Non-Fiction Audiobooks

The Power of Instinct: The New Rules of Persuasion in Business and Life

Award-winning Fortune 500 brand consultant and behavioral expert Leslie Zane shatters conventional marketing wisdom, showing readers how to tap into the hidden brain where instinct prevails, creating a powerful network of connections that drive people to buy your product, company, or vision. People don't make decisions with their conscious mind, but on instinct. In The Power of Instinct, marketing consultant and behavioral science expert Leslie Zane shows that to grow a brand, business, or even a social movement, traditional persuasion tactics fall short. Instead, you must connect to the instinctive mind. And to do this, you need to understand the science of consumer choice and employ techniques that work with a person's brain, not against it. Zane uncovers the hidden network of connections that dictates the snap decisions we make and cracks the code on how to influence it. With a revolutionary set of rules for expanding the network, Zane shows us how to make any brand, business, political candidate, or idea the dominant instinctive choice. With science as your guide, as well as stories from the world's most successful brands from McDonald's and Lululemon to the Yankees and Taylor Swift, you'll learn: - What kind of messages create the greatest amount of positive associations; - Why finding new customers accelerates growth and relying on existing ones is a trap; - Why emotional stories are not enough to drive trial and long-term brand loyalty. Whether you're an entrepreneur, Fortune 500 executive, marketing professional, or job seeker, mastering the power of instinct will help supercharge your growth and make whatever you're selling the first choice for any audience.

Leslie Zane (Author), Kelli Tager, TBD (Narrator)

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Good Judgment: Making Better Business Decisions with the Science of Human Personality

An experienced organizational psychologist teaches you how to select the right employees and business partners, assess investment opportunities more shrewdly, resolve conflicts better and faster, and optimize your performance on the job using the science of personality. Psychologists widely agree that five key traits define our personalities—intellect, emotionality, sociability, drive, and diligence. Unlike emotions, which are transitory in nature, these traits determine our behaviors, including our motivations, social inclinations, reactions to crisis or complexity, patterns of thinking, and more. Organizational psychologist Dr. Richard Davis is an expert in assessing personalities. He has spent decades advising business leaders and evaluating executives from some of the world’s biggest companies, including Amazon, Target, Best Buy, Under Armour, Meta, Starbucks, Nike, LVMH, and the NBA. Over the course of his career, he has helped numerous executives make tough, highly consequential hiring calls based on personality. A company’s board might want its next CEO to be decisive, focused, and a strong communicator. Investors backing a start-up might want a leader who is not only a visionary but also a team player who doesn’t retaliate when given constructive feedback. That’s where he comes in. As a result of his life’s work, Dr. Davis has developed not only a unique perspective on what human personality is, but an indispensable toolkit for analyzing it, and using the information effectively. In Good Judgment, he brings his expertise to you. Dr. Davis explains what the science of personality is and how it works, and how all of us can use it to improve our working relationships, careers, and lives. Whether you’re a novice manager looking to hire your first assistant, a board member in need of the ideal CEO, an angel investor trying to choose between two different startups, or a new parent selecting a pediatrician, understanding the science of personality and how to utilize it is the key to exercising good judgment—at work and in life.

Richard Davis (Author), TBD, Tim Dixon, Tim H. Dixon (Narrator)

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Complicit: Why We Enable Misbehaving Men

A thoroughly researched and deeply personal examination of how we unintentionally condone workplace abuse in a post-#MeToo world and what we can do to affect positive change. When Reah Bravo was hired to work on the Charlie Rose show, the open secret of Rose's behavior toward women didn't deter her from pursuing a position she felt could launch her career in broadcast journalism. She believed herself more than capable of handling any unprofessional behavior that might come her way. But she soon learned a devastating truth: no one can accurately predict how they will respond in an abusive situation until they are in it. In a post-#MeToo world, where many corporations mandate trainings to prevent misconduct, how do abusers continue to victimize their colleagues? When we live in a society where many feminist ideals are mainstream and women make up a significant percentage of the workforce, why is gender harassment more prevalent than ever? Weaving her own experiences with insights from experts and other survivors, Bravo eloquently reveals the psychological and cultural forces that make us all enablers of a sexist and dangerous status quo. Combining the latest in-depth research and enlightening commentary, Complicit shines a light on the prevalence of professional misconduct and charts an accessible path towards real positive change.

Reah Bravo (Author), Reah Bravo, TBD (Narrator)

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Birds Aren't Real: The True Story of Mass Avian Murder and the Largest Surveillance Campaign in US H

The true story of the greatest conspiracy in US history—and how to fight back. Have you ever seen a baby pigeon? You haven’t, have you? No one has, not in many, many years. They used to be everywhere. You couldn’t walk out of your front door in New York City in the 1930s without seeing dozens of those little guys scurrying around. Today, there are millions of grown up pigeons in New York, but not a baby pigeon to be seen. That’s because they come out of the factory as adults. This is one of the many smoking guns of the bird drone surveillance crisis. Since 1959, the Deep State has mercilessly slaughtered over 12 billion birds and replaced them with identical drones that are designed to spy on private citizens and report their every action directly to the government. From pet canaries to Sesame Street, the shadowy figures that pull the strings have infiltrated every aspect of our society, making a mockery of civil liberties while the American people live in blissful ignorance. Until now. In Birds Aren’t Real, whistleblowers Peter McIndoe and Connor Gaydos trace the roots of a political conspiracy so vast and well-hidden that it almost seems like an elaborate hoax. These hero Bird Truthers have risked life and limb to compile and disseminate a treasure trove of information about the origins of the surveillance crisis, its spread, and the patriots who are on the front lines today, raising awareness and working to reclaim America as the land of the free. This urgent manifesto features a host of useful illustrations, activities, and leaked classified documents that will convince even the most outspoken skeptic that birds aren’t real. The truth is out there: will you stand and fight before it’s too late?

Connor Gaydos, Peter Mcindoe (Author), Connor Gaydos, Peter Mcindoe, TBD (Narrator)

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Mother State: A Political History of Motherhood

Brought to you by Penguin. Motherhood is a political state. Helen Charman makes a radical case for what liberated mothering could be, and tells the story of what motherhood has been, from the 1970s to the 2010s. When we talk about motherhood and politics together, we usually talk about isolated moments - the policing of breastfeeding, or the cost of childcare. But this is not enough: we need to understand motherhood itself as an inherently political state, one that has the potential to pose a serious challenge to the status quo. In Mother State, Helen Charman uses this provocative insight to write a new history of Britain and Northern Ireland. Beginning with Women's Liberation and ending with austerity, the book follows mothers' fights for an alternative future. Alongside the mother figures that loom large in British culture, from Margaret Thatcher to Kat Slater, we meet communities of lesbian squatters, anti-nuclear campaigners, the wives of striking miners and teenage mothers protesting housing cuts: groups who believed that if you want to nourish your children, you have to nourish the world around them, too. Here we see a world where motherhood is not a restrictive identity but a state of possibility. 'Mother' ceases to be an individual responsibility, and becomes an expansive collective term to organise under, for people of any gender, with or without children of their own. It begins with an understanding: that to mother is a political act. ©2024 Helen Charman (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Helen Charman (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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Island Refuge: A History of Refugees in Britain

A sweeping and intimately told history of exiles and refugees. How have those who arrived on Britain’s shores shaped its history? For most of its history, Great Britain cherished its outward image as a safe haven for those displaced by religious persecution, political violence or economic crisis – an island of stability in the midst of a cruel, chaotic world. Today, however, refugees seeking to reach Britain most often face perilous journeys, impossible bureaucracy and acidic public opinion. In Island Refuge, migration scholar Matthew Lockwood overturns many of today’s misconceptions by revisiting both our history of migrants and the way British attitudes have flexed and changed over time. This is a profoundly moving and illuminating history, woven together through the stories of individuals: Frederick Douglass and the formerly enslaved men who followed in his footsteps, fleeing America on the hopes of kinder cultures. Little girls like Liesl Ornstein, who discovered they were Jewish only when Hitler took Austria, who were sent to England and told to call themselves ‘Elizabeth’. Sun Yat-sen, who found sanctuary in London – a brief abduction aside – before becoming the Father of modern China. The writers who chronicled their fallen cities from the safety of the British Library. The patriots who found statelessness a gnawing, restless type of despair. Karl Marx, who lived penniless yet arrested the nation’s thinking. Freddie Mercury, who at every turn tried to shake Zanzibar from his bones. What makes a home? What makes a refugee? As allegedly record-breaking numbers of migrants attempt to reach Britain and public conversation becomes, often, poisonous, Island Refuge is a powerful account of what has come before and what has been learned by it. Almost every time, we see when we look back, Britain has not been an island refuge from the world, but an island refuge for the world. Not a country burdened by refugees, but instead transformed and strengthened by them.

Matthew Lockwood (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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Kinky History: A Rollicking Journey through Our Sexual Past, Present, and Future

A provocative journey through human sexual history, packed with fun factoids and forgotten stories, from the historian and storyteller behind Kinky History, @esme.louisee on TikTok Contrary to popular belief, our predecessors had all sorts of obscene hobbies long before Christian Grey hit the scene. In this enlightening romp, learn about the first instances of homosexuality on record from the ancient world and the diverse history of nonbinary gender; encounter a thousand years' worth of hilarious and horrifying contraceptive methods; consider the positive and negative effects of the widespread availability of pornography in the digital age-and how our relationship to it changed during the pandemic; take a sneaky riffle through centuries of bedside drawers; and discover the dirty little secrets of luminaries such as Julius Caesar, James Joyce, Albert Einstein, and Virginia Woolf. Esmé Louise James also identifies the key tipping points that directly inform current beliefs around sex to place the past in conversation with the present. By educating ourselves about the weird, wonderful, and varied spectrum of human sexuality and experience, we can normalize and destigmatize sex, write people of marginalized sexual identities back into the pages of history, and build toward a more liberated future.

Esmé Louise James (Author), Esmé Louise James (Narrator)

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Great Britain?: How To Get Our Future Back

Brought to you by Penguin. We all want to know what on earth is going on. Why real wages are flatlining but taxes are rising, and public services are still collapsing. Why our children can’t afford a house and our neighbours are using foodbanks. We are all yearning for a way out of the repeated economic crises, generational divisions and political dysfunction that dominate our lives. Most of all we want our – and Britain’s – future back. Great Britain? is a much-needed antidote to the pervading sense that Britain is going backwards rather than forwards. It is both a clear-eyed and rigorous diagnosis of the problems facing our country – a unique toxicity of huge inequality and stagnant economic growth – and a hopeful case for reclaiming a different future: by building an investment nation of good work, resilient communities and secure homes, a society in which both burdens and prosperity are shared. As Torsten Bell shows in his bold vision for the alternative, the Britain of today contains the raw materials to build a better Britain for tomorrow. In this treasure trove of analysis, Bell argues that our era of crisis and cynicism needs neither utopia nor nostalgia, but a practical patriotism of radical incrementalism to raise the living standards of middle- and lower-income households. He expertly and passionately points us towards a Britain that we can actually build – a future worth fighting for. ©2024 Torsten Bell (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Torsten Bell (Author), TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Death of Truth

A best-selling author documents how facts-shared truths-have lost their power to hold us together as a community, as a country, globally, and how belief in "alternative facts" and conspiracy theories has destroyed trust in institutions, leaders, and legitimate experts. Drawing on the front-row seat he has had as the cofounder of a company that uses journalists to track online misinformation, Steven Brill takes us inside the decisions made by executives in Silicon Valley to code the algorithms embedded in their social media platforms to maximize profits by pushing divisive content. He unravels the ingenious creation of automated advertising buying systems that reward that eye-attracting content, and describes the exploitation of that ad-driven machinery by politicians, hucksters, and conspiracy theorists. He also explains how the most powerful adversaries of America have used these American-made social media and advertising tools against us with massive disinformation campaigns. Brill explains how with the development of generative artificial intelligence everything could get exponentially worse-unless we act. Apropos of that, in The Death of Truth, he offers thoughtful, provocative but realistic prescriptions for how we can act and reverse course-proposals that are certain to stir debate, and even action. Finally, Brill chillingly recounts how his company's role in exposing Russian disinformation operations resulted in a Russian agent targeting him and his family.

Steven Brill (Author), Dan Woren, TBD (Narrator)

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The Atomic Human: Understanding Ourselves in the Age of AI

Brought to you by Penguin. A vital perspective is missing from the discussions we're having about Artificial Intelligence: what does it mean for our identity? Our fascination with AI stems from the perceived uniqueness of human intelligence. We believe it's what differentiates us. Fears of AI not only concern how it invades our digital lives, but also the implied threat of an intelligence that displaces us from our position at the centre of the world. Neil D. Lawrence's visionary book shows why these fears may be misplaced. Atomism, proposed by Democritus, suggested it was impossible to continue dividing matter down into ever smaller components: eventually we reach a point where a cut cannot be made (the Greek for uncuttable is 'atom'). In the same way, by slicing away at the facets of human intelligence that can be replaced by machines, AI uncovers what is left: an indivisible core that is the essence of humanity. By contrasting our own (evolved, locked-in, embodied) intelligence with the capabilities of machine intelligence through history, The Atomic Human reveals the technical origins, capabilities and limitations of AI systems, and how they should be wielded. Not just by the experts, but ordinary people. Either AI is a tool for us, or we become a tool of AI. Understanding this will enable readers to choose the future we want. ©2024 Neil D. Lawrence (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Neil D. Lawrence (Author), TBD (Narrator)

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The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers

The go-to book on immigration: fact-based, comprehensive, and nonpartisan. Immigration is one of the most controversial topics in the United States and everywhere else. Pundits, politicians, and the public usually depict immigrants as either villains or victims. The villain narrative is that immigrants pose a threat—to our economy because they steal our jobs; our way of life because they change our culture; and to our safety and laws because of their criminality. The victim argument tells us that immigrants are needy outsiders—the poor, huddled masses whom we must help at our own cost if necessary. But the data clearly debunks both narratives. From jobs, investment, and innovation to cultural vitality and national security, more immigration has an overwhelmingly positive impact on everything that makes a society successful. In The Truth About Immigration, Wharton professor Zeke Hernandez draws from nearly 20 years of research to answer all the big questions about immigration. He combines moving personal stories with rigorous research to offer an accessible, apolitical, and evidence-based look at how newcomers affect our local communities and our nation. You'll learn about the overlooked impact of immigrants on investment and job creation; realize how much we take for granted the novel technologies, products, and businesses newcomers create; get the facts straight about perennial concerns like jobs, crime, and undocumented immigrants; and gain new perspectives on misunderstood issues such as the border, taxes, and assimilation. Most books making a case for immigration tell you that immigration is good for immigrants. This book is all about how newcomers benefit you, your community, and your country. Skeptics fear that newcomers compete economically with locals because of their similarities and fail to socially assimilate because of their differences. You'll see that it's exactly the opposite: newcomers bring enduring economic benefits because of their differences and contribute positively to society because of their similarities. Destined to become the go-to book on one of the most important issues of our time, this book turns fear into hope by proving a simple truth: immigrants are essential for economically prosperous and socially vibrant nations.

Zeke Hernandez (Author), André Santana, TBD, Zeke Hernandez (Narrator)

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Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality

A brilliant, original investigation into the radical shift of power as invisible rulers create bespoke realities revolutionizing politics, culture, and society. Anyone who wishes to destroy legitimate political and social power has a new weapon. It is the anarchist's dream, a force so shockingly effective that its destructive power seems limitless. Scientific proof is powerless in front of it; democratic validity is bulldozed by it; leaders are humiliated by it. What we used to call influence has become something violently toxic. Renée DiResta gives us a powerful original framing to explain how it now shapes public opinion through a virtual rumor mill of niche propagandists. While they position themselves as trustworthy "Davids", their reach, influence, and economics make them classic Goliaths, invisible rulers who create bespoke realities that control the destinies of millions of people, their work driven by a simple maxim: "if you make it trend, you make it true." By revealing the machinery and the dynamics of the interplay between influencers, algorithms, and online crowds, DiResta vividly illustrates the way belief in the fundamental legitimacy of institutions that make society work is deliberately undermined. This alternate system for shaping public opinion, unexamined until now, is rewriting the relationship between the people and their government in profoundly disturbing ways. From taking on and defeating California's anti-vaxxers a decade ago to uncovering the ways that China and Russia target the American public and our elections, - and now herself a target of Congressmen Jim Jordan and hyper-partisans of the lunatic fringe - DiResta has not merely been an observer of the machinery promulgating the Big Lie and the unyielding culture wars. As analyst, investigator, and participant, she provides unprecedented insight into the way influencers shape the opinion and behavior of massive crowds, with the power to drive those crowds into battle - while bearing no responsibility for the consequences.

Renee Diresta (Author), Anna Caputo, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook