Audiobooks narrated by Jonathan Yen

Gunflint Falling: Blowdown in the Boundary Waters

On July 4, 1999, in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a bizarre confluence of meteorological events resulted in the most damaging blowdown in the region's history. Gunflint Falling tells the story of this devastating storm from the perspectives of those who were on the ground before, during, and after the catastrophic event. The forecasts in Duluth predicted the day would be 'warm and humid. Partly sunny with a 30% chance of thunderstorms.' But as the evening settled, the first eyewitness accounts began to tell a terrifying story. Friends camping on Lake Polly watched in wonder as the sky turned green and the winds began to whip. They scrambled to pull canoes on shore when a tree snapped and struck one of them in the head, rendering her unconscious. Three women enjoying their last day of a camping trip took shelter in their tent as winds increased. Water drenched the nylon walls as trees crashed around them, one flattening the tent and pinning a woman beneath it. A family vacationing at their cabin dodged falling trees and strained against straight-line winds as they sprinted from the cabin to the safest place they knew: a crawl space underneath it. They watched as trees snapped, their twisted root balls torn out of the earth. By the time the storm began to subside, falling trees had injured approximately sixty people, but amazingly, no one died.

Cary J. Griffith (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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Gunflint Burning: Fire in the Boundary Waters

The story of the Ham Lake fire, at the time the most destructive wildfire in modern Minnesota history-the blaze, the firefighters' battle, the human toll Gunflint Burning is a comprehensive account of the dramatic events around the Ham Lake fire of 2007, one of the largest wildfires in Minnesota history. In sharp detail, Cary J. Griffith describes the key events of the fire as they unfold, transporting listeners to the front lines of an epic struggle that was at times heroic, tragic, and sublime.

Cary J. Griffith (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial Myths of America's War on Drugs

Beware Euphoria uncovers the roots of America's moral obsession with drug regulation, offering a lively and fascinating history of the nation's racialized fear of intoxication. Challenging the idea that early antidrug laws in the United States arose from racial animus, George Fisher instead shows in textured detail how United States drug laws were driven by a deep-seated cultural taboo against euphoria and a preoccupation with white moral integrity. From nineteenth-century opium dens to the war on cocaine and cannabis, and more, Fisher offers a vivid tour of the sites of conflict, along with a convincing case for how the moral discourses and social contexts of the day pit drugs against the law. Bringing this history up to the present, Fisher shows how the racial dynamic has changed dramatically. As harsher penalties swell prisons with mostly nonwhite dealers, antidrug laws have come under renewed scrutiny as a tool of racial oppression. The book closes with an examination of cannabis legalization, driven in part by the movement for racial justice.

George Fisher (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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The Art of Buying Art: How to evaluate and buy art like a professional collector

'The very best book on the subject ever published' -Bernard Ewell, Personal Property Journal (the trade publication of the American Society of Appraisers) The art world can appear impenetrable to the beginner. This classic book, in print since 1990, is an invaluable primer that will help anyone to penetrate the thickets of inscrutable 'insider info' and esoteric jargon. Updated for today's art market, including online buying, The Art of Buying Art is without a doubt the most accessible book on how to research, evaluate, price, and buy artworks-for anyone who wants to buy art. No previous knowledge of art or the art business is necessary. Topics include: how to research and evaluate art prices like the professionals; how to build a quality collection; how to spot fakes and forgeries; how to buy art at auctions and directly from artists; how to negotiate prices; and how to tell the difference between an original and a reproduction. Bamberger provides the information needed to transform anyone into an informed art consumer, to protect collectors from bad buys, and to help them locate the best art at the correct prices.

Alan Bamberger (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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HBR's 10 Must Reads 2017: The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review

With authors from Clayton M. Christensen to Adam Grant and company examples from Intel to Uber, HBR's 10 Must Reads 2017 brings the most important management conversations to your fingertips. This book will inspire you to rethink the way you work in the face of advancing automation; transform your business using a platform strategy; apply design thinking to create innovative products; identify where too much collaboration may be holding your people back; see the theory of disruptive innovation in a brand new light; and recognize the signs that your cross-cultural negotiation may be falling apart. This collection of articles includes 'Collaborative Overload,' by Rob Cross, Reb Rebele, and Adam Grant; 'Algorithms Need Managers, Too,' by Michael Luca, Jon Kleinberg, and Sendhil Mullainathan; 'Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy,' by Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Geoffrey G. Parker, and Sangeet Paul Choudary; 'What Is Disruptive Innovation?,' by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael Raynor, and Rory McDonald; 'How Indra Nooyi Turned Design Thinking into Strategy,' an interview with Indra Nooyi by Adi Ignatius; 'Engineering Reverse Innovations,' by Amos Winter and Vijay Govindarajan; “The Employer-Led Health Care Revolution,' by Patricia A. McDonald, Robert S. Mecklenburg, and Lindsay A. Martin; and more.

Adam Grant, Clayton M. Christensen, Harvard Business Review, Thomas H. Davenport, Vijay Govindarajan (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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How to Make Things Faster: Lessons in Performance from Technology and Everyday Life

Slow systems are frustrating. They waste time and money. But making consistently great decisions about performance can be easy, if you understand what's going on. This book explains in a clear and thoughtful voice why systems perform the way they do. It's for anybody who's curious about how computer programs and other processes use their time and about what you can do to improve them. Through a mix of personal vignettes and technical use cases, Cary Millsap reviews the process of improving performance and provides best practices for optimizing systems efficiently. You'll learn how to identify the information needed to improve a system, how to find the root causes of performance issues, and how to fix them. You'll also learn how performance optimization is both a skill set and a mindset, and how to develop both over time. If you're a computer professional whose success relies on software that goes fast, by the end of this book you'll be able to identify, view, scope, analyze, and remedy performance issues with consistency and confidence.

Cary Millsap (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773–1776

In Tea James Fichter reveals that despite the so-called Boston Tea Party in 1773, two other large shipments of tea from the East India Company survived and were ultimately drunk in North America. The survival of these shipments shaped the politics of the years ahead and hint at the enduring potency of consumerism in revolutionary politics. Tea protests were widespread in 1774, but, Fichter argues, so were tea advertisements and tea sales. Such protests were noisy and sometimes misleading performances, not clear signs that tea consumption was unpopular. Revolutionaries vilified tea in their propaganda and prohibited the importation and consumption of tea and British goods. Yet merchant ledgers reveal these goods were still widely sold and consumed in 1775. Colonists supported Patriots more than they abided by non-consumption. When Congress ended its prohibition against tea in 1776, it reasoned that the ban was too widely violated to enforce. War was a more effective means to resist Parliament, after all, than was a boycott, and as rebel arms advanced, Patriots seized and used tea and other goods Britons left behind. By 1776 protesters sought tea, and, objecting to its high price, they redistributed rather than destroyed it. But as Fichter demonstrates in Tea, the commodity was not, by then, a symbol of the British state, but of American consumerism.

James R. Fichter (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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Shogun: The Life and Times of Tokugawa Ieyasu: Japan's Greatest Ruler

Uncover the true story of the man who unified medieval Japan. For 700 years, Japan was ruled by military commanders who waged war against one another incessantly. Shogun tells the fascinating story of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the man who finally unified and brought lasting peace to the nation. He established a new central government which enabled his descendants to rule Japan for the next 260 years-a period in which Japanese culture as we know it today flourished. The dramatic episodes retold in this book include: - Ieyasu's crushing victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, the largest battle ever fought in Japan - His creation of a new form of government with a centralized system of control that allowed his descendants to rule Japan peacefully for the next fifteen generations - Ieyasu's fateful decision to limit the spread of Christianity in Japan, ultimately banning the religion and massacring tens of thousands of ardent believers This new edition highlights the drama and pageantry of Ieyasu's life and features a new foreword by leading Japanese military historian Alexander Bennett.

A.L. Sadler (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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The Scandal of Cal: Land Grabs, White Supremacy, and Miseducation at UC Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley-widely known as 'Cal'-is admired worldwide as a bastion of innovation and a hub for progressive thought. Far less known are the university's roots in plunder, warfare, and the promotion of white supremacy. As Tony Platt shows in The Scandal of Cal, these original sins sit at the center of UC Berkeley's history. Platt looks unflinchingly at the university's desecration of graves and large-scale hoarding of Indigenous remains. He tracks its role in developing the racist pseudoscience of eugenics in the early twentieth century. He sheds light on the school's complicity with the military-industrial complex and its incubation of unprecedented violence through the Manhattan Project. And he underscores its deliberate and continued evasions about its own wrongdoings, which echo in the institution's decision-making up to the present day. This book, above all, illuminates Cal's culpability in some of the cruelest chapters of US history and sounds a clarion call for the university to undertake a thorough and earnest reckoning with its past. It is a must-listen for Cal alumni, students, faculty, and staff, and for anyone concerned with the impact of higher education in the United States and beyond.

Tony Platt (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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The Edge of Reality: Two Scientists Evaluate What We Know of the UFO Phenomenon

From the outset, Hynek and Vallee make their position clear: UFOs represent an unknown but real phenomenon. The far-reaching implications take us to the edge of what we consider the known and real in our physical environment. Perhaps UFOs signal the existence of a domain of nature as yet totally unexplored. These two eminent scientists studied the UFO phenomenon for decades and collaborated on this landmark report. The authors sample UFO reports, including those allegedly involving humanoids, and describe the patterns that have been perceived in the behavior of the phenomenon. They also establish a framework for the further study of the UFO phenomenon. Where might such study lead? What can be studied, and how? What is the real nature of the UFO phenomenon? Does it originate with the actions of other intelligences in the universe? If so, where, and what, might they be? Does the UFO phenomenon have a purely physical explanation, or is there a vaster, hidden realm that holds the solution? These are the questions that have concerned the authors for many years, and it is with possible answers to them that The Edge of Reality is concerned. This book is a deep dive in discussion between Hynek and Vallee and covers many facets of the UFO phenomena. The Edge of Reality was originally published in 1975 and has been available for many years.

J. Allen Hynek, Jacques Vallee (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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The Art of Startup Fundraising: Pitching Investors, Negotiating the Deal, and Everything Else Entrep

Startup money is moving online, and this guide shows you how it works. The Art of Startup Fundraising takes a fresh look at raising money for startups, with a focus on the changing face of startup finance. New regulations are making the old go-to advice less relevant, as startup money is increasingly moving online. These new waters are all but uncharted-and founders need an accessible guide. This book helps you navigate the online world of startup fundraising with easy-to-follow explanations and expert perspective on the new digital world of finance. You'll find tips and tricks on raising money and investing in startups from early stage to growth stage, and develop a clear strategy based on the new realities surrounding today's startup landscape. The finance world is in a massive state of flux. Changes are occurring at an increasing pace in all sectors, but few more intensely than the startup sphere. When the paradigm changes, your processes must change with it. This book shows you how startup funding works, with expert coaching toward the new rules on the field. You will learn how the JOBS Act impacts the fundraising model; gain insight on startups from early stage to growth stage; find the money you need to get your venture going; craft your pitch and optimize the strategy; build momentum; identify the right investors; and avoid the common mistakes.

Alejandro Cremades (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

Audiobook

At the Mercy of the Sea: The True Story of Three Sailors in a Caribbean Hurricane

A 'normal' Caribbean hurricane travels from east to west, but Lenny was anything but normal. Spawned south of Cuba in 1999, this late-season storm defied all predictions by moving steadily east toward the Leeward Islands. Eventually building almost to Category 5 strength, Lenny squatted for two days between the Virgin Islands and St. Martin, whipping the ocean with 155 mile-per-hour winds and sixty-foot seas. In its path in the Anegada Passage were three sailboats and their unfortunate crews: La Vie en Rose, a forty-one-foot sloop captained by ex-army lieutenant colonel Carl Wake; English Braids, a tiny twenty-one-foot racer skippered by would-be elite competitive sailor Steve Rigby; and Frederic-Anne, a sixty-five-foot schooner skippered by ambitious Guillaume Llobregat. None of the men knew each other, yet they converged by fate in a tiny circle of the sea in the midst of a storm no boat could withstand. And even as he battled for survival, Carl Wake lived the crowning hours of his life. John Kretschmer's At the Mercy of the Sea retraces the journeys of these three sailors through life and across oceans. It is a taut, suspenseful re-creation that seeks to make sense of the improbable intersection of three lives at the height of a storm, and a gripping reconstruction of Carl Wake's search for meaning and, ultimately, for his soul.

John Kretschmer (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Jonathan Yen