Audiobooks narrated by Pete Larkin

2010: Take Back America: A Battle Plan

The battle is coming. Casting your vote in the November 2010 election may be the most important thing you do all year. These elections will be the critical turning point for America's future. They're our chance to take back America. Dick Morris and Eileen McGann outline a strategy for victory—explaining the pitfalls and walking us through a path to winning control of Congress. The stakes: We face permanently high unemployment, socialized medicine, rampant inflation, perpetual debt slavery, and a European-style government-run economy. The targets: Thirteen Senate seats and fifty-four House races will determine control of Congress. The strategy: Make Obama the issue. Attack his policies at their weakest points. Nationalize the campaign. Stay on the offensive. Your campaign: Politics is no longer a spectator sport. 2010: Take Back America is the training manual you need to win. In 2010, you are the campaign. America is the battleground. And we must prevail. **Please Contact Customer Service For Additional Documents**

Dick Morris, Eileen McGann (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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A Man and His Ship: America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States

In the tradition of David McCullough's grand histories, the sweeping story of William Francis Gibbs's quest to build the fastest, finest ocean liner in history is set against the politics, culture, and enterprise of twentieth-century America. At the peak of his power, in the 1940s and 1950s, William Francis Gibbs was considered America's best naval architect. His quest to build the finest, fastest, most beautiful ocean liner of his time, the S.S. United States, was a topic of national fascination. When completed in 1952, the ship was hailed as a technological masterpiece at a time when "made in America" meant the best. Gibbs was an American original, on par with John Roebling of the Brooklyn Bridge and Frank Lloyd Wright of Fallingwater. Forced to drop out of Harvard following his family's sudden financial ruin, he overcame debilitating shyness and lack of formal training to become the visionary creator of some of the finest ships in history. He spent forty years dreaming of the ship that became the S.S. United States. William Francis Gibbs was driven, relentless, and committed to excellence. He loved his ship, the idea of it, and the realization of it, and he devoted himself to making it the epitome of luxury travel during the triumphant post-World War II era. Biographer Steven Ujifusa brilliantly describes the way Gibbs worked and how his vision transformed an industry. A Man and His Ship is a tale of ingenuity and enterprise, a truly remarkable journey on land and sea.

Steven Ujifusa (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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A Season in the Sun: The Rise of Mickey Mantle

The story of Mickey Mantle's magnificent 1956 seasonMickey Mantle was the ideal batter for the atomic age, capable of hitting a baseball harder and farther than any other player in history. He was also the perfect idol for postwar America, a wholesome hero from the heartland.In A Season in the Sun, acclaimed historians Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith recount the defining moment of Mantle's legendary career: 1956, when he overcame a host of injuries and critics to become the most celebrated athlete of his time. Taking us from the action on the diamond to Mantle's off-the-field exploits, Roberts and Smith depict Mantle not as an ideal role model or a bitter alcoholic, but a complex man whose faults were smoothed over by sportswriters eager to keep the truth about sports heroes at bay. An incisive portrait of an American icon, A Season in the Sun is an essential work for baseball fans and anyone interested in the 1950s. **Contact Customer Service for Additional Material**

Johnny Smith, Randy Roberts (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War

This riveting biography from the American Bar Association visits the spectacular life of Edwin Land, breakthrough inventor. At the time of his death, he stood third on the list of our most prolific inventors, behind only Thomas Edison and one of Edison's colleagues. Land's most famous achievement was the creation of a revolutionary film-and-camera system that could produce a photographic print moments after the picture was taken. In A Triumph of Genius, you'll learn details of Land's involvement over four decades with top-secret U.S. military intelligence efforts during World War II and through the Cold War in the service of seven American presidents. Additionally, you'll thrill to the compelling first-hand look at one of our nation's most important legal battles over intellectual property—Polaroid versus Kodak. The conflict led to an epic legal battle, a dramatic event for Land who, from the witness stand, personally starred in a compelling courtroom drama.

Ronald K. Fierstein (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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Amazon Unbound

From the bestselling author of The Everything Store, an unvarnished picture of Amazon's unprecedented growth and its billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, revealing the most important business story of our time. With the publication of The Everything Store in 2013, Bloomberg journalist Brad Stone revealed how the unlikely Seattle start-up Amazon became an unexpected king of ecommerce. Since then, its founder has led Amazon to explosive growth in both size and wealth. In less than ten years, Amazon has quintupled the size of its workforce and increased its valuation to well over a trillion dollars. Whereas Amazon used to sell only books, there is now little they don't sell, becoming the world's largest online retailer and pushing into other markets at warp speed. Between Amazon's forty subsidiaries - like Whole Foods Market, Amazon Studios in Hollywood, websites like Goodreads and IMDb, and Amazon Web Services cloud software unit, plus Bezos's purchase of the Washington Post - it's almost impossible to go a day without encountering their goods. Amazon provides us opportunities to shop, entertain, inform, communicate, store and, one day, maybe even travel to the moon. We live in a world run, supplied and controlled by Amazon. In Amazon Unbound, Stone offers the must-read follow-up to his bestseller The Everything Store, detailing the seismic changes that have taken place at Amazon over the past decade as it became one of the most powerful and feared companies in the global economy, led by one of the most powerful and feared leaders in business. He shows the acquisitions and innovations that have propelled Amazon's unprecedented growth, and the turn in public sentiment that criticises Amazon's monopolistic practices. As he charts the company's meteoric rise, Stone probes the evolution of Jeff Bezos - who started as a geeky entrepreneur but who transformed to become a fit, famed, disciplined billionaire, a man who runs Amazon with an iron fist but finds his personal life splashed over the tabloids. Definitive, timely and revelatory, Stone has provided an unvarnished portrait of a man and company that we couldn't imagine modern life without.

Brad Stone (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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American Drive

Richard E. Dauch narrates the story of his successful upstart manufacturing company and provides a blueprint for job creation, manufacturing competitiveness, economic growth, and excellence in America. Politicians, voters, executives, and employees all want the answer to one question: How can America compete with cheap foreign labor, and restore skilled, well-paying jobs to our economy? American Drive answers that question. An executive with nearly thirty years in the trenches of the hard-nosed Detroit automobile industry, Richard E. "Dick" Dauch had long dreamed of running his own manufacturing company. From his first job on the plant floor at General Motors to his crucial role in helping to rescue Chrysler from the brink of bankruptcy, Dauch focused passionately, and relentlessly, on quality, productivity, and flexibility in manufacturing. In 1993 he took on the challenge of his life, buying a lagging axle supply and parts business from GM, along with five rusting, unprofitable, union-controlled, near-decrepit plants in the heart of a crime-ridden Detroit and a deteriorating environment in Buffalo, New York. The newly created "stand-alone" company was named American Axle and Manufacturing. Dauch set out to create a world-class industrial automotive manufacturer. He bought and bulldozed the crack, liquor, and prostitution businesses that surrounded the company and rebuilt the plants. He upward educated, trained, and expanded the skill sets of the workforce, struck tough bargains with unions, and solved massive quality problems that were costing tens of millions every year and undermining customer satisfaction. Within one year of opening the doors, AAM had turned an astounding sixty-six million dollars in profit. In American Drive, Dauch narrates the story of AAM against the backdrop of his nearly fifty years in the auto industry, from its glory days to its decline in the face of foreign competition, government bailouts, battles with unions, and the recent Great Recession. Tough, smart, inspiring, high-energy, and opinionated, Dauch offers memorable lessons on leadership, advanced product technology, communication, negotiation, and making profits in the most difficult times. Dauch's story transcends the auto industry and draws a blueprint for job creation, manufacturing competitiveness, economic growth, and excellence in America.

Hank H. Cox, Richard E. Dauch (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company

At the end of 2008, Ford Motor Company was just months away from running out of cash. With the auto industry careening toward ruin, Congress offered all three Detroit automakers a bailout. General Motors and Chrysler grabbed the taxpayer lifeline, but Ford decided to save itself. Under the leadership of charismatic CEO Alan Mulally, Ford had already put together a bold plan to unify its divided global operations, transform its lackluster product lineup, and overcome a dys-functional culture of infighting, backstabbing, and excuses. It was an extraordinary risk, but it was the only way the Ford family-America's last great industrial dynasty-could hold on to their company. Mulally and his team pulled off one of the great-est comebacks in business history. As the rest of Detroit collapsed, Ford went from the brink of bankruptcy to being the most profitable automaker in the world. American Icon is the compelling, behind-the-scenes account of that epic turnaround. On the verge of collapse, Ford went outside the auto industry and recruited Mulally-the man who had already saved Boeing from the deathblow of 9/11-to lead a sweeping restructuring of a company that had been unable to overcome decades of mismanage-ment and denial. Mulally applied the principles he developed at Boeing to streamline Ford's inefficient operations, force its fractious executives to work together as a team, and spark a product renaissance in Dearborn. He also convinced the United Auto Workers to join his fight for the soul of American manufacturing. Bryce Hoffman reveals the untold story of the covert meetings with UAW leaders that led to a game-changing contract, Bill Ford's battle to hold the Ford family together when many were ready to cash in their stock and write off the company, and the secret alliance with Toyota and Honda that helped prop up the Amer-ican automotive supply base. In one of the great management narratives of our time, Hoffman puts the reader inside the boardroom as Mulally uses his celebrated Business Plan Review meet-ings to drive change and force Ford to deal with the painful realities of the American auto industry. Hoffman was granted unprecedented access to Ford's top executives and top-secret company documents. He spent countless hours with Alan Mulally, Bill Ford, the Ford family, former executives, labor leaders, and company directors. In the bestselling tradition of Too Big to Fail and The Big Short, American Icon is narrative nonfiction at its vivid and colorful best.

Bryce G. Hoffman (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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American Titan: Searching for John Wayne

As he did in his bestselling biographies of Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, and Clint Eastwood, Marc Eliot offers an exciting, groundbreaking new take on an American icon, the most legendary Western film hero of all time, John Wayne An audience favorite and top box-office draw for decades, John Wayne symbolized masculinity, power, and patriotism, and inspired millions of Americans. Yet despite his popularity and success, he was unfairly dismissed as a "B" movie actor lacking elegance, creativity, range, and depth. American Titan challenges conventional wisdom and reevaluates Wayne's life and vital cinematic legacy, ultimately placing the man known as "Duke" among a select and brilliant pantheon of "actor auteurs", artists whose consistency of style in their work reflects their personal creative vision. In American Titan, Eliot demonstrates that Wayne possessed a distinct and remarkable vision rooted in his unique Midwestern and West Coast childhood that would become manifest in one of the most enduring screen personalities of all time: the elusive, stoic frontier loner. Wayne's heroic outsider also influenced a new generation of actors and filmmakers who would borrow from it to use in their own movies. Drawing on his deep, extensive knowledge of Hollywood and film, Eliot contends that the primary driving force behind Wayne's extraordinary career and body of work was the result of his own ambitions and his collaborations with directors John Ford and Howard Hawks. Eliot offers as evidence the distinct personality that runs through Wayne's staggering 169 films, from Stage Coach and The Searchers to The Quiet Man and The Green Berets. Setting Wayne's life within the sweeping political and social transformations that defined the nation, Eliot's masterly revisionist portrait is a remarkable in-depth look at a life that embodied the spirit of the twentieth century. What emerges is nothing less than a powerful understanding of and appreciation for a true American titan.

Marc Eliot (Author), Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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Basketball: A Love Story

A sweeping and revelatory history of basketball, drawing upon hundreds of hours of interviews with the greatest players, coaches, executives, and journalists in the history of the game. In an effort to tell the complete story of basketball in all its fascinating dimensions, acclaimed authors Jackie Macmullan, Rafe Bartholomew and Dan Klores have compiled nearly a thousand hours' worth of interviews with a staggering number of basketball greats. They've talked to hundreds of legendary players, such as Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Magic Johnson, and spoken with renowned coaches, including Phil Jackson and Coach K, as well as numerous executives, commissioners, and journalists. Most impressive was the extraordinary quality of the interviews. Again and again, players spoke candidly about secrets and told stories they'd never before discussed on the record. The book that grew out of those interviews is an extraordinary project and quite possibly the most ambitious basketball book ever written. At once a definitive oral history and something far more literary and intimate, this is the never-before-told story of how basketball came to be, and about what it means to those who've given their lives to the game. Read by James Fouhey, Jim Frangione, Sullivan Jones, Pete Larkin, January LaVoy, and Carol Monda

Dan Klores, Jackie Macmullan, Rafe Bartholomew (Author), Carol Monda, James Fouhey, January LaVoy, Jim Frangione, Pete Larkin, Sullivan Jones (Narrator)

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Black Mask 1: Doors in the Dark: And Other Crime Fiction from the Legendary Magazine

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by “the seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine” (Booklist). Otto Penzler selected and wrote introductions to the best of the best, the darkest of these dark, vintage stories for the collection The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories. Now that collection is available for the first time on audio. Includes: Introduction by Keith Alan Deutsch; read by Eric Conger “Come and Get It” by Erle Stanley Gardner; read by Oliver Wyman “Arson Plus” by Peter Collinson (Dashiell Hammett); read by Alan Sklar “Fall Guy” by George Harmon Coxe; read by Pete Larkin “Doors in the Dark” by Frederick Nebel; read by Pete Larkin “Luck” by Lester Dent; read by Jeff Gurner

Otto Penzler (Author), Alan Sklar, Eric Conger, Jeff Gurner, Oliver Wyman, Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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Black Mask 2: Murder IS Bad Luck: And Other Crime Fiction from the Legendary Magazine

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by “the seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine” (Booklist). Otto Penzler selected and wrote introductions to the best of the best, the darkest of these dark, vintage stories for the collection The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories. Now that collection is available for the first time on audio. Includes: “Ten Carats of Lead” by Stewart Sterling; read by Alan Sklar “Murder Is Bad Luck” by Wyatt Blassingame; read by Oliver Wyman “Her Dagger Before Me” by Talmadge Powell; read by Pete Larkin “One Shot” by Charles G. Booth; read by Alan Sklar “The Dancing Rats” by Richard Sale; read by Jeff Gurner

Otto Penzler (Author), Alan Sklar, Jeff Gurner, Oliver Wyman, Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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Black Mask 3: The Maltese Falcon: And Other Crime Fiction from the Legendary Magazine

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by “the seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine” (Booklist). Otto Penzler selected and wrote introductions to the best of the best, the darkest of these dark, vintage stories for the collection The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories. Now that collection is available for the first time on audio. Includes: “The Maltese Falcon” by Dashiell Hammett; read by Jeff Gurner “Cry Silence” by Frederic Brown; read by Oliver Wyman “Waiting for Rusty” by William Cole; read by Pete Larkin

Otto Penzler (Author), Jeff Gurner, Oliver Wyman, Pete Larkin (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Pete Larkin