J. D. Jackson has narrated 57 audiobooks on Listento.it by 60 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 433 ratings. The most-rated is The Mindful Athlete.
The Mindful Athlete
Summary
Michael Jordan credits George Mumford with transforming his on-court leadership of the Bulls, helping Jordan lead the team to six NBA championships. Mumford also helped Kobe Bryant, Andrew Bynum, and Lamar Odom and countless other NBA players turn around their games. A widely respected public speaker and coach, Mumford is sharing his own story and the strategies that have made these athletes into stars in The Mindful Athlete: The Secret to Pure Performance. His proven, gentle but groundbreaking mindfulness techniques can transform the performance of anyone with a goal, be they an Olympian, weekend warrior, executive, hacker, or artist. Mumford's deeply moving personal story is unforgettable. A basketball player at the University of Massachusetts (where he roomed with Dr. J, Julius Erving), injuries forced Mumford out of the game he loved. The meds that relieved the pain of his injuries also numbed him to the emptiness he felt without the game and eventually led him to heroin. After years as a functioning addict, Mumford enrolled in Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program, and made meditation, on and off the cushion, the center of his life. He kicked drugs, earned a master's degree in counseling psychology and began teaching meditation to inmates and others. When Michael Jordan left the Chicago Bulls to play baseball in 1993, the team was in crisis. Coach Phil Jackson, a long-time mindfulness practitioner, contacted Dr. Kabat-Zinn to find someone who could teach mindfulness techniques to the struggling team - someone who would have credibility and could speak the language of his players. Kabat-Zinn led Jackson to Mumford and their partnership began. Mumford has worked with Jackson and each of the eleven teams he coached to become NBA champions. His roster of champion clients has since blossomed way beyond basketball to include corporate executives, Olympians, and athletes.
©2016 George Mumford (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
The Beautiful Struggle
Summary
Ta-Nehisi Coates' debut is an infectious, reflective memoir - a lyrical saga of surviving the crack-stricken streets of Baltimore in the '80s. Son of Vietnam vet and black awareness advocate Paul Coates - a poor man who set out to publish lost classics of black history - Ta-Nehisi drifts toward salvation at Howard University, while his ominous brother Big Bill finds his own rhythm hustling.
©2008 Ta-Nehisi Coates (P)2008 Recorded Books,LLC
Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart
Summary
Carrot Quinn fears that she's become addicted to the Internet. The city makes her numb, and she's having trouble connecting with others. In a desperate move, she breaks away from everything to walk 2,660 miles from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail. It will be her first long-distance hike. In the desert of Southern California, Carrot faces many challenges, both physical and emotional: pain, injury, blisters, aching cold and searing heat, dehydration, exhaustion, loneliness. In the wilderness she happens upon and becomes close with an eclectic group of strangers - people she wouldn't have chanced to meet in the "regular world" but who are brought together, here on the trail, by their one common goal: to make it to Canada before the snow flies.
©2015 Carrot Quinn (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Bluebird, Bluebird
Summary
A "heartbreakingly resonant" thriller about the explosive intersection of love, race, and justice from a writer and producer of the Emmy-winning Fox TV show Empire (USA Today). "In Bluebird, Bluebird, Attica Locke had both mastered the thriller and exceeded it." (Ann Patchett) When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules - a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home. When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders - a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman - have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes - and save himself in the process - before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt. From a writer and producer of the Emmy winning Fox TV show Empire, Bluebird, Bluebird is a rural noir suffused with the unique music, color, and nuance of East Texas.
©2017 Attica Locke (P)2017 Hachette Audio
One Rough Man
Summary
A former Delta Force commander, Brad Taylor proves with this breathtaking debut thriller that Vince Flynn and Brad Thor have company. A collection of top operatives, the Taskforce was commissioned by the highest levels of government, kept secret from the media and even Congress. The best of the Taskforce bunch, Pike Logan, knows the greatest threat to American security is one or two idealogues. Unfortunately for them, they’ve just crossed Pike’s path.
©2011 Brad Taylor (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC
Please Stop Helping Us
Summary
Why is it that so many efforts by liberals to lift the Black underclass not only fail, but often harm the intended beneficiaries? In Please Stop Helping Us, Jason L. Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding Black Americans back. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of Blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education is intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer Black college graduates than would otherwise exist. And so it goes with everything from soft-on-crime laws, which make Black neighborhoods more dangerous, to policies that limit school choice out of a mistaken belief that charter schools and voucher programs harm the traditional public schools that most low-income students attend. In theory these efforts are intended to help the poor - and poor minorities in particular. In practice they become massive barriers to moving forward. Please Stop Helping Us lays bare these counterproductive results. People of goodwill want to see more Black socioeconomic advancement, but in too many instances the current methods and approaches aren’t working. Acknowledging this is an important first step.
©2014 Jason L. Riley (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Give Up the Ghost
Summary
The bigger they are, the harder they maul. Immortal not-ghost Wes Cooper and his vampire partner, Hudson Rojas, have it all - rewarding private investigation work, great friends, and, most important, a love that's endured. But ever since Wes sent a demon screaming back to the beyond, his abilities have grown overpowering and overwhelming. He's hiding the fact that he's losing control the best he can, but it's hard to keep anything a secret for long when your partner's a former cop...and especially when your partner's a former cop who wants to move in together. When all hell literally breaks loose in Toronto and super-strength ghosts are unleashed on Wes and his friends, he and Hudson are thrown into a case unlike any they've seen before. To save the city, Wes needs to harness his new power...and find some answers. But when he gets them, the solution to fix it all could mean losing everything. Contains mature themes.
©2019 Jennifer R. L. Burke (P)2019 Tantor
The Law of Moses
Summary
Someone found him in a laundry basket at the Quick Wash, wrapped in a towel, a few hours old and close to death. They called him "Baby Moses" when they shared his story on the ten o'clock news. It all happened before I was born, and by the time I met Moses and my mom told me all about him, the story was old news, and nobody wanted anything to do with him. People love babies, even sick babies. Even crack babies. But babies grow up to be kids, and kids grow up to be teenagers. Nobody wants a messed up teenager. And Moses was messed up. Moses was a law unto himself. But he was also strange and exotic and beautiful. To be with him would change my life in ways I could never have imagined. Maybe I should have stayed away. Maybe I should have listened. My mother warned me. Even Moses warned me. But I didn't stay away.
©2014 Amy Harmon (P)2015 Tantor
Fallen Angels
Summary
With starred reviews from School Library Journal, Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews, this moving novel by acclaimed author Walter Dean Myers is a modern classic. In the late 1960s, Richie Perry is growing up fast on the battlefields of Vietnam. But in the war-torn jungle, every moment is a struggle to survive. All Richie wants is to make it out alive.
©1988 Walter Dean Myers (P)2004 Recorded Books. LLC
Where Do We Go from Here
Summary
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this prophetic work, which was unavailable for more than 10 years, he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering, asserting that humankind - for the first time - has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.
©1967 Estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (P)2018 Random House Audio
The Fatal Conceit
Summary
Hayek gives the main arguments for the free-market case and presents his manifesto on the "errors of socialism." Hayek argues that socialism has, from its origins, been mistaken on factual, and even on logical, grounds and that its repeated failures in the many different practical applications of socialist ideas that this century has witnessed were the direct outcome of these errors. He labels as the "fatal conceit" the idea that "man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes."
©1988 F.A. Hayak (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Broken Monsters
Summary
A criminal mastermind creates violent tableaus in abandoned Detroit warehouses in Lauren Beukes's new genre-bending novel of suspense. Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies. But this one is unique even by Detroit's standards: half boy, half deer, somehow fused together. As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at its seams? If you're Detective Versado's geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you commence a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online. If you're desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story. If you're Thomas Keen, known on the street as TK, you'll do what you can to keep your homeless family safe - and find the monster who is possessed by the dream of violently remaking the world. If Lauren Beukes's internationally best-selling The Shining Girls was a time-jumping thrill ride through the past, her Broken Monsters is a genre-redefining thriller about broken cities, broken dreams, and broken people trying to put themselves back together again.
©2014 Lauren Beukes (P)2014 Hachette Audio
Look Both Ways
Summary
One of AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of 2019! From National Book Award finalist and New York Times best-selling author Jason Reynolds comes a genre-defying new novel that serves as an homage to sharing the stories we all hold within ourselves.
©2019 Jason Reynolds (P)2019 Simon & Schuster Audio
Loose Balls
Summary
What do Julius Erving, Larry Brown, Moses Malone, Bob Costas, the Indiana Pacers, the San Antonio Spurs and the Slam Dunk Contest have in common? They all got their professional starts in the American Basketball Association. The NBA may have won the financial battle, but the ABA won the artistic war. With its stress on wide-open individual play, the adoption of the 3-point shot and pressing defense, and the encouragement of flashy moves and flying dunks, today's NBA is still -- decades later -- just the ABA without the red, white and blue ball. Loose Balls is, after all these years, the definitive and most widely respected history of the ABA. It's a wild ride through some of the wackiest, funniest, strangest times ever to hit pro sports -- told entirely through the (often incredible) words of those who played, wrote and connived their way through the league's nine seasons.
©1990 Terry Pluto (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
King of the Court
Summary
Bill Russell was not the first African American to play professional basketball, but he was its first black superstar. From the moment he stepped onto the court of the Boston Garden in 1956, Russell began to transform the sport in a fundamental way, making him, more than any of his contemporaries, the Jackie Robinson of basketball. In King of the Court, Aram Goudsouzian provides a vivid and engrossing chronicle of the life and career of this brilliant champion and courageous racial pioneer. Russell's leaping, wide-ranging defense altered the game's texture. His teams provided models of racial integration in the 1950s and 1960s, and, in 1966, he became the first black coach of any major professional team sport. Yet, like no athlete before him, Russell challenged the politics of sport. Instead of displaying appreciative deference, he decried racist institutions, embraced his African roots, and challenged the nonviolent tenets of the civil rights movement. This beautifully written book - sophisticated, nuanced, and insightful - reveals a singular individual who expressed the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. while echoing the warnings of Malcolm X.
©2010 Aram Goudsouzian (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Doc
Summary
A brutally honest memoir of talent, addiction, and recovery from one of the greatest baseball pitchers of all time. As a shy 19-year-old, Dwight Gooden swept into New York, lifting a team of crazy characters to World Series greatness and giving a beleaguered city a reason to believe. Then he threw it all away. Now, with fresh and sober eyes, the Mets’ beloved Dr. K shares the intimate details of his life and career, revealing all the extraordinary highs and lows: The hidden traumas in his close-knit Tampa family. The thrill and pressure of being a young baseball phenom in New York. The raucous days and nights with the Mets’ bad boys (and the real reason he missed the 1986 World Series victory parade). The self-destructive drug binges and the three World Series rings. His heartbreaking attempts at getting sober, the senseless damage to family and friends, and the unexpected way he finally saved his life - on VH1’s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. In Doc, Gooden details his close friendships with many of baseball’s greats: Pete Rose, George Steinbrenner, Joe Torre, and nephew Gary Sheffield. For the first time ever, he reveals the full story of his troubled relationship with fellow Mets superstar Darryl Strawberry. And he tells the moving story of the Yankees no-hitter he pitched for his dying father. Doc is a riveting baseball memoir by one of the game’s most fascinating figures and an inspiring story for anyone who has faced tough challenges in life.
©2013 Dwight Gooden (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Sunrise Over Fallujah
Summary
Acclaimed author Walter Dean Myers presents a compelling novel that looks at America's occupation of Iraq through the eyes of those who live it first hand. Charged with building up relations between the U.S. military and the Iraqi people, a team of soldiers strives to make real connections and bridge the divide between two very different cultures. On constant guard from frequent suicide bomb attacks and deadly skirmishes, their situation reveals a tragic human toll.
©2008 Walter Dean Myers (P)2008 Recorded Books, LLC
Loving Day
Summary
On his first night in his new home, Warren spies two figures in the grass outside; when he screws up the nerve to confront them, they disappear. The next day he encounters ghosts of a different kind: In the face of the teenage girl he meets at a comics convention, he sees the mingled features of his white father and his black mother, both now dead. The girl is his daughter, and she thinks she's white. Warren sets off to remake his life with a reluctant daughter he never knew and a haunted house and history he knows too well. In their search for a new life, they struggle with an unwanted house and its ghosts, fall in with a utopian mixed-race cult, and inspire a riot on Loving Day, the unsung holiday that celebrates interracial love.
©2015 Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Girl of His Dreams
Summary
On a rainy morning, not long after the funeral of his mother, Commissario Brunetti and Ispettore Vianello respond to a 911 call reporting a body floating near the steps in one of Venice's side canals. Reaching down to pull it out, Brunetti's wrist is caught by the silkiness of golden hair, and he sees a small foot - together he and Vianello lift a dead girl from the water. But, inconceivably, no one has reported a missing child, nor the theft of the gold jewelry that she carries. So Brunetti is drawn into a search not only for the cause of her death but also for her identity, her family, and for the secrets that people will keep in order to protect their children - be they innocent or guilty. The investigation takes Brunetti from the canals and palazzos of Venice to a Gypsy encampment on the mainland, through quicksands of connections and relationships both known and concealed, as he struggles with both institutional prejudice and entrenched criminality to try to unravel the fate of the dead child.
©2008 Donna Leon and Diogenes Verlag AG Zurich (P)2008 BBC Audiobooks America
A Mouse Divided
Summary
Almost everything you know about Mickey Mouse is wrong: He wasn’t Disney’s first star; Steamboat Willie wasn’t his first movie; Mickey wasn’t a nice guy - and Walt Disney didn’t invent him. In 1928, two very different best friends invented Mickey Mouse. And the success tore them apart. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks’ friendship is a story of betrayal, love, war, money, power, tragedy, intrigue, humor, despair, and hope. You’ll love them both - when you don’t want to drop anvils on their heads. Discover the men behind the mouse and the mystery behind the magic. A Mouse Divided is a stirring depiction of two underdogs. One invented Mickey Mouse - and one said he did. You’ll love Walt Disney more than you ever thought possible - until you don’t. And you’ll sympathize with Walt’s friend-turned-rival Ub Iwerks, always in Walt’s shadow. This true story of how the Disney empire was made is a captivating, addictive listen, endlessly fascinating and revealing. And it’s never been fully told - until now.
©2018 Jeff Ryan (P)2018 Audible, Inc.