Audiobooks narrated by James Cameron Stewart

Making the Arab World: Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash That Shaped the Middle East

In 2013, just two years after the popular overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian military ousted the country's first democratically elected president-Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood-and subsequently led a brutal repression of the Islamist group. These bloody events echoed an older political rift in Egypt and the Middle East: the splitting of nationalists and Islamists during the rule of Egyptian president and Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser. In Making the Arab World, Fawaz Gerges, one of the world's leading authorities on the Middle East, tells how the clash between pan-Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism has shaped the history of the region from the 1920s to the present. Gerges tells this story through an unprecedented dual biography of Nasser and another of the twentieth-century Arab world's most influential figures-Sayyid Qutb, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood and the father of many branches of radical political Islam. Their deeply intertwined lives embody and dramatize the divide between Arabism and Islamism. Yet, as Gerges shows, beyond the ideological and existential rhetoric, this is a struggle over the state, its role, and its power.

Fawaz A. Gerges (Author), James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)

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Worlds in Collision

With this book Immanuel Velikovsky first presented the revolutionary results of his ten-year-long interdisciplinary research to the public, founded modern catastrophism-based on eyewitness reports by our ancestors-shook the doctrine of uniformity of geology as well as Darwin's theory of evolution, put our view of the history of our solar system, of the Earth and of humanity on a completely new basis-and caused an uproar that is still going on today. Worlds in Collision-written in a brilliant, easily understandable, and entertaining style and full to the brim with precise information-can be considered one of the most important and most challenging books in the history of science. Not without reason was this book found open on Einstein's desk after his death. For all those who have ever wondered about the evolution of the earth, the history of mankind, traditions, religions, mythology or just the world as it is today, Worlds in Collision is an absolute must-listen!

Immanuel Velikovsky (Author), James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)

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Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

To modern Western society, capitalism is the air we breathe, and most people rarely think to question it, for good or for ill. But knowing what makes capitalism work-and what makes it fail-is crucial to understanding its long-term health, and the vast implications for the global economy that go along with it. In Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, the eminent scholar David Harvey, author of A Brief History of Neoliberalism, examines the internal contradictions within the flow of capital that have precipitated recent crises. He contends that while the contradictions have made capitalism flexible and resilient, they also contain the seeds of systemic catastrophe. Many of the contradictions are manageable, but some are fatal: the stress on endless compound growth, the necessity to exploit nature to its limits, and tendency toward universal alienation. Capitalism has always managed to extend the outer limits through 'spatial fixes,' expanding the geography of the system to cover nations and people formerly outside of its range. Whether it can continue to expand is an open question, but Harvey thinks it unlikely in the medium term future: the limits cannot extend much further, and the recent financial crisis is a harbinger of this.

David Harvey (Author), James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)

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Charlemagne

When the legendary Frankish king and emperor Charlemagne died in 814 he left behind a dominion and a legacy unlike anything seen in Western Europe since the fall of Rome. Johannes Fried paints a compelling portrait of a devout ruler, a violent time, and a unified kingdom that deepens our understanding of the man often called the father of Europe.

Johannes Fried (Author), James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)

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Korea: The Impossible Country: South Korea's Amazing Rise from the Ashes: The Inside Story of an Eco

South Korea's amazing rise from the ashes: the inside story of an economic, political, and cultural phenomenon Long overshadowed by Japan and China, South Korea is a small country that happens to be one of the great national success stories of the postwar period. From a failed state with no democratic tradition, ruined and partitioned by war, and sapped by a half-century of colonial rule, South Korea transformed itself in just fifty years into an economic powerhouse and a democracy that serves as a model for other countries. With no natural resources and a tradition of authoritarian rule, Korea managed to accomplish a second Asian miracle. Daniel Tudor is a journalist who has lived in and written about Korea for almost a decade. In Korea: The Impossible Country, Tudor examines Korea's cultural foundations; the Korean character; the public sphere in politics, business, and the workplace as well as the family, dating, and marriage. In doing so, he touches on topics as diverse as shamanism, clan-ism, the dilemma posed by North Korea, the myths about doing business in Korea, the Koreans' renowned hard-partying ethos, and why the infatuation with learning English is now causing massive social problems. South Korea has undergone two miracles at once: economic development and complete democratization. The question now is, will it become as some see Japan, a prosperous yet aging society, devoid of energy and momentum? Or will the dynamism of Korean society and its willingness to change-as well as the opportunity it has now to welcome outsiders into its fold-enable it to experience a third miracle that will propel it into the ranks of the world's leading nations regarding human culture, democracy, and wealth?

Daniel Tudor (Author), James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)

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The Fears of Henry IV

King Henry IV survived at least eight plots to dethrone or kill him in the first six years of his reign. However he had not always been so unpopular. In his youth he had been a great chivalric champion and crusader. In 1399, at the age of thirty-two, he was greeted as the saviour of the realm when he ousted from power the tyrannical King Richard II. But Henry had to contend with men who supported him only as long as they could control him; when they failed, they plotted to kill him. Adversaries also tried to take advantage of his questionable right to the crown. Such threats transformed him from hero to murderer, prepared to go to any lengths to save his family and throne. Against all the odds, however, he took a poorly ruled nation, established a new Lancastrian dynasty, and introduced the principle that a king must act in accordance with parliament.

Ian Mortimer (Author), James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)

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The Lives of the Artists

These biographies of the great quattrocento artists have long been considered among the most important of contemporary sources on Italian Renaissance art. Vasari, who invented the term 'Renaissance,' was the first to outline the influential theory of Renaissance art that traces a progression through Giotto, Brunelleschi, and finally the titanic figures of Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, and Raphael. This new translation, specially commissioned for the Oxford World's Classics series, contains thirty-six of the most important lives. Lives of the Artists is an invaluable classic to add to your collection.

Giorgio Vasari (Author), James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)

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Mayflower Lives: Pilgrims in a New World and the Early American Experience

Leading into the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower, Martyn Whittock examines the lives of the 'saints' (members of the Separatist puritan congregations) and 'strangers' (economic migrants) on the original ship. Collectively, these people would become known to history as 'the Pilgrims.' The story of the Pilgrims has taken on a life of its own as one of our founding national myths-their escape from religious persecution, the dangerous transatlantic journey, that brutal first winter. Throughout the narrative, we meet characters already familiar to us through Thanksgiving folklore-Captain Jones, Myles Standish, and Tisquantum (Squanto)-as well as new ones. There is Mary Chilton, the first woman to set foot on shore, and asylum seeker William Bradford. We meet fur trapper John Howland and little Mary More, who was brought as an indentured servant. Then there is Stephen Hopkins, who had already survived one shipwreck and was the only Mayflower passenger with any prior American experience. Decidedly un-puritanical, he kept a tavern and was frequently chastised for allowing drinking on Sundays. Epic and intimate, Mayflower Lives is a rich and rewarding book that promises to enthrall anyone with an interest in early American history.

Martyn Whittock (Author), James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)

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Between Giants: The Battle for the Baltics in World War II

During World War II, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia found themselves trapped between the giants of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Over the course of the war these states were repeatedly occupied by different forces, and local government organizations and individuals were forced to choose between supporting the occupying forces or forming partisan units to resist their occupation. Devastated during the German invasion, these states then became the site of some of the most vicious fighting during the Soviet counterattack and push towards Berlin. Many would be caught up in the bitter fighting in the region and, in particular, in the huge battles for the Courland Bridgehead during Operation Bagration, when hundreds of thousands of soldiers would fight and die in the last year of the war. By the end of the war, death and deportation had cost the Baltic States over twenty percent of their total population and Soviet occupation was to see the iron curtain descend on the region for four decades. Using numerous firsthand accounts and detailed archival research, Prit Buttar weaves a magisterial account of the bitter fighting on the Eastern Front and the three small states whose fates were determined by the fortunes and misfortunes of war.

Prit Buttar (Author), James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)

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Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture

On August 19, 1418, a competition concerning Florence's magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore was announced: 'Whoever desires to make any model or design for the vaulting of the main Dome . . . shall do so before the end of the month of September.' The proposed dome was regarded far and wide as all but impossible to build. The dome would literally need to be erected over thin air. Of the many plans submitted, one stood out. It was offered not by a master mason or carpenter, but by a goldsmith and clockmaker named Filippo Brunelleschi, who would dedicate the next twenty-eight years to solving the puzzles of the dome's construction. In the process, he did nothing less than reinvent the field of architecture. Brunelleschi's Dome is the story of how a Renaissance genius bent men, materials, and the very forces of nature to build an architectural wonder we continue to marvel at today. Denounced at first as a madman, Brunelleschi was celebrated at the end as a genius. He engineered the perfect placement of brick and stone, built ingenious hoists and cranes to carry an estimated 70 million pounds hundreds of feet into the air, and designed the workers' platforms and routines so carefully that only one man died during the decades of construction.

Ross King (Author), James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)

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The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes: The Ancient World Economy and the Empires of Parthia, Central

The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes investigates the trade routes between Rome and the powerful empires of inner Asia, including the Parthian regime which ruled ancient Persia (Iran). It explores Roman dealings with the Kushan Empire which seized power in Bactria (Afghanistan) and laid claim to the Indus Kingdoms. Further chapters examine the development of Palmyra as a leading caravan city on the edge of Roman Syria and consider trade ventures through the Tarim territories that led Roman merchants to Han China. The Han Empire of ancient China matched that of Rome in scale and possessed military technology surpassing that of Roman legions. The Han established a system of Central Asian trade routes known as the Silk Road that carried eastern products as far as Persia and the frontiers of the Roman Empire. This is the first book to address these subjects in a single comprehensive study. It explores Rome's impact on the ancient world economy and reveals what the Chinese and Romans knew about their rival Empires.

Raoul Mclaughlin (Author), James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)

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God's Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, and the Making of the Modern World

Long neglected in world history, the Ottoman Empire was a hub of intellectual fervor, geopolitical power, and enlightened pluralistic rule. At the height of their authority in the sixteenth century, the Ottomans controlled more territory and ruled over more people than any world power, forcing Europeans out of the Mediterranean and to the New World. Yet, despite its towering influence and centrality to the rise of our modern world, the Ottoman Empire's history has for centuries been distorted, misrepresented, and even suppressed in the West. Now Alan Mikhail presents a vitally needed recasting of Ottoman history, retelling the story of the Ottoman conquest of the world through the dramatic biography of Sultan Selim I (1470-1520). Mikhail's game-changing account uses Selim's life to upend prevailing shibboleths about Islamic history and jingoistic 'rise of the West' theories that have held sway for decades. Whether recasting Christopher Columbus's voyages to the 'Americas' as a bumbling attempt to slay Muslims or showing how the Ottomans allowed slaves to become the elite of society while Christian states at the very same time waged the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, God's Shadow radically reshapes our understanding of the importance of Selim's Ottoman Empire in the history of the modern world.

Alan Mikhail (Author), James Cameron Stewart (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by James Cameron Stewart