Fajer Al-Kaisi has narrated 58 audiobooks on Listento.it by 73 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 431 ratings. The most-rated is On Tyranny.
Trump on Trial
Summary
A compelling and masterful account, based on fresh reporting, of the investigation, impeachment, and acquittal of President Donald Trump, a ferocious political drama that challenged American democracy itself. In the spring of 2019, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi did not favor pursuing Trump’s impeachment. Her view was: "He’s just not worth it." But by September, after a whistleblower complaint suggesting that Trump had used his office for his political benefit, Pelosi decided to risk it. The impeachment inquiry led to charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, a gamble that ultimately meant Trump would be the first impeached president on the ballot in US history. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan have crafted a powerful, intimate narrative that concentrates on the characters as well as the dramatic events, braiding them together to provide a remarkable understanding of what happened and why. Drawing on the deep reporting of Post journalists as well as new interviews, Sullivan and Jordan deliver a crisp pause-resister with exquisite detail and scenes. They put readers in the room for both sides of the now-famous phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, 2019, revealing the in-the-moment reactions of those listening to the call in Washington, as well as the tension in Kyiv, as aides passed notes to Zelensky while he was talking to Trump. Sullivan and Jordan deftly illuminate the aims and calculations of key figures. Pelosi’s evolution from no to yes. Trump’s mounting fury as "the I-word" became inevitable. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell firmly telling Trump on the phone about the Senate trial: You need to trust me. Trump on Trial teems with unexpected moments. House member Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, alone at the National Archives, walking amid the nation’s founding documents, weighing her vote on impeachment. Fiery Republican congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, a favorite Trump warrior, deciding to lead the storming of the secure room in the US Capitol basement, where witnesses were testifying. The authors paint vivid portraits of the men and women branded by the president’s supporters as foes from the "deep state": Ukraine experts Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman; ambassadors Marie Yovanovitch and William Taylor. The narrative spools out amid Trump’s nonstop tweeting and the infinite echo chamber of social media, which amplified both parties’ messages in ways unknown during past impeachments. Sullivan and Jordan, aided by editor Steve Luxenberg, follow the story into the aftermath of Trump’s acquittal and the president’s payback for those whom he believed had betrayed him. The retributions took place as the nation reeled from a devastating pandemic and widespread protests about racial injustice, with another trial looming: the 2020 election.
©2020 WP Company LLC. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Buddhism
Summary
Explore the common ground underlying the diverse expressions of the Buddha's teachings with two of Tibetan Buddhism's best-selling authors. Buddhism is practiced by hundreds of millions of people worldwide, from Tibetan caves to Tokyo temples to redwood retreats. To an outside viewer, it might be hard to see what they all have in common. In Buddhism, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and American Buddhist nun Thubten Chodron map out with clarity the convergences and the divergences between the two major strains of Buddhism - the Sanskrit traditions of Tibet and East Asia and the Pali traditions of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. Especially deep consideration is given to the foundational Indian traditions and their respective treatment of such central tenets as the four noble truths, the practice of meditation, and the meaning of nirvana enlightenment. The authors seek harmony and greater understanding among Buddhist traditions worldwide, illuminating the rich benefits of respectful dialogue and the many ways that Buddhists of all stripes share a common heritage and common goals. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2014 Tenzin Gyatso and Thubten Chodron (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
An American Genocide
Summary
Between 1846 and 1873, California's Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide. Madley describes precontact California and precursors to the genocide before explaining how the Gold Rush stirred vigilante violence against California Indians. He narrates the rise of a state-sanctioned killing machine and the broad societal, judicial, and political support for genocide. Many participated: vigilantes, volunteer state militiamen, US Army soldiers, US congressmen, California governors, and others. The state and federal governments spent at least $1.7 million on campaigns against California Indians. Besides evaluating government officials' culpability, Madley considers why the slaughter constituted genocide and how other possible genocides within and beyond the Americas might be investigated using the methods presented in this groundbreaking book. Cover image courtesy of the Braun Research Library Collection, Autry Museum, Los Angeles: 482
©2016 Benjamin Logan Madley (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
The Yacoubian Building
Summary
A fading aristocrat and self-proclaimed "scientist of women". A purring, voluptuous siren. A young shop girl enduring the clammy touch of her boss and hating herself for accepting the modest banknotes he tucks into her pocket afterward. An earnest, devout young doorman, feeling the irresistible pull toward fundamentalism. A cynical, secretly gay newspaper editor, helplessly in love with a peasant security guard. A roof-squatting tailor, scheming to own property. A corrupt and corpulent politician, twisting the Koran to justify taking a mistress. All live in the Yacoubian Building, a once-elegant temple of Art Deco splendor slowly decaying in the smog and hubbub of downtown Cairo, Egypt. In the course of this unforgettable novel, these disparate lives converge, careening inexorably toward an explosive conclusion. Tragicomic, passionate, shockingly frank in its sexuality, and brimming with an extraordinary, embracing human compassion, The Yacoubian Building is a literary achievement of the first order.
©2006 Alaa Al Aswany (P)2019 HarperAudio
Voices of a People's History of the United States, 10th Anniversary Edition
Summary
Selected testimonies to living history-speeches, letters, poems, songs-offered by the people who make history happen, but are often left out of history books: women, workers, nonwhites. Featuring introductions to the original texts by Howard Zinn. New voices featured in this 10th Anniversary Edition include Chelsea Manning, speaking after her 35-year prison sentence; Naomi Klein, speaking from the Occupy Wall Street encampment in Liberty Square; a member of Dream Defenders, a youth organization that confronts systemic racial inequality; members of the Undocumented Youth movement, who occupied, marched, and demonstrated in support of the DREAM Act; a member of the Day Laborers movement; Chicago Teachers Union strikers; and several critics of the Obama administration, including Glenn Greenwald, on governmental secrecy.
©2004, 2009; 2014 Howard Zinn, Anthony Arnove; Howard Zinn Revocable Trust, Anthony Arnove (P)2018 Blackstone Publishing
Palestinian Walks
Summary
Raja Shehadeh is a passionate hill walker. He enjoys nothing more than heading out into the countryside that surrounds his home. But in recent years, his hikes have become less than bucolic, and sometimes downright dangerous. That is because his home is Ramallah, on the Palestinian West Bank, and the landscape he traverses is now the site of a tense standoff between his fellow Palestinians and settlers newly arrived from Israel. In this original and evocative book, we accompany Raja on six walks taken between 1978 and 2006. The earlier forays are peaceful affairs, allowing our guide to meditate at length on the character of his native land, a terrain of olive trees on terraced hillsides, luxuriant valleys carved by sacred springs, carpets of wild iris and hyacinth, and ancient monasteries built more than a thousand years ago. Shehadeh’s love for this magical place saturates his renderings of its history and topography. But latterly, as seemingly endless concrete is poured to build settlements and their surrounding walls, he finds the old trails are now impassable and the countryside he once traversed freely has become contested ground. He is harassed by Israeli border patrols, watches in terror as a young hiking companion picks up an unexploded missile, and even, on one occasion when accompanied by his wife, comes under prolonged gunfire. Amid the many and varied tragedies of the Middle East, the loss of a simple pleasure such as the ability to roam the countryside at will may seem a minor matter. But in Palestinian Walks, Raja Shehadeh’s elegy for his lost footpaths becomes a heartbreaking metaphor for the deprivations of an entire people estranged from their land.
©2007 Raja Shehadeh (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
The Princess Game
Summary
There are no happy endings for the Princesses of Chaminade High in this short, twisty tale of teenage murder games by the New York Times bestselling author of The School for Good and Evil series. The victims are the most popular girls in school, each murdered and arranged in a grim fairy-tale tableau. To find the killer, rookie detective Callum Pederson has gone undercover where the Princes hold court. He’s found enough secrets among the bros to bring them in for questioning - but he could very well get lost in the games the Princes play. The Princess Game is part of Faraway, a collection of retold fairy tales that take the happily-ever-after in daring new directions. Whether read or listened to in one sitting, prepare to be charmed, moved, enlightened, and frightened all over again.
©2020 Soman Chainani (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Brown
Summary
Winner of the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing Finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction and the Trillium Book Award A Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Life, Walrus, CBC Books, Chatelaine, Hill Times, 49th Shelf, and Writers' Trust Best Book of the Year With the urgency and passion of Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me), the seductive storytelling of JD Vance (Hillbilly Elegy) and the historical rigor of Carol Anderson (White Rage), Kamal Al-Solaylee explores the in-between space that brown people occupy in today's world: on the cusp of whiteness and the edge of blackness. Brown proposes a cohesive racial identity and politics for the millions of people from the Global South and provides a timely context for the frictions and anxieties around immigration and multiculturalism that have led to the rise of populist movements in Europe and the election of Donald Trump. At once personal and global, Brown is packed with storytelling and on-the-street reporting conducted over two years in 10 countries on four continents that reveals a multitude of lives and stories from destinations as far apart as the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines, the United States, Britain, Trinidad, France, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Qatar, and Canada. It features striking research about the emergence of brown as the color of cheap labor and the pursuit of a lighter skin tone as a global status symbol. As he studies the significance of brown skin for people from North Africa and the Middle East, Mexico and Central America, and South and East Asia, Al-Solaylee also reflects on his own identity and experiences as a brown-skinned person (in his case from Yemen) who grew up with images of whiteness as the only indicators of beauty and success. This is a daring and politically resonant work that challenges our assumptions about race, immigration, and globalism and recounts the heartbreaking stories of the people caught in the middle.
©2016 Kamal Al-Solaylee (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying
Summary
This is an absorbing account of a dialogue between leading Western scientists and the foremost representative of Buddhism today, the Dalai Lama of Tibet. For modern science, the transitional states of consciousness lie at the forefront of research in many fields. For a Buddhist practitioner, these same states present crucial opportunities to explore and transform consciousness itself. This book is the account of a historic dialogue between leading Western scientists and the Dalai Lama of Tibet. Revolving around three key moments of consciousness - sleep, dreams, and death - the conversations recorded here are both engrossing and highly listenable. Whether the topic is lucid dreaming, near-death experiences, or the very structure of consciousness itself, the listener is continually surprised and delighted. Narrated by Fajer Al-Kaisi, the book begins with insightful remarks on the notion of personal identity by noted philosopher Charles Taylor, author of the acclaimed Sources of Self. This sets the stage for Dr. Jerome Engel, Dr. Joyce MacDougal, and others to engage in extraordinary exchanges with the Dalai Lama on topics ranging from the neurology of sleep to the yoga of dreams. Remarkable convergences between the Western scientific tradition and the Buddhist contemplative sciences are revealed. Dr. Jayne Gackenbach's discussion of lucid dreaming, for example, prompts a detailed and fascinating response from the Dalai Lama on the manipulation of dreams by Buddhist meditators. The conversations also reveal provocative divergences of opinion, as when the Dalai Lama expresses skepticism about near-death experiences as presented by Joan Halifax. The conversations are engrossing and highly listenable. Any listener interested in psychology, neuroscience, Buddhism, or the alternative worlds of dreams will surely enjoy Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying.
©2002 Mind and Life Institute (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
The House of Gucci
Summary
Soon to be a major motion picture from director Ridley Scott, starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver The sensational true story of murder, madness, glamour, and greed that shook the Gucci dynasty, now fully updated with a new afterword On March 27, 1995, Maurizio Gucci, heir to the fabulous fashion dynasty, was slain by an unknown gunman as he approached his Milan office. In 1998, his ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani Martinelli - nicknamed "The Black Widow" by the press - was sentenced to 29 years in prison, for arranging his murder. Did Patrizia murder her ex-husband because his spending was wildly out of control? Did she do it because her glamorous ex was preparing to marry his mistress, Paola Franchi? Or is there a possibility she didn't do it at all? The Gucci story is one of glitz, glamour, intrigue, the rise, near fall and subsequent resurgence of a fashion dynasty. Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and widely acclaimed, The House of Gucci will captivate listeners with its pause-resisting account of high fashion, high finance, and heart-rending personal tragedy.
©2012 Sara G. Forden (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers
Going Home
Summary
In a dazzling mix of reportage, analysis, and memoir, the leading Palestinian writer of our time reflects on aging, failure, the occupation, and the changing face of Ramallah. In Going Home, Raja Shehadeh, the Orwell Prize-winning author of Palestinian Walks, takes us on a series of journeys around his hometown of Ramallah. Set in a single day - the day that happens to be the 50th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank - the audiobook is a powerful and moving record and chronicle of the changing face of his city. Here is a city whose green spaces - gardens and hills crowned with olive trees - have been replaced by tower blocks and concrete lots; where the Israeli occupation has further entrenched itself in every aspect of movement, from the roads that can and cannot be used to the bureaucratic barriers that prevent people leaving the West Bank. Here also is a city that is culturally shifting, where Islam is taking a more prominent role in people’s everyday and political lives and in the geography of the city. A penetrating evocation of memory, pain, and place that is lightened by everyday joys such as delightful accounts of shared meals and gardening, Going Home is perhaps Raja Shehadeh’s most moving and painfully visceral addition to his series of personal histories of the occupation, confirming Rachel Kushner’s judgment that “Shehadeh is a buoy in a sea of bleakness.”
©2020 Raja Shehadeh (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
Singleton
Summary
Singleton is a truck driver. Traveling the highways of the '50s, he lives a life of truck stops, lonely waitresses, and endless cups of coffee. His is the story of a man, his truck, and the open road.
©1981 Jack Cady (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Djinn City
Summary
From the author of the cult classic Escape from Baghdad! comes one of The Guardian's best fantasy books of the year. Indelbed is a lonely kid living in a crumbling mansion in the super-dense, super-chaotic third-world capital of Bangladesh. His father, Dr. Kaikobad, is the black sheep of their clan, the once illustrious Khan Rahman family. A drunken loutish widower, he refuses to allow Indelbed go to school, and the only thing Indelbed knows about his mother is the official cause of her early demise: "Death by Indelbed". But when Dr. Kaikobad falls into a supernatural coma, Indelbed and his older cousin, the wise-cracking slacker Rais, learn that Indelbed's dad was in fact a magician - and a trusted emissary to the djinn world. And the djinns, as it turns out, are displeased. A "hunt" has been announced, and 10-year-old Indelbed is the prey. Still reeling from the fact that genies actually exist, Indelbed finds himself on the run. Soon, the boys are at the center of a great djinn controversy, one tied to the continuing fallout from an ancient war, with ramifications for the future of life as we know it. Saad Z. Hossain updates the supernatural creatures of Arabian mythology - a superior but by no means perfect species pushed to the brink by the staggering ineptitude of the human race. Djinn City is a darkly comedic fantasy adventure, and a stirring follow-up to Hossain's 2015 novel Escape from Baghdad!, which NPR called "a hilarious and searing indictment of the project we euphemistically call 'nation-building.'"
©2020 Saad Z Hossain (P)2020 Scribd Audio
Track Changes
Summary
Hailed as "an unusually gifted storyteller with exceptional insight" (Jewish Tribune), Bernstein award-winning writer Sayed Kashua presents his masterful fourth novel Track Changes, which follows an Arab-Israeli man as he reckons with the weight of his past, his memories, and his cultural identity.
©2020 Sayed Kashua. English translation 2020 by Mitch Ginsburg. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Children of the Stone
Summary
It is an unlikely story. Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan, a child from a Palestinian refugee camp, confronts an occupying army, gets an education, masters an instrument, dreams of something much bigger than himself, and then, through his charisma and persistence, inspires others to work with him to make that dream real. The dream: a school to transform the lives of thousands of children - as Ramzi's life was transformed - through music. Musicians from all over the world came to help. A violist left the London Symphony Orchestra, in part to work with Ramzi at his new school. Daniel Barenboim, the eminent Israeli conductor, invited Ramzi to join his West Eastern Divan Orchestra, which he founded with the late Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said. Since then the two have played together frequently. Children of the Stone chronicles Ramzi's journey - from stone thrower to music student to school founder - and shows how through his love of music he created something lasting and beautiful in a land torn by violence and war. This is a story about the power of music, but also about freedom and conflict, determination and vision. It's a vivid portrait of life amid checkpoints and military occupation, a growing movement of nonviolent resistance, the prospects of musical collaboration across the Israeli-Palestinian divide, and the potential of music to help children everywhere see new possibilities for their lives.
©2015 Sandy Tolan (P)2015 Audible, Inc.
Where the Line Is Drawn
Summary
A moving account of one man's border crossings - both literal and figurative - by the award-winning author of Palestinian Walks, published on the 50th anniversary of the June 1967 War In what has become a classic of Middle Eastern literature, Raja Shehadeh, in Palestinian Walks, wrote of his treks through the hills surrounding Ramallah over a period of three decades under Israel's military occupation. In Where the Line Is Drawn, Shehadeh explores how occupation has affected him personally, chronicling the various crossings that he undertook into Israel over a period of 40 years to visit friends and family, to enjoy the sea, to argue before the Israeli courts, and to negotiate failed peace agreements. Those 40 years also saw him develop a close friendship with Henry, a Canadian Jew who immigrated to Israel at around the same time Shehadeh returned to Palestine from studying in London. While offering an unforgettably poignant exploration of Palestinian-Israeli relationships, Where the Line Is Drawn also provides an anatomy of friendship and an exploration of whether, in the bleakest of circumstances, it is possible for bonds to transcend political divisions.
©2017 Raja Shehadeh (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
Faster, Smarter, Higher
Summary
'Utkarsh Rai's book is a commendable effort that presents a holistic view of career management. A good listen, especially for professionals in the early to mid-stages of their careers.' (N. R. Narayana Murthy) Hard work is necessary for a job but not sufficient for career growth. Given that workplace dynamics are ever-changing, one needs to anticipate and prepare for the impending twists and turns in one's career. Lack of understanding of managing key relationships can lead to frustration in one's career. Being in a hurry to rise, people often ignore honing this skill, focusing too much on their subject matter expertise. Faster, Smarter, Higher provides clever and critical tips on how to manage various key relationships at work.
©2016 Utkarsh Rai (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Native
Summary
Sayed Kashua has been praised by The New York Times as "a master of subtle nuance in dealing with both Arab and Jewish society". An Arab-Israeli who lived in Jerusalem for most of his life, Kashua started writing with the hope of creating one story that both Palestinians and Israelis could relate to, rather than two that cannot coexist together. He devoted his novels and his satirical weekly column published in Haaretz to telling the Palestinian story and exploring the contradictions of modern Israel while also capturing the nuances of everyday family life in all its tenderness and chaos. With an intimate tone fueled by deep-seated apprehension and razor-sharp ironic wit, Kashua has been documenting his own life as well as that of society at large: He writes about his children's upbringing and encounters with racism, about fatherhood and married life, the Jewish-Arab conflict, his professional ambitions, travels around the world as an author, and - more than anything - his love of books and literature. He brings forth a series of brilliant, caustic, wry, and fearless reflections on social and cultural dynamics as experienced by someone who straddles two societies. Written between 2006 and 2014, Native is like an unrestrained, profoundly thoughtful personal journal.
©2016 Sayed Kashua. Translation 2014 by Haaretz. First published as Ben Haaretz by Keter Publishing House in 2015. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits
Summary
Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits evokes the grit and enduring grace that is modern Morocco. As four Moroccans illegally cross the Strait of Gibraltar in an inflatable boat headed for Spain, author Laila Lalami asks: What has driven them to risk their lives? And will the rewards prove to be worth the danger? There's Murad, a gentle, unemployed man who's been reduced to hustling tourists around Tangier; Halima, who's fleeing her drunken husband and the slums of Casablanca; Aziz, who must leave behind his devoted wife in hope of securing work in Spain; and Faten, a student and religious fanatic whose faith is at odds with an influential man determined to destroy her future. Sensitively written with beauty and boldness, this is a gripping audiobook about what propels people to risk their lives in search of a better future.
©2005 Laila Lalami (P)2020 Random House Audio
Faraway
Summary
Classic fables take on new meaning as five of today’s most original bestselling authors serve up some deliciously modern twists. New reflections on evil queens, charmless princes, and star-crossed lovers branch out in provocative and enchanting directions. Follow the path and see where it leads... THE PRINCE AND THE TROLL by Rainbow Rowell A charming everyman and a mysterious something-under-the-bridge cross paths in a short fairy tale by the number one New York Times bestselling author of Eleanor & Park and the Simon Snow series. HAZEL AND GRAY by Nic Stone Two anxious young lovers lost in the woods. A beckoning mansion in a dark clearing. A short modern-day retelling of Hansel and Gretel by the number one New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin. THE PRINCESS GAME by Soman Chainani There are no happy endings for the Princesses of Chaminade High in this short, twisty tale of teenage murder games by the New York Times bestselling author of The School for Good and Evil series. THE CLEANERS by Ken Liu Touch the past or wash it away? Two sisters have a choice in this unforgettable short story of everyday magic and the power of memory by the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Ken Liu. THE WICKEDS by Gayle Forman The reviled villainesses of Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel team up to set the record straight in a subversively funny short story by the number one New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay. Full list of narrators includes Kate Rudd and Frankie Corzo.
©2020 The Prince and the Troll © 2020 by Rainbow Rowell. Hazel and Gray © 2020 by Logolepsy Media Inc. The Princess Game © 2020 by Soman Chainani. The Cleaners © 2020 by Ken Liu. The Wickeds © 2020 by Gayle Forman Inc. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.