Audiobooks narrated by Stefan Rudnicki

1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder

This is the story of two men, and the two decisions, that transformed world history in a single tumultuous year, 1917: Wilson's entry into World War One and Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution. In April 1917 Woodrow Wilson, champion of American democracy but also segregation; advocate for free trade and a new world order based on freedom and justice; thrust the United States into World War One in order to make the "world safe for democracy"-only to see his dreams for a liberal international system dissolve into chaos, bloodshed, and betrayal. That October Vladimir Lenin, communist revolutionary and advocate for class war and "dictatorship of the proletariat," would overthrow Russia's earlier democratic revolution that had toppled the all-power Czar, all in the name of liberating humanity-and instead would set up the most repressive totalitarian regime in history, the Soviet Union. In this incisive, fast-paced history, New York Times bestselling author Arthur Herman brilliantly reveals how Lenin and Wilson rewrote the rules of modern geopolitics. Through the end of World War I, countries only marched into war to increase or protect their national interests. After World War I, countries began going to war over ideas. Together Lenin and Wilson unleashed the disruptive ideologies that would sweep the world, from nationalism and globalism to Communism and terrorism, and that continue to shape our world today. Our New World Disorder is the legacy left by Wilson and Lenin, and their visions of the perfectibility of man. One hundred years later, we still sit on the powder keg they first set the detonator to, through war and revolution.

Arthur Herman (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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A Castle in Romagna

Separated by centuries, extraordinary lives intertwine in this award-winning novel of tragic love, political intrigue, and war. In 1995, at the height of the Bosnian conflict, a young refugee visits the old Mardi Castle in the north of Italy. There, instead of only experiencing the beautiful fortress and Renaissance frescoes, he becomes enthralled with the story of the tragic fate of poet Enzo Strecci, who spent his last days awaiting death in the castle's dungeon. A Franciscan guide, Niccolò, a refugee as well, will illuminate the past in remarkable ways for the curious tourist. The fascinating and moving tale reaches back not only to Strecci's life-four centuries earlier-and the doomed passion for a woman, politics, and poetry that became his downfall, but also to Niccolò's own life, love story, and fateful escape from the brutal conflict between Stalin and Tito. Before the friar's story is over, three men will be connected, regardless of time and space, by fates aligned by love, betrayal, and politics-and a bittersweet nostalgia for lost home.

Igor tiks (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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A Dying Colonialism

Frantz Fanon’s seminal work on anticolonialism and the fifth year of the Algerian Revolution Psychiatrist, humanist, revolutionary, Frantz Fanon was one of the great political analysts of our time, the author of such seminal works of modern revolutionary theory as The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks. He has had a profound impact on civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements around the world. A Dying Colonialism is Fanon’s incisive and illuminating account of how, during the Algerian Revolution, the people of Algeria changed centuries-old cultural patterns and embraced certain ancient cultural practices long derided by their colonialist oppressors as “primitive,” in order to destroy those oppressors. Fanon uses the fifth year of the Algerian Revolution as a point of departure for an explication of the inevitable dynamics of colonial oppression. This is a strong, lucid, and militant book; to read it is to understand why Fanon says that for the colonized, “having a gun is the only chance you still have of giving a meaning to your death.”

Frantz Fanon (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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A Good Day to Die

Their plans were conceived in a drunken excitement and resulted in more horror than any of them could have imagined. There was the poet able to retreat into beatific reveries of superb fishing in cold, fast streams; the Vietnam vet consumed by uppers, downers, and violence; and the girl who loved only one of them-at first. With their ideals ostensibly in order, they set out from Florida to save the Grand Canyon from a dam they believed was being built. Along with the tape deck for the car, the liquor, and the drugs, there was also a case of dynamite.

Jim Harrison (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey toward an Undivided Life

A Hidden Wholeness is a thoughtful and heartfelt examination of sources and consequences of the alienation we feel when our inner and outer lives become divorced from each other, when external forces pressure us to depart from our soul's true yearnings. The book lifts up the problem of the "divided life," diagnoses its sources, assesses its personal and social costs, and offers a model of community that will help people live with greater integrity and wholeness. As he did for vocation in Let Your Life Speak and for inner lives of teachers in The Courage to Teach, best-selling author and teacher Parker J. Palmer speaks to the heart of our yearning for integrity, authenticity, and wholeness in a fractured world. "Parker J. Palmer's latest book is a gift...a guide for living...compassionate, deeply insightful...heart opening and transforming."—BookSense

Parker J. Palmer (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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A Light in the Darkness: Janusz Korczak, His Orphans, and the Holocaust

From National Book Award Finalist Albert Marrin comes the moving story of Janusz Korczak, the heroic Polish Jewish doctor who devoted his life to children, perishing with them in the Holocaust. Janusz Korczak was more than a good doctor. He was a hero. The Dr. Spock of his day, he established orphanages run on his principle of honoring children and shared his ideas with the public in books and on the radio. He famously said that 'children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today.' Korczak was a man ahead of his time, whose work ultimately became the basis for the U.N. Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Korczak was also a Polish Jew on the eve of World War II. He turned down multiple opportunities for escape, standing by the children in his orphanage as they became confined to the Warsaw Ghetto. Dressing them in their Sabbath finest, he led their march to the trains and ultimately perished with his children in Treblinka. But this book is much more than a biography. In it, renowned nonfiction master Albert Marrin examines not just Janusz Korczak's life but his ideology of children: that children are valuable in and of themselves, as individuals. He contrasts this with Adolf Hitler's life and his ideology of children: that children are nothing more than tools of the state. And throughout, Marrin draws readers into the Warsaw Ghetto. What it was like. How it was run. How Jews within and Poles without responded. Who worked to save lives and who tried to enrich themselves on other people's suffering. And how one man came to represent the conscience and the soul of humanity. This is an unforgettable portrait of a man whose compassion in even the darkest hours reminds us what is possible.

Albert Marrin (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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A Murder on Long Island: The Last Advocate; A Joey Mancuso, Father O'Brian Crime Mystery

Real estate developer Harold Longworth is facing life in prison for the murder of his wife in the Sagaponack, Long Island, New York, home. Just hired by the defense attorneys, former NYPD detective Giuseppe "Joey" Mancuso realizes that for a whole year before the trial, the attorneys have bungled the investigation. Was it on purpose? Are the attorneys covering something up? Joey and his half-brother, Father Dominic O'Brian, have ten days before the end of the trial to find the real murderer. The day of the murder, a year ago, Suffolk PD homicide detectives found Mr. Longworth, alone in the home, sitting by his wife's body after he called 9-1-1. Her blood was on his clothes. His bloody prints were on the murder weapon. Gunshot residue on his arms and hands. The prosecution is on the last days of their presentation. They have proven opportunity on the part of Longworth. As for motivation, they are about to show that Mrs. Longworth, the victim, was asking for a divorce and settlement on a $75 million estate. Further, they uncovered that Mr. Harold Longworth suspected his wife of having an affair. As Mancuso and Father O'Brian begin working the case from their center of operations, Captain O'Brian's Pub and Cigar Bar, corner of Beaver and Hanover Streets, in the Financial District of Manhattan, they find that there could be a lot more to this murder. The Longworth Foundation, a $100 million nonprofit organization, is under FBI probe and IRS audit for potential tax schemes, money laundering, and colluding with foreign governments. Mancuso, in his admitted Sherlock Holmes style, likes to look beyond the obvious. To observe things others looked at, but did not see. Can Mancuso and O'Brian save Mr. Longworth from a life sentence? Will they be able to unravel a possible fraudulent tax scheme being concocted by the foundation executives? Or, is it simply a case of the husband did it out of jealously?

Owen Parr (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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A Murder on Wall Street: A Joey Mancuso, Father O'Brian Crime Mystery

Can a priest, his brother, and the brother's girlfriend solve a murder case and see justice done-or will they be the murderer's latest victim? A Murder on Wall Street takes us inside the world of Captain O'Brian's Irish Pub and Cigar Bar in Manhattan, a legendary hotspot in the Financial District. Investigating the death are pub owners Joey Mancuso, fired from the New York Police Department for his unorthodox methods, and his brother Father Dominic, who isn't your typical priest. Also investigating is Marcy Martinez, a Cuban bombshell and FBI agent who is Joey's girlfriend. When a customer kills himself after celebrating the night before, the three know something's wrong. Turns out, the customer's death coincides with people losing money-lots of it-and some of those people are very, very dangerous.

Owen Parr (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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A Rainbow in the Night: The Tumultuous Birth of South Africa

In 1652 a small group of Dutch farmers landed on the southernmost tip of Africa. Sent by the powerful Dutch India Company, their mission was simply to grow vegetables and supply ships rounding the cape. The colonists, however, were convinced by their strict Calvinist faith that they were among God's "Elect," chosen to rule over the continent. Their saga—bloody, ferocious, and fervent—would culminate three centuries later in one of the greatest tragedies of history: the establishment of a racist regime in which a white minority would subjugate and victimize millions of blacks. Called apartheid, it was a poisonous system that would only end with the liberation from prison of one of the moral giants of our time, Nelson Mandela. A Rainbow in the Night is Dominique Lapierre's epic account of South Africa's tragic history and the heroic men and women—famous and obscure, white and black, European and African—who have, with their blood and tears, brought to life the country that is today known as the Rainbow Nation. "Dominique Lapierre raises the curtain on the history of South Africa. Three and a half centuries…a sublime epic full of terrible dramas." —Le Point magazine, France Translated by Kathryn Spink

Dominique Lapierre (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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A Star Shall Fall

The Royal Society of London plays home to the greatest minds of England. It has revolutionized philosophy and scientific knowledge. Its fellows map out the laws of the natural world, disproving ancient superstition and ushering in an age of enlightenment. To the fae of the Onyx Court, living in a secret city below London, these scientific developments are less than welcome. Magic is losing its place in the world-and science threatens to expose the court to hostile eyes. In 1666, a Great Fire burned four-fifths of London to the ground. The calamity was caused by a great Dragon-an elemental beast of flame. Incapable of destroying something so powerful, the fae of London banished it to a comet moments before the comet's light disappeared from the sky. Now the calculations of Sir Edmond Halley have predicted its return in 1759. So begins their race against time. Soon the Dragon's gaze will fall upon London and it will return to the city it ravaged once before. The fae will have to answer the question that defeated them a century before: How can they kill a being more powerful than all their magic combined? It will take both magic and science to save London-but reconciling the two carries its own danger ...

Marie Brennan (Author), Gabrielle De Cuir, Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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A Tale of Love and Darkness

Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, this extraordinary memoir is at once a great family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history. It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was twelve and a half years old, his mother committed suicide-a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen to join a kibbutz, changes his name, marries, has children, and finally becomes a writer as well as an active participant in the political life of Israel. A story of clashing cultures and lives, of suffering and perseverance, of love and darkness. "One of the most enchanting and deeply satisfying books that I have read in many years."-New Republic

Amos Oz (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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A War of Gifts: An Ender Story

Orson Scott Card (Author), Scott Brick, Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Stefan Rudnicki