Anthony Galvin has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Old Sparky.
Old Sparky
Summary
In early 2013, Robert Gleason became the latest victim of the electric chair, a peculiarly American execution method. Shouting "pog mo thin" ("kiss my ass" in Gaelic), he grinned as electricity shot through his system. When the current was switched off, his body slumped against the leather restraints. And Gleeson, who had strangled two fellow inmates to ensure his execution was not postponed, was dead. The execution had gone flawlessly - not a guaranteed result with the electric chair, which has gone horrifically wrong on many occasions. Old Sparky covers the history of capital punishment in America and the "current wars" between Edison and Westinghouse, which led to the development of the electric chair. It examines how the electric chair became the most popular method of execution in America before being superseded by lethal injection. Famous executions are explored alongside quirky last meals and poignant last words. The death penalty remains a hot topic of debate in America, and Old Sparky does not shy away from that controversy. Executions have gone spectacularly wrong, with convicts being set alight or needing up to five jolts of electricity before dying. There have been terrible miscarriages of justice, and the death penalty has not been applied evenhandedly. Historically, African Americans, the mentally challenged, and poor defendants have been likely to get the chair, an anomaly that led the Supreme Court to briefly suspend the death penalty. Since the resumption of capital punishment in 1976, Texas alone has executed more than 500 prisoners, and death row is full.
©2015 Anthony Galvin (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
The Great Polar Fraud
Summary
In 1910 Roald Amundsen set off from Oslo toward the North Pole but soon received word that two Americans - Frederick Cook and Robert Peary - each claimed to have reached the Pole ahead of him. Devastated, Amundsen famously went south. For years Cook and Peary tried to convince the world of their claims. Finally the National Geographic Society endorsed Peary, and the matter seemed settled. In May 1926 an American airman, Richard Byrd, flew north in a three-engine plane, and returned with a log showing that he had flow exactly over the geographical North Pole, becoming the third man to reach that mythical spot. National Geographic again supported the claim. However, it is now obvious that Peary claimed distances he could not possibly have achieved, and it is doubtful that Cooke, who had a history of fraud, ever got even close to the pole. Byrd flew further north than anyone before, but he did not have the fuel to have made the journey he claimed - his log was falsified. Just three days after Byrd's flight, Amundsen reenters the story on an airship traveling across the pole from Svalbard to Alaska, unknowingly passing directly over the pole, becoming the true first to reach it - just as he had been the first at the South Pole. The Great Polar Fraud explores the history of the three men who claimed the pole, their claims, and the subsequent doubts of those claims, effectively rewriting the history of polar exploration and putting Amundsen center stage as the rightful conqueror of both poles.
©2014 Anthony Galvin (P)2014 Audible Inc.