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.
Vigilancia permanente
Summary
El mayor escándalo diplomático de la historia. Una vida al servicio de la verdad. Las memorias que agitarán la geopolítica mundial. «Me llamo Edward Snowden. Antes trabajaba para el gobierno, pero ahora trabajo para el pueblo.» En 2013, Edward Snowden, responsable de la mayor filtración de inteligencia en la historia, sacudió al mundo revelando que el gobierno estadounidense tenía la capacidad de leer cada correo electrónico, escuchar cada llamada y entrometerse en los rincones de la vida privada de todos y cada uno de los ciudadanos del mundo. En Vigilancia permanente, Snowden desgrana por primera vez por qué lo hizo, cómo ayudó a construir un sistema de vigilancia masivo y la crisis de conciencia que le llevó a destaparlo todo y poner en jaque al sistema. Como resultado de aquello, se inició una caza y captura internacional que a día de hoy sigue abierta. Un protagonista fascinante, ingenioso y con una mente prodigiosa convertido a lo largo de su vida en soldado, analista de inteligencia, agente de la CIA y, ya en el exilio, en activista por el derecho a la privacidad. Un audiolibro que nos alerta sobre la deriva autoritaria de los Estados, que denuncia la colaboración entre el espionaje y las grandes multinacionales de la era digital y que destapa cómo nos vigilan y de qué manera se comercia con nuestra información personal. Porque como anuncia Snowden en su libro, «la lucha por el derecho a la intimidad es la nueva lucha por nuestra libertad». Please note: This audiobook is in Spanish.
©2019 Edward Snowden (P)2019 Editorial Planeta, S.A.
Transforming Leadership
Summary
Transforming Leadership focuses on the ways that leaders emerge from being ordinary "transactional" deal-makers to become dynamic agents of major social change who empower their followers. Burns illuminates the evolution of leadership structures, from the chieftains of tribal African societies through Europe's absolute monarchies to the blossoming of the Enlightenment's ideals of liberty and democracy. Along the way he looks at key leaders who attempted to transform their worlds: Elizabeth I, Washington, Jefferson, Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Gorbachev, and others. The book culminates in a bold and innovative plan to address the greatest global leadership challenge of the 21st century: the problem of global poverty.
©2003 James MacGregor Burns (P)2004 Blackstone Audiobooks
Building a Resilient Tomorrow
Summary
Climate change impacts - more heat, drought, extreme rainfall, and stronger storms - have already harmed communities around the globe. Even if the world could cut its carbon emissions to zero tomorrow, further significant global climate change is now inevitable. Although we cannot tell with certainty how much average global temperatures will rise, we do know that the warming we have experienced to date has caused significant losses and that the failure to prepare for the consequences of further warming may prove to be staggering. Building a Resilient Tomorrow does not dwell on overhyped descriptions of apocalyptic climate scenarios, nor does it travel down well-trodden paths surrounding the politics of reducing carbon emissions. Instead, it starts with two central facts: Climate impacts will continue to occur, and we can make changes now to mitigate their effects. While squarely confronting the scale of the risks we face, this pragmatic guide focuses on solutions - some gradual and some more revolutionary - currently being deployed around the globe. Each chapter presents a thematic lesson for decision-makers and engaged citizens to consider, outlining replicable successes and identifying provocative recommendations to strengthen climate resilience.
©2020 Oxford University Press (P)2020 Tantor
Leading from the Emerging Future
Summary
We have entered an age of disruption. Financial collapse, climate change, resource depletion, and a growing gap between rich and poor are but a few of the signs. Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer ask, why do we collectively create results nobody wants? Meeting the challenges of this century requires updating our economic logic and operating system from an obsolete “ego-system” focused entirely on the well-being of oneself to an eco-system awareness that emphasizes the well-being of the whole. Filled with real-world examples, this thought-provoking guide presents proven practices for building a new economy that is more resilient, intentional, inclusive, and aware.
©2013 Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer (P)2019 Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaufer
Moon U.S. Civil Rights Trail
Summary
The U.S. Civil Rights Trail offers a vivid glimpse into the story of Black America's fight for freedom. From witnessing eye-opening landmarks to celebrating triumph over adversity, experience a tangible piece of history with Moon U.S. Civil Rights Trail. Flexible Itineraries: Travel the entire trail through the South, or take shorter trips with chapters on Charleston, Birmingham, Jackson, Memphis, Washington DC, and more places that were significant to the Civil Rights Movement Historic Civil Rights Sites: Learn about Dr. King's legacy at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, be transformed at the small but mighty Emmett Till Intrepid Center, and stand tall with Little Rock Nine at their memorial in Arkansas The Culture of the Movement: Get to know the voices, stories, music, and flavors that shape and celebrate Black America both then and now Expert Insight: Award-winning journalist Deborah Douglas offers her valuable perspective and knowledge, as well as suggestions for engaging with local communities by patronizing Black-owned businesses and seeking out activist groups Travel Tools: Find tips on where to stay, where to eat, the best local nightlife, and more, plus driving directions for exploring the sites on a road trip, with full-color photos and maps Detailed coverage of: Charleston, Atlanta, Selma to Montgomery, Birmingham, Jackson, the Mississippi Delta, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville, Raleigh, Durham, Virginia, and Washington DC Foreword by Bree Newsome Bass: activist, filmmaker, and artist Journey through history, understand struggles past and present, and get inspired to create a better future with Moon U.S. Civil Rights Trail. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2021 Deborah D. Douglas (P)2021 Hachette Audio
MI5
Summary
This book explores the powers, activities, and accountability of MI5 from the end of the Second World War to 1964. It argues that MI5 acted with neither statutory authority nor statutory powers, and with no obvious forms of statutory accountability. It was established as a counter-espionage agency, yet was beset by espionage scandals on a frequency that suggested if not high levels of incompetence, then high levels of distraction and the squandering of resources. The book addresses the evolution of MI5's mandate after the Second World War, which set out its role and functions, and to a limited extent the lines of accountability, the surveillance targets of MI5 and the surveillance methods that it used for this purpose, with a focus in two chapters on MPs and lawyers respectively; the purposes for which this information was used, principally to exclude people from certain forms of employment; and the accountability of MI5 or the lack thereof for the way in which it discharged its responsibilities under the mandate.
©2020 K. D. Ewing, Joan Mahoney, and Andrew Moretta (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Force and Freedom
Summary
From its origins in the 1750s, the White-led American abolitionist movement adhered to principles of "moral suasion" and nonviolent resistance as both religious tenet and political strategy. But by the 1850s, the population of enslaved Americans had increased exponentially, and such legislative efforts as the Fugitive Slave Act and the Supreme Court's 1857 ruling in the Dred Scott case effectively voided any rights Black Americans held as enslaved or free people. As conditions deteriorated for African Americans, Black abolitionist leaders embraced violence as the only means of shocking Northerners out of their apathy and instigating an antislavery war. Through rousing public speeches, the bourgeoning Black press, and the formation of militia groups, Black abolitionist leaders mobilized their communities, compelled national action, and drew international attention. Drawing on the precedent and pathos of the American and Haitian Revolutions, African American abolitionists used violence as a political language and a means of provoking social change. Through tactical violence, argues Carter Jackson, Black abolitionist leaders accomplished what White nonviolent abolitionists could not: creating the conditions that necessitated the Civil War.
©2019 University of Pennsylvania Press (P)2021 Tantor
Bravehearts
Summary
Whistleblowers pay with their lives to save ours. When insiders like former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, ex-FBI agent Coleen Rowley, or Big Tobacco truth-teller Jeffrey Wigand blow the whistle on high-level lying, lawbreaking or other wrongdoing - whether it's government spying, corporate murder, or scientific scandal - the public benefits enormously. Wars are ended, deadly products are taken off the market, white-collar criminals are sent to jail. The whistleblowers themselves, however, generally end up ruined. Nearly all of them lose their jobs - and in many cases their marriages and their health - as they refuse to back down in the face of increasingly ferocious official retaliation. That moral stubbornness despite terrible personal cost is the defining DNA of whistleblowers. The public owes them more than we know. In Bravehearts, Hertsgaard tells the gripping, sometimes darkly comic and ultimately inspiring stories of the unsung heroes of our time. A deeply reported, impassioned polemic, Bravehearts is a book for citizens everywhere - especially students, teachers, activists and anyone who wants to make a difference in the world around them.
©2016 Mark Hertsgaard (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Terrorism and Communism (Revolutions Series)
Summary
Soon after the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky led the Red Army against the counter-revolutionary White armies. Written in the white heat of the Civil War, "Terrorism and Communism" is one of the most potent defences of revolutionary dictatorship of the twentieth century. In his provocative commentary in this new edition, the coruscating critic Slavoj Zizek argues that Trotsky's attack on the illusions of democracy has a vital relevance to today.
©2007 Verso (editorial matter), Slavoj Zizek (P)2011 Audible Ltd
Just Responsibility
Summary
It has been well-established that many of the injustices that people around the world experience every day, from food insecurity to unsafe labor conditions and natural disasters, are the result of wide-scale structural problems of politics and economics. These are not merely random personal problems or consequences of bad luck or bad planning. Confronted by this fact, it is natural to ask what should or can we do to mitigate everyday injustices? In one sense, we answer this question when we buy the local homeless street newspaper, decide where to buy our clothes, remember our reusable bags when we shop, donate to disaster relief, or send letters to corporations about labor rights. But given the global scale of injustices related to poverty, environmental change, gender, and labor, can these individual acts really impact the seemingly intractable global social, political, and economic structures that perpetuate and exacerbate them? Moreover, can we respond to injustices in the world in ways that do more than just address their consequences? Just Responsibility integrates ways of taking political responsibility into a rich theory of political community, accountability, and leadership in which taking responsibility for injustice itself transforms the fabric of political life.
©2018 Oxford University Press (P)2018 Tantor
Team of Five
Summary
From the number one New York Times best-selling author of The Residence and First Women - also a New York Times best seller - comes a poignant, news-making look at the lives of the five former presidents in the wake of their White House years, including the surprising friendships they have formed through shared perspective and empathy. After serving the highest office of American government, five men - Jimmy Carter, the late George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama - became members of the world’s most exclusive fraternity. In Team of Five, Kate Andersen Brower goes beyond the White House to uncover what, exactly, comes after the presidency, offering a glimpse into the complex relationships of these five former presidents, and how each of these men views his place in a nation that has been upended by the Oval Office’s current, norm-breaking occupant, President Donald Trump. With an empathetic yet critical eye and firsthand testimony from the Carters, Donald Trump, and the top aides, friends, and family members of the five former presidents, Team of Five takes us inside the exclusive world of these powerful men and their families, including the unlikely friendship between George W. Bush and Michelle Obama, the last private visits Bill Clinton and Barack Obama shared with George H. W. Bush, and the Obamas’ flight to Palm Springs after Donald Trump’s inauguration. This insightful, illuminating book overflows with anecdotes about how the ex-presidents are working to combat President Trump’s attempts to undo the achievements and hard work accomplished during their own terms. Perhaps most poignantly, Team of Five sheds light on the inherent loneliness and inevitable feelings of powerlessness and frustration that come with no longer being the most important person in the world, but a leader with only symbolic power. There are ways, though, that these men, and their wives, have become powerful political and cultural forces in American life, even as so-called “formers”. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Kate Andersen Brower (P)2020 HarperAudio
Blindfold
Summary
An award-winning journalist’s searing, extraordinary account of being kidnapped and tortured in Syria by al Qaeda for two years - a revelatory memoir about war, human nature, and endurance. In 2012, American journalist Theo Padnos, fluent in Arabic, Russian, German, and French, traveled to a Turkish border town to write and report on the Syrian civil war. One afternoon in October, while walking through an olive grove, he met three young Syrians - who turned out to be al Qaeda operatives - and they captured him and kept him prisoner for nearly two years. On his first day, in the first of many prisons, Padnos was given a blindfold - a grime-stained scrap of fabric - that was his only possession throughout his horrific ordeal. Now, in Blindfold, Padnos recounts his time in captivity in Syria, where he was frequently tortured at the hands of the al Qaeda affiliate, Jebhat al Nusra. We learn not only about Padnos' harrowing experience, but we also get a firsthand account of life in a Syrian village, the nature of Islamic prisons, how captors interrogate someone suspected of being CIA, the ways that Islamic fighters shift identities and drift back and forth through the veil of Western civilization, and much more. No other journalist has lived among terrorists for as long as Theo has - and survived. As a resident of 13 separate prisons in every part of rebel-occupied Syria, Theo witnessed a society adrift amid a steady stream of bombings, executions, torture, prayer, fasting, and exhibitions, all staged by the terrorists. Living within this tide of violence changed not only his personal identity but also profoundly altered his understanding of how to live. Offering fascinating, unprecedented insight into the state of Syria today, Blindfold is an astonishing portrait of courage that combines the emotional power of a captive’s memoir with a journalist’s account of a culture and a nation in conflict that is as urgent and important as ever.
©2021 Theo Padnos. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Rare Earth Frontiers: From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes
Summary
Rare Earth Frontiers is a work of human geography that serves to demystify the powerful elements that make possible the miniaturization of electronics, green energy and medical technologies, and essential telecommunications and defense systems. Julie Michelle Klinger draws attention to the fact that the rare earths we rely on most are as common as copper or lead, and this means the implications of their extraction are global. Klinger excavates the rich historical origins and ongoing ramifications of the quest to mine rare earths in ever more impossible places. Klinger writes about the devastating damage to lives and the environment caused by the exploitation of rare earths. She demonstrates in human terms how scarcity myths have been conscripted into diverse geopolitical campaigns that use rare-earth mining as a pretext to capture spaces that have historically fallen beyond the grasp of centralized power. These include legally and logistically forbidding locations in the Amazon, Greenland, Afghanistan, and on the moon. Drawing on ethnographic, archival, and interview data gathered in local languages and offering possible solutions to the problems it documents, this audiobook examines the production of the rare-earth frontier as a place, a concept, and a zone of contestation, sacrifice, and transformation.
©2017 Cornell University (P)2018 Redwood Audiobooks
The American Experiment
Summary
James MacGregor Burns’s stunning trilogy of American history, spanning the birth of the Constitution to the final days of the Cold War. In these three volumes, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winner James MacGregor Burns chronicles with depth and narrative panache the most significant cultural, economic, and political events of American history. In The Vineyard of Liberty, he combines the color and texture of early American life with meticulous scholarship. Focusing on the tensions leading up to the Civil War, Burns brilliantly shows how Americans became divided over the meaning of Liberty. In The Workshop of Democracy, Burns explores more than a half-century of dramatic growth and transformation of the American landscape, through the addition of dozens of new states, the shattering tragedy of the First World War, the explosion of industry, and, in the end, the emergence of the United States as a new global power. And in The Crosswinds of Freedom, Burns offers an articulate and incisive examination of the US during its rise to become the world’s sole superpower - through the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Cold War, and the rapid pace of technological change that gave rise to the “American Century.”
©1982 The Vineyard of Liberty copyright 1982 by James MacGregor Burns, The Workshop of Democracy copyright 1985 by James MacGregor Burns, The Crosswinds of Freedom copyright 1989 by James MacGregor Burns (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Bending Toward Justice
Summary
This program is read by the author. On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, was bombed, killing four young girls. It was clear that white supremacists were responsible. The community activists who gathered at the church had recently succeeded in desegregating Birmingham public schools, and this was an act of revenge. The girls did not die in vain; the public outrage brought on by this senseless tragedy was crucial to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But who were the perpetrators? Alabamians would have to wait a long time to find out. Due to reluctant witnesses and racial prejudice, the FBI closed the case without any indictments. But as Martin Luther King, Jr., famously claimed, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." When William Baxley became state attorney general years later, he reopened the case, ultimately convicting one of the bombers in 1977. Another suspect passed away in 1994, and author Doug Jones himself prosecuted and convicted the final two perpetrators - a correction of an outrageous miscarriage of justice that was nearly 40 years in the making. Bending Toward Justice is a detailed account of this key moment in our national struggle for equality and the long road to prosecuting those responsible for the tragedy, related by an author who played a major role in the investigation. It is destined to become the next addition to our civil rights canon.
©2018 Doug Jones (P)2018 Macmillan Audio
JFK Has Been Shot
Summary
On November 22, 1963, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, an accomplished surgeon, tried to save John F. Kennedy's life - and then days later, the life of the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. His gripping, firsthand account contradicts the Warren Commission and years of public misperception, and illuminates a chapter in American history long cloaked in conspiracy. Writing with eye-opening immediacy, Dr. Crenshaw takes listeners into the emergency room to share the critical events at Parkland Hospital as he lived them. Now updated, his searing testimony punctures myths and shatters a cover-up of massive proportions.
©2013 Dr. Charles A. Crenshaw, Jens Hansen, J. Gary Shaw, and Cyril Wecht. Foreword © 2013 by Robert K. Tanenbaum (P)2013 Tantor
Presidents in Crisis
Summary
Every American president, when faced with a crisis, longs to take bold and decisive action. When American lives or vital interests are at stake, the public - and especially the news media and political opponents - expect aggressive leadership. But, contrary to the dramatizations of Hollywood, rarely does a president have that option. In Presidents in Crisis, a former director of the Situation Room takes the listener inside the White House during 17 grave international emergencies handled by the presidents from Truman to Obama: from North Korea's invasion of South Korea to the revolutions of the Arab Spring, and from the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the taking of American diplomats hostage in Iran and George W. Bush's response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. In narratives that convey the drama of unfolding events and the stakes of confrontation when a misstep can mean catastrophe, he walks us step-by-step through each crisis. Laying out the key players and personalities and the moral and political calculations that the leaders have had to make, he provides a fascinating insider's look at modern presidential decision making and the fundamental role in it of human frailty. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for those interested in history - books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times best seller or a national best seller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
©2015 Michael K. Bohn (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
The Structure of Power in America
Summary
This audiobook covers the power structure in America. The chapters and topics covered in this audiobook include: The Balance of Power Stormy Weather Opposing Forces Maladies Galore Militias and the Sheople The Revolution Will Be Dramatized Ask a Lithuanian
©1984 Saucerian Press (P)2018 Apollo Press
Throw Them All Out
Summary
One of the biggest scandals in American politics is waiting to explode: the full story of the inside game in Washington tells how the permanent political class enriches itself at the expense of the rest of us. Insider trading is illegal on Wall Street, yet it is routine among members of Congress. Normal individuals cannot get in on IPOs at the asking price, but politicians do so routinely. The Obama administration has been able to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to its supporters, ensuring yet more campaign donations. An entire class of investors now makes all of its profits based on influence and access in Washington. Peter Schweizer has doggedly researched through mountains of financial records, tracking complicated deals and stock trades back to the timing of briefings, votes on bills, and every other point of leverage for politicians in Washington. The result is a manifesto for revolution: the permanent political class must go.
©2011 Peter Schweizer (P)2020 Ellen J. Howard
Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes
Summary
A rediscovery of patriotism as a virtue in line with the core values of democracy in an extremist age. The concept of patriotism has fallen on hard times. What was once a value that united Americans has become so politicized by both the left and the right that it threatens to rip apart the social fabric. On the right, patriotism has become synonymous with nationalism and an “us versus them” worldview, while on the left it is seen as an impediment to acknowledging important ethnic, religious, or racial identities and a threat to cosmopolitan globalism. Steven B. Smith reclaims patriotism from these extremist positions and advocates for a patriotism that is broad enough to balance loyalty to country against other loyalties. Describing how it is a matter of both the head and the heart, Smith shows how patriotism can bring the country together around the highest ideals of equality and is a central and ennobling disposition that democratic societies cannot afford to do without.
©2021 Steven B. Smith (P)2021 Blackstone Publishing