Jeff Riggenbach has narrated 38 audiobooks on Listento.it by 34 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.6★ across 213 ratings. The most-rated is Amusing Ourselves to Death.
Murder in Brentwood
Summary
For O.J. Simpson to get away with murder, an innocent cop, a brilliant detective, had to be destroyed. That was the cynical strategy of the Simpson defense. But as certainty about Simpson's guilt grew, so did the outrage about the scapegoating of Mark Fuhrman. Now the former LAPD detective tells his side of the story in a damning expose. Fuhrman takes the listener on a detective's journey through the crucial first 24 hours of the investigation. We uncover not only the bloody glove but also explosive new evidence recorded by Fuhrman and his partner at the scene but astonishingly never presented at the trial. New revelations about the incompetence and corruption that pervaded the "Trial of the Century" will set the record straight.
©1997 Mark Fuhrman (P)1997 Blackstone Audiobooks
Libertarianism
Summary
Tens of millions of Americans, from Generation X-ers to baby boomers and beyond, are rediscovering libertarianism, a visionary alternative to the tired party orthodoxies of left and right. In 1995, a Gallup poll found that 52 percent of Americans said, "the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens." Later that year, The Wall Street Journal concurred: "Because of their growing disdain for government, more and more Americans appear to be drifting - often unwittingly - toward a libertarian philosophy." Libertarianism is hardly new, but its framework for liberty under law and economic progress makes it especially suited for the dynamic new era we are now entering. In the United States, the bureaucratic leviathan is newly threatened by a resurgence of the libertarian ideas upon which the country was founded. We are witnessing a breakdown of all the cherished beliefs of the welfare-warfare state. David Boaz presents the essential guidebook to the libertarian perspective, detailing its roots, central tenets, solutions to contemporary policy dilemmas, and future in American politics. He confronts head-on the tough questions frequently posed to libertarians: What about inequality? Who protects the environment? What ties people together if they are essentially self-interested?
©1997 David Boaz (P)1997 Blackstone Audiobooks
Cornerstone of Liberty
Summary
"Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner....Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory....The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result." Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, dissenting in the Supreme Court case Kelo v. New London The Supreme Court's decision in the Kelo case created a firestorm of interest in protecting property rights. Through real-life stories and solid legal analysis, this book shows why property rights are the cornerstone of liberty and how they are protected in the U.S. Constitution. It critically examines how courts and legislatures have diminished property rights and then lays out an agenda for protecting these rights in the future.
©2006 Cato Institute (P)2006 Blackstone Audio Inc.
Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes
Summary
The anti-white racism of the political left remains one of the few taboo subjects in America. In this book, David Horowitz, a former confidante of the Black Panthers, lays bare the liberal attack on "whiteness", the latest battle in the war against American democracy.Horowitz acknowledges that America's political culture is the creation of white, European, primarily Christian males. But it is these very men and their heirs that have led the world in abolishing slavery, establishing the principles of ethnic and racial inclusion, and creating a society of unparalleled rights and opportunities that people of every race and creed continue to flock to. Horowitz points to the hypocrisy of this and challenges racism in all its forms, especially the hidden ones.
©1999 David Horowitz (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Edmund Burke
Summary
Russell Kirk has ingeniously combined into a living whole the private Burke and the public Burke. He gives us a fresh assessment of Burke, a statesman enjoying even greater influence today than in his own time. He lucidly unfolds Burke's philosophy, showing how it revealed itself in concrete historical situations in the 18th century and how Burke, through his philosophy, "speaks to our age". This volume makes vivid the four great struggles in the life of Burke: his work for conciliation with the American colonies; his involvement in cutting down the domestic power of George III; his prosecution of Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of India; and his resistance to Jacobinism, the French Revolution's "armed doctrine." In each of these great phases of his public life, Burke fought with passionate eloquence and relentless logic for justice and for the proper balance of order and freedom. With sure instinct born of his sympathy and understanding, Russell Kirk gives us the incisive quotation, the illuminating highlight, the moving, all-too-human elements that bring Burke and his times to vivid life.
©1967 by Russell Kirk (P)1994 by Blackstone Audiobooks
Our Last Hope
Summary
Vote the bums out! Call Congress! Take it to the Supreme Court! These are the calls of political activists nationwide. Yet these methods have completely failed to limit the power of the government in Washington, DC. For over a 100 years, it hasn't matter which political party has been in charge. The consolidation of power in the hands of an unlimited central government continues. In Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty, Michael Maharrey makes the case for a different path - one that's both old and new. It's called nullification. The message? If a new course isn't taken, and taken now, Liberty... may be lost forever.
©2012 Tenth Amendment Center (P)2013 Listen and Think Audio
The Triumph of Liberty
Summary
Of humankind's great achievements over the past 2,000 years, one towers above all the rest: the arduous, painstaking process of wresting liberty from tyranny's iron fist. The Triumph of Liberty chronicles this, our most inspiring story, through 65 biographical portraits. From the millions of men and women whose struggles and successes have made freedom possible, Jim Powell has chosen a few talented, courageous individuals, and by weaving together their moving life stories, he tells brilliantly the saga of liberty as a whole. Some of these men and women, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Martin Luther King, Jr., remain famous. Others, like John Lilburne, a seventeenth-century "Leveller" who spent most of his adult life in prison battling England's infamous Star Chamber, are almost unknown. Some of Powell's choices, Erasmus, Cicero, Locke, Wollstonecraft, and Frederick Douglass, have often before been praised by those who love liberty. Others, Ludwig van Beethoven, Leonard Read, and Louis L'Amour, may be surprising. Others still, like Milton Friedman or Margaret Thatcher, are controversial. Any one of these life stories, based on biographies, letters, diaries, unpublished manuscripts, and interviews with leading scholars, could make a book. Taken together, they form a saga of epic proportions. Here, are the greatest achievements of humankind and the first-ever full story of the triumph of liberty. For more than 30 years, Jim Powell has gathered material for The Triumph of Liberty. He has interviewed scholars, pursued research in major libraries, and visited booksellers, museums, and historic sites around the world.
©2000 Jim Powell (P)2000 Blackstone Audiobooks
John Quincy Adams
Summary
A United States minister, senator, president, and congressman in turn, John Quincy Adams was one of the most prevalent and dedicated Americans in history. Drawing from Adams' 70-year diary, author Paul Nagel probes deeply into the psyche of this cantankerous, misanthropic, erudite, hardworking son of a former president whose remarkable career spanned so many offices. We learn about his passionate marriage to Louisa Johnson, his personal tragedies, including two sons lost to alcoholism, his recurring depression, exasperating behavior, and brilliant diplomacy. We see his frustration with the political life and the pleasure he drew from being a poet, critic, translator, essayist, botanist, and professor of oratory at Harvard. Nagel's great achievement, in this first biography of America's sixth president in a quarter century, is to finally portray Adams in all his talent and complexity.
©1997 Paul C. Nagel (P)1999 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Nathan Bedford Forrest
Summary
He was a fierce and controversial Civil War officer, an unschooled but brilliant cavalryman, an epic figure in America's most celebrated war. A superb tactician and ferocious fighter, Nathan Bedford Forrest revolutionized the way armies fought in the course of rising from private to lieutenant general in the Confederate Army. In this detailed and fascinating account of the legend of the "Wizard of the Saddle," we see a man whose strengths and flaws were both of towering proportions, a man possessed of physical valor perhaps unprecedented among his countrymen. And, ironically, Forrest - the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan - was a man whose social attitudes may well have changed farther in the direction of racial enlightenment over the span of his lifetime than those of most American historical figures.
©1993 Jack Hurst (P)1995 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Galileo
Summary
The founder of modern science and the embodiment of the conflict between science and faith, Galileo remains the most fascinating figure of his age. In this biography, James Reston Jr. provides a lively, vivid portrait of Galileo, taking the listener to the heart of this passionate, embattled, arrogant, and brilliant man. In doing so, Reston paints a picture of Renaissance Italy, of its unparalleled cultural richness and political and religious intrigues. At the center of the story is Galileo's discovery of the telescope, which revolutionized astronomy and put Galileo into conflict with the Catholic church until 1633, when the Inquisition denounced him and banished him for the last 9 years of his life.
©1994 by James Reston, Jr. (P)1995 by Blackstone Audiobooks
Frontiers
Summary
Published in 2000 to critical acclaim, The American West: A New Interpretive History quickly became the standard in college history courses. Now Robert V. Hine and John Mack Faragher offer a concise edition of their classic, freshly updated. Lauded for their lively and elegant writing, the authors provide a grand survey of the colorful history of the American West, from the first contacts between Native Americans and Europeans to the beginning of the 21st century. Frontiers introduces the diverse peoples and cultures of the American West and explores how men and women of different ethnic groups were affected when they met, mingled, and often clashed. Hine and Faragher present the complexities of the American West - as frontier and region, real and imagined, old and new. Showcasing the distinctive voices and experiences of frontier characters, they explore topics ranging from early exploration to modern environmentalism, drawing expansively from a wide range of sources. This book will be treasured by every listener with an interest in the unique saga of the American West.
©2000 Yale University (P)2012 Redwood Audiobooks
Ordeal by Hunger
Summary
The tragedy of the Donner party constitutes one of the most amazing stories of the American West. In 1846, 87 people, men, women, and children, set out for California, persuaded to attempt a new overland route. After struggling across the desert, losing many oxen, and nearly dying of thirst, they reached the very summit of the Sierras, only to be trapped by blinding snow and bitter storms. Many perished; some survived by resorting to cannibalism; all were subjected to unbearable suffering. Incorporating the diaries of the survivors and other contemporary documents, George Stewart wrote the definitive history of that ill-fated band of pioneers, an astonishing account of what human beings may endure and achieve in the final press of circumstance.
©1936 George R. Stewart (P)1996 Blackstone Audiobooks
Grant
Summary
In this stunning biography, William McFeely brings us a thoroughly compelling story of a tangled life. Having once said “a military life had no charms to me,” U.S. Grant entered West Point to get through the course, secure a detail for a few years as assistant professor of mathematics at the Academy, and afterwards obtain a permanent position as professor at some respectable college. But the course his life took was quite different. Little did he ever dream that he would serve with distinction in the Mexican War, lead the Union to victory in the Civil War, struggle through eight years as President of the United States, and wage bitter personal battles against alcoholism, insolvency, and cancer.
©1981 William S. McFeely (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The FBI
Summary
No institution in American society generates as much curiosity, fear, and intrigue as the FBI. No institution can obtain so much information and penetrate so deeply into our private lives. And no institution plays a greater role in safeguarding our freedom - or potentially threatening it. In this groundbreaking book, award-winning journalist Ronald Kessler provides a firsthand look at the people who run the Bureau, the methods they use, the powers they wield, and the secrets they hold. Learn how the FBI solved some of the most highly publicized cases in history, including Watergate, the Pan Am 103 bombing, the Patty Hearst kidnapping, and the World Trade Center bombing. Learn also how and why the FBI fumbled such important cases as the David Koresh cult tragedy in Waco and the Rodney King beating. This revealing book will change the way America perceives the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
©1996 Ronald Kessler (P)1996 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Jefferson Davis
Summary
This book paints a vivid picture of Jefferson Davis as a multifaceted, often charismatic man who mirrored the turbulent times in which he lived and who stood solidly for the South that he loved. Ranging over the complete span of his long life, it shows him as a hardworking Mississippi planter, a compassionate slave owner, a hero of the Mexican War, and an able secretary of war under Franklin Pierce. But it is on the years of the Civil War and Davis’s controversial performance as president of the Confederacy that the book naturally focuses. Loved by many for his eloquence, courage, loyalty, and devotion, he was vilified by many more for his well-known obstinacy and vanity, his feuds with his best commanders, and his unwillingness to delegate responsibility to others. Judicious, balanced, compassionate, Jefferson Davis is an enthralling account of a remarkable man.
©1991 William C. Davis (P)2000 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
We Hold These Truths
Summary
Mortimer Adler devoted a lifetime to studying the great ideas of Western culture and explaining even the most difficult concepts to the average citizen, earning Time magazine’s praise as a "philosopher for everyman". In We Hold These Truths, Dr. Adler caps his life’s work by illuminating the ideas and ideals that have made the United States of America a truly unique nation in the annals of history. The ideas Adler examines include those at the core of the Declaration of Independence: human equality, inalienable human rights, civil rights, the pursuit of happiness, and both the consent and dissent of the governed. These are the ideas that form the basis for justice, domestic tranquility, the common defense, the general welfare, and the blessings of liberty - the ideals that are found in the preamble to the Constitution and which bind us together as a nation and a people. Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001), American philosopher, educator, and popular author, was chairman of Encyclopaedia Britannica’s board of editors, the founder and director of the Institute for Philosophical Research, and an honorary trustee and founder of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies.
©1987 Mortimer J. Alder (P)1996 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Unlimited Access
Summary
As one of two FBI agents posted at the White House to perform background checks on appointees, FBI Special Agent Gary Aldrich intended to close his eventful career in peace and dignity. But what he witnessed during the Clinton administration left him deeply troubled, then alarmed, and finally, so outraged that he felt compelled to leave. Unlimited Access is Aldrich's electrifying expose of a presidential administration with a great deal to hide and willing to put America at risk to keep it hidden. Aldrich describes how a comprehensive security system that had been perfected through six presidencies was systematically dismantled by the Clintons so they could bring friends into the White House who otherwise would have been barred by legal problems, some prosecutable. A New York Times best seller.
©1996 Gary Aldrich (P)1997 Blackstone Audio Inc.
Inside the White House
Summary
"If the general public knew what was going on inside the White House, they would scream." So states one Secret Service agent, just a small link in the chain of security that has guarded the public image of the presidency and the men who define it - until now. With unprecedented access to Secret Service agents, domestic servants, Air Force One stewards, and military aides, journalist Ronald Kessler has gone behind the scenes to uncover the inside story of the White House. From the hidden lives of the last seven presidents and first families to the intricate inner workings of this all-powerful institution, Kessler peels away the White House facade to reveal the fascinating and often scandalous reality behind the stately illusion. Exposing presidential misconduct, blunders, and cover-ups, this fascinating examination ensures that Americans will never view their chief executives the same way again.
©1995 Ronald Kessler (P)1995 Blackstone Audio, Inc.