Audiobooks narrated by Bruno Roubicek

False Prophets: British Leaders' Fateful Fascination with the Middle East from Suez to Syria

'Fascinating' Guardian, 'Book of the Day' 'A truly masterly book... A tour de force that will be read for a very long time.' Peter Hennessy Selected by the New Statesman as an essential read for 2022 Britain shaped the modern Middle East through the lines that it drew in the sand after the First World War and through the League of Nations mandates over the fledgling states that followed. Less than forty years later, the Suez crisis dealt a fatal blow to Britain's standing in the Middle East and is often represented as the final throes of British imperialism. However, as this insightful and compelling new book reveals, successive prime ministers have all sought to extend British influence in the Middle East and their actions have often led to a disastrous outcome. While Anthony Eden and Tony Blair are the two most prominent examples of prime ministers whose reputations have been ruined by their interventions in the region, they were not alone in taking significant risks in deploying British forces to the Middle East. There was an unspoken assumption that Britain could help solve its problems, even if only for the reason that British imperialism had created the problems in the first place. Drawing these threads together, Nigel Ashton explores the reasons why British leaders have been unable to resist returning to the mire of the Middle East, while highlighting the misconceptions about the region that have helped shape their interventions, and the legacy of history that has fuelled their pride and arrogance. Ultimately, he shows how their fears and insecurities made them into false prophets who conjured existential threats out of the sands of the Middle East.

Nigel Ashton (Author), Bruno Roubicek (Narrator)

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Artificial Intelligence: Modern Magic or Dangerous Future?

Artificial intelligence has long been a mainstay of science fiction and increasingly it feels as if AI is entering our everyday lives, with technology like Apple's Siri now prominent, and self-driving cars almost upon us. But what do we actually mean when we talk about 'AI'? Are the sentient machines of 2001 or The Matrix a real possibility or will real-world artificial intelligence look and feel very different? What has it done for us so far? And what technologies could it yield in the future? AI expert Yorick Wilks takes a journey through the history of artificial intelligence up to the present day, examining its origins, controversies and achievements, as well as looking into just how it works. He also considers the future, assessing whether these technologies could menace our way of life, but also how we are all likely to benefit from AI applications in the years to come. Entertaining, enlightening, and keenly argued, this is the essential one-stop guide to the AI debate.

Yorick Wilks (Author), Bruno Roubicek (Narrator)

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CERN and the Higgs Boson: The Global Quest for the Building Blocks of Reality

The Higgs boson is the rock star of fundamental particles, catapulting CERN, the laboratory where it was found, into the global spotlight. But what is it, why does it matter, and what exactly is CERN? In the late 1940s, a handful of visionaries were working to steer Europe towards a more peaceful future through science, and CERN, the European particle physics laboratory, was duly born. James Gillies tells the gripping story of particle physics, from the original atomists of ancient Greece, through the people who made the crucial breakthroughs, to CERN itself, one of the most ambitious scientific undertakings of our time, and its eventual confirmation of the Higgs boson. Weaving together the scientific and political stories of CERN's development, the book reveals how particle physics has evolved from being the realm of solitary genius to a global field of human endeavour, with CERN's Large Hadron Collider as its frontier research tool.

James Gillies (Author), Bruno Roubicek (Narrator)

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Hold Up The Sky

From the author of The Three-Body Problem, a collection of award-winning short stories - a breath-taking selection of diamond-hard science fiction. Stories included are: 1. The Village Teacher. 2. The Time Migration. 3. 2018-04-01. 4. Fire in the Earth. 5. Contraction. 6. Mirror. 7. Ode to Joy. 8. Full Spectrum Barrage Jamming. 9. Sea of Dreams. 10. Cloud of Poems. 11. The Thinker. 2020 Head of Zeus Ltd

Cixin Liu (Author), Bruno Roubicek (Narrator)

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The Song of Simon de Montfort

'Alive with human detail and acute political judgement, this book marks the arrival of a formidably gifted historian.' - Dan Jones, author of The Plantagenets and The Templars It was around half-past eight in the morning, with summer rainclouds weighing heavy in the sky, that Simon de Montfort decided to die. It was 4 August 1265 and he was about to face the royal army in the final battle of a quarrel that had raged between them for years. Outnumbered, outmanoeuvred and certain to lose, Simon chose to fight, knowing that he could not possibly win the day. The Song of Simon de Montfort is the story of this extraordinary man: heir to a great warrior, devoted husband and father, fearless crusader knight and charismatic leader. It is the story of a man whose passion for good governance was so fierce that, in 1258, frustrated by the King's refusal to take the advice of his nobles and the increasing injustice meted out to his subjects, he marched on Henry III's hall at Westminster and seized the reins of power. Montfort established a council to rule in the King's name, overturning the social order in a way that would not be seen again until the rule of Oliver Cromwell in the seventeenth century. Having defeated the King at the Battle of Lewes in 1264, Montfort and his revolutionary council ruled England for some fifteen months, until the enmity between the two sides exploded on that August day in 1265. When the fighting was over, Montfort and a host of his followers had been cut down on the battlefield, in an outpouring of noble blood that marked the end of chivalry in England as it had existed since the Norman Conquest. Drawing on an abundance of sources that allow us to trace Montfort's actions and personality in a depth not possible for earlier periods in medieval history, Sophie Thérèse Ambler tells his story with a clarity that reveals all of the excitement, chaos and human tragedy of England's first revolution.

Sophie Therese Ambler, Sophie Thérèse Ambler (Author), Bruno Roubicek, Sophie Therese Ambler, Sophie Thérèse Ambler (Narrator)

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The Last Paper Crane

A Japanese teenager, Mizuki, is worried about her grandfather who is clearly desperately upset about something. He says that he has never got over something that happened in his past and gently Mizuki persuades him to tell her what it is. We are taken to 1945, Hiroshima, and Mizuki's grandfather as a teenage boy chatting at home with his friend Hiro. Moments later the horrific nuclear bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. What follows is a searing account of the blinding flash, the harrowing search for family and the devastation both human and physical. There is also the very moving and human story as the two teenage boys with great bravery search for and find Keiko, Hiro's five-year-old sister. But then Keiko is lost when Mizuki's grandfather has no option but to leave her in a safe place while he goes for help... Despite a desperate search in the aftermath of the bomb, where he leaves origami folded paper cranes for Keiko with his address on everywhere a survivor could be, he cannot find her... A powerful novel that, despite its harrowing subject matter, has hope at its heart

Kerry Drewery (Author), Bruno Roubicek, Rina Takasaki (Narrator)

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Of Ants and Dinosaurs

In a sunlit clearing in central Gondwana, on an otherwise ordinary day in the late Cretaceous, the seeds of Earth's first and greatest civilization were sown in the grisly aftermath of a Tyrannosaurus' lunch. Throughout the universe, intelligence is a rare and fragile commodity - a fleeting glimmer in the long night of cosmic history. That Earth should harbour not just one but two intelligent species at the same time, defies the odds. That these species, so unalike - and yet so complementary - should forge an alliance that kindled a civilization defies logic. But time is endless and everything comes to pass eventually... The alliance between ants and dinosaurs, was of course, based on dentistry. Yet from such humble beginnings came writing, mathematics, computers, fusion, antimatter and even space travel - a veritable Age of Wonder! But such magnificent industry comes at a price - a price paid first by Earth's biosphere, and then by all those dependent on it. And yet the Dinosaurs refused to heed the Ants' warning of impending ecological collapse, leaving the Ant Federation facing a single dilemma: destroy the dinosaurs, destroy a civilization... or perish alongside them? Praise for the author: "China's answer to Arthur C. Clarke" THE NEW YORKER "Wildly imaginative, really interesting ... The scope of it was immense" BARACK OBAMA "A milestone in Chinese science fiction" NEW YORK TIMES "A marvellous mélange of awe-inspiring scientific concepts, clever plotting and quirky yet plausible characters" TLS "A unique blend of scientific and philosophical speculation, politics and history, conspiracy theory and cosmology" GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

Cixin Liu (Author), Bruno Roubicek (Narrator)

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The Supernova Era

From Cixin Liu, the New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-winning author of The Three Body Problem, comes a new science fiction masterpiece in Supernova Era. In those days, Earth was a planet in space. In those days, Beijing was a city on Earth. On this night, history as known to humanity came to an end. Eight light years away, a star has died, creating a supernova event that showers Earth in deadly levels of radiation. Within a year, everyone over the age of thirteen will die. And so the countdown begins. Parents apprentice their children and try to pass on the knowledge they'll need to keep the world running. But the last generation may not want to carry the legacy of their parents' world. And though they imagine a better, brighter world, they may bring about a future so dark humanity won't survive.

Cixin Liu (Author), Bruno Roubicek (Narrator)

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The Redemption of Time

At the end of the fourth year of the Crisis Era, Yun Tianming, riddled with cancer, chose to end his life. But death for Yun Tianming IS merely the first step in a journey that will place him on the frontline of a war that has raged since the beginning of time. As Yun Tianming lay dying, his brain was extracted from his body, flash frozen, put aboard a spacecraft and launched on a trajectory to intercept the Trisolarian First Fleet. It was a desperate plan. But there was an infinitesimal chance that one day Tianming may, somehow, send valuable information back to Earth. And so he does. But not before he succumbed to subjective centuries of alien torture and betrayed humanity. Rewarded with a cloned body by the Trisolarans, Tianming has spent millennia in exile as a traitor to the human race. But now he has a chance at redemption. A being calling itself The Spirit recruits him to help wage war against a foe that threatens the existence of the entire universe. But Tianming refuses to be a pawn again. He has his own plans...

Baoshu (Author), Bruno Roubicek (Narrator)

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The Analects

One of the undisputed giants in the history of human thought, and the founder of one of the world's longest-lasting cultural traditions, Confucius (known as Kong Fuzi in his native China) is arguably the most enduring of all the world's great thinkers. The Analects, the slender volume thought to have been compiled by his followers, has the strongest claim to represent Confucius' actual words. Sometimes pithy, sometimes conversational, occasionally enigmatic, often profoundly searching, the book contains memorable sayings about the moral health of the individual, the family and the body politic, and continues to be a source of inexhaustible wisdom after more than two and a half millennia. **Contact Customer Service for Additional Content**

Confucius (Author), Bruno Roubicek (Narrator)

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Death's End

Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge and, with human science advancing and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations can co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But peace has made humanity complacent. Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the start of the Trisolar Crisis, and her presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?

Cixin Liu (Author), Bruno Roubicek (Narrator)

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Ball Lightning

When Chen's parents are incinerated before his eyes by a blast of ball lightning, he devotes his life to cracking the secret of this mysterious natural phenomenon. The more he learns, the more he comes to realize that ball lightning is just the tip of an entirely new frontier in particle physics. Although Chen's quest provides a purpose for his lonely life, his reasons for chasing this elusive quarry come into conflict with soldiers and scientists who have motives of their own.

Cixin Liu (Author), Bruno Roubicek (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Bruno Roubicek