The Great Courses has 635 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 479 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 19,831 ratings. The most-rated is A Column of Fire.
Charismatic Leaders Who Remade America
Summary
What is that mysterious thing we call charisma? Where does this magnetic quality come from? Why are we so drawn to it? Are people born charismatic - or do they become that way over time? Can charisma be just as much a force for evil as it is for good? Answers to questions like these are just as important now, in the 21st century, as they were during the earliest years of the American republic. Much of the nation’s history is inextricably linked with charismatic leaders who’ve inspired mass movements, led democratic progress, fanned the flames of violence, and even taken advantage of the human desire for divine inspiration. Think of Puritan heretic Anne Hutchinson or celebrity statesman, founding father Benjamin Franklin. Think of leadership guru Dale Carnegie or daytime television queen Oprah Winfrey. Think of presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Donald Trump. Each of them, in their own way, remade America through their gripping charisma - an allure that gave them the ability to move crowds and societies. Delivered by Professor Molly Worthen of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this Audible Original offers 10 captivating lessons on how these leaders inspired the public as they remade America. You’ll meet a wide range of characters, from politicians and philosophers to billionaires and cult leaders as you get at the heart of how they used their charisma to shape American history. You’ll also trace the evolution of the idea of charisma, from the ancient notion of God’s anointing power to the insights of both modern psychology and leadership studies. Crack the code for charisma, and you’ve cracked the code for the American spirit.
©2020 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2020 Audible Originals, LLC.
A History of the U.S. Economy in the 20th Century
Summary
The history of the U.S. economy in the 20th century is far too interesting - and far too important to our future - to be dismissed with just a few stock explanations. These 10 fast-paced lectures introduce you to vital economic lessons learned in the last century to provide invaluable guidance for understanding the current economy. Each lecture focuses exclusively on one decade to provide you with a clear understanding of economic developments and outside influences on the U.S. economy. In some cases, you'll examine well-defined events like the creation of the Federal Reserve or the war in Vietnam. In other lectures, you'll explore larger societal shifts, such as the evolving role of women in the economy and changing consumption patterns. This decade-by-decade approach takes you deep inside America's memorable economic milestones. Among these: the U.S. trade surplus during World War I; the rise of the automobile industry in the 1920s; the mismanagement of monetary policy that led to the Great Depression; the Employment Act of 1946, which gave the federal government the responsibility to maintain high employment and economic growth; the strangling inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s; and more. Professor Taylor takes care to ensure that you can follow this course clearly regardless of your knowledge of economics. He uses historical examples and quotes from economists and other notables, and his use of economic reasoning often brings surprising insight. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©1996 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)1996 The Great Courses
A Historian Goes to the Movies: Ancient Rome
Summary
How have films like Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Gladiator, or even a satire like Monty Python’s Life of Brian created our popular perceptions of ancient Roman history? In what ways have they led us astray? And why, despite the occasional box-office flop, do movies set in ancient Rome still have the power to captivate us, and to turn each of us into theater-going history buffs? In these 12 lectures, an award-winning historian gives you a front-row look at the great movies that have shaped ancient Rome’s role in popular culture and memory. Packed with insights into both history and filmmaking, this series immerses you in the glory and grandeur (and, sometimes, the folly) of classic and contemporary films featuring over 50 years of cinematic talent, including directors like Stanley Kubrick and Ridley Scott and actors such as Elizabeth Taylor and Russell Crowe. You’ll investigate portrayals of ancient Roman life on the big screen and small screen; learn how to tease out fact from fiction in some of Hollywood’s most stunning spectacles; and deepen your appreciation for films that, when made right, can be thrilling time machines into the past. Some films you may already be a fan of; other films you might have only heard of in passing. But all of them are essential to a well-rounded understanding of the intricate relationship between the world of ancient Rome and the world of the movies. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 The Great Courses (P)2020 The Teaching Company, LLC
How to Speak Effectively in Any Setting
Summary
The power of an effective speech is undeniable. It has the capacity to engage, inform, motivate, and create change in an audience - and in the world. In this compelling 24-lesson course, How to Speak Effectively in Any Setting, taught by Molly Bishop Shadel, Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, learn the fine art of speaking clearly, effectively, and persuasively in contexts across the spectrum, from the board room to the bar room and everywhere in between. With an eye toward the role of ethos, pathos, and logos in effective writing and presentation, Professor Shadel helps you organize and construct a speech in ways that are different from what you might write for other purposes. Focusing on timing and environment in audience experience, you will learn to structure and deliver speeches that your audience can easily follow. Practice, preparation, and some tricks from the actor’s bag of tricks will support great vocal presentation with equally skilled physicality. Whether you are expected to deliver a eulogy, a wedding toast, a commencement speech, or a formal workplace presentation, advice and direction from Professor Shadel will guide you to success. Learn the underpinnings of effective speech writing and skilled delivery in settings both personal and professional, providing you the tools needed to appear confident and competent during all your public speaking experiences. Finish the course with a new understanding of context, occasion, purpose, and audience, prepared to craft and deliver discourse for any occasion and every situation. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2021 The Great Courses (P)2021 The Teaching Company, LLC
Understanding Economics
Summary
Game theory is the study of strategic decision-making in politics, sports, diplomacy, and a host of other areas, but especially in economics, where game theory flourishes. Understanding Economics: Game Theory introduces you to this fascinating field, which combines the fun and challenge of games with the logic of brain teasers. In 12 engaging half-hour lessons, Professor Jay R. Corrigan of Kenyon College analyzes such classic games as the prisoner’s dilemma and the hawk-dove game. While these particular games involve lawbreakers and animal rivalries, they have applications to many situations. Each lesson is devoted to a handful of examples, which you investigate in detail, working out the possible strategies for the different competitors and their expected payoffs. Along the way, you discover why it’s hard to buy a good used car, why people confess to crimes they didn’t commit, why athletes ignore the risks and use performance-enhancing drugs, and how to bid in different kinds of auctions to increase your payoff—and also why you might regret winning one special type of auction. Professor Corrigan covers fundamental concepts, such as dominant strategy and Nash equilibrium, the latter named for the reclusive genius who was profiled in the movie A Beautiful Mind. He teaches you how to diagram a game with a payoff matrix, which is a table that shows every player’s payoff based on the chosen strategies. You also practice backward induction, where you start at the game’s last round and work your way back to the beginning to determine your best opening move. These are all powerful tools for seeing the game from opposing points of view and uncovering an optimum strategy. After taking this course, you’ll know what to do the next time you bargain for a used car or get caught in the frenzy of an auction. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2021 The Great Courses (P)2021 The Teaching Company, LLC
Real Zen for Real Life
Summary
What do you think of when you hear the word Zen? Many Westerners may associate Zen with the counterculture of the 1960s and '70s, while others may associate it with today’s hipster culture. Many use the word to simply mean laid-back and relaxed. But what does Zen really mean? Zen is a school of Buddhism and a rigorous spiritual discipline. To understand what Zen is really about, it is vital not only to study its profound philosophical teachings, but also to engage in the practice of Zen. The word Zen means meditation, and Zen meditation is a practice of “clearing the heart-mind”. For Zen, an open mind entails an open heart, and this open heart-mind is the source of both creativity and compassion. Professor Bret W. Davis, professor of philosophy and the T. J. Higgins, SJ, chair in philosophy at Loyola University Maryland, has created a highly accessible introduction to the philosophical concept of Zen with Real Zen for Real Life. Bringing the academic purview of a philosophy professor, the view of an academic scholar, and the spiritual experience of a practitioner and teacher of Zen, this course reflects the push and pull between Eastern and Western traditions and cultures with the goal of making the study and practice of Zen more accessible and engaging to all viewers. Over the course of 24 lessons, including the eight meditation checkups within lessons, you will learn both what Zen has traditionally meant for East Asians and what it can mean for contemporary Westerners. Prepare to be challenged as Professor Davis asks you to set aside your preconceptions in order to open yourselves to what Zen masters who lived in the past and in distant lands have to teach you. You will especially need to be open to the possibility that Zen may be able to teach you about yourself. This course aims to challenge and inspire you, both intellectually and personally. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 The Great Courses (P)2020 The Teaching Company, LLC
The Hidden Factor: Why Thinking Differently Is Your Greatest Asset
Summary
From technology to business, two (or more) heads often prove to be better than one - but only if those heads are cognitively diverse. Diverse perspectives are a powerful tool for maximizing productivity and enhancing collective performance. Now, in The Hidden Factor: Why Thinking Differently Is Your Greatest Asset, you can learn the strategies that make you a more diverse thinker and position you to break down institutional silos and build robust, effective teams. Delivered by Professor Scott E. Page of the University of Michigan - a pioneering researcher in his field - these 24 thought-provoking lectures are packed with case studies, cautionary tales, and formal mathematical methods that prove the case for cognitive difference. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2012 The Great Courses (P)2012 The Teaching Company, LLC
The Life and Works of Jane Austen
Summary
Born to the ranks of the lower English gentry in 1775, Jane Austen led what some have mistakenly described as an ordinary and unremarkable life - a life that ended all too soon at the age of 41. But from this life, Austen drew inspiration for six novels that all rank as literary masterpieces, including the widely beloved Pride and Prejudice. So, what do we really know about Austen’s life and influences? With Professor Devoney Looser of Arizona State University, you will get invaluable insight into Austen’s everyday reality in the elegant and tumultuous Regency period and a more thorough understanding of her influence and lasting legacy. Over the course of the 24 lessons of The Life and Works of Jane Austen, you will explore her six completed works, as well as her raucous teenage writings and unfinished novels. You will also get a guided tour of Austen’s world - the politics, social dynamics, major events, cultural markers, and class structures that defined the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Great Britain - and how these elements shaped her life and inspired her work. While there may always be a certain amount of mystery about Austen’s life, this course offers a fuller understanding of her world and how she brilliantly captured it on the page. Jane Austen’s work was shaped profoundly by the world she lived in, and The Life and Works of Jane Austen offers you the chance to explore this world and to see how the novels Austen published over two centuries ago continue to engage and entertain readers and influence popular culture through countless adaptations on page and screen. Whether you are a fan, a casual reader - or even someone who has always been a little confused by “Austenmania” - this course will illuminate the worlds, both real and imagined, of Austen’s fiction and her astonishing contributions to literature. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2021 The Great Courses (P)2021 The Teaching Company, LLC
Amber and Clay
Summary
Welcome to ancient Greece as only genius storyteller Laura Amy Schlitz can conjure it. In a warlike land of wind and sunlight, “ringed by a restless sea”, live Rhaskos and Melisto, spiritual twins with little in common beyond the violent and mysterious forces that dictate their lives. A Thracian slave in a Greek household, Rhaskos is as common as clay, a stable boy worth less than a donkey, much less a horse. Wrenched from his mother at a tender age, he nurtures in secret, aided by Socrates, his passions for art and philosophy. Melisto is a spoiled aristocrat, a girl as precious as amber but willful and wild. She’ll marry and be tamed - the curse of all highborn girls - but risk her life for a season first to serve Artemis, goddess of the hunt. Bound by destiny, Melisto and Rhaskos - Amber and Clay - never meet in the flesh. By the time they do, one of them is a ghost. But the thin line between life and death is just one boundary their unlikely friendship crosses. It takes an army of snarky gods and fearsome goddesses, slaves and masters, mothers and philosophers to help shape their story into a gorgeously distilled, symphonic tour de force. Blending verse and prose, this is a tale that vividly transcends time, an indelible reminder of the power of language to illuminate the over- and underworlds of human history.
©2021 Laura Amy Schlitz (P)2021 Recorded Books
King's Counsellor
Summary
The diaries of 'Tommy' Lascelles - as featured in the Netflix hit THE CROWN. As Assistant Private Secretary to four monarchs, 'Tommy' Lascelles had a ringside seat from which to observe the workings of the royal household and Downing Street during the first half of the 20th century. These fascinating diaries begin with Edward VIII's abdication and end with George VI's death and his daughter Elizabeth's Coronation. In between we see George VI at work and play, a portrait more intimate than any other previously published. This compelling account also includes Princess Margaret's relationship with Peter Townsend, and throws an intriguing new light on the way in which King George VI and Winston Churchill worked together during the Second World War. Lascelles was a fine writer - like most of the best diaries his are a delight to listen to as well as being invaluable history.
©2020 Duff Hart-Davis (P)2020 Orion Publishing Group
The Snail and the Whale and Other Stories
Summary
A brilliant collection of best-selling stories from Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, read aloud by stars Josie Lawrence, Steven Pacey and Imelda Staunton - perfect for listening to at home, in the car, at bedtime or any time at all! Travel the world with the little snail and the humpback whale, soar through the sky with the witch and her animal friends, join the Gruffalo's Child as she searches for the mysterious Big Bad Mouse and enjoy the world inside a book with Charlie Cook! The Snail and the Whale and Other Stories is brilliantly performed by well-known actors Josie Lawrence, Steven Pacey and Imelda Staunton, and each story also has a song and sound effects, with a total running time of an hour. Perfect for listening to at home or to brighten up a car journey with the much-loved creations of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. This fantastic collection includes four stories: The Snail and the Whale, Room on the Broom, The Gruffalo's Child and Charlie Cook's Favourite Book.
©2020 Julia Donaldson (P)2020 Macmillan Publishing International Limited
Great Heroes and Discoveries of Astronomy
Summary
When it comes to the heroes of astronomy, we tend to think of lone men persevering in the face of daunting odds. Think of the titans of astronomy and you’re likely to think of names like Edwin Hubble, Albert Einstein, and Carl Sagan. And while these individuals revolutionized our understanding of the visible and invisible universe, they, too, were standing on the shoulders of other scientists and engineers without whom none of their groundbreaking ideas would have been possible. Great Heroes and Discoveries of Astronomy takes you around the world and across time in search of the unsung heroes who, in many ways, are just as important to the story of astronomy as Hubble, Einstein, and Sagan. Whether they stood on the shoulders of giants or themselves offered shoulders for giants to stand on, the heroes of astronomy you’ll meet in these 24 lessons are a collective of the brightest and most daring minds in science. Other influential astronomers you’ll meet include Annie Jump Cannon, who revolutionized the way astronomers classified the stars; Grote Reber, who designed what we recognize today as radio telescopes; Vera Rubin, who identified the first observational evidence of dark matter; and so many others. From groundbreaking new theories to serendipitous observations, from engineering the world’s largest telescopes to designing bold new ways to detect gravitational waves, you’ll witness the evolution of astronomical knowledge in small steps and incredible leaps. This is an incomparable window into why we’ve always found the stars so fascinating. And why we always will. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2021 The Great Courses (P)2021 The Teaching Company, LLC
Conversational French Dialogues
Summary
Have you recently started learning French, but you’re not sure what the best method of learning is? Are you looking for the fastest, easiest way to boost your comprehension and learn to understand and speak this incredible language? Then it’s time to try this audiobook! French is a brilliant language which millions of people enjoy speaking around the world – but how do you find the best tools to help you join them? Inside this ultimate guide, you’ll uncover everything you need to know to put you on the path to mastering French. Containing short essential French dialogues with vocabulary, this audiobook arms you with the vital knowledge you need to make sense of the French language and start speaking in no time. Plus, with this audiobook version, you can listen along to the stories and supercharge your listening skills no matter how busy you are! Here’s what you’ll discover inside: Fifteen essential dialogues for boosting your French conversation skills and learning how native speakers talk Two audio recordings of each story: one slow so that you can understand every word and one at normal speed A variety of topics so that you won't get bored Vocabulary lists after every story to make sure that you've understood every word English translations for every French word A free PDF of the audiobook to download And much more! So if you’re looking for the best way to kickstart your French skills and learn to speak like a native, then you’ve come to the right place. It’s time to take your learning into your own hands and begin your journey to becoming fluent in the amazing French language! Scroll up and buy now to supercharge your French learning today! PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Central Park Language Learning (P)2020 Central Park Language Learning
Hate Me
Summary
I'm the whispers in the dark you can't ignore. The bully you can't run away from. I'm the tormentor who makes your life a living hell. The villain you love to hate. I'm the vicious monster sleeping in the next room. The one who knows all your secrets. And I'll stop at nothing to make you pay. This book is recommended for mature listeners due to graphic language, sexual content, and dark elements.
©2021 Ashley Jade (P)2021 Podium Audio
Social Media Marketing All-in-One for Dummies (4th Edition)
Summary
The best-selling social media marketing guide. Marketing your business through social media isn't an option these days - it's absolutely imperative. In this new edition of the best-selling Social Media Marketing All-in-One for Dummies, you'll get comprehensive, expert guidance on how to use the latest social media platforms to promote your business, reach customers, and thrive in the global marketplace. Social media continues to evolve at breakneck speed, and with the help of this guide, you'll discover how to devise and maintain a successful social media strategy, use the latest tactics for reaching your customers, and utilize data to make adjustments to future campaigns and activities. Plus, you'll find out how to apply the marketing savvy you already have to the social media your prospects are using, helping you to reach - and keep - more customers, make more sales, and boost your bottom line. This audiobook: includes the latest changes to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more; offers tips for engaging your community and measuring your efforts; explains how to blend social media with your other online and offline marketing efforts; and shows you how to leverage data to learn more about your community.
©2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (P)2020 Tantor