Beresford Bennett has narrated 10 audiobooks on Listento.it by 13 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 74 ratings. The most-rated is We Were Eight Years in Power.
We Were Eight Years in Power
Summary
In this “urgently relevant”* collection featuring the landmark essay “The Case for Reparations”, the National Book Award-winning author of Between the World and Me “reflects on race, Barack Obama’s presidency and its jarring aftermath”* - including the election of Donald Trump. *Kirkus Reviews (starred review) New York Times Best Seller Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times • USA Today • Time • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Essence • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Week • Kirkus Reviews "We were eight years in power" was the lament of Reconstruction-era Black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a Black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America's "first White president". But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period - and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation's old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective - the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president. We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates' iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including "Fear of a Black President", "The Case for Reparations", and "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration", along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates' own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment.
©2017 Ta-Nehisi Coates (P)2017 Random House Audio
Zone One
Summary
In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuilding civilization under orders from the provisional government based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street - aka Zone One - but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more innocuous variety - the “malfunctioning” stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, transfixed by their former lives. Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian teams working in lower Manhattan. Alternating between flashbacks of Spitz’s desperate fight for survival during the worst of the outbreak and his present narrative, the novel unfolds over three surreal days, as it depicts the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and the impossible job of coming to grips with the fallen world. And then things start to go wrong. Both spine chilling and playfully cerebral, Zone One brilliantly subverts the genre’s conventions and deconstructs the zombie myth for the twenty-first century.
©2011 Colson Whitehead (P)2011 Random House Audio
No More Mr. Nice Guy
Summary
Niles has just returned from eight years of serving his country as a Special Forces sniper. He's looking forward to a consulting job with Dynamic Defense and spending time with his family, including his bipolar mother, Lorna, and his hard-drinking uncle, Willie. What Niles doesn't know is that Dynamic Defense is actually a CIA front. He's not interested in joining them, but they won't take no for an answer. Bridget St. John is one of the most beautiful women Niles has ever met, and she is also the most deadly. It is her job to recruit Niles to the Dynamic Defense team by any means necessary. When Niles is arrested for a murder he does not commit, Bridget makes him an offer he can't refuse: working for Dynamic Defense in exchange for his freedom. With Niles onboard, Bridget begins to train him in ways he never imagined. Sometimes, however, the student becomes the teacher. Before she realizes what's happening, Bridget falls in love. When circumstances in his personal life collide with his work, Niles is forced to use his military skills to protect those closest to him.
©2016 Carl Weber and Stephanie Covington (P)2016 Recorded Books
He Calls Me Friend
Summary
How do you change the world? Dr. John M. Perkins says the answer is friendship. Find out why in He Calls Me Friend. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 John M. Perkins and Karen Waddles (P)2019 Oasis Audio
Proving Einstein Right
Summary
A thrilling adventure story chronicling the perilous journey of the scientists who set out to prove the theory of relativity - the results of which catapulted Albert Einstein to fame and forever changed our understanding of the universe. In 1911, a relatively unknown physicist named Albert Einstein published his preliminary theory of gravity. But it hadn't been tested. To do that, he needed a photograph of starlight as it passed the sun during a total solar eclipse. So began a nearly decade-long quest by seven determined astronomers from observatories in four countries, who traveled the world during five eclipses to capture the elusive sight. Over the years, they faced thunderstorms, the ravages of a world war, lost equipment, and local superstitions. Finally, in May of 1919, British expeditions to northern Brazil and the island of Príncipe managed to photograph the stars, confirming Einstein's theory. At its heart, this is a story of frustration, faith, and ultimate victory - and of the scientists whose efforts helped build the framework for the big bang theory, catapulted Einstein to international fame, and shook the foundation of physics.
©2019 S. James Gates and Cathie Pelletier (P)2019 Hachette Audio
The Gift of Fire & On the Head of a Pin
Summary
The Gift of FireIn ancient mythology, the Titan Prometheus was punished by the gods for bringing man the gift of fire - an event that set humankind on its course of knowledge. As punishment, Prometheus was bound to a rock. But in The Gift of Fire, those chains cease to be, and the great champion of man walks from that immortal prison into present-day South Central Los Angeles. Disheveled and lost, he is thrown in jail, where he meets lifelong criminal Nosome Blane. Shocked at what humanity has done with his gift, he looks for another way to empower his cause. His only hope lies with Nosome's bedridden fourteen-year-old nephew, Chief Reddy, who is anointed with Prometheus' second gift of fire. On the Head of a Pin Joshua Winterland and Ana Fried are working at Jennings-Tremont Enterprises. JTE is developing advanced animatronics editing techniques that will create high-end movies indistinguishable from live action. But one night Joshua and Ana discover something lingering in the rendered footage . . . an entity that will eventually reveal itself as "the Sail" and lead Joshua and Ana into a new age . . . beyond the reality they have come to know, and deep into the true nature of good and evil.
©2012 Walter Mosley (P)2012 Random House Audio
Bivouac
Summary
When Ferron Morgan's father dies in suspicious circumstances, his trauma is exacerbated by the conflict within his family and among his father's friends over whether the death was the result of medical negligence or if it was a political assassination. Ferron grew up in awe of his father's radical political endeavors, but in later years he watched as the resurgence of the political right in the Caribbean in the 1980s robbed the man of his faith. Ferron's response to the death is further complicated by guilt, particularly over his failure to protect his fiancee from a brutal assault. He begins to investigate the direction of his life with great intensity, in particular his instinct to keep moving on and running from trouble. This is a sharply focused portrayal of Jamaica at a tipping point in its recent past, in which the private grief and trauma condenses a whole society's scarcely understood sense of temporariness and dislocation.
©2010, 2019 Kwame Dawes (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour
Summary
An acclaimed chronicler of the Civil Rights Movement, Peniel Joseph presents this sweeping overview of a key component of the struggle for racial equality: the Black Power movement. This is the story of the men and women who sacrificed so much to begin a more vocal and radical push for social change in the 1960s and 1970s.
©2006 Peniel E. Joseph (P)2007 Recorded Books
Over the Fence
Summary
In this addictive novel set in the Depression-era South, New York Times best-selling author Mary Monroe transports listeners to a small Alabama town where home is not always a sanctuary, and two neighboring families let pleasantries mask increasing resentment.... Bootlegging was Milton and Yvonne Hamilton's ticket out of poverty, prison time, and plain bad luck. Now they've moved on - to a bigger, richer pool of clientele - right in their own respectable new middle-class backyard. And their growing friendship with seemingly-perfect couple Joyce and Odell Watson is proving golden in more ways than one.... As Milton soon learns, Odell is hiding an outside family and dubious business dealings. It's the perfect recipe for a blackmail scheme that will help Milton hide his own dirty secrets - even from Yvonne. Better yet, he can take ever more dangerous risks to ace out his liquor-smuggling rivals - and add a lucrative temptation to his illicit services. And Yvonne, emboldened by her husband's new gravy train, delights in tormenting Joyce about everything the snobbish matron doesn't have - especially children. But even a winning hand can be played too far. Pushed past their limits, Odell and Joyce will play on Milton's careless boasting - to get him and Yvonne out of their lives for good. And soon, a devastating frame-up will plunge one couple into a living nightmare - and set the stage for explosive retribution....
©2019 Mary Monroe (P)2019 Recorded Books
Across the Way
Summary
Neighborhood tensions reach a breaking point in the finale of New York Times best-selling author Mary Monroe's captivating series that sweeps listeners back to 1930's Alabama and into the lives of two neighboring couples whose deceitful friendships and imperfect marriages are just the beginning of their troubles... In this captivating Depression-era set novel by New York Times best-selling author Mary Monroe, two couples find their grudges endangering more than their Alabama small town's deceptive peace... When good-time couple Milton and Yvonne Hamilton moved one house over from the respectable-but-restless Odell and Joyce Watson, it was a fast friendship of shared secrets - and secret jealousies and betrayals. Their alliance was bound to crash and burn, but the Hamiltons won't quite let the flame die out, even after scandalous accusations get them arrested... Odell would do anything to be free of his bootlegging, blackmailing, money extorting neighbors and recover the peaceful - and financially prosperous - life he and Joyce once had. But Milton and Yvonne seem to always bounce back from bad luck, and this time they've returned angrier, and greedier, than ever. Determined to get what Odell "owes" them, the Hamiltons have a big surprise for Joyce too, one that shows how far they will go to get revenge... Now pushed past his breaking point, Odell is sure he's got a foolproof plan to end the scheming once and for all. But it soon spirals into lies, shattering violence, and permanent damage that will roil their tranquil community, and alter his and Joyce's world forever...
©2020 Mary Monroe (P)2020 Recorded Books