Politics Audiobooks | LoveReading

Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance

Continuing his groundbreaking analysis of economic structures, Douglass North develops an analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies.Institutions exist due to the uncertainties involved in human interaction; they are the constraints devised to structure that interaction. Yet, institutions vary widely in their consequences for economic performance; some economies develop institutions that produce growth and development, while others develop institutions that produce stagnation. North first explores the nature of institutions and explains the role of transaction and production costs in their development. The second part of the book deals with institutional change. Institutions create the incentive structure in an economy, and organizations will be created to take advantage of the opportunities provided within a given institutional framework. North argues that the kinds of skills and knowledge fostered by the structure of an economy will shape the direction of change and gradually alter the institutional framework. He then explains how institutional development may lead to a path-dependent pattern of development. In the final part of the book, North explains the implications of this analysis for economic theory and economic history.

Douglass C. North (Author), Mike Chamberlain (Narrator)

Audiobook

Moving Forward: A Story of Hope, Hard Work, and the Promise of America

Most political origin stories have the same backbone. A bright young person starts reading the Washington Post in elementary school. She skips school to see a presidential candidate. In middle school she canvasses door-to-door. The story can be intimidating. It reinforces the feeling that politics is a closed system: if you weren’t participating in debate club, the Young Democrats and Model UN you have no chance. Karine Jean-Pierre’s story breaks the mold. In Moving Forward, she tells how she got involved, showing how politics can be accessible to anyone, no matter their background. In today’s political climate, the need for all of us to participate has never been more crucial. This book is her call to arms for those who know that now is the time for us to act. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Karine Jean-Pierre (Author), Karine Jean-Pierre (Narrator)

Audiobook

All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change

All Hell Breaking Loose is an eye-opening examination of climate change from the perspective of the U.S. military. The Pentagon, unsentimental and politically conservative, might not seem likely to be worried about climate change-still linked, for many people, with polar bears and coral reefs. Yet of all the major institutions in American society, none take climate change as seriously as the U.S. military. Both as participants in climate-triggered conflicts abroad, and as first responders to hurricanes and other disasters on American soil, the armed services are already confronting the impacts of global warming. The military now regards climate change as one of the top threats to American national security-and is busy developing strategies to cope with it. Drawing on previously obscure reports and government documents, renowned security expert Michael Klare shows that the U.S. military sees the climate threat as imperiling the country on several fronts at once. Droughts and food shortages are stoking conflicts in ethnically divided nations, with "climate refugees" producing worldwide havoc. Pandemics and other humanitarian disasters will increasingly require extensive military involvement. The melting Arctic is creating new seaways to defend. And rising seas threaten American cities and military bases themselves. While others still debate the causes of global warming, the Pentagon is intensely focused on its effects. Its response makes it clear that where it counts, the immense impact of climate change is not in doubt.

Michael T. Klare (Author), Richard Poe (Narrator)

Audiobook

Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity

Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he cofounded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem. You'll learn why inducing growth and development has been the conventional response to urban financial struggles-and why it just doesn't work. New development and high-risk investing don't generate enough wealth to support itself, and cities continue to struggle. Listen to this book to find out how cities large and small can focus on bottom-up investments to minimize risk and maximize their ability to strengthen the community financially and improve citizens' quality of life. Strong Towns acknowledges that there is a problem with the American approach to growth and shows community leaders a new way forward. The Strong Towns response is a revolution in how we assemble the places we live.

Charles L. Marohn Jr., Charles L. Marohn, Jr., Jr. Charles L. Marohn (Author), Matthew Boston (Narrator)

Audiobook

Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, Ohio's Sherrod Brown has sat on the Senate floor at a mahogany desk with a proud history. In Desk 88, he tells the story of eight of the Senators who were there before him. Despite their flaws and frequent setbacks, each made a decisive contribution to the creation of a more just America. They range from Hugo Black, who helped to lift millions of American workers out of poverty, to Robert F. Kennedy, whose eyes were opened by an undernourished Mississippi child and who then spent the rest of his life afflicting the comfortable. Brown revives forgotten figures such as Idaho's Glen Taylor, a singing cowboy who taught himself economics and stood up to segregationists, and offers new insights into George McGovern, who fought to feed the poor around the world even amid personal and political calamities. He also writes about Herbert Lehman of New York, Al Gore Sr. of Tennessee, Theodore Francis Green of Rhode Island, and William Proxmire of Wisconsin. Together, these eight portraits in political courage tell a story about the triumphs and failures of the Progressive idea over the past century: in the 1930s and 1960s, and more intermittently since, politicians and the public have successfully fought against entrenched special interests and advanced the cause of economic or racial fairness. Today, these advances are in peril as employers shed their responsibilities to employees and communities, and a U.S. president gives cover to bigotry. But the Progressive idea is not dead. Recalling his own career, Brown dramatizes the hard work and high ideals required to renew the social contract and create a new era in which Americans of all backgrounds can know the "Dignity of Work."

Sherrod Brown (Author), Leon Nixon, Sherrod Brown (Narrator)

Audiobook

Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law

This program includes recorded conversations between Jeffrey Rosen and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In this audiobook, Ruth Bader Ginsburg offers an intimate look at her life and career, through an extraordinary series of conversations with the head of the National Constitution Center. Conversations with RBG is a remarkable and unique audiobook, an informal portrait of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, drawing on a series of her conversations with Jeffrey Rosen, starting in the 1990s and continuing through the Trump era. Rosen, a veteran legal journalist, scholar, and president of the National Constitution Center, shares with us the justice's observations on a variety of topics, and her intellect, compassion, sense of humor, and humanity shine through. The affection they have for each other as friends is apparent in their banter and in their shared love for the Constitution and for opera. With Justice Ginsburg's approval, Rosen has collected her wisdom from their many conversations in which she discusses the future of the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade, her favorite dissents, the cases she would most like to see overruled, the #MeToo movement, how to be a good listener, how to lead a productive and compassionate life. These frank exchanges illuminate the steely determination, self-mastery, and wit that have inspired women and men of all ages to embrace the "Notorious RBG." Whatever the topic, Justice Ginsburg always has something interesting-and often surprising-to say. And while few of us will ever have the opportunity to chat with her face-to-face, Jeffrey Rosen brings us by her side as never before. Conversations with RBG is a deeply felt portrait of an American hero.

Jeffrey Rosen (Author), Peter Ganim, Suzanne Toren (Narrator)

Audiobook

The RBG Way: The Secrets of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Success

Given her incredible tenure as a Supreme Court justice as well as her monumental impact on the modern women's rights movement, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become one of the most prominent political leaders of today. To complement her judicial significance, she has also become one of the most culturally popular political figures in US history. Not only has her workout routine gone viral (and been detailed in a book by her trainer), but RBG's story has been featured in multiple critically acclaimed films. Organized into three parts and then broken down into more specific chapters within each part, The RBG Way offers wisdom from Justice Ginsburg, based on comments she has made on particular topics of importance. Insight is offered on subjects such as women's rights, creating lasting partnerships, overcoming hardship, how to be brave, and how to create lasting change. Rebecca Gibian offers her seasoned journalistic perspective to shed light on beliefs that RBG holds strongly, in a manner that is both comprehensive and accessible.

Rebecca Gibian (Author), Jo Anna Perrin (Narrator)

Audiobook

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers

'Sandworm is much more than a true-life techno-thriller. It's a tour through a realm that is both invisible and critical to the daily lives of every person alive in the 21st century.' -Los Angeles Times From Wired senior writer Andy Greenberg comes the true story of the most devastating cyberattack in history and the desperate hunt to identify and track the elite Russian agents behind it In 2014, the world witnessed the start of a mysterious series of cyberattacks. Targeting American utility companies, NATO, and electric grids in Eastern Europe, the strikes grew ever more brazen. They culminated in the summer of 2017, when the malware known as NotPetya was unleashed, penetrating, disrupting, and paralyzing some of the world's largest businesses-from drug manufacturers to software developers to shipping companies. At the attack's epicenter in Ukraine, ATMs froze. The railway and postal systems shut down. Hospitals went dark. NotPetya spread around the world, inflicting an unprecedented ten billion dollars in damage-the largest, most destructive cyberattack the world had ever seen. The hackers behind these attacks are quickly gaining a reputation as the most dangerous team of cyberwarriors in history: a group known as Sandworm. Working in the service of Russia's military intelligence agency, they represent a persistent, highly skilled force, one whose talents are matched by their willingness to launch broad, unrestrained attacks on the most critical infrastructure of their adversaries. They target government and private sector, military and civilians alike. A chilling, globe-spanning detective story, Sandworm considers the danger this force poses to our national security and stability. As the Kremlin's role in foreign government manipulation comes into greater focus, Sandworm exposes the realities not just of Russia's global digital offensive, but of an era where warfare ceases to be waged on the battlefield. It reveals how the lines between digital and physical conflict, between wartime and peacetime, have begun to blur-with world-shaking implications.

Andy Greenberg (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

Audiobook

World Peace: (And How We Can Achieve It)

The motives, rationales, and impulses that give rise to war-the quest for survival, enrichment, solidarity, and glory-are now better satisfied through peaceful means, war is an increasingly anachronistic practice, more likely to impoverish and harm us humans than satisfy and protect us. This book shows that we already have many of the institutions and practices needed to make peace possible and sets out an agenda for building world peace. In the immediate term, World Peace shows how steps to strengthen compliance with international law, improve collective action such as international peacekeeping and peacebuilding, better regulate the flow of arms, and hold individuals legally accountable for acts of aggression or atrocity crimes can make our world more peaceful. It also shows how in the long term, building strong and legitimate states that protect the rights and secure the livelihoods of their people, gender equal societies, and protecting the right of individuals to opt-out of wars has the potential to establish and sustain world peace. But it will only happen, if individuals organize to make it happen.

Alex J. Bellamy (Author), Tom Bromhead (Narrator)

Audiobook

Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us

This is the book that the leftist elites don't want you to read -- Donald Trump, Jr., exposes all the tricks that the left uses to smear conservatives and push them out of the public square, from online 'shadow banning' to rampant 'political correctness.' In Triggered, Donald Trump, Jr. will expose all the tricks that the left uses to smear conservatives and push them out of the public square, from online 'shadow banning' to fake accusations of 'hate speech.' No topic is spared from political correctness. This is the book that the leftist elites don't want you to read! Trump, Jr. will write about the importance of fighting back and standing up for what you believe in. From his childhood summers in Communist Czechoslovakia that began his political thought process, to working on construction sites with his father, to the major achievements of President Trump's administration, Donald Trump, Jr. spares no details and delivers a book that focuses on success and perseverance, and proves offense is the best defense.

Donald Trump (Author), Donald Trump, James Edward Thomas (Narrator)

Audiobook

With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace

This program is read by the author. A revealing, dramatic, deeply personal audiobook about the most significant events of our time, by the former United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Nikki Haley is widely admired for her forthright manner ("With all due respect, I don't get confused"), her sensitive approach to tragic events, and her confident representation of America's interests as our Ambassador to the United Nations during times of crisis and consequence. In this audiobook, Haley offers a first-hand perspective on major national and international matters, as well as a behind-the-scenes account of her tenure in the Trump administration. This audiobook reveals a woman who can hold her own-and better-in domestic and international power politics, a diplomat who is unafraid to take a principled stand even when it is unpopular, and a leader who seeks to bring Americans together in divisive times.

Nikki R. Haley (Author), Nikki R. Haley (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Plot to Betray America: How Team Trump Embraced Our Enemies, Compromised Our Security, and How W

AN EXPLOSIVE , REVELATORY ASSESSMENT OF THE GREATEST BETRAYAL IN AMERICAN HISTORY William Barr · Paul Manafort · Michael Cohen · Steve Bannon · Rudy Giuliani · Mitch McConnell · Roger Stone · George Papadopoulos · Jeff Sessions · And More! When former FBI Director Robert Mueller III was assigned to the Special Counsel investigation looking into the possibility of Russian interference in the 2016 US election, many Americans felt relieved. But when the report was delivered in April 2019, it was clear that the case was far from closed-and pinning Trump down on conspiracy charges was going to be a lot more difficult than it had first seemed. In The Plot to Betray America, Malcolm Nance, New York Times bestselling author and renowned intelligence expert, reveals exactly how Trump and his inner circle conspired, coordinated, communicated, and eventually strategized to commit the greatest act of treachery in the history of the United States: compromisingthe presidential oath of office in exchange for power and personal enrichment. Seduced by the promises of riches dangled in front of them by Vladimir Putin, the Trump administration eagerly decided to reap the rewards of the plan to put a Kremlin-friendly crony in the Oval Office. And instead of interfering, the Republican Party's faithful William Barr, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Mitch McConnell, Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos, and Jeff Sessions among others did everything they could to facilitate Trump's damage to national security to fill his own pockets. Through in-depth research and interviews with intelligence experts and insiders, Nance charts Trump's deep financial ties to Russia through his family's investments, including those of Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner, and the corrupt behavior of his other double-crossing pro-Moscow associates. Only by untangling the spider web of personal and financial relationships linking the White House to the Kremlin can we start to free ourselves from the constricting clutches of our foreign adversaries and work to rebuild our fractured nation. In this geopolitical page-turner, The Plot to Betray America ultimately sketches the tracks and blueprint of the Trump administration's conspiracy against our country-and how we can still fight to defend democracy, protect our national security, and save the Constitution.

Malcolm Nance (Author), Oliver Wyman (Narrator)

Audiobook