Jeff Cummings has narrated 68 audiobooks on Listento.it by 81 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 550 ratings. The most-rated is The Man in the High Castle.
The Man in the High Castle
Summary
Now an Amazon Original series Winner of the Hugo Award "The single most resonant and carefully imagined book of Dick's career." --New York Times It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war - and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan. This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it, Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.
©1962 Philip K. Dick, © renewed 1990 by Laura Coelho, Christopher Dick, and Isa Hackett. (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
The Rise of Superman
Summary
Wall Street Journal Bestseller In this groundbreaking book, New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler decodes the mystery of ultimate human performance. Drawing on over a decade of research and first-hand reporting with dozens of top action and adventure sports athletes like big wave legend Laird Hamilton, big mountain snowboarder Jeremy Jones, and skateboarding pioneer Danny Way, Kotler explores the frontier science of “flow”, an optimal state of consciousness in which we perform and feel our best. Building a bridge between the extreme and the mainstream, The Rise of Superman explains how these athletes are using flow to do the impossible and how we can use this information to radically accelerate performance in our own lives. At its core, this is a book about profound possibility; about what is actually possible for our species; about where - if anywhere - our limits lie.
©2014 Steven Kotler (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Blockchain Revolution
Summary
The technology likely to have the greatest impact on the future of the world economy has arrived, and it's not self-driving cars, solar energy, or artificial intelligence. It's called the blockchain. The first generation of the digital revolution brought us the Internet of information. The second generation - powered by blockchain technology - is bringing us the Internet of value: a new, distributed platform that can help us reshape the world of business and transform the old order of human affairs for the better. Blockchain is the ingeniously simple, revolutionary protocol that allows transactions to be simultaneously anonymous and secure by maintaining a tamperproof public ledger of value. Though it's the technology that drives bitcoin and other digital currencies, the underlying framework has the potential to go far beyond these and record virtually everything of value to humankind, from birth and death certificates to insurance claims and even votes. Why should you care? Maybe you're a music lover who wants artists to make a living off their art. Or a consumer who wants to know where that hamburger meat really came from. Perhaps you're an immigrant who's sick of paying big fees to send money home to loved ones. Or an entrepreneur looking for a new platform to build a business. And those examples are barely the tip of the iceberg. This technology is public, encrypted, and readily available for anyone to use. It's already seeing widespread adoption in a number of areas. For example, forty-two (and counting) of the world's biggest financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Credit Suisse, have formed a consortium to investigate the blockchain for speedier and more secure transactions. As with major paradigm shifts that preceded it, the blockchain will create winners and losers. And while opportunities abound, the risks of disruption and dislocation must not be ignored. Don Tapscott, the bestselling author of Wikinomics, and his son, blockchain expert Alex Tapscott, bring us a brilliantly researched, highly listenable, and utterly foundational book about the future of the modern economy. Blockchain Revolution is the business leaders' playbook for the next decade and beyond. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2016 Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Recorded by arrangement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
Machine, Platform, Crowd
Summary
From the authors of the best-selling The Second Machine Age, a leader's guide to success in a rapidly changing economy. We live in strange times. A machine plays the strategy game Go better than any human; upstarts like Apple and Google destroy industry stalwarts such as Nokia; ideas from the crowd are repeatedly more innovative than corporate research labs. MIT's Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson know what it takes to master this digital-powered shift: we must rethink the integration of minds and machines, of products and platforms, and of the core and the crowd. In all three cases, the balance now favors the second element of the pair, with massive implications for how we run our companies and live our lives. In the tradition of agenda-setting classics like Clay Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma, McAfee and Brynjolfsson deliver both a penetrating analysis of a new world and a toolkit for thriving in it. For startups and established businesses, or for anyone interested in what the future holds, Machine, Platform, Crowd is essential listening. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
©2017 Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Rise of the Robots
Summary
In a world of self-driving cars and big data, smart algorithms and Siri, we know that artificial intelligence is getting smarter every day. Though all these nifty devices and programs might make our lives easier, they're also well on their way to making "good" jobs obsolete. A computer winning Jeopardy might seem like a trivial, if impressive, feat, but the same technology is making paralegals redundant as it undertakes electronic discovery, and is soon to do the same for radiologists. And that, no doubt, will only be the beginning. In Silicon Valley the phrase "disruptive technology" is tossed around on a casual basis. No one doubts that technology has the power to devastate entire industries and upend various sectors of the job market. But Rise of the Robots asks a bigger question: can accelerating technology disrupt our entire economic system to the point where a fundamental restructuring is required? Companies like Facebook and YouTube may only need a handful of employees to achieve enormous valuations, but what will be the fate of those of us not lucky or smart enough to have gotten into the great shift from human labor to computation? The more Pollyannaish, or just simply uninformed, might imagine that this industrial revolution will unfold like the last: even as some jobs are eliminated, more will be created to deal with the new devices of a new era. In Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford argues that is absolutely not the case. Increasingly, machines will be able to take care of themselves, and fewer jobs will be necessary. The effects of this transition could be shattering. Unless we begin to radically reassess the fundamentals of how our economy works, we could have both an enormous population of the unemployed-the truck drivers, warehouse workers, cooks, lawyers, doctors, teachers, programmers, and many, many more, whose labors have been rendered superfluous by automated and intelligent machines.
©2015 Martin Ford (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
The Second Machine Age
Summary
Audie Award, Judges' Award: Science & Technology, 2015 A revolution is under way. In recent years, Google’s autonomous cars have logged thousands of miles on American highways and IBM’s Watson trounced the best human Jeopardy! players. Digital technologies — with hardware, software, and networks at their core — will in the near future diagnose diseases more accurately than doctors can, apply enormous data sets to transform retailing, and accomplish many tasks once considered uniquely human. In The Second Machine Age MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee — two thinkers at the forefront of their field — reveal the forces driving the reinvention of our lives and our economy. As the full impact of digital technologies is felt, we will realize immense bounty in the form of dazzling personal technology, advanced infrastructure, and near-boundless access to the cultural items that enrich our lives. Amid this bounty will also be wrenching change. Professions of all kinds — from lawyers to truck drivers — will be forever upended. Companies will be forced to transform or die. Recent economic indicators reflect this shift: Fewer people are working, and wages are falling even as productivity and profits soar. Drawing on years of research and up-to-the-minute trends, Brynjolfsson and McAfee identify the best strategies for survival and offer a new path to prosperity. These include revamping education so that it prepares people for the next economy instead of the last one, designing new collaborations that pair brute processing power with human ingenuity, and embracing policies that make sense in a radically transformed landscape. A fundamentally optimistic audiobook, The Second Machine Age will alter how we think about issues.
©2014 Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
The Upside of Your Dark Side
Summary
In The Upside of Your Dark Side, two pioneering researchers in the field of psychology show that while mindfulness, kindness, and positivity can take us far, they cannot take us all the way. Sometimes, they can even hold us back. Emotions like anger, anxiety, or doubt might be uncomfortable, but it turns out that they are also incredibly useful.
For instance:
Anger fuels creativity
Guilt sparks improvement
Self-doubt enhances performance
Selfishness increases courage
Mindlessness leads to better decisions
The key lies in what the authors call "emotional agility," the ability to access our full range of emotions - not just the "good" ones - in order to respond most effectively to whatever situation we might encounter. Drawing on years of scientific research and a wide array of real-life examples including sports, the military, parenting, education, romance, business, and more, The Upside of Your Dark Side is a refreshing reality check that shows us how we can truly maximize our potential.
©2014 Todd B. Kashdan and Robert Biswas-Diener (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Recorded by arrangement with Hudson Street Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, a Penguin Random House Company
Equal Is Unfair
Summary
We've all heard that the American Dream is vanishing, and that the cause is rising income inequality. The rich are getting richer by rigging the system in their favor, leaving the rest of us to struggle just to keep our heads above water. To save the American Dream, we're told that we need to fight inequality through tax hikes, wealth redistribution schemes, and a far higher minimum wage. But what if that narrative is wrong? What if the real threat to the American Dream isn't rising income inequality - but an all-out war on success? In this timely and thought-provoking work, Don Watkins and Yaron Brook reveal that almost everything we've been taught about inequality is wrong. You'll discover: Why successful CEOs make so much money - and deserve to How the minimum wage hurts the very people it claims to help Why middle-class stagnation is a myth How the little-known history of Sweden reveals the dangers of forced equality The disturbing philosophy behind Obama's economic agenda. The critics of inequality are right about one thing: The American Dream is under attack. But instead of fighting to make America a place where anyone can achieve success, they are fighting to tear down those who already have. The real key to making America a freer, fairer, more prosperous nation is to protect and celebrate the pursuit of success - not pull down the high fliers in the name of equality. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2016 Don Watkins and Yaron Brook (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Changing the Game
Summary
The modern day youth sports environment has taken the enjoyment out of athletics for our children. Currently, 70% of kids drop out of organized sports by the age of 13, which has given rise to a generation of overweight, unhealthy young adults. There is a solution. John O'Sullivan shares the secrets of the coaches and parents who have not only raised elite athletes, but have done so by creating an environment that promotes positive core values and teaches life lessons instead of focusing on wins and losses, scholarships, and professional aspirations. Changing the Game gives adults a new paradigm and a game plan for raising happy, high performing children, and provides a national call to action to return youth sports to our kids.
©2014 John O’Sullivan. (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
One Nation Under God
Summary
Conventional wisdom holds that America has been a Christian nation since the Founding Fathers. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse argues that the idea of "Christian America" is nothing more than a myth - and a relatively recent one at that. The assumption that America was, is, and always will be a Christian nation dates back no further than the 1930s, when a coalition of businessmen and religious leaders united in opposition to FDR's New Deal. With the full support of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, these activists - the forerunners of the Religious Right - propelled religion into the public sphere. Church membership skyrocketed; Congress added the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance and made "In God We Trust" the country's official motto. For the first time, America became a thoroughly religious nation. Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how the comingling of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics today.
©2015 Kevin M. Kruse (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Think Like Amazon
Summary
The former Amazon executive who launched and scaled Amazon Marketplace delivers the ultimate playbook on how to “think like Amazon” and succeed in the digital age. “What would Jeff do?” Since leaving Amazon to advise start-ups and corporations, John Rossman has been asked this question countless times by executives who want to know “the secret” behind Amazon’s historic success. In this step-by-step guide, he provides 50½ answers drawn from his experience as an Amazon executive - and shows today’s business leaders how to think like Amazon, strategize like Bezos, and beat the competition like nobody’s business. Learn how to: Move forward to get back to Day 1 - and change the status quo. Become a platform company - with the right platform strategy. Create customer obsession - and grant your customers superpowers. Experiment, fail, rinse, and repeat. Decentralize your way to digital greatness. Master the magic of small autonomous teams. Avoid the trap of past positions. Make better and faster decisions. Use metrics to create a culture of accountability and innovation Use AI and the Internet of Things to reinvent customer experiences. In addition to these targeted strategies, you’ll receive a rare inside glimpse into how Jeff Bezos and Amazon take a remarkably consistent approach to innovate, explore new markets, and spark new growth. You’ll understand the unique mindset and inner workings that drive Amazon’s operational excellence, from its ground-up approach to new digital markets to its out-of-the-box attitudes on innovation. Along the way, you’ll learn specific game-changing strategies that made Amazon stand out in a crowded digital world. These include actionable ideas that you can use to transform your culture, expand your business into digital, and become the kind of platform company that customers obsess over. Rossman also offers invaluable insights into the latest technologies, e-commerce marketing, online culture, and IoT disruptions that only an Amazon insider would know. If you want to compete and win in the digital era, you have to Think Like Amazon.
©2019 by John Rossman. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Art of Negotiation
Summary
A member of the world-renowned Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School introduces the powerful next-generation approach to negotiation. For many years, two approaches to negotiation have prevailed: the "win-win" method exemplified in Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton; and the hard-bargaining style of Herb Cohen's You Can Negotiate Anything. Now award-winning Harvard Business School professor Michael Wheeler provides a dynamic alternative to one-size-fits-all strategies that don't match real world realities. The Art of Negotiation shows how master negotiators thrive in the face of chaos and uncertainty. They don't trap themselves with rigid plans. Instead they understand negotiation as a process of exploration that demands ongoing learning, adapting, and influencing. Their agility enables them to reach agreement when others would be stalemated. Michael Wheeler illuminates the improvisational nature of negotiation, drawing on his own research and his work with Program on Negotiation colleagues. He explains how the best practices of diplomats such as George J. Mitchell, dealmaker Bruce Wasserstein, and Hollywood producer Jerry Weintraub apply to everyday transactions like selling a house, buying a car, or landing a new contract. Wheeler also draws lessons on agility and creativity from fields like jazz, sports, theater, and even military science. For more information, visit the author's website at www.michaelwheeler.com.
©2013 Michael Wheeler (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Martian Time-Slip
Summary
On an arid Mars, local bigwigs compete with Earth-bound interlopers to buy up land before the Un develops it and its value skyrockets. Martian Union leader Arnie Kott has an ace up his sleeve, though: an autistic boy named Manfred who seems to have the ability to see the future. In the hopes of gaining an advantage on a Martian real estate deal, powerful people force Manfred to send them into the future, where they can learn about development plans. But is Manfred sending them to the real future or one colored by his own dark and paranoid filter? As the time travelers are drawn into Manfred's dark worldview in both the future and present, the cost of doing business may drive them all insane.
©1964 Philip K. Dick, © renewed 1992 by The Estate of Philip K. Dick. (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Simple Rules
Summary
How simplicity trumps complexity in nature, business, and life. We struggle to manage complexity every day. We follow intricate diets to lose weight, juggle multiple remotes to operate our home entertainment systems, face proliferating data at the office, and hack through thickets of regulation at tax time. But complexity isn't destiny. Sull and Eisenhardt argue there's a better way: by developing a few simple yet effective rules, you can tackle even the most complex problems. Simple rules are a hands-on tool to achieve some of our most pressing personal and professional objectives, from overcoming insomnia to becoming a better manager or a smarter investor. Simple rules can help solve some of our most urgent social challenges, from setting interest rates at the Federal Reserve to protecting endangered marine wildlife along California's coast. Drawing on more than a decade of rigorous research, the authors provide a clear framework for developing effective rules and making them better over time. They find insights in unexpected places, from the way Tina Fey codified her experience working at Saturday Night Live into rules for producing 30 Rock (rule five: never tell a crazy person he's crazy) to burglars' rules to choose a house to rob ("avoid houses with a car parked outside") to Japanese engineers using the foraging rules of slime molds to optimize Tokyo's rail system. Whether you're struggling with information overload, pursuing opportunities with limited resources, or just trying to change your bad habits, Simple Rules provides a powerful way to tame complexity.
©2015 Donald Sull and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Clean
Summary
Addiction is a preventable, treatable disease, not a moral failing. As with other illnesses, the approaches most likely to work are based on science - not on faith, tradition, contrition, or wishful thinking.
These facts are the foundation of Clean, a myth-shattering look at drug abuse by the author of Beautiful Boy. Based on the latest research in psychology, neuroscience, and medicine, Clean is a leap beyond the traditional approaches to prevention and treatment of addiction and the mental illnesses that usually accompany it. The existing treatment system, including Twelve-Step programs and rehabs, has helped some, but it has failed to help many more, and David Sheff explains why. He spent time with scores of scientists, doctors, counselors, and addicts and their families to learn how addiction works and what can effectively treat it. Clean offers clear, cogent counsel for parents and others who want to prevent drug problems and for addicts and their loved ones no matter what stage of the illness they’re in. But it is also a book for all of us - a powerful rethinking of the greatest public-health challenge of our time.
©2013 David Sheff (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
American Prometheus
Summary
Pulitzer Prize, Biography/Autobiography, 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award, Biography, 2006 J. Robert Oppenheimer is one of the iconic figures of the 20th century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress. When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s. They declared that Oppenheimer could not be trusted with America's nuclear secrets. In this magisterial biography, 25 years in the making, the authors capture Oppenheimer's life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War.
©2005 Kai Bird; 2007 Blackstone Audio Inc.
Walking Among Us
Summary
In his 1998 book, The Threat, Jacobs uncovered disconcerting reports about aliens' plans for the future of Earth. He reported that a "change" is coming; a future when very human-like hybrids would intermingle with humans in everyday life. "Soon we will all be together," the aliens said. "Soon everyone will be happy and everyone will know his place." This audiobook examines a chilling phenomenon that Jacobs began noticing in 2003. The alien integration action plan has kicked into high gear. The incidents of alien abductions have declined as occurrences of alien involvement in everyday life have accelerated. A silent and insidious invasion has begun. Alien hybrids have moved into your neighborhood and into your workplace. They have been trained by human abductees to "pass," to blend in to society, to appear as normal as your next door neighbor. This audiobook illustrates in detail the process of alien integration into society and the strategy and support structure that has been developed to make this happen seamlessly. While he is not certain why they are doing it, the final chapter of the audiobook will provide some chilling possible answers as to why they are here and what they want to accomplish. Jacobs is a careful researcher who has investigated more than 1150 abduction events experienced by more than 150 abductees. This audiobook focuses on the experiences of thirteen abductees.
©2015 David M. Jacobs (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Volume II: Adjustment Team
Summary
Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) was one of the seminal figures of 20th century science fiction. His many stories and novels, which include such classics as The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, reflect a deeply personal world view, exploring the fragile, multifarious nature of reality itself and examining those elements that make us - or fail to make us - fully human. He did as much as anyone to demolish the artificial barrier between genre fiction and "literature," and the best of his work has earned a permanent place in American popular culture. Adjustment Team is the second installment of a uniform, five-volume edition of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick. This wide-ranging collection contains 26 stories and novellas from the extraordinarily productive years of 1952 and 1953, along with extensive story notes. Included here are "The Cookie Lady," an account of a young boy whose relationship with a lonely widow results in a bizarre act of transformation, Second Variety (filmed in 1995 as Screamers), a novella that powerfully evokes a post-apocalyptic society overrun by all-too-human looking robots known as "Claws," and the title story, in which a small accident of timing leads real estate salesman Ed Fletcher to an unexpected confrontation with the malleable nature of a once familiar world. Like its predecessor, The King of the Elves, this new volume offers both an astonishing variety of narrative pleasures and a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of a major American artist.
©2011 Laura Leslie, Isa Dick Hackett, and Christopher Dick (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Time Out of Joint
Summary
Ragle Gumm has a unique job: Every day he wins a newspaper contest. And when he isn’t consulting his charts and tables, he enjoys his life in a small town, in 1959. At least, that’s what he thinks. But then strange things start happening. He finds a phone book where all the numbers have been disconnected, and a magazine article about a famous starlet named Marilyn Monroe, whom he’s never heard of. Plus, everyday objects are beginning to disappear and are replaced by strips of paper with words written on them, like "bowl of flowers" and "soft-drink stand". When Ragle skips town to try to find the cause of these bizarre occurrences, his discovery could make him question everything he has ever known.
©1987 Laura Coelho, Christopher Dick, and Isa Dick (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Julian
Summary
The remarkable bestseller about the fourth-century Roman emperor who famously tried to halt the spread of Christianity, Julian is widely regarded as one of Gore Vidal’s finest historical novels. Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to worshipping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign. A marvelously imaginative and insightful novel of classical antiquity, Julian captures the religious and political ferment of a desperate age and restores with blazing wit and vigor the legacy of an impassioned ruler.
©1962, 1964 copyright renewed 1990, 1992 by Gore Vidal. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.