Audiobooks narrated by Stephen Mitchell

The First Christmas: A Story of New Beginnings

“I love The First Christmas. What a charming way Stephen Mitchell has found to tell my favorite story of all, the Nativity, character by character (I love the donkey and the ox), with wise and thrilling interludes about God, reality, truth.” –Anne Lamott In The First Christmas, Stephen Mitchell brings the Nativity story to vivid life as never before. A narrative that is only sketched out in two Gospels becomes fully realized here with nuanced characters and a setting that reflects the culture of the time. Mitchell has suffused the birth of Jesus with a sense of beauty that will delight and astonish listeners. In this version, we see the world through the eyes of a Whitmanesque ox and a visionary donkey, starry-eyed shepherds and Zen-like wise men, each of them providing a unique perspective on a scene that is, in Western culture, the central symbol for good tidings of great joy. Rather than superimposing later Christian concepts onto the Annunciation and Nativity scenes, he imagines Mary and Joseph experiencing the angelic message as a young Jewish woman and man living in the year 4 BCE might have experienced it, with terror, dismay, and ultimate acceptance. In this context, their yes becomes an act of great moral courage. Listeners of every background will be enchanted by this startlingly beautiful reimagining of the Christmas tale. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Essentials “The First Christmas is a wonderful book, tender and rich with bursts of humor, filled with curious contrivances and surprises. Reading it felt like opening a brightly-wrapped Christmas present and finding a second box (also brightly wrapped) inside, and inside that box a third, and then another, and another, and another. Until, at the very center, in a tiny box, there is a diamond: the wisdom contained within this telling.”--Elizabeth Gilbert 'As is often said about an important and riveting and life-changing event: you had to be there. In The First Christmas, Mitchell puts us there, and the bird and rebirth happen in the reader as well -- no matter how well we know the story. Mitchell's illumined text is a star that leads us to a new understanding of the Bethlehem moments in our lives.' --Julia Alvarez, author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies

Stephen Mitchell (Author), Stephen Mitchell (Narrator)

Audiobook

Joseph And The Way of Forgiveness: A Biblical Tale Retold

"A unique and special kind of masterpiece." -John Banville This program is read by the author. Stephen Mitchell's gift is to breathe new life into ancient classics. In Joseph and the Way of Forgiveness, he offers us his riveting novelistic version of the Biblical tale in which Jacob's favorite son is sold into slavery and eventually becomes viceroy of Egypt. Tolstoy called it the most beautiful story in the world. What's new here is the lyrical, witty, vivid prose, informed by a wisdom that brings fresh insight to this foundational legend of betrayal and all-embracing forgiveness. Mitchell's retelling, which reads like a postmodern novel, interweaves the narrative with brief meditations that, with their Zen surprises, expand the narrative and illuminate its main themes. By stepping inside the minds of Joseph and the other characters, Mitchell reanimates one of the central stories of Western culture. The engrossing tale that he has created will capture the hearts and minds of modern listeners and show them that this ancient story can still challenge, delight, and astonish.

Stephen Mitchell (Author), Stephen Mitchell (Narrator)

Audiobook

Beowulf

Stephen Mitchell's marvelously clear and vivid rendering recreates the robust masculine music of the original. It both hews closely to the Old English and captures its wild energy and vitality, not just as a deep 'work of literature' but also as a rousing entertainment that can still stir our feelings and rivet our attention today, after more than a thousand years. This new translation - spare, sinuous, vigorous in its narration, and translucent in its poetry - makes a masterpiece accessible to everyone.

Stephen Mitchell (Author), Stephen Mitchell (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Mind at Home with Itself: How Asking Four Questions Can Free Your Mind, Open Your Heart, and Turn

Internationally acclaimed bestselling author Byron Katie's most anticipated work since Loving What Is. In A Mind at Home with Itself, Byron Katie illuminates one of the most profound ancient Buddhist texts, The Diamond Sutra (newly translated by distinguished scholar Stephen Mitchell) to reveal the nature of the mind and to liberate us from painful thoughts, using her revolutionary system of self-inquiry called "The Work." Byron Katie doesn't merely describe the awakened mind; she empowers us to see it and feel it, in action. At once startlingly fresh and powerfully enlightening, A Mind at Home with Itself offers us a transformative new perspective on life and death and is certain to become a classic. In the midst of a normal American life, Byron Katie became increasingly depressed and over a ten-year period sank further into despair and suicidal thoughts. Then one morning in 1986 she woke up in a state of absolute joy, filled with the realization of how her own suffering had ended. The freedom of that realization has never left her. Its direct result, The Work, has helped millions of people all over the world to question their stressful thoughts and set themselves free from suffering. **Please Contact Customer Service for Additional Documents**

Byron Katie, Stephen Mitchell (Author), Byron Katie, Madeleine Maby, Pete Simonelli, Stephen Mitchell (Narrator)

Audiobook

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

Out of nowhere, like a breeze in a marketplace crowded with advice, comes Byron Katie and "The Work." In the midst of a normal life, Katie became increasingly depressed, and over a ten-year period sank further into rage, despair, and thoughts of suicide. Then one morning, she woke up in a state of absolute joy, filled with the realization of how her own suffering had ended. The freedom of that realization has never left her, and now in Loving What Is you can discover the same freedom through The Work. The Work is simply four questions that, when applied to a specific problem, enable you to see what is troubling you in an entirely different light. As Katie says, "It"s not the problem that causes our suffering; it"s our thinking about the problem." Contrary to popular belief, trying to let go of a painful thought never works; instead, once we have done The Work, the thought lets go of us. At that point, we can truly love what is, just as it is. Loving What Is will show you step-by-step, through clear and vivid examples, exactly how to use this revolutionary process for yourself. You"ll see people do The Work with Katie on a broad range of human problems, from a wife ready to leave her husband because he wants more sex, to a Manhattan worker paralyzed by fear of terrorism, to a woman suffering over a death in her family. Many people have discovered The Work"s power to solve problems; in addition, they say that through The Work they experience a sense of lasting peace and find the clarity and energy to act, even in situations that had previously seemed impossible. If you continue to do The Work, you may discover, as many people have, that the questioning flows into every aspect of your life, effortlessly undoing the stressful thoughts that keep you from experiencing peace. Loving What Is offers everything you need to learn and live this remarkable process, and to find happiness as what Katie calls "a lover of reality."

Byron Katie, Stephen Mitchell (Author), , Byron Katie, Stephen Mitchell, Various Narrators (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Second Book of the Tao

'A twenty-first-century form of ancient wisdom . . . Mitchell's flights, his paradoxes, his wonderful riffs are brilliant and liberating.' -Pico Iyer The most widely translated book in world literature after the Bible, Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is the classic manual on the art of living. Following the phenomenal success of his own version of the Tao Te Ching, renowned scholar and translator Stephen Mitchell has composed the innovative The Second Book of the Tao. Drawn from the work of Lao-tzu's disciple Chuang- tzu and Confucius's grandson Tzu-ssu, The Second Book of the Tao collects the freshest, most profound teachings from these two great students of the Tao to offer Western readers a path into reality that has nothing to do with east or west, but everything to do with truth. With his own illuminating commentary alongside each adaptation, at once explicating and complementing the text, Mitchell makes the ancient teachings at once modern, relevant, and timeless.

Stephen Mitchell (Author), Stephen Mitchell (Narrator)

Audiobook

Tao Te Ching Low Price

In 81 brief chapters, Lao-Tzu's Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, provides advice that imparts balance and perspective, a serene and generous spirit, and teaches us how to work for the good with the effortless skill that comes from being in accord with the Tao, the basic principle of the universe. Stephen Mitchell's bestselling version has been widely acclaimed as a gift to contemporary culture.

Lao Tzu, Lao-Tzu (Author), Stephen Mitchell (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Thousand Names for Joy

In her first two books, Byron Katie showed how suffering can be ended by questioning the stressful thoughts that create it, through a process of self-inquiry she calls The Work. Now, in A Thousand Names for Joy, she encourages us to discover the freedom that lives on the other side of inquiry. Stephen Mitchell, the renowned translator of the Tao Te Ching, selected provocative excerpts from that ancient text as a stimulus for Katie to talk about the most essential issues that face us all: life and death, good and evil, love, work, and fulfillment. The result is an audiobook that allows the timeless insights of the Tao Te Ching to resonate anew for us today, while offering a vivid and illuminating glimpse into the life of someone who for twenty years, ever since she "woke up to reality" one morning in 1986, has been living what Lao-tzu wrote more than 2,500 years ago. With her stories of total ease in all circumstances, Katie does more than describe the awakened mind; she lets you see it, feel it, in action. And she shows you how that mind is yours as well.

Byron Katie, Stephen Mitchell (Author), Byron Katie, Stephen Mitchell (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Stephen Mitchell