. Paid duelists, smear tactics, hired assassins in public restaurants … nothing is beneath Pavel Young. But Captain Harrington can look after herself, and Pavel Young is about to face the fury of the woman the newsies call the “Salamander.” Yet who will save the Star Kingdom from the repercussions of his actions? Women and men like Brandy Bolgeo are about to pay the toll for the Star Kingdom of Manticore’s honor."

David Weber (Author), Allyson Johnson (Narrator)

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The Early Imperial Republic: From the American Revolution to the U.S.–Mexican War

"Created in a world of empires, the United States was to be something new: an expansive republic proclaiming commitments to liberty and equality but eager to extend its territory and influence. Yet from the beginning, Native powers, free and enslaved Black people, and foreign subjects perceived, interacted with, and resisted the young republic as if it was merely another empire. Such perspectives have driven scholars to reevaluate the early United States, as the parameters of early American history have expanded in Atlantic, continental, and global directions. The essays gathered in The Early Imperial Republic move beyond the question of whether the new republic was an empire, investigating instead where, how, and why it was one. They use the category of empire to situate the early United States in the global context its contemporaries understood, drawing important connections between territorial conquests on the continent and American incursions. In tracing these stories, the volume's contributors bring the study of early United States imperialism down to earth, encouraging us to see the exertion of United States power on the ground as a process that drew upon the example of its imperial predecessors and was forced to grapple with their legacies. They argue that American empire was never confined to one era but is instead a thread throughout history."

Tbd (Author), Allyson Johnson, William Andrew Quinn (Narrator)

Audiobook

Beyond 1619: The Atlantic Origins of American Slavery

"Beyond 1619 brings an Atlantic and hemispheric perspective to the year 1619 as a marker of American slavery's origins and the beginnings of the Black experience in what would become the United States by situating the roots of racial slavery in a broader, comparative context. In recent years, an extensive public dialogue regarding the long shadow of racism in the United States has pushed Americans to confront the insidious history of race-based slavery and its aftermath, with 1619—the year that the first recorded enslaved persons of African descent arrived in British North America—taking center stage as its starting point. Yet this dialogue has narrowed our understanding of slavery, race, and their repercussions to the U.S. context. Beyond 1619 showcases the results when scholars examine and put into conversation multiple empires, regions, peoples, and cultures to get a more complete view of the rise of racial slavery in the Americas. Painting racial slavery's emergence on a hemispheric canvas, and in one compact volume, provides historical context beyond the 1619 moment for discussions of slavery, racism, antiracism, freedom, and lasting inequalities. This volume shines new light on these topics and illustrates the centrality of racial slavery, and contests over its rise, in nearly every corner of the early modern Atlantic World."

Tbd (Author), Allyson Johnson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Indigo Field

"Sir Walter Raleigh Award Winner, 2023 A Women's National Book Association Great Group Read Selection 'Bravo. Utmost admiration. Superb voices and wordplay, incredible story, multiple stories. . . . ' —Foreword Reviews 'Sparkles with a powerful sense of place . . . compelling . . . hard to put down.' —Midwest Book Review 'An impressive, sprawling novel about love and hate, life and death, sin and redemption, one worth any reader's time.' —Southern Literary Review 'Indigo Field brims with multigenerational drama, earthy spirituality, and deeply imagined characters you are unlikely to forget.' —Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Invention of Wings, The Book of Longings, and The Secret Life of Bees In the rural South, a retired colonel in an upscale retirement community grieves the sudden death of his wife on the tennis court. On the other side of the highway, an elderly Black woman grieves the murder of her niece by a white man. Between them lies an abandoned field where three centuries of crimes are hidden, and only she knows the explosive secrets buried there. When the colonel runs into her car, causing a surprising amount of damage, it sparks a feud that sets loose the spirits in the Field, both benevolent and vengeful. In prose that's been called 'dazzling' and 'mesmerizing,' in the animated voices of trees and birds and people, in Southern-voiced storytelling as deeply layered as that of Pat Conroy, Marjorie Hudson lays out the boundaries of a field that contains the soul of the South, and leads us to a day of reckoning."

Marjorie Hudson (Author), Allyson Johnson (Narrator)

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New Suns 2: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color

"Octavia E. Butler said, 'There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.' New Suns 2 brings you fresh visions of the strange, the unexpected, the shocking—breakthrough stories, stories shining with emerging truths, stories that pierce stale preconceptions with their beauty and bravery. Like the first New Suns anthology (winner of the World Fantasy, Locus, IGNYTE, and British Fantasy awards), this book liberates writers of many races to tell us tales no one has ever told. Many things come in twos: dualities, binaries, halves, and alternates. Twos are found throughout New Suns 2, in eighteen science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories revealing daring futures, hidden pasts, and present-day worlds filled with unmapped wonders. Including stories by Daniel H. Wilson, K. Tempest Bradford, Darcie Little Badger, Geetanjali Vandemark, John Chu, Nghi Vo, Tananarive Due, Alex Jennings, Karin Lowachee, Saad Hossain, Hiromi Goto, Minsoo Kang, Tlotlo Tsamaase, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Malka Older, Kathleen Alcalá, Christopher Caldwell, and Jaymee Goh with a foreword by Walter Mosley and an afterword by Dr. Grace Dillon."

Nisi Shawl (Author), Allyson Johnson, Diontae Black (Narrator)

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The Cicada Tree

"WHEN AN ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD, WHISKY DRINKING, PIANO PRODIGY ENCOUNTERS A WEALTHY FAMILY POSSESSING SUPERNATURAL BEAUTY, HER ENSUING OBSESSION UNLEASHES FAMILY SECRETS AND A CATACLYSMIC PLAGUE OF CICADAS. The summer of 1956, a brood of cicadas descends upon Providence, Georgia, a natural event with supernatural repercussions, unhinging the life of Analeise Newell, an eleven-year-old piano prodigy. Amidst this emergence, dark obsessions are stirred, uncanny gifts provoked, and secrets unearthed. During a visit to Mistletoe, a plantation owned by the wealthy Mayfield family, Analeise encounters Cordelia Mayfield and her daughter Marlissa, both of whom possess an otherworldly beauty, a lineal trait regarded as that Mayfield Shine. A whisper and an act of violence perpetrated during this visit by Mrs. Mayfield all converge to kindle Analeise's fascination with the Mayfields. Analeise's burgeoning obsession with the Mayfield family overshadows her own seemingly, ordinary life, culminating in dangerous games and manipulation, setting off a chain of cataclysmic events with life-altering consequences—all of it unfolding to the maddening whir of a cicada song."

Robert Gwaltney (Author), Allyson Johnson (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom

"In The Emancipation Circuit Thulani Davis provides a sweeping rethinking of Reconstruction by tracing how the four million people newly freed from bondage created political organizations and connections that mobilized communities across the South. Drawing on the practices of community they developed while enslaved, freedpeople built new settlements and created a network of circuits through which they imagined, enacted, and defended freedom. This interdisciplinary history shows that these circuits linked rural and urban organizations, labor struggles, and political culture with news, strategies, education, and mutual aid. Mapping the emancipation circuits, Davis shows the geography of ideas of freedom—circulating on shipping routes, via army maneuvers, and with itinerant activists—that became the basis for the first mass Black political movement for equal citizenship in the United States. In this work, she reconfigures understandings of the evolution of southern Black political agendas while outlining the origins of the enduring Black freedom struggle from the Jim Crow era to the present."

Thulani Davis (Author), Allyson Johnson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom

"When Samuel Townsend died at his home in Madison County, Alabama, in November 1856, the fifty-two-year-old white planter left behind hundreds of slaves, thousands of acres of rich cotton land, and a net worth of approximately $200,000. In life, Samuel had done little to distinguish himself from other members of the South's elite slaveholding class. But he made a name for himself in death by leaving almost the entirety of his fortune to his five sons, four daughters, and two nieces: all of them his slaves. In this deeply researched, movingly narrated portrait of the extended Townsend family, R. Isabela Morales reconstructs the migration of this mixed-race family across the American West and South over the second half of the nineteenth century. Searching for communities where they could exercise their newfound freedom and wealth to the fullest, members of the family homesteaded and attended college in Ohio and Kansas; fought for the Union Army in Mississippi; mined for silver in the Colorado Rockies; and, in the case of one son, returned to Alabama to purchase part of the old plantation where he had once been held as a slave. In Morales's telling, the Townsends' story maps a new landscape of opportunity and oppression, where the meanings of race and freedom—as well as opportunities for social and economic mobility—were dictated by highly local circumstances."

R. Isabela Morales (Author), Allyson Johnson (Narrator)

Audiobook

First-Year Teaching For Dummies, 2nd Edition

"Make your first year of teaching one to remember Becoming a new teacher is one of the most fun, exciting, and challenging experiences you'll encounter in your life. Who wouldn't want a little help getting ready before sitting down behind the teacher's desk for the first time? That's where First-Year Teaching For Dummies comes in. You'll find easy-to-follow strategies and techniques to help you navigate the politics of education in your community, develop fun and fulfilling relationships with your students, and refine your own instructional style. You'll learn to: ● Survive and thrive in your first two weeks as you hit the ground running and win over your students, coworkers, and administrators ● Avoid or reduce the major stressors that can lead to burnout and other common problems ● Understand and handle twenty-first-century issues with skill and sensitivity It's almost time for you to take charge of your first classroom and you're raring to go. So, grab a copy of First-Year Teaching For Dummies to find the last-minute tips and common-sense guidance you need to help make your first school year a rewarding one!"

Carol Flaherty, Flirtisha Harris, W. Michael Kelley (Author), Allyson Johnson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Allyson Johnson

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