Current Affairs Audiobooks | Politics

The Secret Apparatus: The Muslim Brotherhood's Industry of Death

The Muslim Brotherhood’s “Secret Apparatus” is a clandestine incubator for Islamic terrorism, and it exports its “industry of death” to destroy the world through infiltration, disinformation, and jihad. The world’s most dangerous terrorist group is not hiding in the caves of the Hindu Kush or in the Saharan wilderness—it operates inside the United States, and its members have sworn to fight eternal jihad. The Muslim Brotherhood is a fraternal cult inspired by the Order of the Assassins and modeled after Joseph Stalin’s Secret Apparatus. It’s an incubator for Islamic terrorist organizations, and it has implemented a one-hundred-year plan to destroy the West. The Muslim Brotherhood claims to be a reformist, non-violent political organization, but it is a terrorism apparatus with a political facade, which its founder Hassan al-Banna called “an industry of death.” The Secret Apparatus proves the Muslim Brotherhood’s clandestine militia—the secret apparatus—is still operational. The Brotherhood leadership’s own words, internal documents, and highest-ranking defector confirm the Brotherhood founded most modern terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. This book examines the Brotherhood’s history, political theology, and secret alliance with Iran, and offers policy recommendations needed to stop an existential threat to the United States and the world.

Cynthia Farahat (Author), Fajer Al-Kaisi (Narrator)

Audiobook

Head Held High

Whenever decorated officer Vishwas Nangre Patil recalls the memories of Diwali from his childhood days, the sounds of firecrackers often transform into the deafening grenade blasts from the night of 26/11. It was his grit, cultivated over the years from the neck-breaking labour of studying for the UPSC exams, that had enabled him to power on and gun down the terrorists inside the Taj Mahal Palace hotel during the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Head Held High, translated from the Marathi book Mann Mein Hai Vishwas, is an account of IPS officer Vishwas Nangre Patil's life-from his humble background, through school, college, long hours of studying for the UPSC examinations to the final selection to the IPS cadre and, eventually, his role in the counterterrorism operations during the Mumbai attacks. This moving and authentic account of the most formative and challenging years of his life is sure to strike a chord with those who aspire to join the Indian civil services.

Vishwas Nangre Patil (Author), Mayur Suvarna (Narrator)

Audiobook

For a Dollar and a Dream: State Lotteries in Modern America

Every week, one in eight Americans place a bet on the dream of a life-changing lottery jackpot. Americans spend more on lottery tickets annually than on video streaming services, concert tickets, books, and movie tickets combined. The story of lotteries in the United States may seem straightforward: tickets are bought predominately by poor people driven by the wishful belief that they will overcome infinitesimal odds and secure lives of luxury. The reality is more complicated. For a Dollar and a Dream shows how, in an era of stagnant upward mobility, millions of Americans turned to the lottery as their only chance at achieving the American Dream. Gamblers were not the only ones who bet on betting. As voters revolted against higher taxes in the late twentieth century, states saw legalized gambling as a panacea, a way of generating revenue without cutting public services or raising taxes. Alongside stories of lottery winners and losers, Jonathan Cohen shows how gamblers have used prayer to help them win a jackpot, how states tried to pay for schools with scratch-off tickets, and how lottery advertising has targeted lower income and nonwhite communities. For a Dollar and a Dream charts the untold history of the nation's lottery system, revealing how players and policymakers alike got hooked on hopes for a gambling windfall.

Jonathan D. Cohen (Author), Tom Lennon (Narrator)

Audiobook

Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America

In Misinformation Nation, Jordan E. Taylor reveals how foreign news defined the boundaries of early American politics and ultimately drove colonists to revolt against Britain and create a new nation. News was the lifeblood of early American politics, but newspaper printers had few reliable sources to report on events from abroad. Though frequently false, the information that Americans encountered in newspapers, letters, and conversations framed their sense of reality, leading them to respond with protests, boycotts, violence, and the creation of new political institutions. Fearing that their enemies were spreading fake news, American colonists fought for control of the news media. As their basic perceptions of reality diverged, Loyalists separated from Patriots and, in the new nation created by the revolution, Republicans inhabited a political reality quite distinct from that of their Federalist rivals. The American Revolution was not only a political contest for liberty, equality, and independence (for white men, at least); it was also a contest to define certain accounts of reality to be truthful while defining others as false and dangerous. Misinformation Nation argues that we must also conceive of the American Revolution as a series of misperceptions, misunderstandings, and uninformed overreactions.

Jordan E. Taylor (Author), Christopher P. Brown (Narrator)

Audiobook

Breve historia de la mentira fascista

El protagonismo de la mentira en los fascismos del pasado y en los populismos de derecha del presente analizado detalladamente y en perspectiva histórica en tiempos de la 'post verdad'. Al explicar por qué su antecesor mentía tanto, el presidente de los Estados Unidos de América, Joe Biden, dijo 'Trump miente como Goebbels'. ¿Era adecuada la comparación? Este libro sostiene que sí porque, en efecto, hoy asistimos a una notable y sostenida ola de emergencia de nuevos líderes populistas de derecha en todo el mundo que, al igual que los líderes fascistas del pasado, derivan gran parte de su poder político de cuestionar la realidad, respaldar mitos, promover ira y paranoia y difundir mentiras. Federico Finchelstein explica por qué los fascistas consideraban que sus mentiras ('verdades simples') llenas de odio, eran ciertas y por qué, a través de la historia del siglo XX, muchos seguidores de sus postulados las asumieron como verdad encarnada en sus líderes. Si de Hitler a Mussolini los líderes del fascismo capitalizaron la falsedad como base de su poder, esa historia continúa en el presente: ahora las noticias verdaderas se presentan como fake news y las noticias falsas se convierten en política de gobierno. La 'post verdad', según se demuestra y detalla explícitamente aquí, tiene una larga historia política y un linaje intelectual bien preciso. Compendio vital sobre el momento sombrío que atraviesa la política contemporánea, esta no es solo una aguda historia intelectual del fascismo, sino un recordatorio urgente de la poderosa fuente de odio que subyace a nuestra era de negación de la realidad.

Federico Finchelstein (Author), Ezequiel Alvarez, Ezequiel álvarez (Narrator)

Audiobook

No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies: With an introduction by Arundhati Roy

Brought to you by Penguin. Part memoir, part manifesto, Chamorro climate activist Julian Aguon's No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies is a coming-of-age story and a call for justice-for everyone, but in particular, for Indigenous peoples. Aguon beautifully weaves together stories from his childhood in the villages of Guam with searing political commentary about matters ranging from nuclear weapons to global warming. Bearing witness and reckoning with the challenges of truth-telling in an era of rampant obfuscation, he culls from his own life experiences to illuminate a collective path out of the darkness. A powerful and bold new voice writing at the intersection of Indigenous rights and environmental justice, Aguon is entrenched in the struggles of the people of the Pacific who are fighting to liberate themselves from colonial rule, defend their sacred sites and obtain justice for generations of harm. In No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies, Aguon shares his wisdom and reflections on love, grief, joy and triumph, and extends an offer to join him in a hard-earned hope for a better world. 'A powerful, beautiful book. Its fierce love - of the land, the ocean, the elders and the ancestors - warms the heart and moves the spirit.' - Alice Walker © Julian Aguon 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Julian Aguon (Author), Kevin Shen (Narrator)

Audiobook

American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy

"[Corn is] a great journalist. I love the way he thinks. I love the way he writes. I'm so glad he's done a super-readable, modern history of the right...We just need smart, digestible history about this stuff right now...[AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS] is perfectly timed...Relevant history for where we are right now." -Rachel Maddow, host, The Rachel Maddow Show "With AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS, David Corn 'did the full homework to take us all the way back to where it really begins.'" -Lawrence O'Donnell, host, The Last Word #1 New York Times bestselling author and investigative reporter David Corn tells the wild and harrowing story of the Republican Party's decades-long relationship with far-right extremism, bigotry, and paranoia. A fast-paced, rollicking, behind-the-scenes account of how the GOP since the 1950s has encouraged and exploited extremism, bigotry, and paranoia to gain power, AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS offers readers a brisk, can-you-believe-it journey through the netherworld of far-right irrationality and the Republican Party's interactions with the darkest forces in America. In a compelling and thoroughly-researched narrative, Corn reveals the hidden history of how the Party of Lincoln forged alliances with extremists, kooks, racists, and conspiracy-mongers and fostered fear, anger, and resentment to win elections-and how this led to Donald Trump's triumph and the transformation of the GOP into a Trump personality cult that foments and bolsters the crazy and dangerous excesses of the right. The Trump-incited insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was no aberration. AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS shows it was a continuation of the long and deep-rooted Republican practice of boosting and weaponizing the rage and derangement of the right. The gripping tale in AMERICAN PSYCHOSIS covers the last seven decades. From McCarthyism to the John Birch Society to segregationists to the New Right to the religious right to Rush Limbaugh to Newt Gingrich to the militia movement to Fox News to Sarah Palin to the Tea Party to Trumpism, the Republican Party has deliberately nurtured and exploited rightwing fear and loathing fueled by paranoia, grievance, and tribalism. This powerful and important account explains how one political party has harnessed the worst elements in politics to poison the nation's discourse and threaten American democracy.

David Corn (Author), Steven Jay Cohen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Plagues and Their Aftermath: How Societies Recover from Pandemics

From a plague in Athens during the Peloponnesian War in 430 BCE, to another in 540 that wiped out half the population of the Roman empire, down through the Black Death in the Middle Ages and on through the 1918 flu epidemic (which killed between 50 and 100 million people) and this century's deadly SARS outbreak, plagues have been a much more relentless fact of life than many realize. The legacy of epidemics, Brian Michael Jenkins observes, is not only one of lives lost but of devastated economies and social disorder, all of which have severe political repercussions. Thus, each chapter of Plagues and Their Aftermath draws on those historical precursors to focus on one particular aspect of their aftermath: What happens to political systems? What happens in the area of crime and terrorism? Do wars happen? What are the effects on cultures? What was the impact of widespread fear and public hysteria, of increased suspicion and scapegoating, of the spread of rumors and conspiracy theories? Jenkins's sobering analysis is riveting and thought-provoking listening for general listeners and specialists alike, and throws welcome light into what many fear is a dark future.

Brian Michael Jenkins (Author), Will Tulin (Narrator)

Audiobook

Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control

Where is the line between digital utopia and digital police state? Surveillance State tells the gripping, startling, and detailed story of how China’s Communist Party is building a new kind of political control: shaping the will of the people through the sophisticated—and often brutal—harnessing of data. It is a story born in Silicon Valley and America’s “War on Terror,” and now playing out in alarming ways on China’s remote Central Asian frontier. As a minority separatist movement strains against Party control, China’s leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI. But across the country in the city of Hangzhou, the government is weaving a digital utopia, where technology helps optimize everything from traffic patterns to food safety to emergency response. Award-winning journalists Josh Chin and Liza Lin take listeners on a journey through the new world China is building within its borders, and beyond. Telling harrowing stories of the people and families affected by the Party’s ambitions, Surveillance State reveals a future that is already underway—a new society engineered around the power of digital surveillance. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press.

Josh Chin, Liza Lin (Author), Brian Nishii (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Race to the Top: Structural Racism and How to Fight It

A New Statesman ‘most anticipated title of the year’ 2022 ‘Compelling.’ David Lammy MP A powerful intervention roundly debunking the myth of progress in racial equality — particularly in the workplace — and offering a blueprint for the future. Have you ever wondered why, as Britain becomes more diverse, so many of our leaders come from the same narrow pool? Can it be acceptable in 2022 that there are no ethnic minority chief constables, no CEOs in the top 50 NHS Trusts and no permanent secretaries in the civil service? Nazir Afzal knows what it’s like to break the glass ceiling, challenge prejudice and shake up predominantly white institutions. Born in Birmingham to first generation Pakistani immigrants, he was the first Muslim to be appointed as a Chief Crown Prosecutor and the most senior Muslim lawyer in the Crown Prosecution Service. His insights into the UK’s relationship with race and power have driven him to demand answers to an age old question around Britain’s diversity failings: why does ethnic minority talent continue to be side-lined? Deploying bristling polemic and presenting an ambitious blueprint to unlock Britain’s hidden potential, this book hears from high-profile ethnic minority leaders to discover the hurdles they had to overcome and what changes are needed to make a difference. Containing interviews with leaders across all sectors, Nazir provides the most detailed examination to date of the prejudice holding our leading institutions and industries back. In doing so it forcefully confronts stale leadership orthodoxies and argues that power in Britain does not have to look exactly the same as it always has done. It’s time to welcome the new wave of diverse leadership talent that Britain is crying out for

Nazir Afzal (Author), Nazir Afzal (Narrator)

Audiobook

Saints and Soldiers: Inside Internet-Age Terrorism, From Syria to the Capitol Siege

More than a decade ago, counterterrorism expert Rita Katz began browsing white supremacist and neo-Nazi forums. The hateful rhetoric and constant threats of violence immediately reminded her of jihadist militants, but law enforcement and policy makers barely paid attention to the Far Right. Now, years of attacks committed by extremists radicalized online-including mass murders at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, as well as the Capitol siege-have brought home the danger. How has the internet shaped today's threats, and what do the online origins of these movements reveal about how to stop them? In Saints and Soldiers, Katz reveals a new generation of terrorist movements that don't just use the internet, but exist almost entirely on it. She provides a vivid view from the trenches, spanning edgy video game chat groups to mainstream social media platforms to what ISIS and Far-Right mass-shooters in El Paso, Orlando, and elsewhere unwittingly reveal between the lines of their manifestos. Katz shows how the online cultures of these movements create today's terrorists and shape how they commit 'real world' violence. From ISIS to QAnon, Saints and Soldiers pinpoints the approaches needed for a new era in which arrests and military campaigns alone cannot stop these never-before-seen threats.

Rita Katz (Author), Suzanne Toren (Narrator)

Audiobook

Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber

Named One of 7 Best Nonfiction Books of the Fall by Kirkus Reviews Andy Borowitz, "one of the funniest people in America" (CBS Sunday Morning), brilliantly examines the intellectual deterioration of American politics, from Ronald Reagan to Dan Quayle, from George W. Bush to Sarah Palin, to its apotheosis in Donald J. Trump. The winner of the first-ever National Press Club award for humor, Andy Borowitz has been called a "Swiftian satirist" (The Wall Street Journal) and "one of the country's finest satirists" (The New York Times). Millions of fans and New Yorker readers enjoy his satirical news column "The Borowitz Report." Now, in Profiles in Ignorance, he offers a witty, spot-on diagnosis of our country's political troubles by showing how ignorant leaders are degrading, embarrassing, and endangering our nation. Borowitz argues that over the past fifty years, American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge, and mass media have encouraged the election of ignoramuses by elevating candidates who are better at performing than thinking. Starting with Ronald Reagan's first campaign for governor of California in 1966 and culminating with the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, Borowitz shows how, during the age of twenty-four-hour news and social media, the US has elected politicians to positions of great power whose lack of the most basic information is terrifying. In addition to Reagan, Quayle, Bush, Palin, and Trump, Borowitz covers a host of congresspersons, senators, and governors who have helped lower the bar over the past five decades. Profiles in Ignorance aims to make us both laugh and cry: laugh at the idiotic antics of these public figures, and cry at the cataclysms these icons of ignorance have caused. But most importantly, the book delivers a call to action and a cause for optimism: History doesn't move in a straight line, and we can change course if we act now.

Andy Borowitz (Author), Andy Borowitz (Narrator)

Audiobook

Current Affairs Audiobooks in Politics