History Audiobooks | Science & Technology

School of Woke: How Critical Race Theory Infiltrated American Schools and Why We Must Reclaim Them

From one of America's most relentless critics of Critical Race Theory comes this far-reaching, on-the-ground investigation of how CRT infiltrated our public schools and transformed them into activism factories-with disastrous results. Awareness of the rise of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in public schools and how it has shaped our education system took the U.S. by storm over the last few years. Parents truly became aware for the first time how deeply entrenched CRT was in the classrooms, and their eyes were opened to the insidious agenda thoroughly embedded in public schools. As a result, CRT and parental rights in education became some of the most explosive issues facing Americans today. Kenny Xu is a perceptive and relentless critic of CRT and our culture's war on meritocracy. And now, in School of Woke, Xu exposes how CRT is transforming public schools and having a destructive impact on our children's education-and their future. In School of Woke, Xu provides historical context to the rise of Critical Race Theory in education, tracing it back to elite graduate schools in the 1970s and showing how the ideology became institutionalized and credentialed. Xu covers the battles taking place in the most problematic and contested school districts in the nation, including Loudoun and Fairfax County Public Schools in Northern Virginia and Santa Barbara High School in California. He also exposes the lucrative business model behind the diversity consulting industrial complex that is instrumental in the curricular wars, revealing how educators and administrators have been gaslighting the public about the prevalence of this radical ideology in the classrooms, where children as young as five are being segregated in the classroom by race and are being taught that whiteness is inherently evil. A work of colorful reportage, historical analysis, and cultural commentary, School of Woke reveals what it will take to extricate our next generation from the destructive trends in our once-vaunted public school education system.

Kenny Xu (Author), Larry Wayne (Narrator)

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The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China

A stunning exploration of the Greater Middle East, where lasting stability has often seemed just out of reach but may hold the key to the shifting world order of the twenty-first century "Continuing Robert D. Kaplan's work as the premier American scholar of geopolitics . . . a book that everyone who wants to understand the real forces that decide war and peace should read."-John Gray, author of The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism The Greater Middle East, which Robert D. Kaplan defines as the vast region between the Mediterranean and China, encompassing much of the Arab world, parts of northern Africa, and Asia, existed for millennia as the crossroads of empire: Macedonian, Roman, Persian, Mongol, Ottoman, British, Soviet, American. But with the dissolution of empires in the twentieth century, postcolonial states have endeavored to maintain stability in the face of power struggles between factions, leadership vacuums, and the arbitrary borders drawn by exiting imperial rulers with little regard for geography or political groups on the ground. In the Loom of Time, Kaplan explores this broad, fraught space through reporting and travel writing to reveal deeper truths about the impacts of history on the present and how the requirements of stability over anarchy are often in conflict with the ideals of democratic governance. In The Loom of Time, Kaplan makes the case for realism as an approach to the Greater Middle East. Just as Western attempts at democracy promotion across the Middle East have failed, a new form of economic imperialism is emerging today as China's ambitions fall squarely within the region as the key link between Europe and East Asia. As in the past, the Greater Middle East will be a register of future great power struggles across the globe. And like in the past, thousands of years of imperial rule will continue to cast a long shadow on politics as it is practiced today. To piece together the history of this remarkable place and what it suggests for the future, Kaplan weaves together classic texts, immersive travel writing, and a great variety of voices from every country that all compel the reader to look closely at the realities on the ground and to prioritize these facts over ideals on paper. The Loom of Time is a challenging, clear-eyed book that promises to reframe our vision of the global twenty-first century.

Robert D. Kaplan (Author), Eric Jason Martin (Narrator)

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Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain

This riveting new history tells the story of Britain's journey from imperial power to a nation divided. After the Second World War, Britain's overseas empire disintegrated. But over the next seventy years, empire came to define Britain and its people as never before. From immigration and race riots to the Suez Crisis and the Falklands War, from the simplistic moral equation of Band Aid to the invasion of Iraq, the imperial mindset has dominated Britain's relationship with itself and the world. In the tragedy of Stephen Lawrence, in Britain's response to radical Islam, even in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, we see how this contradictory relationship has undermined its self-image as a multicultural nation, helping explain the Windrush deportations and Brexit. Drawing on a mass of new research, from personal letters to pop culture, Imperial Island tells a story of immigration and fractured identity, of social strife and communal solidarity, of people on the move and of a people wrestling with their past. It is the story that best explains Britain today.

Charlotte Lydia Riley (Author), Charlotte Lydia Riley (Narrator)

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The History and Legacy of the British Empire's Most Famous Trading Companies across the World

Perhaps the most famous trade company in all of history, the East India Company served as one of the key players in the formation of the British Empire. From its origins as a trading company struggling to keep up with its superior Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish competitors to its tenure as the ruling authority of the Indian subcontinent to its eventual hubristic downfall, the East India Company serves as a lens through which to explore the much larger economic and social forces that shaped the formation of a global British Empire. As a private company that became a non-state global power in its own right, the East India Company also serves as a cautionary tale all too relevant to the modern world’s current political and economic situation. After the Englishman Henry Hudson, under the aegis of the Dutch East India Company, sailed by Manhattan in 1609, he returned home with good news and bad news. Like the other explorers before him, he hadn’t been able to find a water route to the Orient. He had, however, returned with maps (confiscated by the English) and beaver pelts. With that, it became clear that the region around the bay that would take Hudson’s name was a very promising new territory for trade and settlement, which would become a serious bone of contention between the Dutch and the English for the rest of the century. In 1614, another Dutch East India merchant, Adriaen Block, entered through the narrows of the East River between Queens and Randall’s Island, a difficult and dangerous passage that later sank numerous ships and that Block named Hell’s Gate (Hellegat). The European world would know the name “Manhates” when Block returned to the Netherlands with new and improved maps.

Charles River Editors (Author), Victoria Woodson (Narrator)

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[German] - 30 Minuten: Franz Kafkas 'Die Verwandlung': Weltliteratur kompakt: Schneller hören – mehr

Klassiker der Weltliteratur in dreißig Minuten zusammengefasst, mit den wichtigsten Zitaten – Szene für Szene, Akt für Akt! Mit Inhaltsangabe, Informationen zu Autor, allen Charakteren, literarischer Epoche, geschichtlichem Hintergrund: Diese neue Serie wendet sich an Lernende, Studierende – und solche, die ihre Kenntnisse der klassischen Literatur auffrischen wollen! Diese Ausgabe widmet sich Franz Kafkas Erzählung 'Die Verwandlung'. 30 Minuten: Schneller hören – mehr wissen!

Franz Kafka, Jürgen Fritsche (Author), Jürgen Fritsche (Narrator)

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[Persian] - امپراتوری USA: قدرت جهانی بی‌وجدان

«بیایید ابتدا نگرشمان را درباره‌ی صلح بازنگری کنیم. تعداد بیش از حد زیادی از ما آن را ناممکن می‌پنداریم... اما این پنداری خطرناک و شکست باورانه است. به این نتیجه‌گیری می‌انجامد که جنگ اجتناب ناپذیر است، که بشریت محکوم به نابودی است... اما مشکلات ما ساخته‌ی دست بشر است و لذا می‌تواند به دست بشر حل نیز بشود.» جان اف. کندی (رئیس جمهور ایالات متحده ۱۹۶۱ تا ۱۹۶۳) ایالات متحده‌ی آمریکا از پایان جنگ جهانی دوم به این سو از نظر نظامی، اقتصادی و سیاسی قدرتمندترین ملت دنیاست. آن‌ها امپراتوری عصر مدرن هستند. دلار را چاپ می‌کنند که در حال حاضر مهم‌ترین ارز ذخیره‌ی جهانی است. یک قدرت اتمی هستند، بیشترین بودجه‌ی نظامی را دارند، بزرگترین کنسرن‌های تسلیحاتی را و بیشترین پایگاه‌های نظامی را در کشورهای خارجی. قدرتی صاحب حق وتو در شورای امنیت سازمان ملل هستند و بر ناتو سلطه دارند، بزرگترین اتحادیه‌ی نظامی جهان. کسی که به سیاست بین الملل، تاریخ و سیاست معطوف به صلح علاقه داشته باشد، نخواهد توانست امپراتوری USA را نادیده بگیرد، چرا که ایالات متحده مستقیم یا غیرمستقیم بر تقریبا همه‌ی درگیری‌های یکصد سال گذشته اثرگذار بوده و بخش اعظم درگیری‌های نظامی حال حاضر را نیز شکل می‌دهد.

دانیله گانزر, سید ابراهیم تقوی (Author), سید ابراهیم تقوی (Narrator)

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Living Together: Inventing Moral Science

Is moral philosophy more foundational than political theory? It is often assumed to be. David Schmidtz argues that the reverse is true: the question of how to live in a community is more fundamental than questions about how to live. This book questions whether we are getting to the foundations of human morality when we ignore contingent features of communities in which political animals live. Schmidtz contends that theorizing about how to live together should take its cue from contemporary moral philosophy's attempts to go beyond formal theory, and ask which principles have a history of demonstrably being organizing principles of actual thriving communities at their best. Ideals emerging from such research should be a distillation of social scientific insight from observable histories of successful community building. What emerges from ongoing testing in the crucible of life experience will be path-dependent in detail even if not in general outline, partly because any way of life is a response to challenges that are themselves contingent, path dependent, and in flux. Building on this view, Schmidtz argues that justice evolved as a device for grounding peace in the mutual recognition that everyone has their own life to live, and everyone has the right and the responsibility to decide for themselves what to want.

David Schmidtz (Author), David De Vries (Narrator)

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The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will

The visionary behind the bestselling phenomenon The Fourth Turning looks once again to America's past to predict our future in this startling and hopeful prophecy for how our present era of civil unrest will resolve over the next ten years—and what our lives will look like once it has. Twenty-five years ago, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss dazzled the world with a provocative new theory of American history. Looking back at the last 500 years, they'd uncovered a distinct pattern: modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting roughly eighty to one hundred years, the length of a long human life, with each cycle composed of four eras—or "turnings"—that always arrive in the same order and each last about twenty years. The last of these eras—the fourth turning—was always the most perilous, a period of civic upheaval and national mobilization as traumatic and transformative as the New Deal and World War II, the Civil War, or the American Revolution. Now, right on schedule, our own fourth turning has arrived. And so Neil Howe has returned with an extraordinary new prediction. What we see all around us—the polarization, the growing threat of civil conflict and global war—will culminate by the early 2030s in a climax that poses great danger and yet also holds great promise, perhaps even bringing on America's next golden age. Every generation alive today will play a vital role in determining how this crisis is resolved, for good or ill. Illuminating, sobering, yet ultimately empowering, The Fourth Turning Is Here takes you back into history and deep into the collective personality of each living generation to make sense of our current crisis, explore how all of us will be differently affected by the political, social, and economic challenges we'll face in the decade to come, and reveal how our country, our communities, and our families can best prepare to meet these challenges head-on.

Neil Howe (Author), Neil Howe (Narrator)

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The End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration

Brought to you by Penguin. A brilliant new theory of how society works from one of the most iconoclastic thinkers of our time What leads to political turbulence and social breakdown? How do elites maintain their dominant position? And why do ruling classes sometimes suddenly lose their grip on power? For decades, complexity scientist Peter Turchin has been studying world history like no one else. Assembling vast databases mined from 10,000 years of human activity, and then developing new models, he has transformed the way we learn from the past. End Times is the result: a ground-breaking account of how society works. The lessons, he argues, are clear. When the balance of power between the ruling class and the majority tips too far in favour of elites, income inequality surges. The rich get richer, the poor further impoverished. As more people try to join the elite, frustration with the establishment brims over, often with disastrous consequences. Elite overproduction led to state breakdown in imperial China, in medieval France, in the American Civil War and it is happening now. But while we are far along the path toward violent political rupture, Turchin's models also light the way to a brighter future. Drawing insight from those occasions in history where the balance was restored, End Times also points towards a different future: an escape from the patterns of the past. ©2023 Peter Turchin (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Peter Turchin (Author), Robin Mcalpine (Narrator)

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Unsettled: Lord Selkirk's Scottish Colonists and the Battle for Canada's West, 1813-1816

The fascinating story of the Red River Settlement, now Winnipeg, in the years 1813 to 1816, told with archival journals, reports, and letters Unsettled tells the story of two hundred Highlanders who flee the Scottish Clearances in 1813 to establish a settlement on the Red River in what eventually became Winnipeg. They are sponsored by the Earl of Selkirk, a man who has never been west of Montreal. Families who have never left their Highland crofts take an epic journey over ocean, up wild rivers, and through boundless wilderness, surviving disease and brutal winter only to face the determined opposition of fur barons who want no sodbusters threatening their trade and are prepared to stop at nothing to destroy their dream. The 'empty' land they've been promised is also anything but, already occupied by First Nations bands and the beginnings of that proud nation soon to be called Metis, whom they must befriend or fight. Unsettled takes you inside the experience, relying on journals, reports, and letters to bring these days of soaring hope, crushing despair, and heroic determination to life-to bring their present into ours.

Robert Lower (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus

What did it take for the United States to become a global superpower? The answer lies in a missing chapter of American foreign policy with stark lessons for today The cutthroat world of international politics has always been dominated by great powers. Yet no great power in the modern era has ever managed to achieve the kind of invulnerability that comes from being completely supreme in its own neighborhood. No great power, that is, except one-the United States. In We May Dominate the World, Sean A. Mirski tells the riveting story of how the United States became a regional hegemon in the century following the Civil War. By turns reluctant and ruthless, Americans squeezed their European rivals out of the hemisphere while landing forces on their neighbors' soil with dizzying frequency. Mirski reveals the surprising reasons behind this muscular foreign policy in a narrative full of twists, colorful characters, and original accounts of the palace coups and bloody interventions that turned the fledgling republic into a global superpower. Today, as China makes its own run at regional hegemony and nations like Russia and Iran grow more menacing, Mirski's fresh look at the rise of the American colossus offers indispensable lessons for how to meet the challenges of our own century.

Sean A Mirski (Author), Gary Tiedemann (Narrator)

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These Seats Are Reserved: Caste, Quotas and the Constitution of India

Reservation or affirmative action is a hugely controversial policy in India. While constitutionally mandated and with historians, political scientists and social activists convinced of its need, many resist it and consider it as compromising 'merit' and against the principle of equality of opportunity.In These Seats Are Reserved, Abhinav traces the history and making of the reservation policy.How were groups eligible for reservations identified and defined? How were the terms 'depressed classes' and 'backward classes' used in British India and how have they evolved into the constitutional concepts of 'Scheduled Castes', 'Scheduled Tribes', and 'Other Backward Classes' in the present day?The book delves into the intellectual debates that took place on this matter in the Constituent Assembly, the Supreme Court and Parliament. Several contentious issues are examined dispassionately: are reservations an exception to the principle of equality of opportunity? Do quotas in government service undermine efficiency? Can 'merit' really be defined neutrally? What is the thinking behind the rule that no more than 50 per cent of the available seats or positions can be reserved?Deeply researched and ably narrated, this volume is a compelling addition to every thinking individual's library.

Abhinav Chandrachud (Author), Anuj Datta (Narrator)

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History Audiobooks in Science & Technology