General Audiobooks | Science & Technology

The Queen Mother: The Untold Story of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, Who Became Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mot

Packed with stunning revelations, this is the inside story of the Queen Mother from the New York Times bestselling author who first revealed the truth about Princess Diana Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother has been called the "most successful queen since Cleopatra." Her personality was so captivating that even her arch-enemy Wallis Simpson wrote about "her legendary charm." Portrayed as a selfless partner to the King in the Oscar-winning movie The King's Speech, the Queen Mother is most often remembered from her later years as the smiling granny with the pastel hats. When she died in 2002, just short of her 102nd birthday, she was praised for a long life well lived. But there was another side to her story. For the first time, Lady Colin Campbell shows us that the untold life of the Queen Mother is far more fascinating and moving than the official version that has been peddled ever since she became royal in 1923. With unparalleled sources-including members of the Royal Family, aristocrats, and friends and relatives of Elizabeth herself-this mesmerizing account takes us inside the real and sometimes astonishing world of the royal family.

Lady Colin Campbell (Author), Jennifer M. Dixon (Narrator)

Audiobook

Roger Daltrey: Thanks a lot Mr Kibblewhite: My Story

Roger Daltrey is the voice of a generation. That generation was the first to rebel, to step out of the shadows of the Second World War... to invent the concept of the teenager. This is the story from his birth at the height of the Blitz, through tempestuous school days to his expulsion, age 15, for various crimes and misdemeanours within a strict school system. Thanks to Mr Kibblewhite, his authoritarian headmaster, it could all have ended there. The life of a factory worker beckoned. But then came rock and roll. He made his first guitar from factory off-cuts. He formed a band. The band became The Who - Maximum R&B - and, by luck and by sheer bloody-mindedness, Roger Daltrey became the frontman of one of the biggest rock bands on the planet. This is the story of My Generation, Tommy and Quadrophenia, of smashed guitars, exploding drums, cars in swimming pools, fights, arrests and redecorated hotel rooms. But it is also the story of how that post-war generation redefined the rules of youth. Out of that, the modern music industry was born - and it wasn't an easy birth. Money, drugs and youthful exuberance were a dangerous mix. This is as much a story of survival as it is of success. Four years in the making, this is the first time Roger Daltrey has told his story. It is not just his own hilarious and frank account of more than 50 wild years on the road. It is the definitive story of The Who and of the sweeping revolution that was British rock 'n' roll.

Roger Daltrey (Author), Roger Daltrey (Narrator)

Audiobook

Boudica: Warrior Woman of Roman Britain

In AD 60/61, Rome almost lost the province of Britain to a woman. Boudica, wife of the client king Prasutagus, fomented a rebellion that proved catastrophic for Camulodunum (Colchester), Londinium (London), and Verulamium (St. Albans), destroyed part of a Roman legion, and caused the deaths of an untold number of veterans, families, soldiers, and Britons. Yet with one decisive defeat, her vision of freedom was destroyed, and the Iceni never rose again. Boudica: Warrior Woman of Roman Britain introduces listeners to the life and literary importance of Boudica through juxtaposing her different literary characterizations with those of other women and rebel leaders. This study focuses on our earliest literary evidence, the accounts of Tacitus and Cassius Dio, and investigates their narratives alongside material evidence of late Iron Age and early Roman Britain. Throughout the book, Caitlin Gillespie draws comparative sketches between Boudica and the positive and negative examples with which readers associate her, including the prophetess Veleda, the client queen Cartimandua, and the rebel Caratacus. Literary comparisons assist in the understanding of Boudica as a barbarian, queen, mother, commander in war, and leader of revolt.

Caitlin C. Gillespie (Author), Jennifer M. Dixon (Narrator)

Audiobook

Bly vs Bisland: Beating Phileas Fogg in a Race Around The World

Following the publication of Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days in 1873, Americans had an increasing interest in travel. World travel was becoming even easier with the faster steamships of the day. In 1888, Nellie Bly, a feisty, investigative reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World newspaper, pitched a story idea of traveling around the world in 75 days to beat the record achieved by Phileas Fogg, the character in Verne's book. While the editor thought it a great idea, he naturally thought the trip should be made by a man. The idea was shelved for over a year. One day in November 1889, Bly's editor told her the trip against Fogg's time would occur, and she would be the reporter to go - in just two days! She sailed east toward England on 14 November, 1889. The Cosmopolitan was a rival magazine in New York. Not to be outdone by Pulitizer, the Cosmopolitan editors suddenly decided - seemingly within minutes of Bly's departure - to send their own female reporter, Elizabeth Bisland, on a world trip with the intent to return to New York before Bly. Bisland left that evening on a train going west to San Francisco. Both reporters wrote detailed accounts of their journeys. For the first time, their writings have been combined in this book so that a consistent timeline is maintained between both women. The listener can feel the urgency and uniqueness of their travels while fully enjoying the similarities and differences in the authors' styles and their experiences. Who will win the race? Elizabeth Cochrane adopted the name of the Stephen Foster song Nelly Bly as her pen name. This famous song is performed in the credits by noted musicians Vivian and Phil Williams and is used with their gracious permission. You can hear more of their music at VoyagerRecords.com.

Elizabeth Bisland, Nellie Bly (Author), Karen Commins, Melissa Reizian Frank (Narrator)

Audiobook

Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel

Golda Meir was a world figure unlike any other. Born in tsarist Russia in 1898, she immigrated to America in 1906 and grew up in Milwaukee, where from her earliest years she displayed the political consciousness and organizational skills that would eventually catapult her into the inner circles of Israel's founding generation. Moving to mandatory Palestine in 1921 with her husband, the passionate socialist joined a kibbutz but soon left and was hired at a public works office by the man who would become the great love of her life. A series of public service jobs brought her to the attention of David Ben-Gurion, and her political career took off. Fund-raising in America in 1948, secretly meeting in Amman with King Abdullah right before Israel's declaration of independence, mobbed by thousands of Jews in a Moscow synagogue in 1948 as Israel's first representative to the USSR, serving as minister of labor and foreign minister in the 1950s and 1960s, Golda brought fiery oratory, plainspoken appeals, and shrewd deal-making to the cause to which she had dedicated her life-the welfare and security of the State of Israel and its inhabitants. As prime minister, Golda negotiated arms agreements with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and had dozens of clandestine meetings with Jordan's King Hussein in the unsuccessful pursuit of a land-for-peace agreement with Israel's neighbors. But her time in office ended in tragedy, when Israel was caught off guard by Egypt and Syria's surprise attack on Yom Kippur in 1973. Analyzing newly available documents from Israeli government archives, Francine Klagsbrun looks into whether Golda could have prevented that war and whether in its darkest days she contemplated using nuclear force. Resigning in the war's aftermath, she spent her final years keeping a hand in national affairs and bemusedly enjoying international acclaim. Klagsbrun's superbly researched and masterly recounted story of Israel's founding mother gives us a Golda for the ages.

Francine Klagsbrun (Author), Jo Anna Perrin (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Better Me: The Official Autobiography

Gary Barlow is one of the most successful British musicians and songwriters of all time, but fifteen years ago, as he himself admits, he hit rock bottom - he was out of shape, out of work, depressed. Food for him had become an addiction, a means not only of comfort but almost of self-medication as he grappled with the cruel twists of fate of musical stardom. In 2003, as he struggled with the disappointment of an underperforming solo career alongside the tireless media taunts; Gary turned to food. Relentlessly. In the space of nine years he had been on 20 diets in the hopes of a resolution to all his woes. After asking the doctor what the 'cure' for obesity was, it sunk in that he was the only one who could take control of his health. Gary describes this realisation and the task that lay ahead - 'it was like being at the foot of a massive mountain'. So how did he go from an obese, out-of-work and depressed pop icon, to a superstar of music and TV and an accomplished musical songwriter and producer who is full of vitality, fitter, happier and more successful than ever before. What happened? In his extraordinarily honest memoir A Better Me, Gary tells of his journey back to professional success and mental and physical health. From reforming Take That to critical and commercial acclaim and reigniting his own legendary songwriting career; to overcoming his weight problems and crippling obsession with food; to TV judging panel stardom on The X Factor and Let It Shine and at last finding balance in both his personal and professional life. A Better Me is a remarkably frank memoir of Gary's life as he battled with weight, stress, fitness and depression, and staged one of the most thrilling professional comebacks in years. In his warm, witty and authentic voice, he recounts his story with compelling insight, captivating honesty and a human side that people rarely see. Here is one of the UK's most beloved pop stars open, honest and raw and as we've never seen him before. 'This is the book I wished I'd had to turn to.' Gary Barlow

Gary Barlow (Author), Gary Barlow (Narrator)

Audiobook

Places I Stopped on the Way Home: A Memoir of Chaos and Grace

Sometimes I think of how I will describe New York to my children. I will tell them that the city was in so many ways, and for such a long time, the best and worst thing about my life. That it was a sort of perpetual question in pursuit of an answer. And that in attempting to answer it, I turned and faced myself. In Places I Stopped on the Way Home, Meg Fee plots a decade of her life in New York City- from falling in love at the Lincoln Center to escaping the roommate (and bedbugs) from hell on Thompson Street, from chasing false promises on 66th Street and the wrong men everywhere to finding true friendships over glasses of wine in Harlem and Greenwich Village. Weaving together her joys and sorrows, expectations and uncertainties, aspirations and realities, the result is an exhilarating collection of essays about love and friendship, failure and suffering, and above all hope. Join Meg on her heart-wrenching journey, as she cuts the difficult path to finding herself and finding home.

Meg Fee (Author), Allyson Ryan (Narrator)

Audiobook

Lo que no tiene nombre

¿Hasta dónde puede llegar la literatura? En este libro dedicado a la vida y la muerte de su hijo Daniel, Piedad Bonnett alcanza con las palabras los lugares más extremos de la existencia. La naturalidad y la extrañeza conviven en sus páginas igual que en su mirada conviven la sequedad de la inteligencia y el latido más intenso de la emoción. Buscar respuestas es sólo un modo de hacerse preguntas, de negociar con las preguntas, de saber cuántas preguntas caben en una obsesión. La crítica ha dicho... «Yo he aprendido con este libro despiadado de Piedad, que no hay consuelo. Y que sin embargo vale la pena escribir que no hay consolación. ¿Por qué vale la pena? Creo que vale la pena de decirse, de escribirse, porque es verdad.» Héctor Abad Faciolince «¿Hasta dónde puede llegar la literatura? En este libro dedicado a la vida y la muerte de su hijo Daniel, Piedad Bonnett alcanza con las palabras los lugares más extremos de la existencia. La naturalidad y la extrañeza conviven en sus páginas igual que en su mirada conviven la sequedad de la inteligencia y el latido más intenso de la emoción. Buscar respuestas es un modo de hacerse preguntas. También es una forma de seguir cuidando al hijo más allá de la muerte. La gran literatura convierte la historia personal en una experiencia humana colectiva. Por eso este libro habla de la fragilidad de cualquier vida y de la necesidad de seguir viviendo.» Luis García Montero «El dolor de la madre es aquí, por desgracia y también por milagro, tan infinito como el oficio de la escritora. Su doliente serenidad para nombrar lo innombrable, para narrar la peor de las pérdidas, provoca una admiración que es, a partes iguales, de índole personal y estética. 'El pensamiento no se acalla', leemos. Tampoco la literatura, capaz de llegar allí donde la vida nos silencia. Lúcida ante cada palabra que pronuncia en estas páginas de terrible belleza, ante la delicadeza de su herida, Piedad Bonnett nos incorpora conmovedoramente a su familia.» Andrés Neuman «Un testimonio demoledor del hecho más doloroso que una mujer puede imaginar para su vida, escrito con la pluma pesada y pudorosa que sólo puede tener quien se sabe vencida por los demonios pero aún nos mira desde los ojos de sus ángeles. Me da terror y me angustia sentir que este libro es bello, pero eso es: un libro de una belleza notable, ahogada y triste, muda de música, pero tan real como la vida misma.» Pablo Ramos «La vida, la muerte y la literatura se mezclan de una manera dramática en este extraordinario testimonio en el que Piedad Bonnett vuelca su verdad más íntima y su destreza creativa.» Mario Vargas Llosa «Un libro abrasador, valiente hasta la violencia, extraordinario. Piedad Bonnett escribe desde el abismo e ilumina las sombras con un texto penetrante e imprescindible.» Rosa Montero

Piedad Bonnett (Author), Victoria De Hoyos (Narrator)

Audiobook

Any Ordinary Day: Blindsides, Resilience and What Happens After the Worst Day of Your Life

As a journalist, Leigh Sales often encounters people experiencing the worst moments of their lives in the full glare of the media. But one particular string of bad news stories - and a terrifying brush with her own mortality - sent her looking for answers about how vulnerable each of us is to a life-changing event. What are our chances of actually experiencing one? What do we fear most and why? And when the worst does happen, what comes next? In this wise and layered book, Leigh talks intimately with people who've faced the unimaginable, from terrorism to natural disaster to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Expecting broken lives, she instead finds strength, hope, even humour. Leigh brilliantly condenses the cutting-edge research on the way the human brain processes fear and grief, and poses the questions we too often ignore out of awkwardness. Along the way, she offers an unguarded account of her own challenges and what she's learned about coping with life's unexpected blows. Warm, candid and empathetic, this book is about what happens when ordinary people, on ordinary days, are forced to suddenly find the resilience most of us don't know we have.

Leigh Sales (Author), Leigh Sales (Narrator)

Audiobook

I Know My Way Memoir: Always Remember to Color the Sky Blue

Who was Theresa Marafito? Theresa Marafito, daughter of Irish immigrant parents, was born in 1933 in New York City, blind in one eye with partial vision in the other. She was a precocious child who wanted to appear "normal" to her peers and family, regardless of her disability. Her game was to be independent, not dependent and would rarely ask for help. At nineteen she graduated magna cum laude with two master's degrees. Theresa and her husband Jerry, who was also visually impaired, would build a house on a shoestring budget and had two daughters; one who was also born visually impaired. Despite the laughter and happiness that was ever present in their home and business serving the public, Theresa's marriage was strong enough to endure one operation after another in a desperate attempt to keep her from becoming totally blind, plus the horror of watching her infant daughter's agony of being put under the knife. In late 1986, Theresa's perfect world came to a crashing halt when her soul mate Jerry lost his life to cancer. She was so devastated that she poured her heart out on an old manual typewriter trying to capture all of her precious memories. It was after her very tragic death in 2008 that the notes were found and became the starting point of this memoir. Linda, as daughter and Copywriter for several years, knew it would be a great pleasure to capture the essence of her mother's life in this memoir, and help the sighted world to have a better picture of a typical family model with the difficulties of living with visually impaired members. She was up to the task of explaining the level of emotion needed to convey the tension at every turn because she is now almost blind herself, and lost her first husband to cancer as well. Linda Odubayo Thompson

Linda Odubayo Thompson, Linda Odubayo Thompson Theresa Marafito, Rita Pardue, Theresa Marafito (Author), Rita Pardue (Narrator)

Audiobook

Det blir inte alltid som man tänkt sig

How fragile is life? It sometimes doesn't really get as you have imagined. I was seconds away from losing my daughter at the end of pregnancy. From that moment on, life was turned upside down. It took many years before the health care system understood what had actually happened to me. The journey of the past 14 years with an acquired brain injury and also defeated cancer is tough for a happy 3 child's mother. A genuine and open story about a journey with crisis, despair, sorrow, near death experiences, about life's challenges and how to slowly adapt to a new life as a human and a mother.

Ann-Christine Broberg Piller (Author), Ann-Christine Broberg Piller (Narrator)

Audiobook

Mein bester Freund Bob - Was ich vom Streuner über das Glück gelernt habe (Ungekürzt)

'Was ich an Bob von Anfang an so besonders fand, ist die selbst für eine Katze ungewöhnliche Weisheit, die er ausstrahlt. Und in den zehn Jahren, die wir uns nun schon kennen, ist er - zumindest in meinen Augen - immer noch klüger und weiser geworden. Dieses Buch versammelt alles, was ich von Bob in dieser Zeit gelernt habe: Was macht wahre Freundschaft aus? Was brauchen wir eigentlich, um glücklich zu sein? Und wie holt man das Beste aus dem Leben? All das machen uns Katzen vor, und ganz besonders Bob ist ein Meister darin. Wir müssen uns nur die Zeit nehmen, hinzuschauen.' - James Bowen Die Geschichte hinter diesem Buch: Im Frühling 2007 traf der Straßenmusiker James in seinem Hausflur im Norden Londons auf einen zerzausten, verletzten Kater. Er nahm ihn auf, pflegte ihn gesund und nannte ihn Bob. Niemand konnte ahnen, dass dies der Beginn einer großen Freundschaft war, die beider Leben auf den Kopf stellte. Die Geschichte ihrer Freundschaft wurde als 'Bob, der Streuner' zum Welt-Bestseller, 'Bob und wie er die Welt sah', 'Ein Geschenk von Bob', Kinder- und Jugendbücher sowie ein Kinofilm folgten. Seither gehen die beiden ungleichen Freunde gemeinsam durch dick und dünn.

James Bowen (Author), Carlos Lobo (Narrator)

Audiobook

General Audiobooks in Science & Technology