Politics Audiobooks | LoveReading

China's Leaders: From Mao to Now Audiobook

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China over seventy years ago, five paramount leaders have shaped the fates and fortunes of the nation and the ruling Chinese Communist Party: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. Under their leaderships, China has undergone an extraordinary transformation from an undeveloped and insular country to a comprehensive world power. In this definitive study, renowned Sinologist David Shambaugh offers a refreshing account of China's dramatic post-revolutionary history through the prism of those who ruled it. Exploring the persona, formative socialization, psychology, and professional experiences of each leader, Shambaugh shows how their differing leadership styles and tactics of rule shaped China domestically and internationally: Mao was a populist tyrant, Deng a pragmatic Leninist, Jiang a bureaucratic politician, Hu a technocratic apparatchik, and Xi a modern emperor. Covering the full scope of these leaders' personalities and power, this is an illuminating guide to China's modern history and understanding how China has become the superpower of today.

David Shambaugh (Author), Nancy Wu (Narrator)

Audiobook

Insurrection: Rebellion, Civil Rights, and the Paradoxical State of Black Citizenship

The little-known and under-studied 1807 Insurrection Act was passed to give the president the ability to deploy federal military forces to fend off lawlessness and rebellion, but it soon became much more than the sum of its parts. Its power is integrally linked to the perceived threat of black American equity in what lawyer and critic Hawa Allan demonstrates is a dangerous paradox. While the Act was initially used to repress rebellion against slavery, during Reconstruction it was invoked by President Grant to quell white-supremacist uprisings in the South. During the civil rights movement, it enabled the protection of black students who attended previously segregated educational institutions. Most recently, the Insurrection Act has been the vehicle for presidents to call upon federal troops to suppress so-called 'race riots' like those in Los Angeles in 1992, and for them to threaten to do so in other cases of racial justice activism. Allan's distinctly literary voice underscores her paradigm-shifting reflections on the presence of fear and silence in history and their shadowy impact on the law. Throughout, she draws revealing insight from her own experiences as one of the only black girls in her leafy Long Island suburb, as a black lawyer at a predominantly white firm, and as a thinker about the use and misuse of appeals to law and order.

Hawa Allan (Author), Hawa Allan (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution

A vivid and intimate account of the Ukrainian Revolution, the rare moment when the political became the existential What is worth dying for? While the world watched the uprising on the Maidan as an episode in geopolitics, those in Ukraine during the extraordinary winter of 2013-14 lived the revolution as an existential transformation: the blurring of night and day, the loss of a sense of time, the sudden disappearance of fear, the imperative to make choices. In this lyrical and intimate book, Marci Shore evokes the human face of the Ukrainian Revolution. Grounded in the true stories of activists and soldiers, parents, and children, Shore's book blends a narrative of suspenseful choices with a historian's reflections on what revolution is and what it means. She gently sets her portraits of individual revolutionaries against the past as they understand it-and the future as they hope to make it. In so doing, she provides a lesson about human solidarity in a world, our world, where the boundary between reality and fiction is ever more effaced.

Marci Shore (Author), Callie Beaulieu (Narrator)

Audiobook

Republics of Myth: National Narratives and the US-Iran Conflict

Why does the rift between the US and Iran persist? Iran and the United States have been at odds for forty years, locked in a cold war that has run the gamut. In Republics of Myth, Hussein Banai, Malcolm Byrne, and John Tirman argue that a major contributing factor to this tenacious enmity is how each nation views itself. Their often-deadly confrontation derives from the very different national narratives that shape their politics, actions, and vision of their own destiny in the world. The dominant American narrative is the myth of the frontier-that the US can tame it, tame its inhabitants, and nurture democracy as well. Iran, conversely, can claim two dominant myths: the first, an unbroken (but not for lack of trying) lineage back to Cyrus the Great, and the second, the betrayal of Imam Hussein, the Prophet's grandson. From the coup d'etat that overthrew Iran's legitimate premier Mohammad Mosaddeq to the hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq War, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, post-9/11 antagonisms, each episode illustrates anew the weight of historical narratives on present circumstances. Republics of Myth makes a major contribution to understanding this vital conflict.

Hussein Banai, John Tirman, Malcolm Byrne (Author), Chris Sorensen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Corruption: A History of Criminals, Rapists, Murderers, and Dictators

This combo book contains information about the following individuals: Al Capone Charles Manson Edmund Kemper Jack the Ripper Lizzie Borden Pablo Escobar Ted Bundy Adolf Eichmann Benito Mussolini Enver Pasha Francisco Pizarro Josef Mengele Oliver Cromwell Paul Joseph Goebbels Pol Pot Robespierre Rudolf Hoess Torquemada

Kelly Mass (Author), Chris Newman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Evil History: Warlords, Criminals, Dictators, and Murderers

This is a massive combo with 26 audiobooks! You'll find biographies of the following people in here: 1 Alexander the Great 2 Attila the Hun 3 Genghis Khan 4 Hannibal Barca 5 Napoleon Bonaparte 6 Suleiman the Magnificent 7 Vlad the Impaler 8 William the Conqueror 9 Adolf Eichmann 10 Benito Mussolini 11 Enver Pasha 12 Francisco Pizarro 13 Josef Mengele 14 Oliver Cromwell 15 Paul Joseph Goebbels 16 Pol Pot 17 Robespierre 18 Rudolf Hoess 19 Torquemada 20 Al Capone 21 Charles Manson 22 Edmund Kemper 23 Jack the Ripper 24 Lizzie Borden 25 Pablo Escobar 26 Ted Bundy

Kelly Mass (Author), Chris Newman, Doug Greene (Narrator)

Audiobook

Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System

From CSI to Forensic Files to the celebrated reputation of the FBI crime lab, forensic scientists have long been mythologized in American popular culture as infallible crime solvers. Juries put their faith in "expert witnesses" and innocent people have been executed as a result. Innocent people are still on death row today, condemned by junk science. In 2012, the Innocence Project began searching for prisoners convicted by junk science, and three men, each convicted of capital murder, became M. Chris Fabricant's clients. Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System chronicles the fights to overturn their wrongful convictions and to end the use of the "science" that destroyed their lives. Weaving together courtroom battles from Mississippi to Texas to New York City and beyond, Fabricant takes the reader on a journey into the heart of a broken, racist system of justice and the role forensic science plays in maintaining the status quo. At turns gripping, enraging, illuminating, and moving, Junk Science is a meticulously researched insider's perspective of the American criminal justice system. Previously untold stories of wrongful executions, corrupt prosecutors, and quackery masquerading as science animate Fabricant's true crime narrative.

M. Chris Fabricant (Author), Chris Henry Coffey (Narrator)

Audiobook

Capitalism and Slavery

Brought to you by Penguin. Arguing that the slave trade was at the heart of Britain's economic progress, Eric Williams's landmark 1944 study revealed the connections between capitalism and racism, and has influenced generations of historians ever since. Williams traces the rise and fall of the Atlantic slave trade through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to show how it laid the foundations of the Industrial Revolution, and how racism arose as a means of rationalising an economic decision. Most significantly, he showed how slavery was only abolished when it ceased to become financially viable, exploding the myth of emancipation as a mark of Britain's moral progress. 'It's often said that books are compulsory reading, but this book really is compulsory. You cannot understand slavery, or British Empire, without it' Sathnam Sanghera 'Its thesis is a starting point for a new generation of scholarship' New Yorker © Eric Williams 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Eric Williams (Author), William Andrew Quinn (Narrator)

Audiobook

Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch

“Savagery appeased can only grow. Once you give in to it, it must escalate, like a fire searching for air.” The man who won the Pulitzer Prize for GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, who wrote the classic films THE VERDICT and WAG THE DOG sounds his alarm about the Visigoths at our gates. In RECESSIONAL he calls out, skewers, mocks, and, most importantly, dissects the virus of conformity which is now an existential threat to the West. A broad-ranging journey through history, the Bible, and literature, RECESSIONAL examines how politics and cultural attitudes about rebellion have shifted in the United States in the last generation. By screaming down freedom of thought and expression, Mamet explains, we kill invention and democracy – the foundations of security and growth. A wickedly funny, wistful and wry appeal to the free-thinking citizen, RECESSIONAL is a vital warning that if we don’t confront the cultural thuggery now, the commissars and their dupes will transform the Land of the Free into the dictatorship at which they aim.

David Mamet (Author), Jim Frangione (Narrator)

Audiobook

Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace

Brought to you by Penguin. An acclaimed expert on violence and seasoned peacebuilder explains the five reasons why conflict (rarely) blooms into war, and how to interrupt that deadly process. It's easy to overlook the underlying strategic forces of war, to see it solely as a series of errors, accidents, and emotions gone awry. It's also easy to forget that war shouldn't happen-and most of the time it doesn't. Around the world there are millions of hostile rivalries, yet only a tiny fraction erupt into violence. Too many accounts of conflict forget this. With a counterintuitive approach, Blattman reminds us that most rivals loathe one another in peace. That's because war is too costly to fight. Enemies almost always find it better to split the pie than spoil it or struggle over thin slices. So, in those rare instances when fighting ensues, we should ask: what kept rivals from compromise? Why We Fight draws on decades of economics, political science, psychology, and real-world interventions to lay out the root causes and remedies for war, showing that violence is not the norm; that there are only five reasons why conflict wins over compromise; and how peacemakers turn the tides through tinkering, not transformation. From warring states to street gangs, ethnic groups and religious sects to political factions, there are common dynamics to heed and lessons to learn. Along the way, we meet vainglorious European monarchs, African dictators, Indian mobs, Nazi pilots, British football hooligans, ancient Greeks, and fanatical Americans. What of remedies that shift incentives away from violence and get parties back to deal-making? Societies are surprisingly good at interrupting and ending violence when they want to-even the gangs of Medellín, Columbia do it. Realistic and optimistic, this is book that lends new meaning to the old adage, 'Give peace a chance.' © Christopher Blattman 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Christopher Blattman (Author), Landon Woodson (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Age of The Strongman: How the Cult of the Leader Threatens Democracy around the World

Brought to you by Penguin. In The Age of the Strongman, Gideon Rachman finds global coherence in the chaos of the new nationalism, leadership cults and hostility to liberal democracy. We are in a new era: authoritarian leaders have become a central feature of global politics. Since 2000, self-styled strongmen have risen to power in capitals as diverse as Moscow, Beijing, Delhi, Brasilia, Budapest, Ankara, Riyadh and Washington. These leaders are nationalists and social conservatives, with little tolerance for minorities, dissent or the interests of foreigners. At home, they claim to be standing up for ordinary people against globalist elites; abroad, they posture as the embodiments of their nations. And everywhere they go, they encourage a cult of personality. What's more, these leaders are not just operating in authoritarian political systems but have begun to emerge in the heartlands of liberal democracy. While in the West the EU referendum and the election of Donald Trump in 2016 mark a watershed, the new era started at the beginning of the new millennium, when Vladimir Putin took power in Russia. How and why did this new style of strongman leadership arrive? How likely is it to lead the world into war or economic collapse? And what liberal forces are in place not only to keep these strongmen in check but to reverse the trend? From Trump, Putin and Bolsonaro to Erdogan, Xi and Modi, Gideon Rachman pays full attention to the strongman phenomenon around the world and uncovers the complex and often surprising interaction between these leaders. Whilst others have tried to understand the emergence of these new leaders individually, The Age of the Strongman provides the first truly global treatment of the new nationalism, underpinned by an exceptional level of access to key actors in this drama: Gideon Rachman has been in the same room with most of these strongmen and reported from their countries over a long journalistic career. © Gideon Rachman 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Gideon Rachman (Author), Gideon Rachman, John Hopkins (Narrator)

Audiobook

Enough: The Violence Against Women and How to End It

‘An urgent and vital call to arms that compassionately and forensically exposes the many ways criminal justice fails women, and offers practical and clear-sighted solutions’ THE SECRET BARRISTER This is a book that calls time on the endless tide of violence against women and the failures of our criminal justice system to respond. From barrister Harriet Johnson, Enough lays bare the appalling status quo of abuse against women in our society, offering an irrefutable case for why change is needed in policing and justice. Most vitally, it also gives a manifesto for how to get there. With expertise, clear-sightedness and appropriate fury, this book helps us see where women are suffering – from homicide to domestic abuse to street harassment. It exposes the ways the criminal justice system lets women down – from officers failing to properly investigate to a lack of consequences when police behaviour is unacceptable, to backlogged courts and the realities of convincing a jury. Addressing misogyny is to everyone’s benefit and the answers aren’t simple. Enough is the call to arms we can – and must – all get behind.

Harriet Johnson (Author), Harriet Johnson (Narrator)

Audiobook