Annie Jacobsen has 8 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 388 ratings. The most-rated is Surprise, Kill, Vanish.
Surprise, Kill, Vanish
Summary
Surprise...your target. Kill...your enemy. Vanish...without a trace. From Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, the untold story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units. When diplomacy fails and war is unwise, the president calls on the CIA's Special Activities Division, a highly classified branch of the CIA and the most effective black-operations force in the world. Originally known as the president's guerrilla warfare corps, SAD conducts risky and ruthless operations that have evolved over time to defend America from its enemies. Almost every American president since World War II has asked the CIA to conduct sabotage, subversion, and yes, assassination. With unprecedented access to 42 men and women who proudly and secretly worked on CIA covert operations from the dawn of the Cold War to the present day, along with declassified documents and deep historical research, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen unveils - like never before - a complex world of individuals working in treacherous environments populated with killers, connivers, and saboteurs. Despite Hollywood notions of off-book operations and external secret hires, covert action is actually one piece in a colossal foreign policy machine. Written with the pacing of a thriller, Surprise, Kill, Vanish brings to vivid life the sheer pandemonium and chaos, as well as the unforgettable human will to survive and the intellectual challenge of not giving up hope that define paramilitary and intelligence work. Jacobsen's exclusive interviews - with members of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service (equivalent to the Pentagon's generals), its counterterrorism chiefs, targeting officers, and Special Activities Division's Ground Branch operators who conduct today's close-quarters killing operations around the world - reveal, for the first time, the enormity of this shocking, controversial, and morally complex terrain. Is the CIA's paramilitary army America's weaponized strength or a liability to its principled standing in the world? Every operation reported in this audiobook, however unsettling, is legal. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Annie Jacobsen (P)2019 Hachette Audio
Operation Paperclip
Summary
The explosive, dark secrets behind America's post-WWII science programs from the author of the New York Times best seller Area 51. In the chaos following WWII, some of the greatest spoils of Germany's resources were the Third Reich's scientific minds. The U.S. government secretly decided that the value of these former Nazis' knowledge outweighed their crimes and began a covert operation code-named Paperclip to allow them to work in the U.S. without the public's full knowledge. Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including papers made available to her by direct descendants of the Third Reich's ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and lost dossiers discovered at the National Archives and Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into one of the most complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secrets of the 20th century.
©2014 Annie Jacobsen (P)2014 Hachette Audio
Area 51
Summary
Myths and hypotheses about Area 51 have long abounded, thanks to the intense secrecy enveloping it. Some claim it is home to aliens, underground tunnel systems, and nuclear facilities. Others believe that the lunar landing was filmed there. The prevalence of these rumors stems from the fact that no credible insider has ever divulged the truth about his time inside the base. Until now. Annie Jacobsen had exclusive access to 20 men who served on the base proudly and secretly for decades and are now aged 75-92; she also had unprecedented access to 55 additional military and intelligence personnel, scientists, pilots, and engineers linked to the secret base, 32 of whom lived and worked there for extended periods. In Area 51, Jacobsen shows us what has really gone on in the Nevada desert, from testing nuclear weapons to building supersecret supersonic jets to pursuing the War on Terror. This is the first book based on interviews with eyewitnesses to Area 51 history, which makes it the seminal work on the subject. Filled with formerly classified information that has never been accurately decoded for the public, Area 51 weaves the mysterious activities of the top secret base into a gripping narrative, showing that fact is often more fantastic than fiction, especially when the distinction is almost impossible to make.
©2011 Annie Jacobson (P)2011 Hachette
The Pentagon's Brain
Summary
The definitive history of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, from the author of the New York Times best seller Area 51. No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history of the organization, New York Times best-selling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private documents, and declassified memos to paint a picture of DARPA, or "the Pentagon's brain", from its Cold War inception in 1958 to the present. This is the book on DARPA - a compelling narrative about this clandestine intersection of science and the American military and the often frightening results.
©2015 Annie Jacobsen (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Phenomena
Summary
The definitive history of the military's decades-long investigation into mental powers and phenomena, from the author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Pentagon's Brain and international best seller Area 51. This is a book about a team of scientists and psychics with top secret clearances. For more than 40 years, the US government has researched extrasensory perception, using it in attempts to locate hostages, fugitives, secret bases, and downed fighter jets, to divine other nations' secrets, and even to predict future threats to national security. The intelligence agencies and military services involved include CIA, DIA, NSA, DEA, the navy, air force, and army - and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now, for the first time, New York Times best-selling author Annie Jacobsen tells the story of these radical, controversial programs using never before seen declassified documents as well as exclusive interviews with, and unprecedented access to, more than 50 of the individuals involved. Speaking on the record, many for the first time, are former CIA and Defense Department scientists, analysts, and program managers as well as the government psychics themselves. Who did the US government hire for these top secret programs, and how do they explain their military and intelligence work? How do scientists approach such enigmatic subject matter? What interested the government in these supposed powers, and does the research continue? Phenomena is a riveting investigation into how far governments will go in the name of national security.
©2017 Annie Jacobsen (P)2017 Hachette Audio
First Platoon
Summary
An urgent investigation into warfare, good, and evil in the age of biometrics, the technology that would allow the government to identify anyone, anywhere, at any time This is a story that starts off close and goes very big. The initial part of the story might sound familiar at first: It is about a platoon of mostly 19-year-old boys sent to Afghanistan, and an experience that ends abruptly in catastrophe. Their part of the story folds into the next: inexorably linked to those soldiers and never comprehensively reported before is the US Department of Defense’s quest to build the world’s most powerful biometrics database, with the power to identify, monitor, catalogue, and police people all over the world. First Platoon is an American saga that illuminates a transformation of society made possible by this new technology. Part war story, part legal drama, it is about identity in the age of identification. About humanity - physical bravery, trauma, PTSD, a yearning to do right and good - in the age of biometrics, which reduce people to iris scans, fingerprint scans, voice patterning, detection by odor, gait, and more. And about the power of point-of-view in a burgeoning surveillance state. Based on hundreds of formerly classified documents, FOIA requests, and exclusive interviews, First Platoon is an investigative exposé by a master chronicler of government secrets. First Platoon reveals a post-9/11 Pentagon whose identification machines have grown more capable than the humans who must make sense of them. A Pentagon so powerful it can cover up its own internal mistakes in pursuit of endless wars. And a people at its mercy, in its last moments before a fundamental change so complete it might be impossible to take back.
©2021 Annie Jacobsen (P)2021 Penguin Audio
The Science of Self Talk: How to Increase Your Emotional Intelligence and Stop Getting in Your Own Way
Summary
Talking to ourselves - and learning to listen We all speak to ourselves on a daily basis. Whether it’s out loud or an internal (or infernal) commentary, we all practice self-talk, and how we speak to ourselves can have a significant effect on our emotions and subsequent actions. Some people’s self-talk is mostly about the future while, for others, it’s an internal dialogue about the past. Some self-talk is positive and upbeat, while other self-talk is harsh, critical, or defeatist. Self-talk can focus on other people, but, more often than not, it is about ourselves - and is often negative. If you listen carefully, you’ll notice that your inner conversation reflects thoughts and emotions. Self-talk isn’t random. It exhibits patterns that repeat themselves. And everyone has their own characteristic self-talk that is uniquely theirs. In The Science of Self Talk, mindfulness expert Ian Tuhovsky explains how we can rewrite the script when it comes to our internal communication. Through a series of simple exercises for use in daily life, you can understand your own self-talk in order to change the conversation. This unique book covers: Constructive self-talk and dysfunctional self-talk - and knowing the difference The impact of negative self-talk Learned helplessness Positive self-talk - challenge or threat? The Pareto Principle which says that, for many events, roughly 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes Creating the right circumstances for motivation Getting to know yourself Loving yourself - emotional intelligence Turning down the volume on your self-talk Self-talk is a little like turning on the director’s commentary on a movie. You can simply watch the movie, or you can add in commentary about what’s happening in it - this is, in a nutshell, what most of us do in our daily lives. The Science of Self Talk can help you to rewrite the script of your movie and improve the way that you - and others - see yourself.
©2018 Ian Tuhovsky (P)2018 Ian Tuhovsky
Looking at Lincoln
Summary
Lincoln's legacy is everywhere--there he is on your penny and five-dollar bill. And we are still the United States because Lincoln helped hold them together. But who was he really? The little girl in this audiobook wants to find out. Among the many other things, she discovers our sixteenth president was a man who believed in freedom for all; had a dog named Fido; loved Mozart, apples, and his wife's vanilla cake; and kept his notes in his hat.
©2012 Maira Kalman (P)2015 Dreamscape Media, LLC