Audiobooks narrated by Traber Burns

A Better Planet: Forty Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future

A practical, bipartisan call to action from the world's leading thinkers on the environment and sustainability Sustainability has emerged as a global priority over the past several years. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and the adoption of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals through the United Nations have highlighted the need to address critical challenges, like the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, water shortages, and air pollution. But in the United States, partisan divides, regional disputes, and deep disagreements over core principles have made it nearly impossible to chart a course toward a sustainable future. This timely new book, edited by celebrated scholar Daniel C. Esty, offers fresh thinking and forward-looking solutions from environmental thought leaders across the political spectrum. The book's forty essays cover such subjects as ecology, environmental justice, Big Data, public health, and climate change, all with an emphasis on sustainability. This book focuses on moving toward sustainability through actionable, bipartisan approaches based on rigorous analytical research.

Daniel C. Esty (Author), Alex Boyles, Caroline Shaffer, Erica Sullivan, Kate Mulligan, Kevin Kenerly, Traber Burns, William Hughes (Narrator)

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A Brilliant Death: A Novel

Amanda Baron died in a boating accident on the Ohio River in 1953. Or did she? While it was generally accepted that she had died when a coal barge rammed the pleasure boat she was sharing with her lover, her body was never found. Travis Baron was an infant when his mother disappeared. After the accident and the subsequent publicity, Travis’s father scoured the house of all evidence that Amanda Baron had ever lived, and her name was never to be uttered around him. Now in high school, Travis yearns to know more about his mother. With the help of his best friend, Mitch Malone, Travis begins a search for the truth about the mother he never knew. The two boys find an unlikely ally: an alcoholic former detective who served time for falsifying evidence. Although his reputation is in tatters, the information the detective provides about the death of Amanda Baron is indisputable—and dangerous. Nearly two decades after her death, Travis and Mitch piece together a puzzle lost to the dark waters of the Ohio River. They know how Amanda Baron died and why. Now what do they do with the information?

Robin Yocum (Author), Traber Burns (Narrator)

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A Dog's Gift: The Inspirational Story of Veterans and Children Healed by Man's Best Friend

A decade ago, former military counterintelligence officer Terry Henry joined his precocious young daughter, Kyria, on a trip to a nursing home in order to allow its residents to play with their family dog, a golden retriever named Riley. Terry was astounded by the transformations that unfolded before his eyes. Soon after, Terry and Kyria started their service dog organization, Paws4people, with the goal of pairing dogs with human beings in need of healing, including traumatized and wounded war veterans and children living with physical, emotional, and intellectual disabilities. In A Dog's Gift, award-winning journalist and author Bob Drury movingly captures the story of a year in the life of Paws4people and the broken bodies and souls the organization mends. The book follows the journey of pups bred by the organization from their loving, if rigorous, early training to an emotional event that Terry and Kyria have christened "the bump," where each individual service dog chooses its new owner through an almost mystical connection that ignites the healing process. Incorporating vivid storytelling, insights into canine wisdom, history, science, and moving tales of personal transformation, A Dog's Gift is a story of miracles bound to be embraced by not only the sixty million Americans who own dogs but by anyone with a full heart and a loving soul.

Bob Drury (Author), Traber Burns (Narrator)

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A Life on the Edge: Memoirs of Everest and Beyond

In May of 1963, Seattle mountaineer Jim Whittaker stepped into world history by becoming the first American to summit Mount Everest. More than fifty years later, he is still regarded as a seminal figure in North American mountaineering, as well as an astute businessman who helped create the outdoor recreation industry. A Life on the Edge: Memoirs of Everest and Beyond is Jim's courageous, no-punches-pulled autobiography and a look at a peripatetic, sometimes difficult life. Beyond the glory of the Everest summit and his other extraordinary climbing feats, including the first American summit of K2, he openly describes his personal, 'everyman' experience of social upheaval in the 1960s and '70s, an early divorce, family strife, a passionate new love later in life, near-bankruptcy, and business triumphs and losses. Jim tells it all with verve and honesty and, true to his nature, turns every setback into the stage for new adventure. This special fiftieth anniversary edition celebrates the story of Jim's life and features a new foreword by Ed Viesturs, as well as a new final chapter that brings listeners up to date, including details of Jim's trek to Everest Base Camp in 2012 and his son Leif's recent successful summits of Everest.

Jim Whittaker (Author), Traber Burns (Narrator)

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A Moment in Time: An American Story of Baseball, Heartbreak, and Grace

Ralph Branca is best known for throwing the pitch that resulted in Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard ‘Round the World," the historic homerun that capped an incredible comeback and won the pennant for the Giants in 1951. And so Branca was on the losing end of what many consider to be baseball's most thrilling moment, but that notoriety belies a profoundly successful life and career. A Moment in Time is the remarkable story of a man who could have been destroyed by a supreme professional embarrassment, but wasn't. Branca came up as a young phenom, playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers during their heyday. He was a staple of the Dodgers' teams in the late 40's, dominating the National League. New York City itself was immersed in post-war optimism, and the three teams produced passionate rivalries. It's no stretch to say that New York baseball was the center of the sporting universe. In those days, the players were part of the fabric of the neighborhoods, of the city itself. It's a world populated by legendary characters like Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Leo Durocher, Branch Rickey, and Walter O'Malley. This is the world that Branca's memoir evokes. The infamous homerun is, of course, still deeply ingrained in that story. Seven years ago, Joshua Prager reported in the Wall Street Journal that the Giants had cheated, illegally stolen signs, and that Bobby Thomson knew a fastball was coming on that fateful pitch. Prager's story made international headlines and produced a bestselling book, but it wasn't news to Ralph Branca, who found out from a teammate in 1954. Over the years, Branca has always declined to comment on the scandal, out of respect for his friendship with Thomson. He is finally ready to tell his story, which is as entertaining and inspiring as any classic baseball tale.

David Ritz, Ralph Branca (Author), Traber Burns (Narrator)

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A Perilous Conception

It's 1976. Despite fierce international controversy over whether in vitro fertilization (IVF) should ever be performed in humans, doctors around the world race to be first to produce a baby through this procedure. Dr. Colin Sanford, a brilliant, ambitious obstetrician in the Pacific Northwest city of Emerald, has a plan. He recruits Dr. Giselle Hearn, an experienced laboratory geneticist-embryologist at the university who's frustrated by the ultraconservative policies of her department chairman. Drs. Sanford and Hearn, working secretly, set out to put their names in history books. Unfortunately, a secret that big is hard to keep, and Alma Wanego, Dr. Hearn's lab supervisor, catches on and demands a blackmail payment. Several months later, Dr. Sanford's patient, Joyce Kennett, gives birth to a healthy boy, and Sanford prepares to make an announcement at a press conference. But before that happens, Joyce Kennett's marginally-schizophrenic husband kills Dr. Hearn and then himself. Police Detective Bernie Baumgartner's investigation is hampered by pressure from influential people at the university who want to control sensationalism that might harm the institution. The chief of police chalks it up to the work of a mentally unstable man who may have forgotten to take his medication and considers the case closed. But dogged, tenacious Baumgartner suspects that Sanford and Hearn were in fact doing IVF, that they succeeded with the Kennetts, and that murder, suicide, and other crimes were the fallout. A double cat-and-mouse game develops between doctor and detective, and as stakes escalate, truth becomes an increasingly evasive commodity. "Hot-button issues, ruthless ambition, human experimentation, blackmail, suicide, murder…A Perilous Conception delivers."—Kevin O'Brien, New York Times bestselling author

Larry Karp (Author), Sean Runnette, Traber Burns (Narrator)

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A Room to Die In

How could a man have been murdered when he was found alone in his study, a gun in his hand, and the door locked from the inside? It had to be suicide, the police figured. Although there was no suicide note, there was a letter proving conclusively that Roland Nelson, over the last several months, was being blackmailed. But to his daughter, Ann, whom he had seen only spasmodically since he had left her mother when Ann was a baby, there were unanswered questions. She was convinced that her father could never have killed himself. Before she found the answers, two people were brutally garroted with a wire, one of them in her own apartment. Could she find all the answers before the killer silenced her, too?

Ellery Queen (Author), Traber Burns (Narrator)

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A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge

On December 16, 1944, the vanguard of three German armies, totaling half a million men, attacked US forces in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg, achieving what had been considered impossible—total surprise. In the most abysmal failure of battlefield intelligence in the history of the US Army, 600,000 American soldiers found themselves facing Hitler’s last desperate effort of the war. The brutal confrontation that ensued became known as the Battle of the Bulge, the greatest battle ever fought by the US Army—a triumph of American ingenuity and dedication over an egregious failure in strategic intelligence. A Time for Trumpets is the definitive account of this dramatic victory, told by one of America’s most respected military historians, who was also an eyewitness: MacDonald commanded a rifle company in the Battle of the Bulge. His account of this unique battle is exhaustively researched, honestly recounted, and movingly authentic in its depiction of hand-to-hand combat. Mingling firsthand experience with the insights of a distinguished historian, MacDonald places this profound human drama unforgettably on the landscape of history.

Charles B. MacDonald (Author), Traber Burns (Narrator)

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Bannon

Rock Bannon, wounded in an Indian attack, is rescued by a wagon train heading to Oregon. He has fully recovered when the train pulls into a fort to stock up on supplies. It is there that the leaders of the train meet Morton Harper, a smooth-talking man who persuades them to take an easier trail that will allow them to escape an attack by Indians. Bannon knows that there will be no escape from attack on that route and that it will lead the train directly onto Hardy Bishop's vast ranching domain. Either way, and probably both, it will mean war-a war the pioneers will undoubtedly lose.Bannon first appeared in Giant Western (Winter 1948) under the title Showdown Trail. L'Amour subsequently reworked and expanded this story into The Tall Stranger, published as an original paperback in 1957. The expanded story was filmed as The Tall Stranger (Allied Artists, 1957), directed by Thomas Carr and starring Joel McCrea and Virginia Mayo.

Louis L' Amour, Louis L'Amour, Louis L'amour, Louis L’amour (Author), Traber Burns (Narrator)

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Before Chappaquiddick: The Untold Story of Mary Jo Kopechne and the Kennedy Brothers

On July 18, 1969, a car driven by Senator Edward M. Kennedy plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, off the coast of Cape Cod. Mary Jo Kopechne, a twenty-eight-year-old former staffer for Kennedy’s brother Robert, died in the crash. The scandal that followed demeaned Kopechne’s reputation and scapegoated her for Ted Kennedy’s inability to run for the presidency instead of acknowledging her as an innocent victim in a tragedy that took her life. William C. Kashatus’s biography of Mary Jo Kopechne illuminates the life of a politically committed young woman who embodied the best ideals of the sixties. Arriving in Washington in 1963, Kopechne soon joined the staff of Robert F. Kennedy and committed herself to his vision of compassion for the underprivileged, social idealism tempered by political realism, and a more humane nation. Kashatus details her work as an energetic and trusted staffer who became one of the famed Boiler Room Girls at the heart of RFK’s presidential campaign. Shattered by his assassination, Kopechne took a break from politics before returning as a consultant. It was at a reunion of the Boiler Room Girls that she accepted a ride from Edward Kennedy—a decision she would pay for with her life. The untold—and long overdue—story of a promising life cut short, Before Chappaquiddick tells the human side of one of the most memorable scandals of the 1960s.

William C. Kashatus (Author), Traber Burns (Narrator)

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Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary

Here is the epic life story of the Native American holy man who has inspired millions around the world. Black Elk, the Native American holy man, is known to millions of readers around the world from his 1932 testimonial, Black Elk Speaks. Adapted by the poet John Neihardt from a series of interviews, it is one of the most widely read and admired works of American Indian literature. Cryptic and deeply personal, it has been read as a spiritual guide, a philosophical manifesto, and a text to be deconstructed-while the historical Black Elk has faded from view. In this sweeping book, Joe Jackson provides the definitive biographical account of a figure whose dramatic life converged with some of the most momentous events in the history of the American West. Born in an era of rising violence, Black Elk killed his first man at Little Big Horn, witnessed the death of his second cousin Crazy Horse, and traveled to Europe with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Upon his return, he was swept up in the traditionalist Ghost Dance movement and shaken by the massacre at Wounded Knee. But Black Elk was not a warrior and instead chose the path of a healer and holy man, motivated by a powerful prophetic vision that haunted and inspired him, even after he converted to Catholicism in his later years. In Black Elk, Jackson has crafted a true American epic, restoring to Black Elk the richness of his times and gorgeously portraying a life of heroism and tragedy, adaptation and endurance, in an era of permanent crisis on the Great Plains. "Stirring, wide-ranging biography of the Sioux elder whose testimonials underlay 'one of the twentieth century's most important documents on Native American culture'...Of much literary and historical merit and a fine addition to the shelves of anyone interested in this part of America's unhappy past."-Kirkus Reviews, starred review **Please Contact Customer Service for Additional Documents**

Joe Jackson (Author), Traber Burns (Narrator)

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Black Mike: A Western Duo

Black Mike Sam Cassidy comes home to find himself in a series of tense confrontations. His father expects Sam to work for him at the local bank, and Sheriff Ben Faraday, for whom Sam worked the previous summer as deputy, is suffering from a terminal disease and wants Sam to become a deputy again. "Black Mike" Nickels wants to expand his use of public land and bring in more sheep, backed by guns. The Cattlemen's Association has vowed to stop Black Mike, but Sam's decision to become a deputy could make enemies of them both. Gun in His Hand Dane Coe is returning to Ogallala in Nebraska Territory at his father's request. He is met at the train depot by Ed Lanning, ramrod for Sam Drew's ranch, and Frank Ashton, a young gunfighter. Sam Drew will do whatever it takes to get the railroad to end its track on his own land rather than the land owned by Dane's father.

Wayne D. Overholser (Author), Jim Meskimen, Traber Burns (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Traber Burns