Craig Unger has 5 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 47 ratings. The most-rated is House of Trump, House of Putin.
House of Trump, House of Putin
Summary
The New York Times Best Seller
"The story Unger weaves with those earlier accounts and his original reporting is fresh, illuminating and more alarming than the intelligence channel described in the Steele dossier." (The Washington Post)
House of Trump, House of Putin offers the first comprehensive investigation into the decades-long relationship among Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Mafia that ultimately helped win Trump the White House.
It is a chilling story that begins in the 1970s, when Trump made his first splash in the booming, money-drenched world of New York real estate, and ends with Trump’s inauguration as president of the United States. That moment was the culmination of Vladimir Putin’s long mission to undermine Western democracy, a mission that he and his hand-selected group of oligarchs and Mafia kingpins had ensnared Trump in, starting more than 20 years ago with the massive bailout of a string of sensational Trump hotel and casino failures in Atlantic City. This book confirms the most incredible American paranoias about Russian malevolence.
To most, it will be a hair-raising revelation that the Cold War did not end in 1991 - that it merely evolved, with Trump’s apartments offering the perfect vehicle for billions of dollars to leave the collapsing Soviet Union. In House of Trump, House of Putin, Craig Unger methodically traces the deep-rooted alliance between the highest echelons of American political operatives and the biggest players in the frightening underworld of the Russian Mafia. He traces Donald Trump’s sordid ascent from foundering real estate tycoon to leader of the free world. He traces Russia’s phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the post-Cold War Soviet Union as well as its ceaseless covert efforts to retaliate against the West and reclaim its status as a global superpower.
Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be president. This essential audiobook is crucial to understanding the real powers at play in the shadows of today’s world.
The appearance of key figures in this book - Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, and Felix Sater to name a few - will ring with haunting significance in the wake of Robert Mueller's report and as others continue to close in on the truth.
©2018 Craig Unger (P)2018 Penguin Audio
American Kompromat
Summary
Kompromat n. - Russian for "compromising information" This is a story of dirty secrets and the most powerful people in the world. Craig Unger’s new book, American Kompromat, tells of the spies and salacious events underpinning men’s reputations and riches. It tells how a relatively insignificant targeting operation by the KGB’s New York rezidentura (New York Station) more than 40 years ago - an attempt to recruit an influential businessman as a new asset - triggered a sequence of intelligence protocols that morphed into the greatest intelligence bonanza in history. And it tells of a coterie of associates, reaching all the way into the office of the attorney general, who stood to advance power and themselves. Based on extensive, exclusive interviews with dozens of high-level sources - Soviets who resigned from the KGB and moved to the United States, former officers in the CIA, FBI counterintelligence agents, lawyers at white-shoe Washington firms - and analysis of thousands of pages of FBI investigations, police investigations, and news articles in English, Russian, and Ukrainian, American Kompromat shows that something much more sinister and important has been taking place than the public could ever imagine: namely, that from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, kompromat operations documented the darkest secrets of the most powerful people in the world and transformed them into potent weapons. Was Donald Trump a Russian asset? Just how compromised was he? And how could such an audacious feat have been accomplished? American Kompromat is situated in the ongoing context of the Trump-Russia scandal and the new era of hybrid warfare, kleptocrats, and authoritarian right-wing populism it helped accelerate. To answer these questions and more, Craig Unger reports, is to understand kompromat - operations that amassed compromising information on the richest and most powerful men on earth, and that leveraged power by appealing to what is for some the most prized possession of all: their vanity.
©2021 Craig Unger (P)2021 Penguin Audio
House of Bush, House of Saud
Summary
How did the Bushes, America's most powerful political family, become gradually seduced by and entangled with their Saudi counterparts? Why did the Bush administration approve the secret airlift of 140 Saudis, including two dozen relatives of Osama bin Laden, just after September 11? Did one of the Saudi royals on the planes have any advance knowledge of the attacks? What specifically chosen words did George W. Bush say on national television during the 2000 election campaign to trigger Muslim support? How did Saudi-funded Islamic groups propel Bush to victory in Florida, thus winning him the presidency? The answers to these questions lie in a largely hidden relationship between the House of Bush and the House of Saud that began in the mid-1970s. An amazing weave of money, power, and influence, it takes place all over the globe and involves war, covert operations, and huge deals in oil and defense industries. But, most horrifyingly of all, the secret liasion between these two great families helped trigger the Age of Terror and give rise to the tragedy of 9-11.
©2004 Craig Unger (P)2004 Simon & Schuster, Inc. AUDIOWORKS is an imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster, Inc.
When Women Win
Summary
The dramatic inside story of the rise of women in elected office over the past quarter-century, from the pioneering founder of three-million-member EMILY's List - one of the most influential players in today's political landscape
In 1985, aware of the near-total absence of women in Congress, Ellen R. Malcolm launched EMILY's List, a powerhouse political organization that seeks to ignite change by getting women elected to office. The rest is riveting history: Between 1986 - when there were only 12 Democratic women in the House and none in the Senate - and now, EMILY's List has helped elect 19 women Senators, 11 governors, and 110 Democratic women to the House.
Incorporating exclusive interviews with Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Tammy Baldwin, and others, When Women Win delivers stories of some of the toughest political contests of the past three decades, including the historic victory of Barbara Mikulski as the first Democratic woman elected to the Senate in her own right; the defeat of Todd Akin ("legitimate rape") by Claire McCaskill; and Elizabeth Warren's dramatic win over incumbent Massachusetts senator Scott Brown.
When Women Win includes Malcolm's own story - the high drama of Anita Hill's sexual harassment testimony against Clarence Thomas and its explosive effects on women's engagement in electoral politics; the long nights spent watching the polls after months of dogged campaigning; the heartbreaking losses and unprecedented victories - but it's also a pause-resisting political saga that may well lead up to the election of the first woman president of the United States.
©2016 Ellen R. Malcolm and Craig Unger (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Small portions of chapter 9, “How to Beat Bubba,” first appeared in “How to Beat Bubba” by Craig Unger in the New Republic, October 22, 1990.
Boss Rove
Summary
Karl Rove, the man who masterminded the rise of George W. Bush from governor of Texas to the presidency, who advised Bush during two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who some claim helped seize the 2004 election for Bush, and who was at the center of the Bush administration's two biggest scandals - the Valerie Plame Wilson affair and the U.S. attorneys scandal - is back. Since exiting the Bush administration, Rove has quietly become the country's greatest Republican power broker. His pulpit is much vaster than his role as a commentator on Fox News and his regular columns for the Wall Street Journal suggest. His real strength is his ability to mobilize immense sums through the SuperPAC American Crossroads and similar organizations, and channel that money on behalf of Republican candidates. Knowing that Rove remains connected and powerful, Unger investigates Rove's politically controversial activities of times past, shedding important new light on them, and shows their relevance to his activities today. He scrutinizes Rove's roles in the Valerie Plame Wilson affair, the U.S. attorneys scandal, the strange events in Ohio on the night of the 2004 presidential election, and much more. But now that Rove is back in control of GOP political strategy and funding, there are pressing new questions: How did Rove do an end run around on the Republican National Committee and build his own, more powerful organization? In what ways did he subtly, and not so subtly, influence the 2012 Republican primary process? What did he say (and do) regarding candidates Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum? How did he placate the Tea Party, which he privately despises, even as he cleverly marginalized its importance? How did he and Mitt Romney draw closer as the GOP convention neared? How will he further benefit from a Romney victory? And if Romney loses, why will Rove remain powerful? Unger has the answers. As demonstrated in his previous books, Unger is adept at combining incisive reporting with the journalistic record to create a master narrative that sheds new light on a political subject. Detailed, fascinating, and entertaining, Boss Rove will interest not only listeners who want to know more about the 2012 election but also those keen to understand the forces endangering American democracy. This up-to-the-minute journalistic report sheds crucial light on Rove's vital behind-the-scenes role in this fall's presidential election and in the future of American politics.
©2012 Craig Unger (P)2012 Tantor