Fred Sanders has narrated 141 audiobooks on Listento.it by 180 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 9,074 ratings. The most-rated is Elon Musk.
Blood Moon
Summary
This sweeping American epic reveals one of the greatest untold stories of the 19th century: the fierce rivalry between two great Cherokee chiefs that led to war, forced migration, and the devastation of a once-proud nation. Blood Moon is the story of the century-long blood feud between two rival Cherokee chiefs from the early years of the United States through the infamous Trail of Tears and into the Civil War. While little remembered today, their mutual hatred shaped the tragic history of the tribe far more than anyone, even the reviled President Andrew Jackson, ever did. In this epic saga, John Sedgwick brings to life an untold chapter of American history through the relationship between one chief called The Ridge, a fearsome warrior who spoke no English but whose exploits on the battlefield were legendary, and John Ross, who was the Cherokees’ primary chief for nearly 40 years, yet displayed the Scottish side of his mixed-blood heritage and spoke not a word of Cherokee. To protect their sacred landholdings from American encroachment, these two men negotiated with almost every American president from George Washington through Abraham Lincoln. At first friends and allies, they broke on the subject of Removal, breeding an enmity that led to a bloody civil war within Cherokee Nation that culminated in the two factions battling each other in the War Between the States. Dramatic, far-reaching, and unforgettable, Blood Moon paints a portrait of these two inspirational leaders who worked together to lift their people to the height of culture and learning as the most civilized tribe in the nation and then drop them to the depths of ruin and despair as they turned against each other. Theirs is a story of land, pride, honor, and loss that forms much of the country’s mythic past today.
©2018 John Sedgwick (P)2018 Simon & Schuster
Leave It as It Is
Summary
“A rallying cry in the age of climate change.” (Robert Redford) An environmental clarion call, told through best-selling author David Gessner’s wilderness road trip inspired by America’s greatest conservationist, Theodore Roosevelt. “Leave it as it is”, Theodore Roosevelt announced while viewing the Grand Canyon for the first time. “The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.” Roosevelt’s rallying cry signaled the beginning of an environmental fight that still wages today. To reconnect with the American wilderness and with the president who courageously protected it, acclaimed nature writer and New York Times best-selling author David Gessner embarks on a great American road trip guided by Roosevelt’s crusading environmental legacy. Gessner travels to the Dakota badlands where Roosevelt awakened as a naturalist; to Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon where Roosevelt escaped during the grind of his reelection tour; and finally, to Bears Ears, Utah, a monument proposed by Native Tribes that is embroiled in a national conservation fight. Along the way, Gessner questions and reimagines Roosevelt’s vision for today. As Gessner journeys through the grandeur of our public lands, he tells the story of Roosevelt’s life as a pioneering conservationist, offering an arresting history, a powerful call to arms, and a profound meditation on our environmental future.
©2020 David Gessner. All rights reserved. (P)2020 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Power of Half
Summary
It all started when 14-year-old Hannah Salwen had a eureka moment. Seeing a homeless man in her neighborhood at the same instant she spotted a man driving a glistening Mercedes, she said, “Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal.” Until that day, the Salwens had been caught up like so many of us in the classic American dream—providing a good life for their children, accumulating more and more stuff, doing their part to help others but not really feeling it. So when Hannah was stopped in her tracks by this glaring disparity, her parents knew they had to act on her urge to do something. As a family, they made the extraordinary decision to sell their Atlanta mansion, buy a house half its size, and give half of the sale price to a worthy charity. At first it seemed outlandish: What, are we crazy? Then it became a challenge: We are totally doing this. Their plan eventually took them across the globe and well out of their comfort zone. In the end they learned that they had the power to change a little corner of the world. And they found themselves changing too. As Kevin Salwen says, “No one else is nuts enough to sell their house,” but what his family discovered along the way will inspire countless others, no matter what their means or resources are. Warm, funny, and deeply moving, The Power of Half is the story of how one family grew closer as they discovered that half could be so much more.
©2010 Kevin Salwen and Hannah Salwen (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers
Bin Laden
Summary
The definitive biography of the man behind the September 11th attacks. On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, Osama bin Laden is still a vivid symbol of outrage and tragedy in the American imagination. One of the most-recognized faces of terror, bin Laden has presented himself to the world as a paragon of ascetic virtue. Journalist Adam Robinson tells a far different story. This authoritative biography lifts bin Laden’s mask of moral purity as it recounts his transformation from dissolute rich kid into terrorist mastermind. Drawing on information from members of bin Laden’s own family and extensive independent research in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Oman, Libya, and Pakistan, Robinson opens a window into the man who changed the face of global politics.
©2011 Adam Robinson (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Operation Swallow
Summary
The true and heroic story of American POWs' daring escape from a Nazi concentration camp. In this little-known story from World War II, a group of American POW camp leaders risk everything to save hundreds of fellow servicemen from a diabolical Nazi concentration camp. Their story begins in the dark forests of the Ardennes during Christmas 1944 and ends at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in the spring of 1945. This appalling chapter of US military history and uplifting Holocaust story deserves to be widely known and understood. Operation Swallow provides a historical, first person perspective of how American GIs stood up against their evil SS captors who were forcing them to work as slave laborers. A young GI is thrust into a leadership position and leads his fellow servicemen on a daring escape. It is a story filled with courage, sacrifice, torture, despair, and salvation. A compelling narrative-driven nonfiction book has not been written that takes the listener deep into the dark story of Operation 'Swallow' and Berga Concentration Camp - until now. Written from personal testimonies and official documents, Operation Swallow is a tale replete with high adventure, compelling characters, human drama, tragedy, and eventual salvation, from the pen of a master of the modern military narrative. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2019 Mark Felton (P)2019 Center Street
Who Was Bruce Lee?
Summary
Bruce Lee was a Chinese American action film star, martial arts instructor, filmmaker, and philosopher. His Hong Kong- and Hollywood-produced films elevated the traditional martial arts film to a new level of popularity and acclaim. Through such films as Way of the Dragon and Enter the Dragon, Lee helped to change the way Asians were presented in American films, and in the process he became an iconic figure known throughout the world. Although he died at the young age of 32, Bruce Lee is widely considered to be the one of the most influential martial artists of all time.
©2016 Jim Gigliotti (P)2016 Listening Library
Beaten Down, Worked Up
Summary
“A page-turning book that spans a century of worker strikes.... Engrossing, character-driven, panoramic.” (Zephyr Teachout, The New York Times Book Review) We live in an era of soaring corporate profits and anemic wage gains, one in which low-paid jobs and blighted blue-collar communities have become a common feature of our nation’s landscape. Behind these trends lies a little-discussed problem: the decades-long decline in worker power. Award-winning journalist and author Steven Greenhouse guides us through the key episodes and trends in history that are essential to understanding some of our nation’s most pressing problems, including increased income inequality, declining social mobility, and the concentration of political power in the hands of the wealthy few. He exposes the modern labor landscape with the stories of dozens of American workers, from GM employees to Uber drivers to underpaid schoolteachers. Their fight to take power back is crucial for America’s future, and Greenhouse proposes concrete, feasible ways in which workers’ collective power can be - and is being - rekindled and reimagined in the 21st century. Beaten Down, Worked Up is a stirring and essential look at labor in America, poised as it is between the tumultuous struggles of the past and the vital, hopeful struggles ahead. A PBS NewsHour Now Read This Book Club Pick
©2019 Steven Greenhouse (P)2019 Random House Audio
The Divorce Papers
Summary
Witty and wonderful, sparkling and sophisticated, this debut romantic comedy brilliantly tells the story of one very messy, very high-profile divorce, and the endearingly cynical young lawyer dragooned into handling it. Twenty-nine-year-old Sophie Diehl is happy toiling away as a criminal law associate at an old line New England firm where she very much appreciates that most of her clients are behind bars. Everyone at Traynor, Hand knows she abhors face-to-face contact, but one weekend, with all the big partners away, Sophie must handle the intake interview for the daughter of the firm's most important client. After 18 years of marriage, Mayflower descendant Mia Meiklejohn Durkheim has just been served divorce papers in a humiliating scene at the popular local restaurant Golightly's. She is locked and loaded to fight her eminent and ambitious husband, Dr. Daniel Durkheim, chief of the Department of Pediatric Oncology, for custody of their 10-year-old daughter Jane - and she also burns to take him down a peg. Sophie warns Mia that she's never handled a divorce case before, but Mia can't be put off. As she so disarmingly puts it: It's her first divorce, too. Debut novelist Susan Rieger doesn't leave a word out of place in this hilarious and expertly crafted debut that shines with the power and pleasure of storytelling. Told through personal correspondence, office memos, emails, articles, and legal papers, this playful reinvention of the epistolary form races along with humor and heartache, exploring the complicated family dynamic that results when marriage fails. For Sophie, the whole affair sparks a hard look at her own relationships - not only with her parents, but with colleagues, friends, lovers, and most importantly, herself. Much like Where'd You Go, Bernadette, The Divorce Papers will have you laughing aloud and thanking the literature gods for this incredible, fresh new voice in fiction.
©2014 Susan Rieger (P)2014 Random House Audio
Dinner with DiMaggio
Summary
The real Joe DiMaggio, remembered by the man who knew him best in the last decade of his life - candid and little-known stories about icons from Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, and his Yankees teammates on the field to Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and other great celebrities off the field. Dr. Rock Positano, an internationally renowned foot specialist in New York City, was introduced to Joe DiMaggio by the dean of New York sports writers, Bill Gallo, in 1990. The Yankee Clipper's career-ending heel spur injury and botched surgeries brought them together. During the time Dr. Positano successfully treated the Yankee Clipper, a friendship slowly developed. As Dr. Positano would learn, DiMaggio moved very carefully and deliberately. Dinner with DiMaggio follows the story of their friendship from its starstruck beginning through all its highs and lows over the next decade. Forty years younger than DiMaggio, Dr. Positano became a surrogate son at a time when his actual son was suffering from substance-abuse problems. Positano's accounts of their times together reveal DiMaggio's many rituals and quirks: the same meals at the same restaurants, the same pals in New York and Florida, jacket and tie everywhere. At the pinnacle of his fame, DiMaggio had learned to be guarded and carefully managed his image and private life. As his trust in his young friend grew, DiMaggio opened up about Marilyn but also about his first wife, Dorothy Arnold, the mother of his son and the real love of his life. The Yankee Clipper knew everyone, and Positano shares never-before-told stories of famous people DiMaggio admired and those he didn't. This is DiMaggio as he really was: sometimes cranky and calculating but more often charming, generous, and loyal and always big-hearted when it came to kids. The stories and experiences he shared with Rock Positano comprise an intimate portrait of one of the great stars of baseball and one of the icons of the 20th century. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2017 Rock Positano (P)2017 Simon & Schuster Audio
LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination
Summary
The case against Lyndon B. Johnson and his role in Kennedy's assassination has never been sounder. LBJ aims to prove that Vice President Johnson played an active role in the assassination of President Kennedy and that he began planning his takeover of the U.S. presidency even before being named the vice presidential nominee in 1960. Lyndon B. Johnson's flawed personality and character traits, formed as a child, grew unchecked for the rest of his life as he suffered severe bouts of manic-depressive illness. He successfully hid this disorder from the public as he bartered, stole, and finessed his way through the corridors of power on Capitol Hill, though it's recorded that some of his aides knew of his struggle with bipolar disorder. After years of researching Johnson and the JFK assassination, Phillip F. Nelson conclusively shows that LBJ had an active role in JFK's assassination, and he includes newly uncovered photographic evidence proving that Johnson knew when and where Kennedy's assassination would take place. Nelson's careful and meticulous research has led him to uncover secrets from one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in our country's history.
©2011 Phillip F. Nelson (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Cold Warriors
Summary
A brilliant, invigorating account of the great writers on both sides of the Iron Curtain who played the dangerous games of espionage, dissidence, and subversion that changed the course of the Cold War. During the Cold War, literature was both sword and noose. Novels, essays and poems could win the hearts and minds of those caught between the competing creeds of capitalism and communism. They could also lead to exile, imprisonment or execution if they offended those in power. The clandestine intelligence services of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union had secret agents and vast propaganda networks devoted to literary warfare. But the battles were personal, too: friends turning on each other, lovers cleaved by political fissures, artists undermined by inadvertent complicities. In Cold Warriors, Harvard University’s Duncan White vividly chronicles how this ferocious intellectual struggle was waged on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The book has at its heart five major writers - George Orwell, Stephen Spender, Mary McCarthy, Graham Greene and Andrei Sinyavsky - but the full cast includes a dazzling array of giants, among them Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, John le Carré, Richard Wright, Ernest Hemingway, Boris Pasternak, Gioconda Belli, Arthur Koestler, Vaclav Havel, Joan Didion, Isaac Babel, Howard Fast, Lillian Hellman, Mikhail Sholokhov - and scores more. Spanning decades and continents and spectacularly meshing gripping narrative with perceptive literary detective work, Cold Warriors is a welcome reminder that, at a moment when ignorance is celebrated and reading and listening are seen as increasingly irrelevant, writers and books can change the world.
©2019 Duncan White (P)2019 HarperAudio
This Love Is Not for Cowards
Summary
More than 10 people are murdered every day in Ciudad Jurez, a city about the size of Philadelphia. As Mexico has descended into a feudal narco-state - one where cartels, death squads, the army, and local police all fight over billions of dollars in profits from drug and human trafficking - the border city of Jurez has been hit hardest of all. And yet, more than a million people still live there. They even love their impoverished city, proudly repeating its mantra: "Amor por Jurez." Nothing exemplifies the spirit and hope of Juarenses more than the Indios, the city's beloved but hard-luck soccer team. Sport may seem a meager distraction, but to many it's a lifeline. It drew charismatic American midfielder Marco Vidal back from Dallas to achieve the athletic dreams of his Mexican father. Team owner Francisco Ibarra and Mayor Jos Reyes Ferriz both thrive on soccer. So does the dubiously named crew of Indios fans, El Kartel. In this honest, unflinching, and powerful book, Robert Andrew Powell chronicles a season of soccer in this treacherous city just across the Rio Grande, and the moments of pain, longing, and redemption along the way. As he travels across Mexico with the team, Powell reflects on this struggling nation and its watchful neighbor to the north. This story is not just about sports, or even community, but the strength of humanity in a place where chaos reigns.
©2012 Robert Andrew Powell (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Who Is Bruce Springsteen?
Summary
Not only was Bruce Springsteen "Born in the USA", he has risen to become a 20-time Grammy winner and American icon. Bruce Springsteen grew up in a blue-collar New Jersey town where his parents struggled to make ends meet. Bruce didn't fit in at school but found solace in rock and roll and playing guitar. After the breakup of a local band he'd joined, Springsteen went out on his own, and people began to take notice. He signed with Columbia Records and, under pressure to come up with a hit, wrote "Born in the USA", which tells the story of America during the years of the Vietnam War. A multimillionaire and 20-time Grammy winner, the Boss has remained a working-class hero whose music deals with the political and social changes in our country.
©2016 Stephanie Sabol (P)2017 Listening Library
The Art of Noticing
Summary
An imaginative, thought-provoking gift audiobook to awaken your senses and attune them to the things that matter in your life. Welcome to the era of white noise. Our lives are in constant tether to phones, to email, and to social media. In this age of distraction, the ability to experience and be present is often lost: to think and to see and to listen. Enter Rob Walker's The Art of Noticing. This audiobook edition will spark your creativity - and most importantly, help you see the world anew. Through a series of simple and playful exercises - 131 of them - Walker maps ways for you to become a clearer thinker, a better listener, a more creative workplace colleague and finally, to rediscover your sense of passion and to notice what really matters to you.
©2019 Rob Walker (P)2019 Random House Audio
Ice
Summary
'Tis the season for mistletoe and holly, Santa . . . and suspense. And the gift that keeps on giving is Ice: premier thriller author Linda Howard's breathless tale of a man, a woman, and a battle for survival against an unforgiving winter - and an unrelenting killer. Oh what fun it is to listen. Gabriel McQueen has only just arrived home on holiday leave from the service when his county-sheriff father sends him back out again with new marching orders. A brewing ice storm, and a distant neighbor who's fallen out of contact, have the local lawman concerned. So he enlists Gabriel to make the long haul to the middle of nowhere, and make sure Lolly Helton is safe and sound. It's a trip the younger McQueen would rather not make, given the bitter winter weather - and the icy conditions that have always existed between him and Lolly. But there's no talking back when your dad is the town's top cop. And there's no turning back when night falls just as Gabriel arrives - and discovers that the weather outside isn't the only thing that's frightful. Spotting strangers in Lolly's home - one of them packing a weapon - is all it takes to kick Gabriel into combat mode. And his stealth training is all he needs to extract Lolly from the house without alerting her captors. But when the escape is discovered, the heat - and the hunt - are on. And the winter woods are nowhere to be once the ice storm touches down, dropping trees, blocking roads, and trapping the fleeing pair in the freezing dark.
©2009 Linda Howard (P)2009 Random House
Becoming Los Angeles
Summary
Best-selling author and beloved chronicler of Los Angeles D.J. Waldie reconsiders the city in a collection of contemporary essays. Becoming Los Angeles, a new collection by the author of the acclaimed memoir Holy Land, blends history, memory, and critical analysis to illuminate how Angelenos have seen themselves and their city. Waldie’s particular concern is commonplace Los Angeles, whose rhythms of daily life are set against the gaudy backdrop of historical myth and Hollywood illusion. It’s through sacred ordinariness that Waldie experiences the city’s seasons. In his exploration of sprawling Los Angeles, he considers how the city’s image was constructed and how it fostered willful amnesia about the city’s conflicted past. He encounters the immigrants and exiles, the dreamers and con artists, the celebrated and forgotten who became Los Angeles. He measures the place of nature in the city and the different ways that nature has been defined. He maps on the contours of Los Angeles what embracing-or rejecting-an Angeleno identity has come to mean. Becoming Los Angeles draws on a decade of Waldie’s writing about the intersection of the city’s history and its aspirations. He asks, what do we talk about when we talk about Los Angeles today? In a global, cosmopolitan city, is there value in cultivating a local imagination? And he wonders how to describe a city that is denser and more polarized and challenged by climate change, homelessness, and economic disparity. There will always be romance in the idea of Los Angeles, but it requires renewed hope to sustain. Becoming Los Angeles is a further account of how Waldie gained a sense of place, which James Mustich, author of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, described as “an almost sacramental act of attention.” Becoming Los Angeles is ultimately a book about learning how to fall in love with wherever it is you are.
©2020 DJ Waldie (P)2021 Random House Audio
The Flu Pandemic and You
Summary
An essential survival guide - both to pandemic influenza, and to the hype surrounding it. Written by an emergency physician and a public health physician, The Flu Pandemic and You is a timely and forthright guide on how to prepare for an influenza pandemic, and how to understand the broader context in which this health threat exists. With cool heads and professional expertise, Drs. Lam and Lee carefully explain how listeners can assess their level of risk, and set out practical advice on how to contend with a pandemic, addressing such issues as: How the flu virus works and what level of threat Canadians really face How to help protect yourself and your family from contracting influenza How to identify symptoms What you need to know about antiviral drugs What to do in a worst-case scenario The Flu Pandemic and You develops a lucid framework to help people understand the current anxiety about influenza in the context of the risks we all face in our daily lives. This crucially important book, full of reasoned, knowledgeable advice, is an indispensable resource for fearful times.
©2006 Vincent Lam (P)2020 Penguin Random House Canada
What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
Summary
These eight new stories from the celebrated novelist and short-story writer Nathan Englander display a gifted young author grappling with the great questions of modern life, with a command of language and the imagination that place Englander at the very forefront of contemporary American fiction. The title story, inspired by Raymond Carver’s masterpiece, is a provocative portrait of two marriages in which the Holocaust is played out as a devastating parlor game. In the outlandishly dark “Camp Sundown” vigilante justice is undertaken by a group of geriatric campers in a bucolic summer enclave. “Free Fruit for Young Widows” is a small, sharp study in evil, lovingly told by a father to a son. “Sister Hills” chronicles the history of Israel’s settlements from the eve of the Yom Kippur War through the present, a political fable constructed around the tale of two mothers who strike a terrible bargain to save a child. Marking a return to two of Englander’s classic themes, “Peep Show” and “How We Avenged the Blums” wrestle with sexual longing and ingenuity in the face of adversity and peril. And “Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother’s Side” is suffused with an intimacy and tenderness that break new ground for a writer who seems constantly to be expanding the parameters of what he can achieve in the short form. Beautiful and courageous, funny and achingly sad, Englander’s work is a revelation.
©2012 Nathan Englander (P)2012 Random House Audio
The Moralist
Summary
By the author of acclaimed biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Adams, a penetrating biography of one of the most high-minded, consequential, and controversial US presidents, Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924). The Moralist is a cautionary tale about the perils of moral vanity and American overreach in foreign affairs. In domestic affairs, Wilson was a progressive who enjoyed unprecedented success in leveling the economic playing field, but he was behind the times on racial equality and women’s suffrage. As a Southern boy during the Civil War, he knew the ravages of war, and as president he refused to lead the country into World War I until he was convinced that Germany posed a direct threat to the United States. Once committed, he was an admirable commander in chief, yet he also presided over the harshest suppression of political dissent in American history. After the war Wilson became the world’s most ardent champion of liberal internationalism - a democratic new world order committed to peace, collective security, and free trade. With Wilson’s leadership, the governments at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 founded the League of Nations, a federation of the world’s democracies. The creation of the League, Wilson’s last great triumph, was quickly followed by two crushing blows: a paralyzing stroke and the rejection of the treaty that would have allowed the United States to join the League. After a backlash against internationalism in the 1920s and 1930s, Wilson’s liberal internationalism was revived by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and it has shaped American foreign relations - for better and worse - ever since.
©2018 Patricia O'Toole (P)2018 Simon & Schuster Audio
This Side of Wild
Summary
The Newbery Honor-winning author of Hatchet and Dogsong shares surprising true stories about his relationship with animals, highlighting their compassion, intellect, intuition, and sense of adventure. Gary Paulsen is an adventurer who competed in two Iditarods, survived the Minnesota wilderness, and climbed the Bighorns. None of this would have been possible without his truest companions: his animals. Sled dogs rescued him in Alaska, a sickened poodle guarded his well-being, and a horse led him across a desert. Through his interactions with dogs, horses, birds, and more, Gary has been struck with the belief that animals know more than we may fathom. His understanding and admiration of animals is well known, and in This Side of Wild, which has taken a lifetime to write, he proves the ways in which they have taught him to be a better person.
©2015 Gary Paulsen (P)2015 Simon & Schuster