Rajiv Chandrasekaran has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 11 ratings. The most-rated is Upstanders: Season 2 (FREE).
Upstanders: Season 2 (FREE)
Summary
Performed by the acclaimed actor Michael B. Jordan (The Wire, Fantastic Four, Creed), Upstanders is a stirring tribute to the ordinary people who make a remarkable difference in big cities and small towns across the country. For more than a year, Howard Schultz, the chairman and former CEO of Starbucks, and former Washington Post senior correspondent and associate editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran searched the country for even more of America's unsung heroes, as a follow-up to Upstanders' first season. Now you'll hear the stories and voices of the people they found - local citizens who are demonstrating unbelievable courage and inspiring a better America at a time when we need these heroes more than ever. From the Dallas chef who's staffing his restaurant with former juvenile offenders, to the Missoula, Montana mother who opened her community's hearts and doors to refugees, to the Seattle firefighter who's helping to destigmatize post-traumatic stress among our nation's first responders - the 11 individuals featured in this second volume of Upstanders embody the American spirit and much of what's missing from today's national debate over how to salvage America's soul. Through their passion for humanity, courage to lead, and willingness to act, the Upstanders we celebrate here remind us that we all have the power to create positive change in our communities and beyond.
©2017 Starbucks Coffee Company (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
Imperial Life in the Emerald City
Summary
In this unprecedented account, The Washington Post's former Baghdad bureau chief, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, takes us into the Green Zone, headquarters for the American occupation in Iraq. In this bubble separated from wartime realities, the task of reconstructing a devastated nation competes with the distractions of a Little America: a half-dozen bars, a disco, a shopping mall - much of it run by Halliburton. While qualified Americans willing to serve in Iraq are screened for their views on Roe v. Wade, the country is put into the hands of inexperienced 20-somethings chosen for their Republican Party loyalty. Ignoring what Iraqis say they want or need, the team pursues irrelevant neoconservative solutions and pie-in-the-sky policies instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring electricity. Their almost comic initiatives anger the locals and fuel the insurgency.
©2006 Rajiv Chandrasekaran (P)2006 Blackstone Audio Inc.
For Love of Country
Summary
A celebration of the extraordinary courage, dedication, and sacrifice of this generation of American veterans on the battlefield and their equally valuable contributions on the home front. Because so few of us now serve in the military, our men and women in uniform have become strangers to us. We stand up at athletic events to honor them, but we hardly know their true measure. Here, Starbucks CEO and longtime veterans’ advocate Howard Schultz and National Book Award finalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post offer an enlightening, inspiring corrective. The authors honor acts of uncommon valor in Iraq and Afghanistan, including an Army sergeant who repeatedly runs through a storm of gunfire to save the lives of his wounded comrades; two Marines who sacrifice their lives to halt an oncoming truck bomb and protect 33 of their brothers in arms; a 60-year-old doctor who joins the Navy to honor his fallen son. We also see how veterans make vital contributions once they return home, drawing on their leadership skills and commitment to service: former soldiers who aid residents in rebuilding after natural disasters; a former infantry officer who trades in a Pentagon job to teach in an inner-city neighborhood; a retired general leading efforts to improve treatments for brain-injured troops; the spouse of a severely injured soldier assisting families in similar positions. These powerful, unforgettable stories demonstrate just how indebted we are to those who protect us and what they have to offer our nation when their military service is done.
©2014 Howard Schultz (P)2014 Random House Audio
Little America
Summary
From the award-winning author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a riveting, intimate account of America's troubled war in Afghanistan. When President Barack Obama ordered the surge of troops and aid to Afghanistan, Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran followed. He found the effort sabotaged not only by Afghan and Pakistani malfeasance, but by infighting and incompetence within the American government: a war cabinet arrested by vicious bickering among top national security aides; diplomats and aid workers who failed to deliver on their grand promises; generals who dispatched troops to the wrong places; and headstrong military leaders who sought a far more expansive campaign than the White House wanted. Through their bungling and quarreling, they wound up squandering the first year of the surge. Chandrasekaran explains how the United States has never understood Afghanistan - and probably never will. During the Cold War, American engineers undertook a massive development project across southern Afghanistan in an attempt to woo the country from Soviet influence. They built dams and irrigation canals, and they established a "comfortable" residential community known as Little America, with a Western-style school, a coed community pool, and a plush clubhouse - all of which embodied American and Afghan hopes for a bright future and a close relationship. But in the late 1970s - after growing Afghan resistance and a Communist coup - the Americans abandoned the region to warlords and poppy farmers. In one revelatory scene after another, Chandrasekaran follows American efforts to reclaim the very same territory from the Taliban. Along the way, we meet an Army general whose experience as the top military officer in charge of Iraq's Green Zone couldn't prepare him for the bureaucratic knots of Afghanistan, a Marine commander whose desire to charge into remote hamlets conflicted with civilian priorities, and a war-seasoned diplomat frustrated in his push for a scaled-down but long-term American commitment. Their struggles show how Obama's hope of a good war, and the Pentagon's desire for a resounding victory, shriveled on the arid plains of southern Afghanistan. Meticulously reported, hugely revealing, Little America is an unprecedented examination of a failing war - and an eye-opening look at the complex relationship between America and Afghanistan.
©2012 Rajiv Chandrasekaran (P)2012 Random House Audio