The Biographies & Memoirs category has 8,363 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 123,952 ratings. The most-rated is Born a Crime.
The Lobotomist
Summary
The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the 20th century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, MD, who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman's documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.
©2005 Jack El-Hai (P)2021 Tantor
My Life as Myself
Summary
Through her books The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, and Possessing the Secret of Joy, Alice Walker is familiar to millions of readers and listeners. Who is this woman who rose from the shadows of the segregated South to win the Pulitzer Prize? How did she find the courage to address with grace and wisdom the most difficult cultural issues of our time?
In My Life as My Self, Alice Walker takes you into her private world and summons the powerful spirits and events that have shaped her life: how she learned to fight oppression through her creativity; her reconnection to ancestral roots and the natural world; and her emergence as a courageous artist, recognized for both her brilliance and her compassion. In this rare, intimate conversation, she peels back the veneer of cultural "evolution" and exposes how we have been conditioned to think and act the way others want us to. When you hear the words of Alice Walker, you will see mirrored in her life the greater struggle each of us faces: to be who we truly are.
©2009 Alice Walker (P)2009 Alice Walker
Let's Build a Company
Summary
Harpreet Grover and Vibhore Goyal met in college and then spent the next decade of their lives building a company before exiting successfully. One way to tell their story is this: they had a dream, they followed it and, then, through perseverance, they made it come true. But that’s not really the truth. Like everything in life - at least everything worth having - it wasn’t that simple. There was blood, sweat and tears, there was loss of capital, loss of friendship and even a loss of faith along the way. It started with a phone call from Harpreet’s mother introducing him to an uncle who wanted some help. Or maybe it started when Vibhore and Harpreet met as roommates in Room 143 at IIT Bombay. What remains true is that soon both had quit their jobs and launched CoCubes. From no money in their bank accounts for eight years after graduating to becoming dollar millionaires two years later in 2016, this is a tale of grit - of a company built in India by two Indian-middle-class 20-somethings-turned-entrepreneurs - written in the hope that you can avoid the mistakes they made and learn from what they did right. This is that story - the story that you don’t always hear. But if you want to be an entrepreneur, and you prefer straight talk to sugar-coating, it’s one you should listen to.
©2020 Harpreet Grover and Vibhore Goyal (P)2021 Random House Audio
The Chief
Summary
William Randolph Hearst, known to his staff as the "Chief", was a brilliant business strategist and a man of prodigious appetites. By the 1930s, he controlled the largest publishing empire in the United States, including 28 newspapers, the Cosmopolitan Picture Studio, radio stations, and 13 magazines. He quickly learned how to use this media stronghold to achieve unprecedented political power. The son of a gold miner, Hearst underwent a public metamorphosis from Harvard dropout to political kingmaker; from outspoken populist to opponent of the New Deal; and from citizen to congressman. In The Chief, David Nasaw presents an intimate portrait of the man famously characterized in the classic film Citizen Kane. With unprecedented access to Hearst's personal and business papers, Nasaw details Heart's relationship with his wife, Millicent, and his romance with Marion Davies; his interactions with Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, and every American president from Grover Cleveland to Franklin Roosevelt; and his acquaintance with movie giants such as Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, and Irving Thalberg. An "absorbing, sympathetic portrait of an American original," The Chief sheds light on the private life of a very public man (Chicago Tribune).
©2000 David Nasaw (P)2021 Tantor
Out of the Silence
Summary
A personal story of survival, hope, and spiritual awakening in the face of unspeakable tragedy.
It’s the unfathomable modern legend that has become a testament to the resilience of the human spirit: the 1972 Andes plane crash and the Uruguayan rugby teammates who suffered seventy-two days among the dead and dying. It was a harrowing test of endurance on a snowbound cordillera that ended in a miraculous rescue. Now comes the unflinching and emotional true story by one of the men who found his way home.
Four decades after the tragedy, a climber discovered survivor Eduardo Strauch’s wallet near the memorialized crash site and returned it to him. It was a gesture that compelled Strauch to finally “break the silence of the mountains.”
In this revelatory and rewarding memoir, Strauch withholds nothing as he reveals the truth behind the life-changing events that challenged him physically and tested him spiritually, but would never destroy him. In revisiting the horror story we thought we knew, Strauch shares the lessons gleaned from far outside the realm of rational learning: how surviving on the mountain, in the face of its fierce, unforgiving power and desolate beauty, forever altered his perception of love, friendship, death, fear, loss, and hope.
©2012 by Eduardo Strauch Urioste, Mireya Soriano. Translation © 2019 by Jennie Erikson. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Contested Will
Summary
For nearly two centuries, the authorship of William Shakespeare's plays has been challenged by writers and artists as diverse as Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Henry James, Helen Keller, Orson Welles, Malcolm X, and Sir Derek Jacobi. How could a young man from rural Warwickshire, lacking a university education, write some of the greatest works in the English language? How do we explain the seemingly unbridgeable gap between Shakespeare's life and works? Contested Will unravels the mystery of Shakespeare's authorship, retracing why and when doubts first arose, what's at stake in the controversy for how we value Shakespeare's achievement, and why, in the end, there can be no doubt about who wrote the plays.
©2009 James Shapiro (P)2010 Tantor
My Adventures as a Spy
Summary
Robert Baden-Powell's memories of some of his espionage operations between the 1880s and the outbreak of the First World War. AUTHOR: Robert Baden-Powell was born in 1857 and is probably best remembered as the hero of the siege of Mafeking in 1899/1900 during the Boer War and as the man who started the Scout and Guide Movements. He wrote many books over the course of his life, some of which he illustrated himself. This book was first published in February 1915, seven months after the outbreak of the First World War, and is a collection of anecdotes and memories about the work of spies, based on his own experiences in Africa, Europe and Asia. ABRIDGER: Michael Bartlett is a writer with much radio, television and stage plays to his credit, though perhaps he is best known for writing “The Archers” for Radio 4 and “Rainbow” for Thames Television. He is also a producer and has directed plays, readings and documentaries for the BBC, for commercial radio and for audio publication. READER: Michael Cochrane has appeared in many plays in the theatre, on television and on radio as well as in a number of films. He has also read many audio books, including the Gold Award winning “Lord Edgware Dies”. His recent television appearances include “General Simmerson in “Sharpe’s Challenge” and Judge Hynes in “Wire in the Blood”. He also plays Oliver Sterling in “The Archers” on Radio 4. MUSIC: The piano music, Baden-Powell Schottische, is played by Alexandra White.
©1915 The Scout Association (P)2006 Crimson Cats Audio Books
Gunning for the Godman
Summary
Notorious godman Asumal Sirumalani Harpalani (Asaram Bapu) is currently serving life imprisonment in the Central Jail, Jodhpur. He was convicted for rape and also has murder charges against him. A no-holds-barred, firsthand account, Gunning for the Godman looks at how Ajay landed the case when others had flatly refused; how he got a team together; how he foiled Asaram Bapu’s daring escape plan; how he ensured the victim’s safety even while receiving countless death threats himself. And, finally, how he played a masterstroke with the judge that changed the course of the case. This is the shocking, thrilling, true story behind the conviction, written by the investigating officer on the case.
©2020 Ajay Pal Lamba (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Ancora Kobane
Summary
Matteo Caccia ci racconta la storia di Karim Franceschi, nato nel 1989 a Casablanca e cresciuto a Senigallia, che nel 2014 parte per Kobane con un progetto umanitario, poi decide di restare in Siria e unirsi alla lotta armata contro l'Isis. Nel 2016 fonda una brigata internazionale che avrà un ruolo importantissimo nella caduta di Raqqa, capitale dello Stato Islamico. Nel corso delle 10 puntate sarà la voce di Karim stesso a raccontare la sua storia: le ragioni delle sue scelte, i sentimenti, le paure e le speranze in 2 anni di lotta accanto agli uomini e alle donne di Kobane. A casa Karim non ci riesce a stare, decide di tornare indietro per creare la propria squadra d'assalto. Ma la guerra è cambiata, Kobane è libera e ora bisogna sbaragliare l'Isis a casa sua, nella sua roccaforte: Raqqa. Chi sarà davvero disposto a combattere la battaglia più dura di tutte? Matteo Caccia è il narratore delle vicende - storiche e umane - che ruotano intorno alla vita di Karim e che ne dettano decisioni ed emozioni. Il racconto è arricchito da documenti sonori e musiche originali a cura di Luca Micheli che ha firmato anche la regia, testimonianze dirette di amici, parenti, giornalisti "embedded", compagni e compagne di lotta e contributi raccolti dalla redazione a cura di G.L.
©2020 Audible Originals (P)2020 Audible Studios
Top Cases of the FBI, Volume 2
Summary
From underworld gangsters to homegrown terrorists, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has tracked down and arrested some of the most infamous felons in history.
In this second volume of Top Cases of the FBI, RJ Parker includes more recent and illustrious cases broken down into major criminal categories: organized crime and gangsters, counterintelligence/espionage, violent crime/major thefts/bank robberies, civil rights, white-collar crime, and terrorism.
Some of the more notorious investigations detailed in the book include: Black Dahlia, Hurricane Katrina fraud, American traitor Robert Hanssen, Undercover FBI Agent Joseph Pistone, the KKK, and the anthrax attacks post-9/11.
©2017 RJ Parker Publishing (P)2017 RJ Parker Publishing
Doctor Death: Harold Shipman
Summary
Britain's most prolific known serial killer wasn't a ripper or strangler. He was a licensed physician, bound in theory by the good medical practice guidelines of the General Medical Council established in 1858, making care of patients his "first concern" while "being open, honest, and acting with integrity". The "healer" nicknamed Doctor Death achieved none of those goals. But even knowing what he did, the question still remains: Why did he kill?
©2019 RJ Parker Publishing (P)2019 RJ Parker Publishing
Boyfriends of Dorothy
Summary
In her love letter to her gay “boyfriends,” New York Times bestselling author Wednesday Martin shows just how an unconditional - and nontraditional - romance transformed the life of a teenage outsider forever. As an awkward high schooler, Wednesday struggled to find her place in Grand Rapids. Until a handsome senior encouraged her to believe how talented, smart, and wonderfully different she was. Naturally, Wednesday fell for him...He was falling, too. For another boy. Yet this one-sided crush proved life altering, paving the way for a string of “boyfriends” who offered Wednesday something deeper than physical connection. Boyfriends of Dorothy is part of The Real Thing, a collection of moving, hilarious, and big-hearted essays on the modern realities of friendship, romance, commitment, and love, with art by Geoff McFetridge. Each story can be read - or listened to - in a single sitting.
©2018 Wednesday Martin (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
Mickey
Summary
By the age of 25, Mickey's mother had born five sons. By the age of 30, she'd gotten rid of them all. For nine-year-old Mickey, the early '50s were not the Ozzie and Harriet fantasy of love and security. Instead, they were years of abandonment, unimaginable cruelty, and virtual slavery. This memoir reveals Mickey's devastating experiences of being handed off from one abusive person to another...all in the name of survival.
©2018 Robert Shafer (P)2019 Robert Shafer
Philip Roth
Summary
The renowned biographer's definitive portrait of a literary titan. Appointed by Philip Roth and granted independence and complete access, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the postwar literary scene. Bailey shows how Roth emerged from a lower-middle-class Jewish milieu to achieve the heights of literary fame, how his career was nearly derailed by his catastrophic first marriage, and how he championed the work of dissident novelists behind the Iron Curtain. Bailey examines Roth's rivalrous friendships with Saul Bellow, John Updike, and William Styron, and reveals the truths of his florid love life, culminating in his almost-20-year relationship with actress Claire Bloom, who pilloried Roth in her 1996 memoir, Leaving a Doll's House. Tracing Roth's path from realism to farce to metafiction to the tragic masterpieces of the American Trilogy, Bailey explores Roth's engagement with nearly every aspect of postwar American culture.
©2021 Blake Bailey (P)2021 Recorded Books Inc.
![Cover art for Reinas malditas [Bloody Queens]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ft1F5wh1L._SL500_.jpg)
Reinas malditas [Bloody Queens]
Summary
Las fascinantes vidas de seis reinas marcadas por la tragedia que no pudieron elegir su destino y que dejaron una profunda huella en la Historia. Excéntricas, caprichosas, rebeldes, ambiciosas...Más allá de un mundo de privilegios, riqueza, y poder, todas fueron mujeres de carne y hueso obligadas a llevar sobre sus hombros la pesada carga de un imperio. La vida de estas reinas dista mucho de ser un romántico cuento de hadas. Aunque infinidad de películas y novelas nos han mostrado el rostro más amable de su reinado, en general, fueron muy desdichadas. Todas tienen en común la soledad, el desarraigo, la nostalgia, la falta de amor, o el sufrimiento por no poder dar un heredero al trono. También, comparten la dolorosa pérdida de sus hijos, los fracasos matrimoniales, o el sentirse extranjeras en una corte donde no eran bien recibidas. Las suyas no fueron grandes historias de amor porque sus matrimonios eran un "asunto de Estado". Algunas, como Sissi, fueron emperatrices en contra de su voluntad y se enfermaron de melancolía; otras, como Cristina de Suecia, escandalizaron con sus extravagantes comportamientos y sus ansias de libertad. María Antonieta y Alejandra Romanov comparten un trágico final, mientras que la reina Victoria de Inglaterra y Eugenia de Montijo asumieron con extraordinaria dignidad su papel en los momentos más difíciles. A través de los diarios personales y correspondencia familiar, Cristina Morató nos descubre el lado más humano y menos conocido de unas reinas y emperatrices, maltratadas por la historia, que no pudieron elegir su destino. Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.
©2014 Cristina Morató; 2014, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, S. A. U.; 2016 Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial, S. A. U. (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Kaffee und Zigaretten
Summary
Ferdinand von Schirachs persönlichstes Werk.
Ferdinand von Schirachs neues Buch verwebt autobiographische Erzählungen, paradoxe Aperçus, Betrachtungen und Reflexionen zu einem erzählerischen Ganzen, in dem sich Privates und Allgemeines auf faszinierende Weise berühren, verzahnen und wechselseitig spiegeln. Es geht um prägende Erlebnisse des Erzählers, um flüchtige Momente des Glücks, um Einsamkeit, um die Sehnsucht nach Heimat, um Kunst und Gesellschaft ebenso wie um die großen Lebensthemen Ferdinand von Schirachs, um merkwürdige Rechtsfälle und Begebenheiten, um die Idee des Rechts und die Würde des Menschen. Diese Vielschichtigkeit macht "Kaffee und Zigaretten" zum persönlichsten Werk Ferdinand von Schirachs.
©2019 Luchterhand Verlag, München (P)2019 der Hörverlag
Sinatra
Summary
Packed with revelations, this is the first complete account of a career built on raw talent, sheer willpower - and criminal connections. Anthony Summers - best-selling author of Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe - and Robbyn Swan unveil stunning new information about Sinatra’s links to the Mafia, his crowded love life and his tangled relationships with U.S. presidents. Exclusive breakthroughs include the discovery of how the Mafia connection began - in a remote Sicilian village - and moving interviews with his lovers. Never-before-published conversations with Ava Gardner get to the core of the tragic passion that dominated his life, came close to destroying him, and made his best work heartbreakingly personal. Sinatra delivers the full life story of a complex, flawed genius.
©2005 Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan (P)2005 Books on Tape, Inc.
Ich ging in die Dunkelheit
Summary
Der Killer kam immer nachts: Von 1976 bis 1986 ereignete sich in beschaulichen Vororten in Kalifornien eine Vergewaltigungs- und Mordserie, die die USA in ihren Grundfesten erschütterte. Auf unheimliche Weise tauchte der Mörder plötzlich im Schlafzimmer seiner Opfer auf. Und immer wieder entkam er unerkannt. Der "Golden State Killer": ein Mysterium, an dem sich trotz zahlloser Spuren Generationen von Ermittlern die Zähne ausbissen. Michelle McNamara heftete sich an die Fersen des Verbrechers und ermittelte über acht Jahre lang auf eigene Faust. Sie kam dem Monster immer näher - und starb, kurz bevor sie ihren Bericht fertigstellen konnte.
©2019 Atrium (P)2019 DAV
Charlie Munger
Summary
Charlie Munger ist visionärer Vizepräsident von Berkshire Hathaway, einem der 20 größten Unternehmen der USA. Doch noch mehr ist er Warren Buffetts unersetzlicher Geschäftspartner, der über Jahrzehnte besser abgeschnitten hat als der Markt. Munger ist davon überzeugt, dass Sie als Investor dasselbe schaffen können. Seine Lebenserfahrung - ein Bündel interdisziplinärer Denkmodelle aus Wirtschaft, Psychologie und Philosophie - ermöglicht es ihm, Emotionen und Investitionen strikt zu trennen und so die üblichen Fallstricke beim Investieren zu meiden. Das können auch Sie. Tren Griffins Hörbuch präsentiert erstmals Mungers Investmentstrategien, von denen Generationen erfolgreicher Investoren profitiert haben. Doch geht es Munger und Griffin nicht ausschließlich um Investmentstrategien, sondern auch darum, genau die Denkstrukturen zu vermitteln, aus denen Sie als Leser sowohl für Ihre Investitionen als auch Ihr Leben praktischen Nutzen ziehen können. Das erste Hörbuch über Charlie Mungers einzigartige Investmentstrategien auf Deutsch.
©2016 FinanzBuch Verlag, ein Imprint der Münchner Verlagsgruppe GmbH (P)2020 FinanzBuch Verlag, ein Imprint der Münchner Verlagsgruppe GmbH
Stephen Hawking: A Biography
Summary
Stephen Hawking was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author, and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. His scientific works included a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Hawking was the first to set out a theory of cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He was a vigorous supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Hawking was a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. In 2002, Hawking was ranked number 25 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009 and achieved commercial success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general. His book A Brief History of Time appeared on the British Sunday Times best seller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks. Hawking had a rare early-onset slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease (also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, "ALS", or Lou Gehrig's disease) that gradually paralysed him over the decades. Even after the loss of his speech, he was still able to communicate through a speech-generating device, initially through use of a hand-held switch, and eventually by using a single cheek muscle.
©2018 Kyle Johnson (P)2018 Kyle Johnson