Audiobooks narrated by Stephen Bowlby

Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?

With every presidential election, Americans puzzle over the peculiar mechanism of the Electoral College. The author of the Pulitzer finalist The Right to Vote explains the enduring problem of this controversial institution. Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through the Electoral College, an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Most Americans have long preferred a national popular vote, and Congress has attempted on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College. Several of these efforts-one as recently as 1970-came very close to winning approval. Yet this controversial system remains. Alexander Keyssar explains its persistence. After tracing the Electoral College's tangled origins at the Constitutional Convention, he explores the efforts from 1800 to 2020 to abolish or significantly reform it, showing why each has failed. Reasons include the complexity of the electoral system's design, the tendency of political parties to elevate partisan advantage above democratic values, the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments, and, importantly, the South's prolonged backing of the Electoral College, grounded in its desire to preserve white supremacy in the region. The commonly voiced explanation that small states have blocked reform for fear of losing influence proves to have been true only occasionally. Keyssar examines why reform of the Electoral College has received so little attention from Congress for the last forty years, and considers alternatives to congressional action such as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and state efforts to eliminate winner-take-all. In analyzing the reasons for past failures while showing how close the nation has come to abolishing the institution, Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? offers encouragement to those hoping to produce change in the twenty-first century.

Alexander Keyssar (Author), Stephen Bowlby (Narrator)

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What to Ask the Person in the Mirror: Critical Questions for Becoming a More Effective Leader and Re

Successful leaders know that leadership is less often about having all the answers-and more often about asking the right questions. The challenge lies in being able to step back, reflect, and ask the key questions that are critical to your performance and your organization's effectiveness. In What to Ask the Person in the Mirror, leadership expert Robert Kaplan presents a process for asking the big questions that will enable you to diagnose problems, change course if necessary, and advance your career. He lays out areas of inquiry, including questions such as: Do I clearly articulate my vision and top priorities to my employees and key constituencies?; Does the way I spend my time enable me to achieve my top priorities?; Do I give subordinates timely and direct feedback they can act on? Do I actively seek feedback myself?; Have I developed a succession roadmap?; Is my organization's design aligned with the achievement of its objectives?; and Is my leadership style still effective, and does it reflect who I truly am? Packed with real-life situations, this accessible and practical guide helps you learn to ask the right questions-and work through the answers in ways that are right for you. By asking these questions, you can tackle the inevitable challenges of leadership as you craft new strategies for staying on top of your game.

Robert S. Kaplan (Author), Stephen Bowlby (Narrator)

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Visits from Heaven: One Man's Eye-Opening Encounter with Death, Grief, and Comfort from the Other Si

Pete Deison, Stephen Bowlby (Author), Stephen Bowlby, Steven Bowlby (Narrator)

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Very Cold for May

Her corpse would be the hottest news in town. May Laval was as brilliant as a ten-carat diamond—and just as cold. As the calculating ruler of a social set, she influenced generals, politicians, and big businessmen. Slowly and shrewdly, she learned the intimate details of everyone’s life and recorded the seamy facts in a diary so as not to forget a single sordid detail. One day, May Laval threatened to publish her diary. Now it’s up to PR man Jake Harrison to find out who killed May and—while he’s at it—why his wife left him.

William P. McGivern (Author), Stephen Bowlby (Narrator)

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Vatican II: A Very Short Introduction

The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), or Vatican II, is arguably the most significant event in the life of the Catholic Church since the Reformation. The Council initiated, intentionally or not, profound changes not simply within Catholic theology, but in the religious, social, and moral lives of the world's billion Catholics. It also reconfigured, intellectually and practically, the Church's engagements with those outside of it-most obviously with regard to other religions. The sixteen documents formally issued by Vatican II constitute some of the most influential writings of the whole twentieth century. Debates over their correct interpretation and authority are constant, but they remain an indispensable point-of-reference for all areas of Catholic life, from liturgy and sacraments, to the Church's vast network of charitable and educational endeavors the world over. In this Very Short Introduction, Shaun Blanchard and Stephen Bullivant present the backstory to this event. Vatican II is explored in light of the wider history of the Catholic Church and placed in the tumultuous context of the 1960s. It distils the research on Vatican II, employing the first-hand accounts of participants and observers, and the official proceedings of the Council to paint a rich picture of one of the most important events of the last century.

Shaun Blanchard, Stephen Bullivant (Author), Stephen Bowlby (Narrator)

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Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory

In May 1830, the United States formally launched a policy to expel Native Americans from the East to territories west of the Mississippi River. Justified as a humanitarian enterprise, the undertaking was to be systematic and rational, overseen by Washington's small but growing bureaucracy. But as the policy unfolded over the next decade, thousands of Native Americans died under the federal government's auspices, and thousands of others lost their possessions and homelands in an orgy of fraud, intimidation, and violence. Drawing on firsthand accounts and the voluminous records produced by the federal government, Saunt's deeply researched book argues that Indian Removal, as advocates of the policy called it, was not an inevitable chapter in US expansion across the continent. Rather, it was a fiercely contested political act designed to secure new lands for the expansion of slavery and to consolidate the power of the southern states. Indigenous peoples fought relentlessly against the policy, while many US citizens insisted that it was a betrayal of the nation's values. When Congress passed the act by a razor-thin margin, it authorized one of the first state-sponsored mass deportations in the modern era, marking a turning point for native peoples and for the United States.

Claudio Saunt (Author), Stephen Bowlby (Narrator)

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Tragic Consequences: The Price America is Paying for Rejecting God and How to Reclaim Our Culture fo

David L. Goetsch, Oliver L. North (Author), Stephen Bowlby, Steven Boldy (Narrator)

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Tiny Blunders/Big Disasters: Thirty-Nine Tiny Mistakes That Changed the World Forever

The small things that had great historical consequences ... How often does a single tiny mistake cause an entire civilization to collapse? More often than you think! Listeners of Jared Knott's book Tiny Blunders/Big Disasters will be amazed at the little things that changed history in a big way. Here are a few examples: A single document poorly designed by one single clerk in one single county changed the outcome of a presidential election and led directly to a major war. A soldier accidentally kicked a helmet off of the top of a wall and caused an empire to collapse. A small mechanical device several inches long failed to function, which changed the outcome of WWII and led to the deaths of millions of people. A man failed to gather his army in time to defend against an attack because of the temptation of opium and a young slave woman. And many more! Hypnotic and addictive, these well-researched, factual stories will keep you listening far past your bedtime. Showing human weakness at its very worst in critical moments, this book is the "butterfly effect" in human history reviewed.

Jared Knott (Author), Stephen Bowlby (Narrator)

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Think Fast, Mr. Peters: A Toby Peters Mystery

Hollywood detective Toby Peters is asleep on his floor when the dentist who shares his office calls, wailing that his wife has left him. While on the one hand, Toby is shocked that a woman as unpleasant as Mildred could ever attract a suitor, he's even more surprised by the name of the alleged Lothario: Peter Lorre, the scaly-voiced, bug-eyed Hollywood character actor. Though he can't imagine why the dentist would want her back, Toby agrees to track down his missing wife. He finds Lorre in a greasy spoon near the Warner Brothers' lot, but the actor doesn't know a thing about the missing Mildred. Her boyfriend turns out to be a Peter Lorre impersonator, and by the time Toby finds him, he's doing a very credible imitation of a dead man. The bullet was meant for the real Lorre, who has just become Toby's client-whether Toby likes it or not.

Stuart Kaminsky, Stuart M. Kaminsky (Author), Stephen Bowlby (Narrator)

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The World According to Proust

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) was arguably France's best-known literary writer. He was the author of stories, essays, translations, and a 3,000-page novel, In Search of Lost Time (1913-27). This book is a brief guide to Proust's magnum opus in which Joshua Landy invites the listener to view the novel as a single quest-a quest for purpose, enchantment, identity, connection, and belonging-through the novel's fascinating treatments of memory, society, art, same-sex desire, knowledge, self-understanding, self-fashioning, and the unconscious mind. Landy also shows why the questions Proust raises are important and exciting for all of us: how we can feel at home in the world; how we can find genuine connection with other human beings; how we can find enchantment in a world without God; whether an artist's life can shed light on their work; what we can know about the world, other people, and ourselves; when not knowing is better than knowing; how sexual orientation affects questions of connection and identity; who we are, deep down; what memory tells us about our inner world; why it might be good to think of our life as a story. Finally, Landy suggests why it's worthwhile to read the novel itself-how the long, difficult, but joyous experience of making it through 3,000 pages of prose can be transformative for our minds and souls.

Joshua Landy (Author), Stephen Bowlby (Narrator)

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The Way We Die Now: A Novel

When Miami homicide detective Hoke Moseley receives an unexplained order to let his beard grow, he doesn’t think much about it. He has too much going on at home, especially with a man he helped convict ten years before moving in across the street. Hoke immediately assumes the worst, and considering he has his former partner, her newborn, and his two teenage daughters living with him, he doesn’t like the situation one bit. It doesn’t help matters when he is suddenly assigned to work undercover, miles away, outside of his jurisdiction and without his badge, his gun, or his teeth. Soon he is impersonating a drifter and trying to infiltrate a farm operation suspected of murdering migrant workers. But when he gets there for his job interview, the last thing he is offered is work. In this final installment of the highly acclaimed Hoke Moseley novels, Charles Willeford’s brilliance and expertise show on every page. Funny, thrilling, and disturbing in equal parts, The Way We Die Now is a triumphant finish to one of the most original detective series of all time.

Charles Willeford (Author), Stephen Bowlby (Narrator)

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The Victim of the System

“One of the best books I’ve read in a long time.” – Sara Kinsey Haunted by the unsolved murder of his parents, a hometown sports hero battles the justice system and the most powerful oil family in the country to save a ten-year-old genius on trial for murder. John Grisham’s THE CLIENT meets J.R. Ewing’s DALLAS in this intriguing and unique thriller about the justice system, closure and the abyss between them… Twenty-two years ago, Ike Rossi’s life was shattered when his parents were murdered in cold blood. He surrendered his football scholarship and returned home to find their killer and raise his nine-year-old sister. Now, the crime of a local ten-year-old genius, Jack Cole, threatens to unearth old wounds rather than provide the closure Ike desperately wants. When Ike meets Jack inside the Pittsburgh courthouse, he doesn’t see a murderer but instead a boy who has been victimized by a system that has left them both without justice. Despite knowing the case will resurrect the painful demons of his parents’ unsolved murders, Ike agrees to clear Jack’s name. The court of public opinion and the district attorney have an airtight case. Worse, taking Jack’s side thrusts Ike into the crosshairs of the most powerful family in Pittsburgh, the Falzones. Now, with only days before the trial, Ike confronts the Falzones’ crumbling empire to find the shocking evidence that could save Jack. At the same time, he races to decipher a series of cryptic clues from Jack’s dead father that could hold the key to his son’s freedom. But each step closer to the truth draws them further into danger, and as three fractured families collide, Ike is forced to choose between saving Jack—and saving himself. “…what I can unequivocally tell you is this: This book is captivating from the very first chapter.” - Judy Johnson

Steve Hadden (Author), Stephen Bowlby (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Stephen Bowlby