General Audiobooks | Science & Technology

City of Lies: Love, Sex, Death, and the Search for Truth in Tehran

Ramita Navai gives voice to ordinary Iranians forced to live extraordinary lives: the porn star, the aging socialite, the assassin and enemy of the state who ends up working for the Republic, the dutiful housewife who files for divorce, and the old-time thug running a gambling den. In today's Tehran, intrigues abound and survival depends on an intricate network of falsehoods: mullahs visit prostitutes, local mosques train barely pubescent boys in crowd-control tactics, and cosmetic surgeons promise to restore girls' virginity. Navai paints an intimate portrait of those discreet recesses in a city where the difference between modesty and profanity, loyalty and betrayal, honor and disgrace is often no more than the believability of a lie.

Ramita Navai (Author), Sylvia Lisle (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cioran: Manual de antiayuda

El filósofo y escritor rumano Emil Cioran fue un escritor de aforismos contradictorios, amargos, irónicos, líricos y potentes sobre los temas más diversos: la alienación humana, el pecado original, el sentido trágico de la historia, el fin de la civilización, la negativa del consuelo de la fe, la obsesión por la vida eterna, el exilio, los totalitarismos, etc. Detestó nacer y tener que enfrentarse a la vida, pero leyó, se cultivó y no dejó de trasladar sus ideas para inducir a la reflexión. «Cioran: Manual de antiayuda» no es un ensayo ni una biografía ni una novela, es todo ello, mezclado con humor e inteligencia por Alberto Domínguez para sintetizar y exponer el pensamiento de Cioran, el pensador pesimista por excelencia. Este audiolibro está narrado en castellano. - Alberto Domínguez nació en Mataró (Barcelona) en 1975. Se licenció en Filosofía en la Universidad de Barcelona y ha colaborado en diversas publicaciones. «Cioran: Manual de antiayuda» es su primer libro.

Alberto Domínguez (Author), Richard Del Olmo (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, and the Price of a Vision

The director Michael Cimino (1939-2016) is famous for two films: the intense, powerful, and enduring Vietnam movie ,I>The Deer Hunter, which won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1979 and also won Cimino Best Director, and Heaven's Gate, the most notorious bomb of all time. When it was finally released, Heaven's Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood's auteur era. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven's Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair. Elton's Cimino is a richly detailed biography that offers a revisionist history of a lightning rod filmmaker. Based on extensive interviews with Cimino's peers and collaborators and enemies and friends, it unravels the enigmas and falsehoods, many perpetrated by the director himself, which surround his life, and sheds new light on his extraordinary career. This is a story of the making of art, the business of Hollywood, and the costs of ambition, both financial and personal.

Charles Elton (Author), Michael Butler Murray (Narrator)

Audiobook

Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made

The imperial aspect of Winston Churchill's career tends to be airbrushed out, while the battles against Nazism are heavily foregrounded, in this detailed study by historian Richard Toye. A charmer and a bully, Winston Churchill was driven by a belief that the English were a superior race whose goals went beyond individual interests to offer an enduring good to the entire world. No better example exists than Churchill's resolve to stand alone against a more powerful Hitler in 1940 while the world's democracies fell to their knees. But there is also the Churchill who frequently inveighed against human rights, nationalism, and constitutional progress—the imperialist who could celebrate racism and believed India was unsuited to democracy. Drawing on newly released documents and an uncanny ability to separate the facts from the overblown reputation (by mid-career Churchill had become a global brand), Richard Toye provides the first comprehensive analysis of Churchill's relationship with the empire. Instead of locating Churchill's position on a simple left/right spectrum, Toye demonstrates how the statesman evolved and challenges the listener to understand his need to reconcile the demands of conscience with those of political conformity.

Richard Toye (Author), Michael Page (Narrator)

Audiobook

Churchill Defiant: Fighting On: 1945-1955

Winston Churchill rages against time and his own mortality in this tumultuous political drama of his last ten years of public life. Here is Churchill at his most outrageous, maddening, and devious-but also at his most human, courageous, and defiant. "I am an obstinate pig." This was how Winston Churchill described himself. At the end of July 1945, Winston Churchill was a defeated man-hurled from power by the British people at the end of the war in which he had just saved his country. Churchill Defiant is the story of how, when it seemed impossible, Churchill fought his way back over the next six years to the center of great events-the only place he ever wanted to be. In 1951, at last prime minister once more, he was ready to begin his dash to win "the last prize I seek": the enduring peace that had eluded the world after Hitler's defeat. But Churchill's battles were just beginning. He would have to wage war with both his closest colleagues and his most indispensable allies, the Americans, to get where none of them wanted him to go: the negotiating table with the Soviets. Barbara Leaming has written a gripping, fast-paced narrative of bare-knuckle politics, of life-and-death decisions, of old grudges and fresh blame. It is the story of how, between 1945 and 1955, Churchill simultaneously fought to prevent a third world war and to defy his own mortality as the clock ticked away and time threatened to run out for him. This is Winston Churchill in close-up-a compelling, vivid, and deeply poignant portrait of the great man at a time when almost no one wanted him to remain on the public stage and when he was willing to do absolutely anything to stay there.

Barbara Leaming, Barbara Leaming (Author), Simon Prebble (Narrator)

Audiobook

Churchill and America

In this stirring book, Martin Gilbert tells the intensely human story of Winston Churchill's profound connection to America, a relationship that resulted in an Anglo-American alliance that has stood at the center of international relations for more than a century. Winston Churchill, whose mother, Jennie Jerome, the daughter of a leading American entrepreneur, was born in Brooklyn in 1854, spent much of his seventy adult years in close contact with the United States. In two world wars, his was the main British voice urging the closest possible cooperation with the United States. From before the First World War, he understood the power of the United States, the "gigantic boiler," which, once lit, would drive the great engine forward. Sir Martin Gilbert was appointed Churchill's official biographer in 1968 and has ever since been collecting archival and personal documentation that explores every twist and turn of Churchill's relationship with the United States, revealing the golden thread running through it of friendship and understanding despite many setbacks and disappointments. Drawing on this extensive store of Churchill's own words - in his private letters, his articles and speeches, and press conferences and interviews given to American journalists on his numerous journeys throughout the United States - Gilbert paints a rich portrait of the Anglo-American relationship that began at the turn of the last century. In Churchill and America, Gilbert explores how Churchill's intense rapport with this country resulted in no less than the liberation of Europe and the preservation of European democracy and freedom. It also set the stage for the ongoing alliance that has survived into the twenty-first century. "This is a fascinating story, straightforward and well told, of one of the 20th century's most important leaders and the critical connection he forged between the world's fading superpower and its rising one."-Publishers Weekly "It is doubtful whether anyone on this planet knows more about the life and times of Winston Churchill than his official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert."-Library Journal

Martin Gilbert (Author), Simon Vance, Simon Vance (Narrator)

Audiobook

Chuck Yeager: World War II Fighter Pilot

For Dutton Caliber's American War Heroes series, the riveting true story of United States Air Force officer, flying ace, and record-setting test pilot Chuck Yeager. Bold, brash, and brimming with courage, Chuck Yeager burst onto the scene as a national hero in 1947, when he became the first to fly an airplane faster than the speed of sound. Yet even before his days as America's most famous test pilot, Yeager was a young fighter ace in the US Army Air Force, flying a P-51 Mustang over Nazi-occupied Europe. His exploits are the stuff of legend. Soon after downing his first enemy fighter, Yeager, too, was shot down, surviving thanks to the help of the French Resistance and his own skills as a bomb maker-and earned a Bronze Star for saving the life of a fellow American. Against regulation, and only with the approval of General Eisenhower himself, Yeager returned to duty as a fighter pilot. While fiercely protecting Allied bombers, he shot down eleven enemy planes, including a lightning-fast Messerschmitt Me 262, the world's first jet-powered airplane, and completed more than sixty missions. In Chuck Yeager, acclaimed author Don Keith tells the true story of the American icon during the war in which Yeager first proved he had the right stuff. Cover image courtesy of the San Diego Air & Space Museum

Don Keith (Author), Josh Robert Thompson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Chroniques d'un médecin légiste

En France, on tue tous les jours, toutes les heures. Les faits divers envahissent les journaux, les séries télévisées de médecine légale prolifèrent, les histoires criminelles, réelles ou fictives, exercent sur le public une fascination sans borne. Michel Sapanet est médecin légiste. Sa vie, c'est la mort. Sur sa table en inox, avec un immense respect, il pratique son autopsie: exploration des boîtes crâniennes, inspection des chairs meurtries, ouverture des coeurs. Égorgés, poignardés, étranglés, pendus, tués par balle, toutes les victimes finissent par parler. Voici le quotidien extraordinaire d'un homme ordinaire. Quelle vérité habite ces corps anonymes, bien souvent méconnaissables ? Au médecin légiste d'aller la chercher. Suicide déguisé, sombre accident de chasse ou infanticide inexplicable, le docteur Sapanet passe en revue les nombreuses affaires criminelles survenues ces dernières années dans sa région poitevine. Avec humour, il propose une plongée en apnée dans son univers et accomplit cet art insolite de faire parler les morts. ©2010 Pocket, un département d'Univers Poche

Michel Sapanet (Author), Olivier Chauvel (Narrator)

Audiobook

Chris Christie: The Inside Story of His Rise to Power

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has become a national Republican Party figure, famous for his blunt public statements, his willingness to confront powerful special interests, and his determination to change the ingrown, corrupt, backroom political culture of New Jersey. In just two years as governor, Christie has moved aggressively to reduce the state's ballooning deficit, rein in lucrative entitlements for teacher, police, fire, and public employee unions, cut out-of-control government spending, and create jobs by reducing counterproductive business regulations. But beneath Christie's combative public persona is an intensely loyal family man, whose deep roots in New Jersey shape his core values. Written by New York Times bestselling author Bob Ingle and fellow journalist Michael Symons, who have covered the governor's political career for more than a decade, Chris Christie offers the first inside portrait of this fascinating man. Drawing on interviews with Christie himself, his wife, Mary Pat, his brother, Todd, his father, Bill, his uncle Joe, and many longtime supporters as well as political opponents, Ingle and Symons trace Christie's life. He grew up in New Jersey, surrounded by a big, roiling Italian-American family where his mother, Sondra, and grandmother Anne were powerful influences. Surprisingly, his political career nearly ended after a bruising loss in a local county campaign, but was revived when Christie was appointed United States Attorney for New Jersey. He soon became a feared prosecutor, and culminated an impressive string of successful cases with a multi-year investigation that resulted in the arrests of more than forty people, in one of the state's most notorious examples of political corruption. Despite calls to run for president, Christie reiterated his commitment to reforming New Jersey. Chris Christie: The Inside Story of His Rise to Power goes behind the scenes to reveal his family life, his public life, and what the future might hold.

Bob Ingle, Michael Symons (Author), Johnny Heller (Narrator)

Audiobook

Chosen Forever

When Susan Richards adopted an abused horse rescued by the local SPCA, she didn't know how Lay Me Down's loving nature would touch her heart-and change her life.For more than a decade she had aspired to be a published writer but it was only with the memoir she wrote to honor Lay Me Down that she achieved this goal.The book led to a book tour in the course of which Susan reconnected with family and friends from who she had cut herself off. She had given up on romance, but at the second reading of her tour she encountered the man who had sold her his house twenty-four years earlier, a world famous photographer, Dennis Stock. Despite her any qualms about age and intimacy, they fell in love. "Richards reflects on how rich life becomes when one travels her own best path....each page of this uplifting book will touch a chord in everyone who enjoyed her first book."-Booklist

Susan Richards (Author), Lorna Raver (Narrator)

Audiobook

Chosen by a Horse: How a Broken Horse Fixed a Broken Heart

Susan Richards went to rescue one horse and ended up bringing home an extraordinary replacement, Lay Me Down, a broken down race horse that would teach her how to embrace the joys of life. "An inspirational story of what family means and what the loss of one can do to us-and for us."-Boston Globe

Susan Richards (Author), Lorna Raver (Narrator)

Audiobook

Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance

A brilliant literary memoir of chosen family and chosen heritage, told against the backdrop of Chicago’s North and South Sides. As a multiracial household in Chicago’s North Side community of Rogers Park, race is at the core of Francesca T. Royster and her family's world, influencing everyday acts of parenting and the conception of what family truly means. Like Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, this lyrical and affecting memoir focuses on a unit of three: the author; her wife Annie, who's white; and Cecilia, the Black daughter they adopt as a couple in their forties and fifties. Choosing Family chronicles this journey to motherhood while examining the messiness and complexity of adoption and parenthood from a Black, queer, and feminist perspective. Royster also explores her memories of the matriarchs of her childhood and the homes these women created in Chicago’s South Side—itself a dynamic character in the memoir—where “family” was fluid, inclusive, and not necessarily defined by marriage or other socially recognized contracts. Calling upon the work of some of her favorite queer thinkers, including José Esteban Muñoz and Audre Lorde, Royster interweaves her experiences and memories with queer and gender theory to argue that many Black families, certainly her own, have historically had a “queer” attitude toward family: configurations that sit outside the white normative experience and are the richer for their flexibility and generosity of spirit. A powerful, genre-bending memoir of family, identity, and acceptance, Choosing Family, ultimately, is about joy—about claiming the joy that society did not intend to assign to you, or to those like you.

Francesca T. Royster (Author), Sarah Palmero (Narrator)

Audiobook

General Audiobooks in Science & Technology