General Audiobooks | Science & Technology

Joan: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint

Since her death at the age of nineteen in 1431, Joan of Arc has maintained a remarkable hold on our collective imagination. During the tumultuous Hundred Years War between England and France, a young peasant girl nicknamed "The Maid" (La Pucelle) followed her heart and came to the aid of her nation. Facing unimaginable odds, Joan's belief in her mission from God continued to propel her forward. Within months, she was directing soldiers and bravely fighting for her nation. Joan became a national hero and was the guest of honor at her King's coronation. However, her success and fame ultimately and ironically became her undoing. Neither wife nor nun, neither queen nor noblewoman, neither philosopher nor stateswoman, Joan showed the world that anyone who follows their heart has the power to change history.

Donald Spoto (Author), Dick Hill (Narrator)

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Dog Years: A Memoir

Why do dogs speak so profoundly to our inner lives? When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he finds himself bringing home Beau, a large golden retriever, malnourished and in need of loving care. Beau joins Arden, the black retriever, to complete their family. As Beau bounds back into life, the two dogs become Mark Doty's intimate companions, his solace, and eventually the very life force that keeps him from abandoning all hope during the darkest days. Their tenacity, loyalty, and love inspire him when all else fails. Dog Years is a remarkable book: a moving and intimate memoir interwoven with profound reflections on our feelings for animals and the lessons they teach us about life, love, and loss. Mark Doty writes about the heart-wrenching vulnerability of dogs, the positive energy and joy they bring, and the gift they bear us of unconditional love. A book unlike any other, Mark Doty's surprising meditation is radiantly unsentimental yet profoundly affecting. Beautifully written, Dog Years is a classic in the making.

Mark Doty (Author), Mark Doty (Narrator)

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Born On A Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant

One of the world's fifty living autistic savants is the first and only to tell his compelling and inspiring life story-and explain how his incredible mind works. Worldwide, there are fewer than fifty living savants, those autistic individuals who can perform miraculous mental calculations or artistic feats (think Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man). Until now, none of them has ever been capable of discussing his/her thought processes, much less undertake the writing of a book. Daniel Tammet is the first. From childhood, Daniel Tammet's problems were immediately apparent. He was shunned by his classmates and often resorted to rocking and humming quietly. Yet he could memorize almost anything, and his math and language skills were astonishing. But high school, Daniel was diagnosed as autistic and he began to discover his own superhuman abilities-calculating huge sums in his head in seconds, learning new languages in one week, and memorizing more than 22,000 digits of pi. With heart-melting simplicity and astonishing self-awareness, Born on a Blue Day tells Daniel's story-from his childhood frustrations to adult triumphs, while explaining how his mind works. He thinks in pictures. He sees numbers as complex shapes: thirty-seven is lumpy like porridge, while eighty-nine reminds him of falling snow. Today, Daniel has emerged as one of the world's most fascinating minds, and inspiring stories. While his brain has amazed scientists for years, everyone will be moved by this remarkable man's life story.

Daniel Tammet (Author), Simon Vance, Simon Vance (Narrator)

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The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America

A leading Supreme Court expert recounts the personal and philosophical rivalries that forged our nation's highest court and continue to shape our daily lives. The Supreme Court is the most mysterious branch of government, and yet the Court is at root a human institution, made up of very bright people with very strong egos, for whom political and judicial conflicts often become personal. In this compelling work of character-driven history, Jeffrey Rosen recounts the history of the Court through the personal and philosophical rivalries on the bench that transformed the law-and by extension, our lives. The story begins with the great Chief Justice John Marshall and President Thomas Jefferson, cousins from the Virginia elite whose differing visions of America set the tone for the Court's first hundred years. The tale continues after the Civil War with Justices John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell Holmes, who clashed over the limits of majority rule. Rosen then examines the Warren Court era through the lens of the liberal icons Hugo Black and William O. Douglas, for whom personality loomed larger than ideology. He concludes with a pairing from our own era, the conservatives William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, only one of whom was able to build majorities in support of his views. Through these four rivalries, Rosen brings to life the perennial conflict that has animated the Court-between those justices guided by strong ideology and those who forge coalitions and adjust to new realities. He illuminates the relationship between judicial temperament and judicial success or failure. The stakes are nothing less than the future of American jurisprudence.

Jeffrey Rosen (Author), Alan Sklar (Narrator)

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The Lady in the Palazzo: At Home in Umbria

From village feasts and rustic tavernas to ancient piazzas and moonlit balconies, the smells and tastes and sounds and soul of Umbria come alive in bestselling author Marlena de Blasi's evocative memoir. By turns romantic and sensual, joyous and celebratory, touching and humorous, Marlena de Blasi's account of moving with her husband, Fernando, to Orvieto, the largest city in Italy's Umbria, will appeal to anyone who delights in travel and shares the fantasy of beginning a new life in a very different place. It is a tale of the couple's search for the right home-which turns out to be the former ballroom of a fifteenth=-century palazzo-and the right balance in their lives, in this case making friends of cooks, counts, shepherds, and a lone violinist. It is a tale, too, of an American woman finding her niche in a society bound by tradition and seemingly closed to outsiders. With a voice full of wonder, de Blasi brings to life these engagingly quirky people and the aloof, almost daunting society that exists in Umbria. Not since Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence has a writer so convincingly captures the essence of a singular place and created a feast for readers of all stripes."Vivid writing and an affectionate appreciation of the sounds, scenes and flavors of Italy."-Publishers Weekly

Marlena de Blasi (Author), Laural Merlington (Narrator)

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Born Free Trilogy

Joy Adamson is world-famous as the woman who walked with lions. These are the books that brought the story of her work to a public whose imagination was captured by the discovery of this remarkable interaction between man and beast. Born Free was first published in 1960, and tells the story of her relationship with Elsa, raising her from a young cub and later releasing her into the wild. Living Free and Forever Free continues Elsa's story and that of her cubs. Immortalised in film by Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, this is the original story for a new generation of readers to discover for themselves.

Joy Adamson (Author), Joanna David (Narrator)

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Digging For The Truth

Josh Bernstein, host of the History Channel's Digging For The Truth combines his personal experiences as an outdoor survival guide as he takes readers through some of the most remote, intriguing and physically challenging locations on the planet as he uncovers the world's greatest ancient mysteries. The book cover his adventures in Jerusalem, Zimbabwe, Austria, Peru, Greenland, Ethiopia, Yemen, and the Amazon. In addition, he takes viewers behind the scenes as they witness food poisoning, snake bites and sleepless weeks, to the logistical trials of shooting in some of the most remote places on earth. No location is too dangerous, no terrain too rough, no culture too exotic for Bernstein.t

Josh Bernstein (Author), William Dufris (Narrator)

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American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, a

Susan Cheever (Author), Kate Reading (Narrator)

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The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography

In this luminous memoir, a true American icon looks back on his celebrated life and career. His body of work is arguable the most morally significant in cinematic history, and the power and influence of that work are indicative of the character of the man behind the many storied roles. Here, Sidney Poitier explores these elements of character and personal values to take his own measure - as a man, as a husband, and father, and as an actor. Poitier was uncompromising as he pursued a personal and public life that would honor his upbringing and the invaluable legacy of his parents. Committed to the notion that what one does for a living articulates who one is, Poitier played only forceful and affecting characters who said something positive, useful, and lasting about the human condition. Here, finally, is Poitier's own introspective look at what has informed his performances and his life. Poitier explores the nature of sacrifice and commitment, pride and humility, rage and forgiveness, and paying the price for artistic integrity. What emerges is a picture of a man seeking truth, passion, and balance in the face of limits--his own and the world's. A triumph of the spirit, The Measure of a Man captures the essential Poitier.

Sidney Poitier (Author), Sidney Poitier (Narrator)

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Thomas Hardy

Whitbread Award winner Claire Tomalin's seminal biography of the enigmatic novelist and poet Thomas Hardy. Today Thomas Hardy is best known for creating the great Wessex landscape as the backdrop to his rural stories, starting with Far from the Madding Crowd, and making them classics. But his true legacy is that of a progressive thinker. When he published Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure late in his career, Hardy explored a very different world than that of his rural tales, one in which the plight of lower classes and women take center stage while the higher classes are damned. Ironically, though, Hardy remained cloaked in the arms of this very upper class during the publication of these books, acting at all times in complete convention with the rules of society. Was he using his books to express himself in a way he felt unable to do in the company he kept, or did he know sensationalism would sell? Award-winning author Claire Tomalin expertly reconstructs the life that led Hardy to maintain conventionality and write revolution. Born in Dorset in 1840, Hardy came of age in rather meager circumstances. At sixteen, he left home for London and slowly worked his way through many rejections to become a published writer. Despite his mother's admonitions to never marry, he wed Emma Lavinia Gifford in 1874 and, even though he fell easily in love, stayed true to her till her death in 1912. He frequently toured London society, but few felt they knew the true Hardy, and it is this very core of self that Tomalin elegantly brings us to know so completely. Hardy's work consistently challenged sexual and religious conventions in a way that few other books of his time did. Though his personal modesty and kindness allowed some to underestimate him or even to pity him, they did not prevent him from taking on the central themes of human experience-time, memory, loss, love, fear, grief, anger, uncertainty, death. And it was exactly his quiet life, full of the small, personal dramas of family quarrels, rivalries, and at times, despair, that infuses his works with the rich detail that sets them apart as masterpieces. In this engrossing biography, Tomalin skillfully identifies the inner demons and the outer mores that drove Hardy and presents a rich and complex portrait of one of the greatest figures in English literature.

Claire Tomalin (Author), Josephine Bailey (Narrator)

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Портреты. Коринна в России

Алданов Марк Александрович (1886-1957) — русский прозаик, публицист, автор очерков на исторические темы, философ и химик. Большую известность Алданов получил благодаря историческим очеркам, печатавшимися в газете «Последние новости» и посвященным как деятелям и событиям Французской революции и близких эпох, так и современникам-политикам. Его очерки написаны хорошим языком, с большим количеством подробностей и фактов. Издание содержит исторический очерк Марка Алданова 'Портреты. Коринна в России'. Аудиокнига. Читает: Левицкая Татьяна © ИДДК

Mark Aldanov (Author), Levitsky Tatiana (Narrator)

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Князь Александр Данилович Меншиков

Знаменитое историческое исследование выдающегося русского историка, одного из основоположников русской исторической мысли Николая Ивановича Костомарова (1817-1885), рассказывает о ближайшем сподвижнике Петра Великого, первом российском генералиссимусе – князе Александре Даниловиче Меншикове. Александр Данилович Меншиков (6 (16) ноября 1673, Москва — 12 (23) ноября 1729, Берёзов) — русский государственный и военный деятель, сподвижник и фаворит Петра I, генерал-фельдмаршал (1709), первый генерал-губернатор Санкт-Петербурга (1703—1724 и 1725—1727), президент Военной коллегии (1719—1724 и 1726—1727). Единственный русский дворянин, получивший от русского монарха титул герцога («герцог Ижорский», 1707 год). После смерти Петра I — фактический правитель России (1725—27), «первый сенатор», «первый член Верховного тайного совета» (1726), при Петре Втором — генералиссимус морских и сухопутных войск (12 мая 1727). В сентябре 1727 года подвергся опале, был лишён имущества, званий и наград и сослан с семьёй в Сибирь, где через два года умер. Работа Николая Костомарова, написанная великолепным литературным языком, поможет разобраться в сложнейшем историческом периоде правления императора Петра I. События и факты, описанные Н. И. Костомаровым, включены в программы по изучению истории в 6-11 классах средней школы всех уровней обучения. Аудиокнига. Читает: Бобылев Илья © ИДДК

Nikolay Kostomarov (Author), Ilya Bobylev (Narrator)

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General Audiobooks in Science & Technology