Audiobooks narrated by Paul Michael Garcia

WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy

A team of journalists with unparalleled inside access provides the first full, in-depth account of WikiLeaks, its founder Julian Assange, and the ethical, legal, and political controversies it has both uncovered and provoked. The extraordinary twists and turns of WikiLeaks have been closely followed by the Guardian newspaper ever since the website launched in 2006, and Guardian journalists have had unprecedented access to all the major players, from angry and embarrassed politicians and diplomats to the extraordinary figure of Julian Assange himself. At different times Assange hid at David Leigh's homes. Here they reveal the many strands-legal, ethical, security related-of a story that continues to dominate world headlines. They look at the Internet culture and technology that made the mining of secret information possible and at the fanatical hackers who set up WikiLeaks. They explore the secret goings-on that WikiLeaks has uncovered, from the revelation of extrajudicial killings in Kenya in 2008 to the avalanche of US diplomatic cables in 2010. They study the implications of the latest revelations and reveal the strange and contradictory nature of Assange himself: a man praised by Amnesty International in 2009 but also, barely a year later, accused by Swedish police of sex crimes. The WikiLeaks story has received worldwide attention and reaction. WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy presents the whole history of the organization and the ethical debate that surrounded the use of its material, plus the inside story of the personalities that created then threatened to destroy the website that has changed our view of secrecy forever. Praise for David Leigh: "One of Britain's most distinguished investigative journalists."-CityNews, City University London

Charles Arthur, David Leigh, Ed Pilkington, Luke Harding, Robert Booth (Author), Paul Michael Garcia, Paul Michael Garcia (Narrator)

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Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines

Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age eleven. In the years that followed, he would regularly smoke pot, do cocaine and ecstasy, and develop addictions to crystal meth and heroin. Even so, he felt like he would always be able to quit and put his life together whenever he needed to. It took a violent relapse one summer in California to convince him otherwise. In writing that is raw and honest, Nic spares no detail in telling us the compelling, heartbreaking, and true story of his relapse and the road to recovery. As we watch Nic plunge the mental and physical depths of drug addiction, he paints a picture of a person at odds with his past, with his family, with his substances, and with himself.

Nic Sheff (Author), Paul Michael Garcia, Paul Michael Garcia, Richard Powers (Narrator)

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To the Edges of the Earth: 1909, the Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Explorat

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, an entwined narrative of the most adventurous year of all time, when three expeditions simultaneously raced to the top, bottom, and heights of the world.As 1909 dawned, the greatest jewels of exploration—set at the world’s frozen extremes—lay unclaimed: the North and South Poles and the so-called “Third Pole,” the pole of altitude, located in unexplored heights of the Himalaya. Before the calendar turned, three expeditions had faced death, mutiny, and the harshest conditions on the planet to plant flags at the furthest edges of the Earth.In the course of one extraordinary year, Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson were hailed worldwide at the discovers of the North Pole; Britain’s Ernest Shackleton had set a new geographic “Furthest South” record, while his expedition mate, Australian Douglas Mawson, had reached the Magnetic South Pole; and at the roof of the world, Italy’s Duke of the Abruzzi had attained an altitude record that would stand for a generation, the result of the first major mountaineering expedition to the Himalaya's eastern Karakoram, where the daring aristocrat attempted K2 and established the standard route up the most notorious mountain on the planet. Based on extensive archival and on-the-ground research, Edward J. Larson weaves these narratives into one thrilling adventure story. Larson, author of the acclaimed polar history Empire of Ice, draws on his own voyages to the Himalaya, the arctic, and the ice sheets of the Antarctic, where he himself reached the South Pole and lived in Shackleton’s Cape Royds hut as a fellow in the National Science Foundations’ Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. These three legendary expeditions, overlapping in time, danger, and stakes, were glorified upon their return, their leaders celebrated as the preeminent heroes of their day. Stripping away the myth, Larson, a master historian, illuminates one of the great, overlooked tales of exploration, revealing the extraordinary human achievement at the heart of these journeys.

Edward J. Larson (Author), Paul Michael Garcia, Paul Michael Garcia (Narrator)

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The Word Exchange: A Novel

A fiendishly clever dystopian novel for the digital age, The Word Exchange is a fresh, stylized, and decidedly original debut about the dangers of technology and the power of the printed word. In the not-so-distant future, the forecasted “death of print” has become a reality. Bookstores, libraries, newspapers, and magazines are a thing of the past, as we spend our time glued to handheld devices called memes that not only keep us in constant communication but have become so intuitive as to hail us cabs before we leave our offices, order takeout at the first growl of a hungry stomach, and even create and sell language itself in a marketplace called the Word Exchange. Anana Johnson works with her father, Doug, at the North American Dictionary of the English Language, where he is hard at work on the last edition that will ever be printed. Doug is a staunchly anti-meme, anti-tech intellectual who fondly remembers the days when people used e-mail to communicate—or even actually spoke to one another. One evening, Doug disappears, leaving a single written clue: ALICE—a code word he and Anana devised to signal if one of them ever fell into harm’s way. Thus begins Anana’s journey down the proverbial rabbit hole. Joined by Bart, her bookish colleague, Anana’s search for Doug will take her into dark basement incinerator rooms, underground passages of the Mercantile Library, secret meetings of the anonymous Diachronic Society, the boardrooms of the evil online retailing site Synchronic, and ultimately to the hallowed halls of the Oxford English Dictionary—spiritual home of the written word. As Ana pieces together what is going on, and Bart gets sicker and sicker with the strange “word flu” that has spread worldwide and causes people to speak in gibberish, Alena Graedon crafts a fresh, cautionary tale that is at once a technological thriller and a thoughtful meditation on the price of technology and the unforeseen, though very real, dangers of the digital age. “Alena Graedon’s spectacular debut is a story for our age of ‘accelerated obsolescence.’ A genuinely scary and funny mystery about linguistic slippage and disturbance, it’s also a moving meditation on our sometimes comic, sometimes desperate struggles to speak, and to listen, and to mean something to one another. To borrow Graedon’s own invention, The Word Exchange is ‘Synchronic’—a gorgeous genre mash-up that offers readers the pleasures of noir, science fiction, romance, and philosophy. It’s an unforgettable joyride across the thin ice of language.”—Karen Russell, New York Times bestselling author

Alena Graedon (Author), Paul Michael Garcia, Paul Michael Garcia, Tavia Gilbert (Narrator)

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The Star Beast

A compelling coming-of-age adventure from legendary SF master and multiple New York Times bestseller Robert A. Heinlein Lummox has been the pet of the Stuart family for generations. With eight legs, a thick hide, and increasingly large size, Lummox is nobody's idea of man's best friend. Nevertheless, John Stuart XI, descendant of the starman who originally brought Lummox back to Earth, loves him. But when Lummox eats a neighbor's car and begins to grow again, the feds decide that enough is enough. John isn't about to let the authorities take his pet away, and with his best friend, Betty, he determines to save Lummox-even if he must leave the life he's known forever. "One of the grand masters of science fiction."-Wall Street Journal, praise for the author

Robert A. Heinlein (Author), Paul Michael Garcia, Paul Michael Garcia, Richard Powers (Narrator)

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The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

The bestselling author of The Big Switch returns with an explosive look at technology's effect on the mind. 'Is Google making us stupid?' When Nicholas Carr posed that question in an Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: as we enjoy the Internet's bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration yet published of the Internet's intellectual and cultural consequences. Weaving insights from philosophy, neuroscience, and history into a rich narrative, The Shallows explains how the Internet is rerouting our neural pathways, replacing the subtle mind of the book reader with the distracted mind of the screen watcher. A gripping story of human transformation played out against a backdrop of technological upheaval, The Shallows will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds. 'Neuroscience and technology buffs, librarians, and Internet users will find this truly compelling.''Library Journal (starred review)

Nicholas Carr (Author), Paul Michael Garcia, Paul Michael Garcia (Narrator)

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The Shadow Hunter

On a moonlit night 30,000 years ago, a young Neanderthal boy dreamed a true dream. In his dream, the spirit of the cave bear commanded the boy to follow her. Transported to a distant future beyond our own, he entered a strange world of brilliant and terrifying possibilities, a world inhabited by people who did not know the nature spirits, or even understand the spirits of their own technology. Guided only by memories, the young Neanderthal must recreate the shaman's path. He must reconcile the powerful and capricious spirit of the cave bear with the realities of life in the new world, and find a way to save his people, the animals, and their sacred relationship. The clash of prehistoric shamanic traditions with future technology makes for a gripping tale in this first novel by the Nebula Award-winning author. "Murphy's [blend] of fantasy and reality honorably recalls the novels of Margaret Atwood."-Publishers Weekly

Pat Murphy (Author), Paul Michael Garcia, Paul Michael Garcia (Narrator)

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The Ringworld Throne

Come back to the Ringworld—the most astonishing feat of engineering ever encountered. A place of untold technological wonders, home to myriad humanoid races, and world of some of the most beloved science fiction stories ever written. The human Louis Wu; the puppeteer known as the Hindmost; Acolyte, son of the Kzin called Chmeee: legendary beings brought together once again in the defense of the Ringworld. Something is going on with the protectors. Incoming spacecraft are being destroyed before they can reach the Ringworld. Vampires are massing. And the Ghouls have their own agenda—if anyone dares approach them to learn. Each race on the Ringworld has always had its own protector. Now it looks as if the Ringworld itself needs a protector. But who will sit on the Ringworld throne? "Readers who remember Ringworld from earlier encounters will no doubt relish the latest installment of the saga."—New York Times Book Review

Larry Niven (Author), Paul Michael Garcia, Paul Michael Garcia, Richard Powers (Narrator)

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The Ringworld Engineers

It's been twenty years since the quixotic and worlds-weary Louis Wu discovered the Ringworld. Now he and Speaker-to-Animals are going back, captives of the Hindmost, a deposed puppeteer leader. With Louis' help, the Hindmost intends to regain his status by bringing back such extraordinary treasures from the Ringworld that his fellow puppeteers will have to be impressed. But when they arrive, Louis discovers that the Ringworld is no longer stable—and will destroy itself within months. To survive, he must locate the control center of the legendary engineers who built the planet. His quest becomes a wild and gripping venture blended with the mysteries and spectacular technologies that only Larry Niven can conjure. "The Ringworld Engineers has all the imaginativeness, convincing detail, and narrative vivacity that have come to be associated with the works of Larry Niven. Furthermore, it answers a lot of questions that have been tantalizing his readers for a long time. Most highly recommended!"—Poul Anderson

Larry Niven (Author), Paul Michael Garcia, Paul Michael Garcia, Richard Powers (Narrator)

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The Return

During a live television broadcast on the night of a lunar eclipse, renowned astrophysicist Andrew Leland is suddenly lifted into the sky by a giant spacecraft and taken away for all to see. Six years later, he turns up wandering in the Sonoran Desert, thin, bearded, a ghost of his former self. Upon his return he denies ever having been abducted, refuses to cooperate with the government or media, and disappears from the public eye, supposedly becoming a hermit somewhere in the woodlands of the Midwest. Meanwhile, much like J. D. Salinger, Leland inspires legions of cultish devotees, including a young physics graduate student named Shawn Ferris who is obsessed with finding out what really happened to him. When Shawn finally tracks Leland down, he discovers that he has not been hiding in the woods-he's been on the run for years, continuously hunted by a secret organization that has pursued him across multiple continents and is determined to force him into revealing what he knows. Shawn soon joins Leland on the run. Though Leland is at first reluctant to reveal anything about his experiences in space, Shawn will soon learn the truth about his abduction and the real reason for his return and will find himself caught up in a global conspiracy that puts more than just one planet in danger.

Joseph Helmreich (Author), Paul Michael Garcia, Paul Michael Garcia (Narrator)

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The Perfect Fake: A Novel

Tom Fairchild is a man with a past he can’t shake. He’s struggling to make it as a graphic artist, but his probation officer thinks he belongs in jail. Then millionaire Miami real estate developer Stuart Barlowe offers him fifty thousand dollars to travel to Italy with his daughter Allison, a map expert and Tom’s childhood love, to duplicate a rare Renaissance map. But Tom soon suspects that Barlowe wants a forgery, not a duplicate. He just doesn’t know why, and Allison isn’t talking. When people start turning up dead, and Tom and Allison realize they are being tailed, it quickly becomes clear that they have no one to trust but each other. “Paul Garcia revels in the thuggishness of Parker’s Eastern European hit man, the whininess of her Florida millionaires, and the earnest, romantic nature of her hero, Tom Fairchild…The vocal distinctions are theatrical, lending drama to a novel of international intrigue.”--AudioFile

Barbara Parker (Author), Paul Michael Garcia, Paul Michael Garcia (Narrator)

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The Numerati

Every day, we produce loads of data about ourselves simply by living in the modern world: We click web pages, flip channels, drive through automatic toll booths, shop with credit cards, and make cell phone calls. Now, in one of the greatest undertakings of the 21st century, a savvy group of mathematicians and computer scientists is beginning to sift through this data to dissect us and map out our next steps, profiling us as workers, shoppers, patients, voters, potential terrorists, even lovers. Their goal? To manipulate our behavior-what we buy, how we vote-without our even realizing it.In this tour-de-force of original reporting and analysis, journalist Stephen Baker provides us with a fascinating guide to the world we're all entering-and to the people controlling that world. "Captivating....An intriguing but disquieting look at a not too distant future when our thoughts will remain private, but computers will disclose our tastes, opinions, habits and quirks to curious parties, not all of whom have our best interests at heart."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Stephen Baker (Author), Paul Michael Garcia, Paul Michael Garcia (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Paul Michael Garcia