The Art & Literature category has 653 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 1,594 ratings. The most-rated is Inheritance.
Inheritance
Summary
An Instant New York Times Best Seller A Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, and National Indie Best Seller A Best Book of the Year According to Elle, Real Simple, and Kirkus Reviews "Memoir gold: a profound and exquisitely rendered exploration of identity and the true meaning of family." (People Magazine) "Beautifully written and deeply moving - it brought me to tears more than once." (Ruth Franklin, The New York Times Book Review) From the acclaimed, best-selling memoirist, novelist - "a writer of rare talent" (Cheryl Strayed) - and host of the hit podcast Family Secrets, comes a memoir about the staggering family secret uncovered by a genealogy test: an exploration of the urgent ethical questions surrounding fertility treatments and DNA testing, and a profound inquiry of paternity, identity, and love. What makes us who we are? What combination of memory, history, biology, experience, and that ineffable thing called the soul defines us? In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her father was not her biological father. She woke up one morning and her entire history - the life she had lived - crumbled beneath her. Inheritance is an audiobook about secrets - secrets within families, kept out of shame or self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. It is the story of a woman's urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that has been scrupulously hidden from her for more than 50 years, years she had spent writing brilliantly, and compulsively, on themes of identity and family history. It is an audiobook about the extraordinary moment we live in - a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics, but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover.
©2019 Dani Shapiro (P)2019 Random House Audio
Lessons
Summary
The instant New York Times best seller Supermodel and philanthropist Gisele Bündchen shares personal stories, insights, and photos to explore lessons that have helped shape her life. Gisele Bündchen's journey began in southern Brazil, growing up with five sisters, playing volleyball, and rescuing the dogs and cats around her hometown. In fact, she wanted to become either a professional volley player or a veterinarian. But at the age of 14, fate suddenly intervened in the form of a modeling scout, who spotted her in São Paulo. Four years later, Gisele's appearance in Alexander McQueen's memorably rain-soaked London runway show in the spring 1998 launched her spectacular career as a fashion model, and put an end to the "heroin chic" era of fashion. Since then, Gisele has appeared in almost 400 ad campaigns and on over 1200 magazine covers. She has walked in more than 470 fashion shows for the most influential brands in the world. Gisele has become an icon, leaving a lasting mark on the fashion industry. But until now, few people have gotten to know the real Gisele, a woman whose private life stands in dramatic contrast to her public image. In Lessons, she reveals for the first time who she really is and what she's learned over the past 37 years to help her live a meaningful life - a journey that takes listeners from a childhood spent barefoot in small-town Brazil, to an internationally successful career, motherhood and marriage to quarterback Tom Brady. A work of great openness and vulnerability, Lessons reveals the inner life of a very public woman.
©2018 Gisele Bündchen (P)2018 Penguin Audio
How to Murder Your Life
Summary
From Cat Marnell, "New York's enfant terrible" (The Telegraph), a candid and darkly humorous memoir of prescription drug addiction and self-sabotage, set in the glamorous world of fashion magazines and downtown nightclubs. At 26 Cat Marnell was an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America - and that's all most people knew about her. But she hid a secret life. She was a prescription drug addict. She was also a "doctor shopper" who manipulated Upper East Side psychiatrists for pills, pills, and more pills; a lonely bulimic who spent hundreds of dollars a week on binge foods; a promiscuous party girl who danced barefoot on banquets; a weepy and hallucination-prone insomniac who would take anything - anything - to sleep. This is a tale of self-loathing, self-sabotage, and, yes, self-tanner. It begins at a posh New England prep school - and with a prescription for attention deficit disorder medication Ritalin. It continues to New York, where we follow Marnell's amphetamine-fueled rise from intern to editor through the beauty departments of NYLON, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Lucky. We see her fight between ambition and addiction and how, inevitably, her disease threatens everything she worked so hard to achieve. From the Conde Nast building (where she rides the elevator alongside Anna Wintour) to seedy nightclubs, from doctors' offices and mental hospitals, Marnell shows - like no one else can - what it is like to live in the wild, chaotic, often sinister world of a young female addict who can't say no. Combining lightning-rod subject matter and bold literary aspirations, How to Murder Your Life is mesmerizing, revelatory, and necessary.
©2017 Cat Marnell (P)2017 Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Yuval Noah Harari
Summary
Professor Yuval Noah Harari is a lecturer at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Gaining his PhD from Oxford University, he has published several books and articles. His most recent works comprise the international bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and, most recently Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.
©2016 Audible Ltd (P)2016 Audible, Ltd
The Chiffon Trenches
Summary
New York Times Best Seller From the pages of Vogue to the runways of Paris, this “captivating” (Time) memoir by a legendary style icon captures the fashion world from the inside out, in its most glamorous and most cutthroat moments. “The Chiffon Trenches honestly and candidly captures 50 sublime years of fashion.” (Manolo Blahnik) Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, Fortune, and Garden & Gun During André Leon Talley’s first magazine job, alongside Andy Warhol at Interview, a fateful meeting with Karl Lagerfeld began a decades-long friendship with the enigmatic, often caustic designer. Propelled into the upper echelons by his knowledge and adoration of fashion, André moved to Paris as bureau chief of John Fairchild’s Women’s Wear Daily, befriending fashion’s most important designers (Halston, Yves Saint Laurent, Oscar de la Renta). But as André made friends, he also made enemies. A racially tinged encounter with a member of the house of Yves Saint Laurent sent him back to New York and into the offices of Vogue under Grace Mirabella. There, he eventually became creative director, developing an unlikely but intimate friendship with Anna Wintour. As she rose to the top of Vogue’s masthead, André also ascended and soon became the most influential man in fashion. The Chiffon Trenches offers a candid look at the who’s who of the last 50 years of fashion. At once ruthless and empathetic, this engaging memoir tells with raw honesty the story of how André not only survived the brutal style landscape but thrived - despite racism, illicit rumors, and all the other challenges of this notoriously cutthroat industry - to become one of the most renowned voices and faces in fashion. Woven throughout the audiobook are also André’s own personal struggles that have impacted him over the decades, along with intimate stories of those he has turned to for inspiration (Diana Vreeland, Diane von Fürstenberg, Lee Radziwill, to name a few), and of course his Southern roots and ongoing faith, which have guided him since childhood. The result is a highly compelling listen that captures the essence of a world few of us will ever have real access to, but one that we all want to know oh so much more about.
©2020 André Leon Talley (P)2020 Random House Audio
Stephen Fry
Summary
In this interview Stephen Fry talks to us about the process of narrating the complete adventures of London's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes. He touches on the genius of Arthur Conan Doyle and reveals how joining the 'Sherlock Holmes Society' played a part in his expulsion from school and subsequent imprisonment. Coming round full circle, Stephen admits to having jumped at the chance of voicing Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection. Keen to delve once more into the 'majestic swing, rhythm and pulse of the text,' Stephen describes his experience in the recording studio, all the while expressing a general fondness for the magic of stories told aloud. As a renowned and beloved actor, writer, and presenter, Stephen Fry has imprinted himself into British culture. He has voiced all seven of the Harry Potter audiobooks, as well as titles such as The Picture of Dorian Gray, Mythos and Winnie the Pooh. His flawless rendition of literary classics is always second to none and in Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection, Stephen immediately draws you in and leaves you wanting more. Including personal introductions written by and narrated by Stephen, The Definitive Collection is a truly unique literary gem. Audible Members' Choice Winner of the Year, the audiobook has been described by listeners as 'superb' and 'over 70 hours of pure brilliance.'
©2016 Audible Studios (P)2016 Audible Studios
Esther Perel
Summary
Joining us in the Audible Studios to discuss her series Where Should We Begin? is esteemed psychotherapist Esther Perel. Coined as one of the original voices of modern relationships, Perel has accumulated up to 20 million listeners for her coveted TED talks and has become the go-to therapist for couples seeking help with intimacy. Most noted for her work on erotic intelligence and her expertise on issues of infidelity, Esther Perel covers all in her frank and refreshing Audible Audio Shows series, which began in 2017 and listens in on couples talking through their problems in Esther’s therapy room. Esther Perel talks to us about the making of her podcast series with Audible, what she hopes listeners can gain from the intimate discussions and what she learns from her clients.
©2018 Audible Ltd (P)2018 Audible Ltd
This Is Not a Fashion Story
Summary
New York Times best seller “We Wore What's Danielle Bernstein Is Giving Us the Modern-Day Sex and the City With New Memoir" (E!) A revealing (in more ways than one) tell-all from Long Island girl-turned-international fashion influencer, designer, CEO, and tech entrepreneur Danielle Bernstein, the creative genius behind the hit style platform @WeWoreWhat. Danielle Bernstein spent her youth shopping at discount department stores, getting boozy in suburban backyards, and proposing marriage to every boy she dated. By age 19, she was a college dropout living in a West Village shoebox with three roommates and only six months to prove that her blog, @WeWoreWhat, could become a full blown career...or else board the train back to her mom's house. Flash forward 10 years. Danielle is more than a famed influencer with over two million followers. She's also a bonafide business woman - a CEO, tech founder, and fashion designer whose living a dream lifestyle that includes all-expense-paid luxury travel to Paris and Positano, skipping the velvet rope, and controlling her own destiny. Despite these successes, Danielle has never been your typical play-by-the-rules fashionista. She disrupted the fashion industry using her own playbook - one that she's finally ready to share with you, her listeners. This Is Not a Fashion Story is the down and dirty tale of how a Long Island-born teenager became one of the most recognizable names in fashion. It's a story that proves success isn't about a college degree or how rich your parents are. It's about trusting your gut, knowing when to take risks, and fighting to get what you want in life, love, and business. But above all, it's the story of how a young girl made in the concrete jungle that is New York City - and how you can too.
©2020 Danielle Bernstein (P)2020 Vertel Publishing
Dry
Summary
You may not know it, but you've met Augusten Burroughs. You've seen him on the street, in bars, on the subway, at restaurants: a twentysomething guy, nice suit, works in advertising. Regular. Ordinary. But when the ordinary person had two drinks, Augusten was circling the drain by having twelve; when the ordinary person went home at midnight, Augusten never went home at all. Loud, distracting ties, automated wake-up calls and cologne on the tongue could only hide so much for so long. At the request (well, it wasn't really a request) of his employers, Augusten lands in rehab, where his dreams of group therapy with Robert Downey Jr. are immediately dashed by grim reality of fluorescent lighting and paper hospital slippers. But when Augusten is forced to examine himself, something actually starts to click and that's when he finds himself in the worst trouble of all. Because when his thirty days are up, he has to return to his same drunken Manhattan life - and live it sober. What follows is a memoir that's as moving as it is funny, as heartbreaking as it is true. Dry is the story of love, loss, and Starbucks as a Higher Power.
©2003 Augusten Burroughs; ©2003 by Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC
International Women's Day
Summary
In this International Women’s Day Audible Sessions Special, seven influential women discuss literature and gender equality and the importance of diversity in storytelling and reveal the women who inspire them. Featuring June Sarpong, Lily Cole, Meera Syal, Pearl Mackie, Prue Leith, Sam Baker and Eleanor Tomlinson. As part of this Audible Sessions Special, Audible made a donation to the Malala Fund, a charity championing the education of girls across the globe.
©2018 Audible Ltd (P)2018 Audible Ltd
Walden
Summary
Thoreau's classic account of the solitary life, describing his attempts to simplify his life and sort out his priorities by living alone in a cabin beside Walden Pond for nearly two years, is one of the most influential books ever written. The bible of the environmental movement, Walden vividly portrays Thoreau's reverence for nature, and his understanding of the idea that nature is made up of crucially interrelated parts.
Public Domain (P)2006 Trout Lake Media
Une vie sans peur et sans regret
Summary
Libre, passionnée, courageuse, dotée d'un franc-parler connu aussi bien au Canada qu'en France, Denise Bombardier n'est pas de ces journalistes et écrivains qui laissent indifférent. Femme de combats, d'engagements, parce qu'elle ne craint ni la polémique ni les débats d'idées, elle s'est tracé un sillon médiatique et littéraire où s'impose une ligne directrice rare : le refus des compromis et des compromissions. Une force de caractère qui lui vient de loin, comme ces mémoires le décrivent avec vigueur, chaleur, tendresse, colères et humour aussi.
Née à Montréal dans une famille modeste, élevée dans "l'eau bénite" d'une époque écrasée par le poids de la religion, fille d'une mère sous le joug d'un mari autoritaire et froid, elle s'est vite rebellée contre les siens au nom de sa liberté d'agir et de penser. Un peu comédienne, rapidement journaliste, très tôt férue de politique, elle bataille depuis quarante ans pour le féminisme, la défense de la langue française, contre les conformismes et les bénis-oui-oui. Parce qu'elle s'est extraite de la pauvreté culturelle grâce à l'éducation, parce qu'elle n'a jamais trahi ses idéaux mais toujours aimé apprendre, cette affranchie a eu une vie riche.
Grands auteurs (Anne Hébert, Dany Laferrière, Michel Tremblay, Antonine Maillet...), journalistes, hommes politiques (Daniel Johnson, Brian Mulroney, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, René Lévesque, Robert Bourassa et tant d'autres), intellectuels tels Jean-François Revel, Benoîte Groult, Marguerite Yourcenar et politiques de renom comme Alain Peyrefitte, François Mitterrand, Michel Rocard en France... elle a rencontré nombre de personnalités. Des figures qu'elle raconte par le menu, comme tout son parcours, sa famille, ses amours dans cet ouvrage foisonnant, sans langue de bois, plein d'amour envers le Québec, la langue française et la France elle-même.
©2019 Place des Éditeurs (P)2019 Audible Studios
Bryan Cranston
Summary
Introducing his autobiography, A Life in Parts, Bryan Cranston talks to us about embodying the infamous drug kingpin Walter White, the physical and emotional turmoil that comes with being an actor and how a difficult and oftentimes violent upbringing led him to become an unrelenting optimist. Having first graced our screens at the age of seven, Bryan now has over 150 titles to his name, including Linwood Boomer’s hugely celebrated sitcom Malcom in the Middle and Vince Gilligan’s multiaward-winning Breaking Bad. A fan of short stories, Brian presents A Life in Parts through a series of brief chapters which take the listener through a chronological journey of his life. Also an excellent guide for prospective actors, Brian imparts advice to those who are looking to make their mark in Hollywood.
©2016 Audible Ltd (P)2016 Audible Ltd
Thoreau: Walden / Civil Disobedience
Summary
In 1845 Henry David Thoreau, one of the principal New England Transcendentalists, left the small town of Concord for the country. Beside the lake of Walden he built himself a log cabin and returned to nature, to observe and reflect – while surviving on eight dollars a year. From this experience emerged Walden, one of the great classics of American literature, and a deeply personal reaction against the commercialism and materialism that Thoreau saw as the main impulses of mid-19th-century America. Here also is Civil Disobedience, Thoreau’s essay on just resistance to government, which not only challenged the establishment of his day but has been used as a flag for later campaigners from Mahatma Ghandi to Dr Martin Luther King. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2010 Naxos Audiobook (P)2010 Naxos Audiobook
The Monk of Mokha
Summary
From the best-selling author of The Circle, the true story of a young Yemeni-American man, raised in San Francisco, who dreams of resurrecting the ancient art of Yemeni coffee but finds himself trapped in Sana'a by civil war, and his riveting tale of escape. Mokhtar Alkhanshali grew up in San Francisco, one of seven siblings raised by Yemeni immigrants in a tiny apartment. At age 24, unable to pay for college, he works as a doorman. Until: a statue of an Arab raising a cup of coffee awakens something in him. He sets out to learn the rich history of coffee in Yemen and the complex art of tasting and identifying varietals. He travels to Yemen, collects samples of beans, eager to bring improved cultivation methods to the farmers. And he is on the verge of success when civil war engulfs Yemen in 2015 and he is trapped in Sana'a. Desperate to escape, he embarks on a passage that has him twice kidnapped at gunpoint, dodging US-made bombs dropped by the Saudi air force, and crossing the Red Sea onboard an unsafe skiff, all the while carrying two suitcases of coffee. A heart-pounding true story that weaves together the history of coffee, the ongoing Yemeni civil war, and the courageous journey of a young man - a Muslim and a US citizen - following the most American of dreams.
©2018 Dave Eggers (P)2018 Random House Audio
Berlin Diary
Summary
By the acclaimed journalist and New York Times best-selling author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, this day-by-day eyewitness account of the momentous events leading up to World War II in Europe is the private, personal, utterly revealing journal of a great foreign correspondent. CBS radio broadcaster William L. Shirer was virtually unknown in 1940 when he decided there might be a book in the diary he had kept in Europe during the 1930s—specifically those sections dealing with the collapse of the European democracies and the rise of Nazi Germany. Shirer was the only Western correspondent in Vienna on March 11, 1938, when the German troops marched in and took over Austria, and he alone reported the surrender by France to Germany on June 22, 1940, even before the Germans reported it. The whole time, Shirer kept a record of events, many of which could not be publicly reported because of censorship by the Germans. In December 1940, Shirer learned that the Germans were building a case against him for espionage, an offense punishable by death. Fortunately, Shirer escaped and was able to take most of his diary with him. Berlin Diary first appeared in 1941, and the timing was perfect. The energy, the passion, and the electricity in it were palpable. The book was an instant success, and it became the frame of reference against which thoughtful Americans judged the rush of events in Europe. It exactly matched journalist to event: the right reporter in the right place at the right time. It stood, and still stands, as so few books have ever done, a pure act of journalistic witness.
©1941 William L. Shirer (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Churchill and Orwell
Summary
A New York Times best seller! A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 A dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, who preserved democracy from the threats of authoritarianism, from the left and right alike. Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930s - Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and in deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. In a crucial moment, they responded first by seeking the facts of the matter, seeing through the lies and obfuscations, and then they acted on their beliefs. Together, to an extent not sufficiently appreciated, they kept the West's compass set toward freedom as its due north. It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930s, democracy was discredited in many circles, and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism but saw in Hitler and Mussolini "men we could do business with", if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedom - that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted. In the end, Churchill and Orwell proved their age's necessary men. The glorious climax of Churchill and Orwell is the work they both did in the decade of the 1940s to triumph over freedom's enemies. And though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, in Thomas E. Ricks' masterful hands, their lives are a beautiful testament to the power of moral conviction and to the courage it can take to stay true to it, through thick and thin.
©2017 Thomas E. Ricks (P)2017 Penguin Audio
The World of Yesterday
Summary
Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, recalls the golden age of prewar Europe - its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall with the onset of two world wars. Zweig's passionate, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the brink of extinction. It is an unusually humane account of Europe from the closing years of the 19th century through to World War II, seen through the eyes of one of the most famous writers of his era. Zweig's books (novels, biographies, essays) were translated into numerous languages, and he moved in the highest literary circles; he also encountered many leading political and social figures of his day. The World of Yesterday is a remarkable, totally engrossing history. This translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell captures the spirit of Zweig's writing in arguably his most important work, completed shortly before his tragic death in 1942. It is read with sympathy and understanding by David Horovitch.
©1942 Fischer Verlag. 2011 Anthea Bell (translation) (P)2017 Ukemi Productions Ltd
Running with Scissors
Summary
Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead-ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age 12, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in perfect squalor. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard shed completed the tableau. Here, there were no rules, there was no school. The Christmas tree stayed up until summer, and Valium was eaten like Pez. And when things got dull, there was always the vintage electroshock therapy machine under the stairs.... Running with Scissors is at turns foul and harrowing, compelling and maniacally funny. But above all, it chronicles an ordinary boy's survival under the most extraordinary circumstances. Running with Scissors acknowledgments: Gratitude doesn't begin to describe it: Jennifer Enderlin, Christopher Schelling, John Murphy, Gregg Sullivan, Kim Cardascia, Michael Storrings, and everyone at St. Martin's Press. Thank you: Lawrence David, Suzanne Finnamore, Robert Rodi, Bret Easton Ellis, Jon Pepoon, Lee Lodes, Jeff Soares, Kevin Weidenbacher, Lynda Pearson, Lona Walburn, Lori Greenburg, John DePretis, and Sheila Cobb. I would also like to express my appreciation to my mother and father for, no matter how inadvertently, giving me such a memorable childhood. Additionally, I would like to thank the real-life members of the family portrayed in this book for taking me into their home and accepting me as one of their own. I recognize that their memories of the events described in this book are different than my own. They are each fine, decent, and hard-working people. The book was not intended to hurt the family. Both my publisher and I regret any unintentional harm resulting from the publishing and marketing of Running with Scissors. Most of all, I would like to thank my brother for demonstrating, by example, the importance of being wholly unique.
©2002 Augusten Burroughs (P)2002 Audio Renaissance, a Division of Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC
The Vanity Fair Diaries
Summary
Tina Brown kept delicious daily diaries throughout her eight spectacular years as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. Today they provide an incendiary portrait of the flash and dash and power brokering of the Excessive Eighties in New York and Hollywood. The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her 20s who arrives in New York City with a dream. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Condé Nast's troubled new flagship Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet's slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company. She survives the politics, the intrigue, and the attempts to derail her by a simple stratagem: succeeding. In the face of rampant skepticism, she triumphantly reinvents a failing magazine. Here are the inside stories of Vanity Fair scoops and covers that sold millions - the Reagan kiss, the meltdown of Princess Diana's marriage to Prince Charles, the sensational Annie Leibovitz cover of a gloriously pregnant, naked Demi Moore. Within the diary's cinematic minutes, the drama, the comedy, and the struggle of running an "it" magazine come to life. Brown's Vanity Fair Diaries is also a woman's journey, of making a home in a new country, and of the deep bonds with her husband, their prematurely born son, and their daughter. Astute, open-hearted, often riotously funny, Tina Brown's The Vanity Fair Diaries is a compulsively fascinating and intimate chronicle of a woman's life in a glittering era.
©2017 Tina Brown (P)2017 Macmillan Audio