Eric Jason Martin has narrated 75 audiobooks on Listento.it by 95 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 679 ratings. The most-rated is The Dutch Wife.
The Dutch Wife
Summary
A sweeping story of love and survival during World War II AMSTERDAM, MAY 1943. As the tulips bloom and the Nazis tighten their grip across the city, the last signs of Dutch resistance are being swept away. Marijke de Graaf and her husband are arrested and deported to different concentration camps in Germany. Marijke is given a terrible choice: to suffer a slow death in the labor camp or - for a chance at survival - to join the camp brothel. On the other side of the barbed wire, SS officer Karl Müller arrives at the camp hoping to live up to his father’s expectations of wartime glory. When he encounters the newly arrived Marijke, this meeting changes their lives forever. Woven into the narrative across space and time is Luciano Wagner’s ordeal in 1977 Buenos Aires, during the heat of the Argentine Dirty War. In his struggle to endure military captivity, he searches for ways to resist from a prison cell he may never leave. From the Netherlands to Germany to Argentina, The Dutch Wife braids together the stories of three individuals who share a dark secret and are entangled in two of the most oppressive reigns of terror in modern history. This is a novel about the blurred lines between love and lust, abuse and resistance, and right and wrong, as well as the capacity for ordinary people to persevere and do the unthinkable in extraordinary circumstances.
©2018 Ellen Keith (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
Rogue Heroes
Summary
The incredible untold story of WWII's greatest secret fighting force, as told by our great modern master of wartime intrigue. Britain's Special Air Service - or SAS - was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young, gadabout aristocrat whose aimlessness in early life belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a battlefield map of World War II's African theater and saw a protracted struggle with Rommel's desert forces, Stirling saw an opportunity: Given a small number of elite, well-trained men, he could parachute behind enemy lines and sabotage their airplanes and war matériel. Paired with his constitutional opposite, the disciplined martinet Jock Lewes, Stirling assembled a revolutionary fighting force that would upend not just the balance of the war but the nature of combat itself. He faced no little resistance from those who found his tactics ungentlemanly or beyond the pale, but in the SAS' remarkable exploits facing the Nazis in Africa and then on the continent can be found the seeds of nearly all special forces units that would follow. Bringing his keen eye for psychological detail to a riveting wartime narrative, Ben Macintyre uses his unprecedented access to SAS archives to shine a light inside a legendary unit long shrouded in secrecy. The result is not just a tremendous war story but a fascinating group portrait of men of whom history and country asked the most.
©2016 Ben Macintyre (P)2016 Random House Audio
The Diamond Age
Summary
In Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson took science fiction to dazzling new levels. Now, in The Diamond Age, he delivers another stunning tale. Set in 21st-century Shanghai, it is the story of what happens when a state-of-the-art interactive device falls into the hands of a street urchin named Nell. Her life, and the entire future of humanity, is about to be decoded and reprogrammed.
©1995 Neal Stephenson (P)2001 Audible, Inc.
Eat Dirt
Summary
Doctor of natural medicine and wellness authority Dr. Josh Axe delivers a groundbreaking, indispensable guide for understanding, diagnosing, and treating one of the most discussed yet little-understood health conditions: leaky gut syndrome. Do you have a leaky gut? For 80 percent of the population, the answer is yes - and most people don't even realize it. Leaky gut syndrome is the root cause of a litany of ailments: chronic inflammation, allergies, autoimmune diseases, hypothyroidism, adrenal fatigue, diabetes, and even arthritis. To keep us in good health, our gut relies on maintaining a symbiotic relationship with trillions of microorganisms that live in our digestive tract. When our digestive system is out of whack, serious health problems can manifest, and our intestinal walls can develop microscopic holes, allowing undigested food particles, bacteria, and toxins to seep into the bloodstream. This condition is known as leaky gut syndrome. In Eat Dirt, Dr. Josh Axe explains that what we regard as modern "improvements" to our food supply - including refrigeration, sanitation, and modified grains - have damaged our intestinal health. In fact, the same organisms in soil that allow plants and animals to flourish are the ones we need for gut health. In Eat Dirt, Dr. Axe explains that it's essential to get a little "dirty" in our daily lives in order to support our gut bacteria and prevent leaky gut syndrome. Dr. Axe offers simple ways to get these needed microbes, from incorporating local honey and bee pollen into your diet to forgoing hand sanitizers and even ingesting a little probiotic-rich soil. Because leaky gut manifests differently in every individual, Dr. Axe also identifies the five main "gut types" and offers customizable plans - including diet, supplement, and lifestyle recommendations - to dramatically improve gut health in just 30 days. With a simple diet plan, recipes, and practical advice, Eat Dirt will help listeners restore gut health and eliminate leaky gut for good. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2016 Dr. Josh Axe (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
Cleaning the Gold
Summary
The new short story from Karin Slaughter and Lee Child! Twice the action. Twice the drama. Double the trouble. Will Trent is undercover at Fort Knox. His assignment: to investigate a 22-year-old murder. His suspect's name: Jack Reacher. Jack Reacher is in Fort Knox on his own mission: to bring down a dangerous criminal ring operating at the heart of America’s military. Except now Will Trent is on the scene. But there’s a bigger conspiracy at play - one that neither the special agent nor the ex-military cop could have anticipated. And the only option is for Jack Reacher and Will Trent to team up and play nicely. If they can....
©2019 Karin Slaughter and Lee Child (P)2019 HarperAudio
Against the Grain
Summary
An account of all the new and surprising evidence now available for the beginnings of the earliest civilizations that contradict the standard narrative Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family - all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction. Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the "barbarians" who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples.
©2017 Yale University (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
On Anarchism
Summary
On Anarchism provides the reasoning behind Noam Chomsky's fearless lifelong questioning of the legitimacy of entrenched power. In these essays, Chomsky redeems one of the most maligned ideologies, anarchism, and places it at the foundation of his political thinking. Chomsky's anarchism is distinctly optimistic and egalitarian. Moreover, it is a living, evolving tradition that is situated in a historical lineage; Chomsky's anarchism emphasizes the power of collective, rather than individualist, action. The collection includes a revealing new introduction by journalist Nathan Schneider, who documented the Occupy movement for Harper's and The Nation, and who places Chomsky's ideas in the contemporary political moment. On Anarchism will be essential listening for a new generation of activists who are at the forefront of a resurgence of interest in anarchism - and for anyone who struggles with what can be done to create a more just world.
©2013 Noam Chomsky; Introduction 2013 Nathan Schneider (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Plague
Summary
On July 22, 2009, a special meeting was held with 24 leading scientists at the National Institutes of Health to discuss early findings that a newly discovered retrovirus was linked to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), prostate cancer, lymphoma, and eventually neurodevelopmental disorders in children. When Dr. Judy Mikovits finished her presentation the room was silent for a moment, then one of the scientists said, "Oh my God!" The resulting investigation would be like no other in science. For Dr. Mikovits, a 20-year veteran of the National Cancer Institute, this was the midpoint of a five-year journey that would start with the founding of the Whittemore-Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease at the University of Nevada, Reno, and end with her as a witness for the federal government against her former employer, Harvey Whittemore, for illegal campaign contributions to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. On this journey, Dr. Mikovits would face the scientific prejudices against CFS, wander into the minefield that is autism, and through it all struggle to maintain her faith in God and the profession to which she had dedicated her life. This is a story for anybody interested in the peril and promise of science at the very highest levels in our country.
©2014 Kent Heckenlively and Judy Mikovits (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Gone
Summary
A crime lord has declared war on America. Only Detective Michael Bennett knows why. Manuel Perrine doesn't fear anyone or anything. A charismatic and ruthless leader, Perrine slaughters rivals as effortlessly as he wears his trademark white linen suit. Detective Michael Bennett once managed to put Perrine behind bars, the only official in the US ever to accomplish that. But now Perrine is out, and he has sworn to find and kill Bennett and everyone dear to him. Detective Bennett, along with his 10 adopted children, their nanny, and his grandfather, are hidden safely on a rural California farm, with guards courtesy of the FBI's witness protection program. Perrine begins to embark on an escalating series of assassinations across the country, killings whose brazenness and audacity bring into question the possibility of safety and law in the U.S. The FBI has no choice but to ask Detective Bennett to risk it all in Perrine's war on America. With explosive action and fierce villainy that rivals James Bond movies at their best, Gone is the next astounding novel by James Patterson.
©2013 James Patterson (P)2013 Hachette Audio
Confessions of a Funeral Director
Summary
A sixth-generation funeral director and writer of the popular "must read" (Time magazine) blog Confessions of a Funeral Director reflects on mortality and the powerful lessons death holds for every one of us in this compassionate and thoughtful spiritual memoir that combines the humor and insight of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes with the poignancy and brevity of When Breath Becomes Air. Death. It happens to everyone, yet most of us don't want to talk about this final chapter of existence. Sixth-generation funeral director Caleb Wilde intimately understands this reticence and fear. The son of an undertaker, he hesitated to embrace the legacy of running his family's business. Yet he discovered that caring for the deceased and their loved ones profoundly changed his faith and his perspective on death - and life itself. "Yes, death can be bad. Yes, death can be negative," he acknowledges, "but it can also be beautiful. And that alternate narrative needs to be discussed". In Confessions of a Funeral Director, he talks about his experiences and pushes back against the death-negative ethos of our culture, opening a thoughtful, poignant conversation to help us see the end of life in a positive and liberating way. In the wry, compassionate, and honest voice that has charmed his growing legions of blog readers, Wilde offers an intimate look inside his business, offering information on unspoken practices around death such as the embalming process, beautiful and memorable stories about families in the wake of death, and, most importantly, a fresh and wise perspective on how embracing death can allow us to embrace life. Confessions of a Funeral Director is the story of one man learning how death illuminates and deepens the meaning of existence - insights that can help us all pursue and cherish full, rich lives.
©2017 Caleb Wilde (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
How the World Works
Summary
According to The New York Times, Noam Chomsky is "arguably the most important intellectual alive." But he isn't easy to read...or at least he wasn't until these books came along. Made up of intensively edited speeches and interviews, they offer something not found anywhere else: pure Chomsky, with every dazzling idea and penetrating insight intact, delivered in clear, accessible, listener-friendly prose. Published as four short books in the famous Real Story series - What Uncle Sam Really Wants; The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many; Secrets, Lies and Democracy; and The Common Good - they've collectively sold almost 600,000 copies. And they continue to sell year after year after year because Chomsky's ideas become, if anything, more relevant as time goes by. For example, 20 years ago, he pointed out that "in 1970, about 90% of international capital was used for trade and long-term investment - more or less productive things - and 10% for speculation. By 1990, those figures had reversed." As we know, speculation continued to increase exponentially. We're paying the price now for not heeding him them.
©1986, 2011 Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian, and Arthur Naiman (P)2020 Tantor
Blindspot
Summary
I know my own mind. I am able to assess others in a fair and accurate way. These self-perceptions are challenged by leading psychologists Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald as they explore the hidden biases we all carry from a lifetime of exposure to cultural attitudes about age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, and nationality. Blindspot is the authors’ metaphor for the portion of the mind that houses hidden biases. Writing with simplicity and verve, Banaji and Greenwald question the extent to which our perceptions of social groups - without our awareness or conscious control - shape our likes and dislikes and our judgments about people’s character, abilities, and potential. In Blindspot, the authors reveal hidden biases based on their experience with the Implicit Association Test, a method that has revolutionized the way scientists learn about the human mind and that gives us a glimpse into what lies within the metaphoric blindspot. The title’s "good people" are those of us who strive to align our behavior with our intentions. The aim of Blindspot is to explain the science in plain enough language to help well-intentioned people achieve that alignment. By gaining awareness, we can adapt beliefs and behavior and "outsmart the machine" in our heads so we can be fairer to those around us. Venturing into this book is an invitation to understand our own minds. Brilliant, authoritative, and utterly accessible, Blindspot is a book that will challenge and change listeners for years to come. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2013 Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Harvard Business Review Manager's Handbook
Summary
The one primer you need to develop your managerial and leadership skills. Whether you're a new manager or looking to have more influence in your current management role, the challenges you face come in all shapes and sizes: a direct report's anxious questions, your boss's last-minute assignment of an important presentation, or a blank business case staring you in the face. To reach your full potential in these situations, you need to master a new set of business and personal skills. Packed with step-by-step advice and wisdom from Harvard Business Review's management archive, the HBR Manager's Handbook provides best practices on topics from understanding key financial statements and the fundamentals of strategy to emotional intelligence and building your employees' trust. The book's brief sections allow you to home in quickly on the solutions you need right away - or take a deeper dive if you need more context. Keep this comprehensive guide with you throughout your career and be a more impactful leader in your organization. In this book you'll find: Step-by-step guidance through common managerial tasks Short sections and chapters that you can turn to quickly as a need arises Self-assessments throughout Exercises and templates to help you practice and apply the concepts in the book Concise explanations of the latest research and thinking on important management skills from Harvard Business Review experts such as Dan Goleman, Clayton Christensen, John Kotter, and Michael Porter Real-life stories from working managers Recaps and action items at the end of each chapter that allow you to reinforce or review the ideas quickly The skills covered in the book include: Transitioning into a leadership role Building trust and credibility Developing emotional intelligence Becoming a person of influence Developing yourself as a leader Giving effective feedback Leading teams Fostering creativity Mastering the basics of strategy Learning to use financial tools Developing a business case
©2017 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
The Return of Marco Polo's World
Summary
A bracing assessment of US foreign policy and world disorder over the past two decades from the bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography and The Coming Anarchy. “[Kaplan] has emerged not only as an eloquent defender of foreign-policy realism but as a grand strategist to whom the Pentagon turns for a tour d’horizon.” (The Wall Street Journal) In the late 13th century, Marco Polo began a decades-long trek from Venice to China along the trade route between Europe and Asia known as the Silk Road - a foundation of Kublai Khan’s sprawling empire. Now, in the early 21st century, the Chinese regime has proposed a land-and-maritime Silk Road that duplicates exactly the route Marco Polo traveled. Drawing on decades of firsthand experience as a foreign correspondent and military embed for The Atlantic, Robert D. Kaplan outlines the timeless principles that should shape America’s role in a turbulent world that encompasses the Chinese challenge. From Kaplan’s immediate thoughts on President Trump to a frank examination of what will happen in the event of war with North Korea, these essays are a vigorous reckoning with the difficult choices the US will face in the years ahead. Praise for The Return of Marco Polo’s World: “Elegant and humane...[a] prophecy from an observer with a depressingly accurate record of predictions.” (Bret Stephens, The New York Times Book Review) “These essays constitute a truly pathbreaking, brilliant synthesis and analysis of geographic, political, technological, and economic trends with far-reaching consequences. The Return of Marco Polo’s World is another work by Robert D. Kaplan that will be regarded as a classic.” (General David Petraeus, US Army, Ret.) “Thoughtful, unsettling, but not apocalyptic analyses of world affairs flow steadily off the presses, and this is a superior example.... Presented with enough verve and insight to tempt readers to set it aside to reread in a few years.” (Kirkus Review, starred review) “An astute, powerfully stated, and bracing presentation.” (Booklist) “This volume compiles sixteen major essays on America’s foreign policy from national security commentator Kaplan.... An overview of thoughtful, multilayered positions and perspectives evolving through changing circumstances.” (Publishers Weekly)
©2018 Robert D. Kaplan (P)2018 Random House Audio
The People's Republic of Walmart
Summary
Since the demise of the USSR, the mantle of the largest planned economies in the world has been taken up by the likes of Walmart, Amazon, and other multinational corporations. For the left and the right, major multinational companies are held up as the ultimate expressions of free-market capitalism. Their remarkable success appears to vindicate the old idea that modern society is too complex to be subjected to a plan. And yet, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski argue, much of the economy of the West is centrally planned at present. Not only is planning on vast scales possible, we already have it and it works. The real question is whether planning can be democratic. Can it be transformed to work for us? An engaging, polemical romp through economic theory, computational complexity, and the history of planning, The People's Republic of Walmart revives the conversation about how society can extend democratic decision-making to all economic matters. With the advances in information technology in recent decades and the emergence of globe-straddling collective enterprises, democratic planning in the interest of all humanity is more important and closer to attainment than ever before.
©2019 Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski (P)2019 Tantor
What to Do When Machines Do Everything
Summary
The essential playbook for the future of your business. What to Do When Machines Do Everything is a guidebook to succeeding in the next generation of the digital economy. When systems running on artificial intelligence can drive our cars, diagnose medical patients, and manage our finances more effectively than humans, it raises profound questions on the future of work and how companies compete. Illustrated with real-world cases, data, and insight, the authors provide clear strategic guidance and actionable steps to help you and your organization move ahead in a world where exponentially developing new technologies are changing how value is created. Written by a team of business and technology expert practitioners - who also authored Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things, and Organizations are Changing the Rules of Business - this book provides a clear path to the future of your work. The first part of the book examines the once in a generation upheaval most every organization will soon face as systems of intelligence go mainstream. The authors argue that contrary to the doom and gloom that surrounds much of IT and business at the moment, we are in fact on the cusp of the biggest wave of opportunity creation since the Industrial Revolution. Next, the authors detail a clear-cut business model to help leaders take part in this coming boom. The AHEAD model outlines five strategic initiatives - Automate, Halos, Enhance, Abundance, and Discovery - that are central to competing in the next phase of global business by driving new levels of efficiency, customer intimacy and innovation. Business leaders today have two options: be swallowed up by the ongoing technological evolution, or ride the crest of the wave to new profits and better business. This book shows you how to avoid your own extinction event, and will help you: Understand the untold full extent of technology's impact on the way we work and live Find out where we're headed, and how soon the future will arrive Leverage the new emerging paradigm into a sustainable business advantage Adopt a strategic model for winning in the new economy The digital world is already transforming how we work, live, and shop, how we are governed and entertained, and how we manage our money, health, security, and relationships. Don't let your business - or your career - get left behind. What to Do When Machines Do Everything is your strategic roadmap to a future full of possibility and success. Or peril. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2017 Cognizant Technology Solutions U.S. Corporation (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
The Bible for Dummies
Summary
Ninety percent of Americans own a copy of the Bible, and while it's the most widely read book, it's also the least understood. Regardless of your religion, understanding the Bible brings much of Western art, literature, and public discourse into greater focus - from Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" painting to the Wachowski brothers' The Matrix movies. People have historically turned to religion to deal with tragedy and change, and with the right insight, the Bible can be an accessible, helpful guide to life's big questions. The Bible for Dummies appeals to people of all faiths, as well as those who don't practice any particular religion, by providing interfaith coverage of the entire Bible and the often fascinating background information that makes the Bible come alive. You'll find answers to such questions as: Where did the Bible come from? Who wrote the Bible? How is the Bible put together? Follow the history of the Bible from its beginning thousands of years ago as tattered scrolls to its status as the best seller of all time.
©2003 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (P)2019 Tantor
The Bear
Summary
In an Edenic future, a girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen. A cautionary tale of human fragility, of love and loss, The Bear is a stunning tribute to the beauty of nature's dominion.
©2020 Andrew Krivak (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Cellar of Horror
Summary
Serial killer Gary Heidnik's name will live on in infamy, and his home, 3520 North Marshall Street in Philadelphia, is a house tainted with the memory of unbelievable horrors. What police found there was an incredible nightmare made real. Four young women had been held captive - some for four months - half-naked and chained. They had been tortured, starved, and repeatedly raped. But more grotesque discoveries lay in the kitchen: human limbs frozen, a torso burned to cinders, an empty pot suspiciously scorched.... This is not a story for the faint-hearted. Cellar of Horror is a shocking true account of the self-proclaimed minister with a long history of mental illness, who preyed upon the susceptible in a bizarre plan to create his own "baby factory." It is a macabre web spun around money, power, and religion, tangled with courtroom drama and lawyers' tactics, sure to send a chill into your very soul.
©1988 Ken Englade (P)2020 Tantor
Nova Terra: Titan and Greymane
Summary
Contains books one and two of the The Titan series, a litRPG gamelit adventure. Titan, book 1 Nova Terra, your dreams, your world. Trapped in his own body by a debilitating medical condition, Xavier Lee seeks reprieve from his giant-sized problems through full immersion into the game world of Nova Terra. Billed as the first true alternate reality, Nova Terra runs parallel to the real world and promises to fulfill the fantasies and desires of those who dare plunge into its mysterious depths. In order to adjust to his new life of quests, skill mastery, and magic, Xavier will have to forget everything he knows. As he struggles to make the most of his new-found freedom, Xavier will have to learn to deal with a new body, new friends, and a new world that is much more than it seems. Greymane, book 2 Betrayed and left for dead by his team, Thorn learned the hard way that the game world of Nova Terra is not all sunshine and roses. Stripped of his destiny, Thorn refuses to let what happened to him control his fate. But, betrayed once, can he really trust the people around him? His encounter with an ancient evil and a forgotten God has set him on the path of a ruler and on a crash course with one of the most powerful guilds in the game. He’ll need all the strength, cunning, and courage he can muster if he wants to come out on top.
©2019 Seth Ring (P)2021 Podium Audio