Joshua Hammer has 6 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 3.5★ across 8 ratings. The most-rated is The Falcon Thief.
The Falcon Thief
Summary
A rollicking true-crime adventure about a rogue who trades in rare birds and their eggs - and the wildlife detective determined to stop him. On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain’s Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were 14 rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. So begins a tale almost too bizarre to believe, following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions - and Detective Andy McWilliam of the United Kingdom’s National Wildlife Crime Unit, who’s hell bent on protecting the world’s birds of prey. The Falcon Thief whisks listeners from the volcanoes of Patagonia to Zimbabwe’s Matobo National Park, and from the frigid tundra near the Arctic Circle to luxurious aviaries in the deserts of Dubai, all in pursuit of a man who is reckless, arrogant, and gripped by a destructive compulsion to make the most beautiful creatures in nature his own. It’s a story that’s part true-crime narrative, part epic adventure - and wholly unputdownable until the very last minute.
©2020 Joshua Hammer (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio
Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu
Summary
In the 1980s, a young adventurer and collector for a government library, Abdel Kader Haidara, journeyed across the Sahara Desert and along the Niger River, tracking down and salvaging tens of thousands of ancient Islamic and secular manuscripts that had fallen into obscurity. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu tells the incredible story of how Haidara, a mild-mannered archivist and historian from the legendary city of Timbuktu, later became one of the world's greatest and most brazen smugglers. In 2012, thousands of Al Qaeda militants from northwest Africa seized control of most of Mali, including Timbuktu. They imposed Sharia law, chopped off the hands of accused thieves, stoned to death unmarried couples, and threatened to destroy the great manuscripts. As the militants tightened their control over Timbuktu, Haidara organized a dangerous operation to sneak all 350,000 volumes out of the city to the safety of southern Mali. Over the past 20 years, journalist Joshua Hammer visited Timbuktu numerous times and is uniquely qualified to tell the story of Haidara's heroic and ultimately successful effort to outwit Al Qaeda and preserve Mali's - and the world's - literary patrimony. Hammer explores the city's manuscript heritage and offers never-before-reported details about the militants' march into northwest Africa. But above all, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu is an inspiring account of the victory of art and literature over extremism.
©2016 Joshua Hammer. Recorded by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc. (P)2016 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Kalinka Affair
Summary
When André Bamberski's daughter died 30 years ago, he was helpless to save her. Suspicions of murder began to surround her stepfather, a German doctor named Dieter Krombach, but Bamberski could only hope the truth would prevail. But when the authorities gave up their pursuit, he knew he had to act. So against the odds, Bamberski embarked on an obsessive quest to capture and punish his daughter's killer. In this riveting true story by Joshua Hammer, a father travels to the limits of law in search of justice.
©2012 Joshua Hammer (P)2012 The Atavist
The Honeymoon Murder
Summary
Anni and Shrien Dewani's life together was the stuff of romance novels: Love at first sight, a whirlwind courtship, a wedding proposal in Paris after a flight on Shrien's private plane. Young, wealthy, and attractive, the Dewanis were the kind of couple that seemed immune to misfortune - until they arrived in Cape Town, South Africa on their honeymoon. Barely a day later, a brutal carjacking left Anni dead and Shrien wandering alone through one of South Africa's most dangerous neighborhoods. At first, Anni Dewani's death seemed to be a random tragedy, a case of naïve tourists out of their depth in an unfamiliar land. But the police investigating the killing soon began to suspect that something more nefarious had happened - and that not all of the incident's victims were as innocent as they first appeared. In The Honeymoon Murder, veteran foreign correspondent Joshua Hammer uncovers a story of tragic misfortune and intrigue, in which cultural and political pressures complicate private lives and nothing is quite what it seems to be.
©2013 The Atavist, Joshua Hammer (P)2013 The Atavist, Joshua Hammer
The Desert Blues
Summary
Manny Ansar and Iyad Ag Ghali had little in common - one was a politically connected intellectual, the other a rebel waging war on behalf of his nomadic people in the middle of the Sahara. They did share one thing, though: a passion for Mali's desert blues, a haunting mix of traditional music infused with the influence of Elvis Presley, Bob Marley, and Jimi Hendrix. The Festival in the Desert was born out of that shared passion. A grand spectacle in Mali's desolate dunes, the festival attracted some of the most famous musicians in the world, including Bono, Jimmy Buffet, and Robert Plant. But as the music flourished, the friendship turned to enmity. Ghali, who once openly scoffed at religious piety, succumbed to the pull of radical Islam. Ansar, who couldn't fathom his friend's transformation, maintained the festival in the face of increasing threats of deadly violence. In The Desert Blues, veteran foreign correspondent Joshua Hammer lays bare the longing at the heart of Mali's legendary sound, and brings to life the jubilant possibility the festival represented and the deadly drama that ripped it all apart.
©2015 Joshua Hammer and The Atavist (P)2015 Joshua Hammer and The Atavist
The Salvation of Mosul
Summary
An Iraqi archaeologist braved ISIS snipers and booby-trapped ruins to rescue cultural treasures in the city and nearby legendary Nineveh and Nimrud."The Salvation of Mosul" is from the October 2017 issue of Smithsonian.
©2016 Smithsonian Institution (P)2016 Audible, Inc.