Audiobooks narrated by Joe Barrett

Schoolboy: The Untold Journey of a Yankees Hero

Waite 'Schoolboy' Hoyt's improbable baseball journey began when the 1915 New York Giants signed him as a high school junior, for no pay and a five-dollar bonus. Based on a trove of Hoyt's writings and interview transcripts, Tim Manners has reanimated the baseball legend's untold story, entirely in Hoyt's own words. Over his twenty-three-year professional baseball career, Hoyt won 237 big league games across 3,845 2/3 innings-and one locker room brawl with Babe Ruth. He writes at length about the art of pitching and how the game and its players changed-and didn't-over his lifetime. After retiring from baseball at thirty-eight and coming to terms with his alcoholism, Hoyt found some happiness as a family man and a beloved, pioneering Cincinnati Reds radio sportscaster with a Websterian vocabulary spiked with a Brooklyn accent. When Hoyt died in 1984 his foremost legacy may have been as a raconteur who punctuated his life story with awe-inspiring and jaw-dropping anecdotes. In Schoolboy he never flinches from an unsparing account of his remarkable and paradoxical eighty-four-year odyssey.

Waite Hoyt (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

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Madness, Betrayal and the Lash: The Epic Voyage of Captain George Vancouver

From 1792 to 1795, George Vancouver sailed the Pacific as the captain of his own expedition and as an agent of imperial ambition. To map a place is to control it, and Britain had its eyes on America's Pacific coast. And map it Vancouver did. His voyage was one of history's greatest feats of maritime daring, discovery, and diplomacy, and his marine survey of Hawaii and the Pacific coast was at its time the most comprehensive ever undertaken. But just two years after returning to Britain, the forty-year-old Vancouver, hounded by critics, shamed by public humiliation at the fists of an aristocratic sailor he had flogged, and blacklisted because of a perceived failure to follow the Admiralty's directives, died in poverty, nearly forgotten. In this riveting and perceptive biography, historian Stephen Bown delves into the events that destroyed Vancouver's reputation and restores his position as one of the greatest explorers of the Age of Discovery.

Stephen R. Bown (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

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Where The Ley Lines Meet: Final Chapter to the Claire Saga

The Claire Trilogy taught us the meaning of family and loyalty in every sense of those words through the bonding of Claire the Mule and her family of mystical misfits under the most trying of circumstances. Its prequel, Finding Jimmy Moran, introduced the world to the magical young boy who grows into the man that leads Claire's family across the galaxy. Where The Ley Lines Meet is what happens when the mystical misfits and their alien brethren are recalled to earth to reunite and save the world. The storylines and characters the fans have come to love in the prior four books reappear in this continuation and conclusion of The Claire Saga. Or is it?

Tom Mccaffrey (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

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The Rebellious CEO: 12 Leaders Who Did It Right

Over the course of seven decades Ralph Nader has been Corporate America's fiercest critic. Supreme Court Justice William Powell singled out Nader in his infamous memo as the 'single most effective antagonist of American business . . . [the] target of his hatred . . . is corporate power.' But now, in a book that will surprise both his fans and critics, Nader profiles a small group of CEOs who he believes performed extraordinarily well as business leaders and civic reformers, some well-known, some not, who should be celebrated as exceptions whose life and career should be a course of emulation and inspiration for students of business, executives, and the wider citizenry. This select group of mavericks and iconoclasts-which includes The Body Shop's Anita Roddick, Patagonia's Yvon Chouinard, Vanguard's John Bogle, and Busboys and Poets' Andy Shallal-give us, Nader writes, 'a sense of what might have been and what still could be if business were rigorously framed as a process that was not only about making money and selling things but improving our social and natural world.'

Ralph Nader (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

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Marty Glickman: The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend

For close to half a century after World War II, Marty Glickman was the voice of New York sports. His distinctive style of broadcasting, on television and especially on the radio, garnered for him legions of fans who would not miss his play-by-play accounts. His vocabulary and method of broadcasting left an indelible mark on the industry, and many of today's most famous sportscasters were Glickman disciples. In Marty Glickman, Jeffrey S. Gurock showcases the life of this important contributor to American popular culture. In addition to the stories of how he became a master of American sports airwaves, Marty Glickman has also been remembered as a Jewish athlete who, a decade before he sat in front of a microphone, was cynically barred from running in a signature track event in the 1936 Olympics by anti-Semitic American Olympic officials. This lively biography details this traumatic event and explores not only how he coped for decades with that painful rejection but also examines how he dealt with other anti-Semitic and cultural obstacles that threatened to stymie his career. Marty Glickman is a story of adversity and triumph, of sports and minority group struggles, told within the context of the prejudicial barriers that were common to thousands, if not millions, of fellow Jews of his generation as they aimed to make it in America.

Jeffrey S. Gurock (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

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Finding Jimmy Moran: Codicil to The Claire Trilogy

Who is Jimmy Moran? It starts with a lucky penny. Then a muse who bestows a mystical gift. Or maybe a curse? Family, friends, and fights abound as Jimmy breaks the law, looks for love in all the wrong places and experiences loss that transforms him. A mischievous Bronx boy becomes a man in his search for the love of his life. This is the coming-of-age story of the character we meet in the Claire Trilogy, who becomes a mob lawyer, Claire the mule's best friend, and the leader of the motley crew of magical misfits.

Tom Mccaffrey (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

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Jim Kaat: Good As Gold: My Eight Decades in Baseball

An unforgettable look at a lifetime of baseball packed with humor and passion for the game With a career that has now touched eight decades, Jim Kaat has had a prime front row seat for baseball's continuing evolution. Not only was he a major-league pitcher for twenty-five seasons, but his time as a pitching coach and his many years as a broadcaster have given him a singular long view of the game. In Good as Gold, Kaat weaves the tale of a lifetime, taking fans on the field, into the clubhouse, and behind the mic as only he can. Full of priceless stories from New York, Minnesota, and across the major leagues, this honest and engaging autobiography gives fans a rare seat alongside Kaat on a tour of baseball history.

Jim Kaat (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

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A Banker's Journey: How Edmond J. Safra Built A Global Financial Empire

In A Banker's Journey, financial journalist and historian Daniel Gross, who, like Edmond Safra, traces his heritage to Aleppo, Syria, reconstructs the public life of an intensely private man. With exclusive access to Safra's personal archives, Gross tracks the banker's remarkable journey from Beirut to Milan, São Paulo, Geneva, and New York-to the pinnacle of global finance. Edmond Safra was fifteen in 1947, when his father sent him to establish a presence in Milan, Italy. Fluent in six languages, and with an eye for value, managing risk, and personal potential, Safra was in perpetual motion until his tragic death in 1999. The modern, global financial empire he built was based on timeless principles: a banker must protect his depositors and avoid excessive leverage and risk. In an age of busts and bailouts, Safra posted remarkable returns while rarely suffering a credit loss. From a young age, Safra assumed the mantle of leadership in the Syrian-Lebanese Jewish community, providing personal aid, supporting the communities that formed in exile, and championing Sephardic religious and educational efforts in Israel and around the world. Safra's life of achievement in the twentieth century offers enduring lessons for those seeking to make their way in the twenty-first century. He inspired generations to make the world a better place.

Daniel Gross (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

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Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism

Revolution and Dictatorship explores why dictatorships born of social revolution-such as those in China, Cuba, Iran, the Soviet Union, and Vietnam-are extraordinarily durable, even in the face of economic crisis, large-scale policy failure, mass discontent, and intense external pressure. Few other modern autocracies have survived in the face of such extreme challenges. Drawing on comparative historical analysis, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way argue that radical efforts to transform the social and geopolitical order trigger intense counterrevolutionary conflict, which initially threatens regime survival, but ultimately fosters the unity and state-building that supports authoritarianism. Although most revolutionary governments begin weak, they challenge powerful domestic and foreign actors, often bringing about civil or external wars. These counterrevolutionary wars pose a threat that can destroy new regimes, as in the cases of Afghanistan and Cambodia. Among regimes that survive, however, prolonged conflicts give rise to a cohesive ruling elite and a powerful and loyal coercive apparatus. This leads to the downfall of rival organizations and alternative centers of power, such as armies, churches, and landowners, and helps to inoculate revolutionary regimes against elite defection, military coups, and mass protest-principal sources of authoritarian breakdown.

Lucan Way, Steven Levitsky (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

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Against the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Rise of Conservatism, 1976-2009

From the author of Catching the Wind comes the second volume of the definitive biography of Ted Kennedy and a history of modern American liberalism. "Magisterial . . . an intricate, astute study of political power brokering comparable to Robert A. Caro's profile of Lyndon Johnson in Master of the Senate."-Publishers Weekly (starred review) Against the Wind completes Neal Gabler's magisterial biography of Ted Kennedy, but it also unfolds the epic, tragic story of the fall of liberalism and the destruction of political morality in America. With Richard Nixon having stilled the liberal wind that once propelled Kennedy's-and his fallen brothers'-political crusades, Ted Kennedy faced a lonely battle. As Republicans pressed Reaganite dogmas of individual freedom and responsibility and Democratic centrists fell into line, Kennedy was left as the most powerful voice legislating on behalf of those society would neglect or punish: the poor, the working class, and African Americans. Gabler shows how the fault lines that cracked open in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam were intentionally widened by Kennedy's Republican rivals to create a moral vision of America that stood in direct opposition to once broadly shared commitments to racial justice and economic equality. Yet even as he fought this shift, Ted Kennedy's personal moral failures in this era-the endless rumors of his womanizing and public drunkenness and his bizarre behavior during the events that led to rape accusations against his nephew William Kennedy Smith-would be used again and again to weaken his voice and undercut his claims to political morality. Tracing Kennedy's life from the wilderness of the Reagan years through the compromises of the Clinton era, from his rage against the craven cruelty of George W. Bush to his hope that Obama would deliver on a lifetime of effort on behalf of universal health care, Gabler unfolds Kennedy's heroic legislative work against the backdrop of a nation grown lost and fractured. In this outstanding conclusion to the saga that began with Catching the Wind, Neal Gabler offers his inimitable insight into a man who fought to keep liberalism alive when so many were determined to extinguish it. Against the Wind sheds new light both on a revered figure in the American Century and on America's current existential crisis.

Neal Gabler (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

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The Drive-Thru Crematorium

Stanley Maddox lives a mundane life in a nondescript town. His wife is cheating on him, his colleagues at work don’t recognize him, and he has recently noticed a mysterious creature darting its way through his house. When he notices a flap of skin on his face, he begins pulling. Beneath his skin lies another person, an evil person, with the power to change his life forever.

Jon Bassoff (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

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Never Panic Early: An Apollo 13 Astronaut's Journey

The extraordinary autobiography of astronaut Fred Haise, one of only twenty-four men to fly to the moon. In the gripping Never Panic Early, Fred Haise, Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 13, offers a detailed firsthand account of when disaster struck three days into his mission to the moon. An oxygen tank exploded, a crewmate uttered the now iconic words, “Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and the world anxiously watched as one of history’s most incredible rescue missions unfolded. Haise brings listeners into the heart of his experience on the challenging mission—considered NASA’s finest hour—and reflects on his life and career as an Apollo astronaut. In this personal and illuminating memoir, Haise takes an introspective look at the thrills and triumphs, regrets and disappointments, and lessons that defined his career, including his years as a military fighter pilot and his successful twenty-year NASA career that would have made him the sixth man on the moon had Apollo 13 gone right. Many of his stories navigate fear, hope, and resilience, like when he crashed while ferrying a World War II air show aircraft and suffered second and third-degree burns over sixty-five percent of his body, putting him in critical condition for ten days before making a heroic recovery. In Never Panic Early, Haise explores what it was like to work for NASA in its glory years and demonstrates a true ability to deal with the unexpected.

Fred Haise (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Joe Barrett