The Politics & Government category has 4,793 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 40,708 ratings. The most-rated is A Promised Land.
1619
Summary
The essential history of the extraordinary year in which American democracy and American slavery emerged hand in hand in colonial Virginia. Along the banks of the James River, Virginia, during an oppressively hot spell in the middle of summer 1619, two events occurred within a few weeks of each other that would profoundly shape the course of history. In the newly built church at Jamestown, the General Assembly - the first gathering of a representative governing body in America - came together. A few weeks later, a battered privateer entered the Chesapeake Bay carrying the first African slaves to land on mainland English America. In 1619, historian James Horn sheds new light on the year that gave birth to the great paradox of our nation: slavery in the midst of freedom. This portentous year marked both the origin of the most important political development in American history, the rise of democracy, and the emergence of what would in time become one of the nation's greatest challenges: the corrosive legacy of racial inequality that has afflicted America since its beginning. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2018 James Horn (P)2018 Hachette Audio
Radicalization to Terrorism
Summary
Terrorism and radicalization came to the forefront of news and politics in the US after the unforgettable attacks of September 11th, 2001. When George W. Bush famously asked "Why do they hate us?," the President echoed the confusion, anger and fear felt by millions of Americans, while also creating a politicized discourse that has come to characterize and obscure discussions of both phenomena in the media. Since then the American public has lived through a number of domestic attacks and threats, and watched international terrorist attacks from afar on television sets and computer screens. The anxiety and misinformation surrounding terrorism and radicalization are perhaps best detected in questions that have continued to recur in the last decade: "Are terrorists crazy?"; "Is there a profile of individuals likely to become terrorists?"; "Is it possible to prevent radicalization to terrorism?" Fortunately, in the two decades since 9/11, a significant body of research has emerged that can help provide definitive answers. As experts in the psychology of radicalization, Sophia Moskalenko and Clark McCauley propose 12 mechanisms that can move individuals, groups, and mass publics from political indifference to sympathy and support for terrorist violence.
©2020 Oxford University Press (P)2020 Tantor
Antitrust
Summary
An important, urgently needed book from the much-admired senior senator from Minnesota and former candidate for president of the United States - a fascinating exploration of antitrust in America and the way forward to protect all Americans from the dangers of curtailed competition, and from vast information gathering, through monopolies. From Standard Oil, and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, to the Progressive Era's trust-busters, Amy Klobuchar, in this large, compelling history, writes of the fight against monopolies in America. She writes of the breakup of Ma Bell, the pricing monopoly of Big Pharma, and the future of the giant tech companies (Facebook, Amazon, Google). She begins with the Gilded Age (1870s-1900), when builders of fortunes and rapacious robber barons such as J. P. Morgan, John Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt were reaping vast fortunes as industrialization swept across the American landscape, with the rich getting vastly richer and the poor, poorer. She discusses President Theodore Roosevelt, who, during the Progressive Era (1890s-1920), "busted" the trusts (breaking up monopolies); the Clayton Act of 1914; the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914; and the Celler-Kefauver Act of 1950 (it strengthened the Clayton Act). She explores today's Big Pharma and its price-gouging; and tech, television, content, and agriculture communities and how a marketplace with few players, or one in which one company dominates distribution, can hurt consumer prices and stifle innovation. As the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, Klobuchar is at work on, among others, issues raised by giant tech companies, such as Facebook, Google (it reportedly controls 90 percent of the search engine market), and Amazon, and puts forth her plans, ideas, and legislative proposals designed to strengthen the antitrust laws and antitrust enforcement.
©2021 Amy Klobuchar (P)2021 Random House Audio
The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence
Summary
How often have people claimed that a certain thing was "in the Constitution" and you've wanted to pull out a copy to show them what this incredible document really says? This is the book you want to keep with you at all times: the full text of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the two documents that are the backbone of United States government. Hearing them as they were written is a must for every American. Regular listening is required for any historian or member of the legal profession, and a good idea for all Americans. Acclaimed Constitutional scholar Paul Skousen, author of How to Read the Constitution, frames this simple text with a brief preface and a summary of important facts about these two documents, including important dates, for the ultimate quick reference. Throughout the text of the Constitution, he provides a clear guide to parts that became invalid due to later amendments, making the current meaning clear. Without intruding on the meaning, Skousen gives you a great tool for understanding our most basic principles of good government. An inspiring introduction by New York Times best-selling author Dan Clark will put you in the right frame of mind to listen to and appreciate these great documents. This handy guide can become your best friend, and you'll want to keep a copy nearby. Here is your chance to become an expert on two of the most important documents that shaped our country!
©2016 Paul B. Skousen, Dan Clark, Izzard Ink Publishing (P)2016 Izzard Ink Publishing
Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone
Summary
There is no shortage of democracy, at least in name, and yet it is in crisis everywhere we look. From a cabal of plutocrats in the White House to gerrymandering and dark-money campaign contributions, it is clear that the principle of government by and for the people is not living up to its promise. The problems lie deeper than any one election cycle. As Astra Taylor demonstrates, real democracy - fully inclusive and completely egalitarian - has in fact never existed. In a tone that is both philosophical and anecdotal, weaving together history, theory, the stories of individuals, and interviews with such leading thinkers as Cornel West and Wendy Brown, Taylor invites us to reexamine the term. Is democracy a means or an end, a process or a set of desired outcomes? What if those outcomes, whatever they may be - peace, prosperity, equality, liberty, an engaged citizenry - can be achieved by non-democratic means? In what areas of life should democratic principles apply? If democracy means rule by the people, what does it mean to rule and who counts as the people? Democracy's inherent paradoxes often go unnamed and unrecognized. Exploring such questions, Democracy May Not Exist offers a better understanding of what is possible, what we want, why democracy is so hard to realize, and why it is worth striving for.
©2019 Astra Taylor (P)2020 Tantor
Capitalism, Alone
Summary
We are all capitalists now. For the first time in human history, the globe is dominated by one economic system. In Capitalism, Alone, leading economist Branko Milanovic explains the reasons for this decisive historical shift since the days of feudalism and, later, communism. Surveying the varieties of capitalism, he asks: What are the prospects for a fairer world now that capitalism is the only game in town? His conclusions are sobering, but not fatalistic. Capitalism gets much wrong, but also much right - and it is not going anywhere. Our task is to improve it. Milanovic argues that capitalism has triumphed because it works. It delivers prosperity and gratifies human desires for autonomy. But it comes with a moral price, pushing us to treat material success as the ultimate goal. And it offers no guarantee of stability. In the West, liberal capitalism creaks under the strains of inequality and capitalist excess. That model now fights for hearts and minds with political capitalism, exemplified by China, which many claim is more efficient, but which is more vulnerable to corruption and, when growth is slow, social unrest. As for the economic problems of the Global South, Milanovic offers a creative, if controversial, plan for large-scale migration.
©2019 the President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2019 Tantor
We're Better Than This
Summary
This audiobook contains beautiful memories of Representative Elijah Cummings narrated by Laurence Fishburne and Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, with a foreword written and read by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Included are the eulogies from his funeral delivered by Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Secretary Hillary Clinton, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Harry Spikes, Kweisi Mfume, Bishop Walter Scott Thomas, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, Jennifer Cummings, Adia Cummings, and James Cummings. Baltimore Congressman Elijah Cummings was known for saying “We’re better than this.” He said it in Baltimore, a city on the verge of explosion over police treatment of citizens. He said it in Congress when microphones were shut down, barring free speech. He said it when the President flaunted his power and ignored the Constitution. He said it when the President resorted to bullying, name-calling, and feeding racial divisions. We are better than this. He continued to say it until his final days last October. He said it because he believed we must call out what is wrong and call on our better selves to make things right. In We’re Better Than This, Cummings details the formative moments in his life that prepared him to hold President Donald Trump accountable for his actions while in office. Cummings powerfully weaves together the urgent drama of modern-day politics and the defining stories from his past. He offers a unique perspective on how his upbringing as the son of sharecroppers in a South Baltimore neighborhood, rampant with racism and poverty, laid the foundation of a life spent fighting for justice. Cummings was known for his ability to referee contentious members of Congress and reach across the aisle for the sake of justice. Since his early days in politics, Cummings proved his abilities as a leader and legal mind who could operate at the highest levels of democracy, always working with - and for - the underserved. Part memoir, part call to action, the book goes behind the scenes with the House Democratic leadership, offering an eye-opening account of the relentless and unprecedented obstructionism by both the President and GOP. Cummings’ final words present a vital defense of how government oversight defines our collective trust and makes the case that, even in the face of our nation’s most challenging times, we must remain rooted in the politics of optimism.
©2020 Elijah Cummings (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
The Soros Lectures at the Central European University
Summary
In October 2009, George Soros delivered a series of lectures at the Central European University in Budapest that provided a broad overview of his thoughts on economics and politics. Soros has achieved great and consistent success in the world of finance but has also contributed to the broader world of philosophy and human rights through the work of his Open Society Institute, an international network of foundations. These lectures are the culmination of a lifetime of practical and philosophical reflection. In the first and second lectures, Soros discusses his general theory of reflexivity and its application to financial markets, providing insights into the recent financial crisis. The third and fourth lectures examine the concept of open society, which has guided Soros's global philanthropy, as well as the potential for conflict between capitalism and open society. The closing lecture focuses on the way ahead, closely examining the increasingly important economic and political role that China will play in the future. The Soros Lectures presents these five seminal talks in one volume, offering a condensed summary of Soros's worldview.
©2010 George Soros (P)2011 Tantor
One Mighty and Irresistible Tide
Summary
The idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants is at the core of the American narrative. But in 1924, Congress instituted a system of ethnic quotas so stringent that it choked off large-scale immigration for decades, sharply curtailing arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe and outright banning those from nearly all of Asia. In a riveting narrative filled with a fascinating cast of characters, from the indefatigable Congressman Emanuel Celler and Senator Herbert Lehman to the bull-headed Nevada Senator Pat McCarran, Jia Lynn Yang recounts how lawmakers, activists, and presidents from Truman through LBJ worked relentlessly to abolish the 1924 law. Through a world war, a refugee crisis after the Holocaust, and a McCarthyist fever, a coalition of lawmakers and activists descended from Jewish, Irish, and Japanese immigrants fought to establish a new principle of equality in the American immigration system. Their crowning achievement, the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, proved to be one of the most transformative laws in the country's history, opening the door to nonwhite migration at levels never seen before - and changing America in ways that those who debated it could hardly have imagined.
©2020 Jia Lynn Yang (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Set the Night on Fire
Summary
A magisterial, riveting movement history of Los Angeles in the '60s. Los Angeles in the '60s was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Power - where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home to the Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium, as well as being the birthplace of “Asian American” as a political identity. It was a locus of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women’s movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture. Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide the first comprehensive movement history of LA in the '60s, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of interviews with principal figures, as well as the authors’ storied personal histories as activists. Following on from Davis’ award-winning LA history, City of Quartz, Set the Night on Fire is a historical tour de force, delivered in scintillating and fiercely beautiful prose.
©2020 Mike Davis and Jon Wiener (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
The Taliban
Summary
Battle hardened, tribally oriented, and deeply committed to its cause, the Taliban has proven itself resourceful, adaptable, and often successful. As such, the Taliban presents a counterinsurgency puzzle for which the United States has yet to identify effective military tactics, information operations, and Coalition developmental policies. Written by one of the Department of the Army's leading intelligence and military analysts on the Taliban, this book covers the group's complete history, including its formation, ideology, and political power, as well as the origins of its current conflict with the United States. The work carefully analyzes the agenda, capabilities, and support base of the Taliban; forecasts the group's likely course of action to retake Afghanistan; and details the Coalition forces' probable counterinsurgency responses. Author Mark Silinsky also reviews the successes and failures of the latest US counterinsurgency doctrine to extrapolate the best strategies for future counterinsurgency campaigns.
©2014 Mark Silinsky (P)2016 Mark Silinsky
On the House
Summary
This program is read by the author. Former Speaker of the House John Boehner shares colorful tales from the halls of power, the smoke-filled rooms around the halls of power, and his fabled tour bus. John Boehner is the last of a breed. At a time when the arbiters of American culture were obsessing over organic kale, cold-pressed juice, and SoulCycle, the man who stood second in line to the presidency was unapologetically smoking Camels, quaffing a glass of red, and hitting the golf course whenever he could. There could hardly have been a more diametrically opposed figure to represent the opposition party in President Barack Obama's Washington. But when Boehner announced his resignation, President Obama called to tell the outgoing Speaker that he'd miss him. "Mr. President," Boehner replied, "yes, you will." He thought of himself as a "regular guy with a big job", and he enjoyed it. In addition to his own stories of life in the swamp city and of his comeback after getting knocked off the leadership ladder, Boehner offers his impressions of leaders he's met and what made them successes or failures, from Ford and Reagan to Obama, Trump, and Biden. He shares his views on how the Republican Party has become unrecognizable today; the advice - some harsh, some fatherly - he dished out to members of his own party, the opposition, the media, and others; and his often acid-tongued comments about his former colleagues. And of course he talks about golfing with five presidents. Through Speaker Boehner's honest and self-aware reflections, you'll be reminded of a time when the adults were firmly in charge. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press
©2021 John Boehner (P)2021 Macmillan Audio
Eagle Down
Summary
Selected as a "BUZZ BOOK" for Fall/Winter (Publishers Lunch) The Wall Street Journal's national security reporter - formerly based in Kabul from 2013-2017 - takes listeners into the lives of US Special Forces on the front lines against the Taliban and Islamic State, where a new and covert war is keeping Afghanistan from collapse. In 2015, the White House claimed triumphantly "the longest war in American history is over". But for some, it was just the beginning of a new and covert war, fought far from public view, with limited resources, little governmental oversight, and contradictory orders. Take Hutch, a battle-worn Green Beret on his fifth combat tour in 2015, tasked with a high-stakes mission: lead a small band of men into Kunduz, recapture the city from the Taliban, and turn it over to the Afghan government. The US role was meant to be a secret - after all, the war was over. Then, disaster struck. He called in an airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital, killing dozens of doctors and patients. Or Caleb, who stepped on a bomb during a raid on a Taliban hideout in notorious Sangin. Or Andy, trapped in Marjah with a crashed Black Hawk and no air support. From Hutch to Caleb to Andy, Eagle Down is a dramatic and intimate portrayal of this ongoing forgotten war that moves from the desperate battlegrounds in muddy Afghan villages all the way to the White House. Pulitzer Prize finalist Jessica Donati, with big picture insight and on-the-ground grit, reveals how America came to rely on US Special Forces, through successive policy directives that ramped up the war under the Obama and Trump administrations. Donati argues the covert war is failing to stabilize Afghanistan, and without a long-term plan, is undermining US interests both at home and abroad. Relying on Donati's daring on-the-ground reporting, firsthand accounts from Special Forces, military documents, and declassified reports, Eagle Down is an account of the heroism, sacrifice, and tragedy experienced by those that continue to fight America's longest war.
©2021 Jessica Donati (P)2021 PublicAffairs
L'addestramento
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. "Sarai un combattente, tutto quello di cui avrai bisogno ti verrà dato". Karim non ha nemmeno idea di quali o quante cose avrà bisogno. Non ha idea di come si tenga in mano un fucile e di cosa voglia dire "vita militare". Per questo il suo viaggio verso Kobane inizia con un addestramento. Fino al giorno in cui al campo arriva un Curdo che parla inglese e ha un messaggio per lui. 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
Sabotage
Summary
"I don't like the word 'sabotage'," - a former Goldman Sachs trader admitted. "It's just harsh.... Though, frankly, how else do you make money in this business...I mean, real money." The fundamental motive for financial innovation is not to make the system work better, but to avoid regulation and oversight. This is not a bug of the financial system, but a built-in feature. The president of the US is not a tax avoider because he is an especially fraudulent financier; he's a tax avoider because he is a wealthy man in a system premised on such deceit. Finance is an industry of sabotage. This book is a brilliant, intellectual detective story that traces the origins of financial sabotage, starting with the work of a prescient American economist who saw the capacity for banks and businesses to dissemble and profit as early as the 1920s. What was accomplished modestly in the first half of the 20th century became a booming global industry in the 1980s. Financialization took over everything, culminating in instruments so complex and confusing their own creators were being destroyed by them in 2008. With each financial bust, people expect to hear who the culprit was, and cynically know to not expect much punishment to ever reach them. But the innovation of this book is to show that each individual gaming the system isn't a crook - the whole system is sabotage. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Anastasia Nesvetailova and Ronen Palan (P)2020 PublicAffairs
The Aquariums of Pyongyang
Summary
"Destined to become a classic" (Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking), this harrowing memoir of life inside North Korea was the first account to emerge from the notoriously secretive country - and it remains one of the most terrifying. Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea's other leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for "re-education." Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea. Sent to the notorious labor camp Yodok when he was 9 years old, Kang observed frequent public executions and endured forced labor and near-starvation rations for 10 years. In 1992, he escaped to South Korea, where he found God and now advocates for human rights in North Korea. Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, this book brings together unassailable firsthand experience, setting one young man's personal suffering in the wider context of modern history, giving eyewitness proof to the abuses perpetrated by the North Korean regime.
©2005 Chol-hwan Kang, Pierre Rigoulot (P)2018 Hachette Audio
Fatal Beauty
Summary
Jimmy Joste was a powerhouse in the oil and gas industry, but he was a weakling when it came to his gorgeous, athletic, longtime lover, Rhonda Glover. Addicted to her sexual prowess and madly in love, Joste gave her homes, cars, cash, and a $350,000 engagement ring. Their 15 years of passion and excess ended the day Rhonda drove directly from a shooting range to the Austin home they once shared. After pumping 10 bullets into him from a Glock 9mm, she stood over Joste's blood-splattered body and shot him six more times, twice below the waist. According to Rhonda, Joste was violent and abusive and threatened her life. Here, for the first time, are Rhonda Glover's shocking stories of drug-crazed devil worship and sexual perversity. But in a packed courtroom, prosecutors presented shocking evidence that beautiful Rhonda didn't act in self-defense - it was hot-blooded murder!
©2011 Burl Barer (P)2018 ListenUp Audiobooks
Tell Me How It Ends
Summary
A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the US. Structured around the 40 questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman's essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear - both here and back home.
©2017 Valeria Luiselli (P)2018 Random House Audio
At America's Gates
Summary
With the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese laborers became the first group in American history to be excluded from the United States on the basis of their race and class. This landmark law changed the course of US immigration history, but we know little about its consequences for the Chinese in America or for the United States as a nation of immigrants. At America's Gates is the first book devoted entirely to both Chinese immigrants and the American immigration officials who sought to keep them out. Erika Lee explores how Chinese exclusion laws not only transformed Chinese American lives, immigration patterns, identities, and families but also recast the United States into a "gatekeeping nation". Immigrant identification, border enforcement, surveillance, and deportation policies were extended far beyond any controls that had existed in the United States before. Drawing on a rich trove of historical sources - including recently released immigration records, oral histories, interviews, and letters-Lee brings alive the forgotten journeys, secrets, hardships, and triumphs of Chinese immigrants. Her timely book exposes the legacy of Chinese exclusion in current American immigration control and race relations.
©2003 Erika Lee (P)2018 Tantor
The Man Who Sells Everything
Summary
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, talks to Foreign Affairs about American competitiveness, creative disruption, and why he runs into the office every morning.
©2015 Foreign Affairs (P)2015 Audible, Inc.