History Audiobooks | Science & Technology

Austin Mardon, Dr. Austin Mardon, Ernest Mardon (Author), Peace Joshua (Narrator)

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All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power

All the Presidents' Bankers is a groundbreaking narrative of how an elite group of men transformed the American economy and government, dictated foreign and domestic policy, and shaped world history. Culled from original presidential archival documents, All the Presidents’ Bankers delivers an explosive account of the hundred-year interdependence between the White House and Wall Street that transcends a simple analysis of money driving politics—or greed driving bankers. Nomi Prins ushers us into the intimate world of exclusive clubs, vacation spots, and Ivy League universities that binds presidents and financiers. She unravels the multi-generational blood, intermarriage, and protégé relationships that have confined national influence to a privileged cluster of people. This unprecedented history of American power illuminates how financiers have retained their authoritative position through history, swaying presidents regardless of party affiliation. It explores the alarming global repercussions of a system lacking barriers between public office and private power. Prins leaves us with an ominous choice: either we break the alliances of the power elite, or they will break us.

Nomi Prins (Author), Marguerite Gavin (Narrator)

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Allein unter Flüchtlingen: Eine Entdeckungsreise durch Deutschland

Seit Herbst 2015, als zahlreiche Flüchtlinge nach Deutschland kamen, hat sich das Land grundlegend verändert. Viele erleben die Migrationsbewegung als eine Zäsur, deren Folgen noch längst nicht abzusehen sind. Um zu verstehen, was da in den letzten Monaten eigentlich genau passiert ist, ist Tuvia Tenenbom einmal mehr kreuz und quer durch die Republik gereist. Er wollte wissen, was die wahren Gründe der 'Willkommenskultur' waren, warum Deutschland ein großes Herz gezeigt, aber immer noch keinen Plan hat, und wie es hier eigentlich um die Meinungsfreiheit bestellt ist. Seinen Gesprächspartnern - seien es Gregor Gysi, Volker Beck oder Kardinal Reinhard Marx, seien es Frauke Petry von der AfD, Pegida-Gründer Lutz Bachmann oder der geistige Führer der neuen Rechten Götz Kubitschek, seien es Akif Pirinçci oder Jürgen Todenhöfer - hat er unbequeme Fragen gestellt. Die Erkenntnisse, die er dabei gewonnen hat, sind mindestens ebenso verstörend wie seine Besuche in den Flüchtlingslagern, wo er von beschämenden Zuständen berichtet, deren Auswirkungen nicht nur individuell verheerend sind, sondern in nicht allzu ferner Zukunft die gesamte deutsche Gesellschaft betreffen werden. Tuvia Tenenboms provokante, streitbare Großreportage über die neue deutsche Wirklichkeit ist ebenso aufrüttelnd wie erschütternd - und ein Appell zum Umdenken und offenen Diskurs.

Tuvia Tenenbom (Author), Stefan Krause (Narrator)

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Alles über Weihnachten (Ungekürzt)

'Das Fest wird von allen Seiten beleuchtet', urteilt die Evangelische Sonntagszeitung: 'Wer Weihnachten mag, wird Freude daran haben. Wer Weihnachten nicht mag, bei dem ändert sich vielleicht diese Einstellung.' Eugen Ernst stellt in diesem Hörbuch die vielfältigen Erscheinungen weihnachtlichen Brauchtums dar und verfolgt deren Entwicklung von den vor- und urchristlichen Ursprüngen bis in die Gegenwart. Viele verbinden das Fest der Liebe mit Tannenbaum und Lichterschmuck, mit Krippe und Engeln, mit vertauten Liedern und Düften. Doch war das schon immer so? Woher kamen und kommen diese Brauchtümer, und wie haben sie sich im Laufe der Jahrhunderte verändert? Auf spannende Fragen wie diese gibt das Hörbuch so kenntnisreich wie unterhaltsam Auskunft.

Eugen Ernst (Author), Martin Falk (Narrator)

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America and the Art of the Possible: Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decay

Between 1920 and 1950, America saw an unprecedented expansion of wealth and power underwritten by technological innovation, cultural confidence, and victory in war. American elites won World War II, rebuilt the world order with America at its head, inaugurated the jet age, and put a man on the moon. The boom led to a larger, richer middle class that confirmed America’s best ideals. By the early 1970s, that ended. American elites have captured a disproportionate share of the social and economic rewards over the last fifty years. Meanwhile, the middle class has shrunk in size and has become economically insecure, owning a smaller share of national wealth than at any time in the nation’s history. This has happened even while most households have two income earners, versus the single-income households that characterized the period of shared prosperity. At the same time, technological innovation that improves people’s standard of living has dramatically slowed. These trends undermine the basic premise behind the broad acceptance of a meritocratic elite, whose rule is predicated on the belief that if the best rise to the top, their talent and energy will create a rising tide that lifts all boats. We had that once. We can have it again.

Christopher Buskirk (Author), Alex Boyles (Narrator)

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America's Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers . . . and the Future of the United St

What is wrong with America today? Is it possible that America could crumble and our democracy fail? Questions like these plague Americans and cause us to be anxious about the future of the 'land that we love.' Individuals may come to different conclusions, but there seems to be a common thread - the deep-seated feeling that we need to improve our country. Our culture is increasingly immoral, the family structure is threatened from all sides, and government programs consistently overreach, creating massive debt. In this powerful and prophetic audiobook, nationally syndicated columnist and trusted political commentator Cal Thomas offers a diagnosis of what exactly is wrong with the United States by drawing parallels to once-great empires and nations that declined into oblivion. Citing the historically proven 250-year pattern of how superpowers rise and fall, he predicts that America's expiration date is just around the corner and shows us how to escape their fate. Through biblical insights and hard-hitting truth, he reminds us that real change comes when America looks to God instead of Washington. Scripture, rather than politics, is the GPS he uses to point listeners to the right road - a road of hope, life, and change. Because, he says, if we're willing to seek God first, learn from history, and make changes at the individual and community level, we can not only survive, but thrive, again. This powerful, timely, and much-needed perspective is a must-listen for anyone who longs for a promising future for our great nation.

Cal Thomas (Author), John Dowd (Narrator)

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America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918

Richard Brookhiser has won a wide and loyal following for his stylish, pointed, and elegant biographies of George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. In America's First Dynasty, Brookhiser tells the story of America's longest and still greatest dynasty -- the Adamses, the only family in our history to play a leading role in American affairs for nearly two centuries. From John, the self-made, tough-minded lawyer who rose to the highest office in the government he helped create; to John Quincy, the child prodigy who grew up amid foreign royalty, followed his father to the White House, and later reinvented himself as a champion of liberty in Congress; to politician and writer Charles Francis, the only well-balanced Adams; to Henry, brilliant scholar and journalist -- the Adamses achieved longer-lasting greatness than any other American family. Brookhiser's canvass starts in colonial America, when John Adams had to teach himself the law and ride on horseback for miles to find clients. It does not end until after the Titanic sinks -- Henry had booked a room but changed his plans -- and World War I begins, with Henry near the action in France. The story of this single family offers a short course in the nation's history, because for nearly two hundred years Adams history was American history. The Adamses were accompanied by an impressive cast of characters, from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, to Andrew Jackson and Ulysses Grant, to Teddy Roosevelt. America's First Dynasty offers telling portraits of the great men of our past, and many of the women around them. John and Abigail's great love affair was destined to be repeated by their offspring and offspring's offspring. As with any family, there was a darker side to the Adams story: many of its members were abject failures. Alcoholism was a familiar specter, and suicide was not unknown. Only one of the four great Adamses was a kind man and father; the others set standards so impossibly high that few of their children could meet them. Yet despite more than a century of difference from John to Henry, certain Adams traits remained the same. In the story of our first and still-greatest family, we can all see something of our own struggles with family, fate, and history.

Richard Brookhiser (Author), Dan Cashman (Narrator)

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American Awakening: Identity Politics and Other Afflictions of Our Time

In American Awakening, Joshua Mitchell compares today's secular politics of identity-skin tone, gender, and sexuality-to the religious awakenings of America's past. The book asks where the clerisy of identity politics came from, how identity politics claimed a death grip on liberalism, and how can it be defeated. We are living in the midst of an American Awakening, without God and without forgiveness. The first two Awakenings brought religious renewal; the third-the social gospel movement and its aftermath (1880-1910)-invoked the authority of religion to bring about political and social transformation, but lost sight of Christianity along the way.The Awakening through which we are now living comprehends politics through the categories of religion without recognizing it, has no place for the God who judges or the God who forgives, and has brought America to a dead end, beyond which no one can see. Identity politics renders judgment not based on sins of omission and commission, but on the publicly visible, unalterable attributes that precede whatever citizens might do or leave undone. Identity politics offers no forgiveness for transgressions, because they are irredeemable. Liberal politics was once concerned with working together to build a common world. Identity politics has transformed politics. It has turned politics into a religious venue of sacrificial offering.For the moment, the irredeemable scapegoat is the white, heterosexual, man. After he is humiliated and purged, on whom will innocent victims turn their cathartic rage? White women? Black men?Identity politics is the antiegalitarian spiritual eugenics of our age. It demands that pure and innocent groups ascend, and the stained transgressor groups be purged. If religious revivals are understood as collective efforts to redeem a stained world, then identity politics is an American religious revival-this time around, without God.

Joshua Mitchell (Author), Chris Abell (Narrator)

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American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies That the Government Tells Us

Dick Russell, Jesse Ventura (Author), George K. Wilson (Narrator)

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American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution

In 1987, E. L. Doctorow celebrated the Constitution's bicentennial by reading it. 'It is five thousand words long but reads like fifty thousand,' he said. Distinguished legal scholar Garrett Epps disagrees. It's about 7,500 words. And Doctorow 'missed a good deal of high rhetoric, many literary tropes, and even a trace of, if not wit, at least irony,' he writes. In American Epic, Epps takes us through a complete reading of the Constitution to achieve an appreciation of its power and a holistic understanding of what it says. In this book he seeks not to provide a definitive interpretation, but to listen to the language and ponder its meaning. He draws on four modes of reading: scriptural, legal, lyric, and epic. The Constitution's first three words, for example, sound spiritual-but Epps finds them to be more aspirational than prayer-like. He turns the Second Amendment into a poem to illuminate its ambiguity. He notices oddities and omissions. The Constitution lays out rules for presidential appointment of officers, for example, but not removal. Should the Senate approve each firing? Can it withdraw its 'advice and consent' and force a resignation? And he challenges himself, as seen in his surprising discussion of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in light of Article 4, which orders states to give 'full faith and credit' to the acts of other states.

Garrett Epps (Author), Lee Goettl (Narrator)

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American Exception: Empire and the Deep State

American Exception seeks to explain the breakdown of US democracy, in particular to understand the uncanny continuity of American foreign policy, the breakdown of the rule of law, and the extreme concentration of wealth and power into an overworld of the corporate rich. To trace the evolution of the American state, Aaron Good takes a deep-politics approach. The term “deep state” was badly misappropriated during the Trump era. In the simplest sense, it here refers to all those institutions that collectively exercise undemocratic power over state and society. To trace how we arrived at this point, American Exception explores various deep state institutions and history-making interventions. Key institutions involve the relationships between the overworld of the corporate rich, the underworld of organized crime, and the national security actors that mediate between them. History-making interventions include the toppling of foreign governments, the launching of aggressive wars, and the political assassinations of the 1960s. In its long history before World War II, the United States had a deep political system, a system of governance in which decision-making and enforcement were carried out within—and outside of—public institutions. It was a system that always included some degree of secretive collusion and law-breaking. After World War II, US elites decided to pursue global dominance over the international capitalist system. Setting aside the liberal rhetoric, this project was pursued in a manner that was by and large imperialistic rather than progressive. To administer this covert empire, US elites created a massive national security state characterized by unprecedented levels of secrecy and lawlessness. The “Global Communist Conspiracy” provided a pretext for exceptionism—an endless “exception” to the rule of law. What gradually emerged after World War II was a tripartite state system of governance. The open democratic state and the authoritarian security state were both increasingly dominated by an American deep state. Aaron Good concludes by assessing the prospects for a revival of US democracy.

Aaron Good (Author), Arthur Morey (Narrator)

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American Fascists: The Christian Right

Veteran journalist Chris Hedges challenges the Christian Right's religious legitimacy and argues that at its core it is a mass movement fueled by unbridled nationalism and a hatred for the open society. He argues that the movement's yearning for apocalyptic violence and its assault on dispassionate, intellectual inquiry are laying the foundation for a new, frightening America.

Chris Hedges (Author), Eunice Wong (Narrator)

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