Keith Sellon-Wright has narrated 60 audiobooks on Listento.it by 60 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 694 ratings. The most-rated is The Longevity Diet.
The Best of Enemies
Summary
C. P. Ellis grew up in the poor white section of Durham, North Carolina, and as a young man joined the Ku Klux Klan. Ann Atwater, a single mother from the poor black part of town, quit her job as a household domestic to join the civil rights fight. During the 1960s, as the country struggled with the explosive issue of race, Atwater and Ellis met on opposite sides of the public school integration issue. Their encounters were charged with hatred and suspicion. In an amazing set of transformations, however, each of them came to see how the other had been exploited by the South's rigid power structure, and they forged a friendship that flourished against a backdrop of unrelenting bigotry. Rich with details about the rhythms of daily life in the mid-20th-century South, The Best of Enemies offers a vivid portrait of a relationship that defied all odds. By placing this very personal story into broader context, Osha Gray Davidson demonstrates that race is intimately tied to issues of class and that cooperation is possible - even in the most divisive situations - when people begin to listen to one another.
©2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2017 Osha Gray Davidson
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
Summary
This timely reissue of Richard Hofstadter's classic work on the fringe groups that influence American electoral politics offers an invaluable perspective on contemporary domestic affairs. In The Paranoid Style in American Politics, acclaimed historian Richard Hofstadter examines the competing forces in American political discourse and how fringe groups can influence - and derail - the larger agendas of a political party. He investigates the politics of the irrational, shedding light on how the behavior of individuals can seem out of proportion with actual political issues, and how such behavior impacts larger groups. With such other classic essays as "Free Silver and the Mind of 'Coin' Harvey" and "What Happened to the Antitrust Movement?", The Paranoid Style in American Politics remains both a seminal text of political history and a vital analysis of the ways in which political groups function in the United States.
©1965 Richard Hofstadter (P)2018 Tantor
The Unforgiven
Summary
It's a case reminiscent of the explosive story of Susan Smith, convicted in the drownings of her two young sons in South Carolina. But in The Unforgiven, three young children are in the back seat of a car driven by Amanda Hamm's boyfriend as it slips into an Illinois lake. Amanda and her boyfriend survive. Her three children do not. The question of whether it was a horrible accident or a murderous plot divided family and friends and traumatized the entire community. The brief but intense police investigation included seven interviews Hamm voluntarily gave police without the benefit of counsel. The outcome remains controversial to this day and comes full circle with state child welfare workers' concern about children born to Hamm since the fateful day at Clinton Lake. The Unforgiven coauthor and journalist Edith Brady-Lunny covered the case from start-to-finish, beginning the night of the drownings. Her coauthor Steve Vogel lives nearby. His Reasonable Doubt, considered a true crime classic, was a New York Times bestseller. Together, they have extensive first-hand knowledge of the case and access to nearly every record related to the court proceedings.
©2019 Edith Brady-Lunny and Steve Vogel (P)2019 Tantor
Ancient Skies
Summary
The stars and constellations are among the few remaining objects that appear to us just as they appeared to our distant ancestors. From anywhere on Earth, a person may view the celestial panorama simply by stepping outside at night and gazing upward. This nonfiction narrative presents the tales of the 48 classical constellations, compiled from literature spanning a thousand years from Homer (c. 800 BC) to Claudius Ptolemy (c. AD 150). These age-old tales have captured the human imagination from ancient times to the present, and through them we can examine the early practical astronomy, philosophical speculation on the cosmos, and fundamental moral beliefs of much of Western civilization. Through Marshall's research and storytelling, Ancient Skies brings the belief systems of the classical world to shining life.
©2018 David Weston Marshall (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Setup
Summary
The pitch went like this: Chris Butler, a retired cop, ran a private investigator firm in Concord, California. His business had a fascinating angle - his firm was staffed entirely by soccer moms. In fact, Butler employed PI Super Moms: attractive, organized, smart, and trained in investigative techniques, self-defense, and weaponry. This American Life host Ira Glass described them as "MILF: Charlie's Angels." When this story came across Pete Crooks's desk when he was working at Diablo magazine in 2010, he was instantly hooked. He'd heard a little bit about Butler and his super moms in the news; they'd been featured in People magazine and on Dr. Phil. What Butler's publicist was offering was too tantalizing to pass up: an opportunity to ride along with Butler and a few of his sexy PIs as they prepared to start filming a reality TV show. But after the ride-along-and after he started receiving mysterious emails from one of Butler's employees - Crooks started to realize something didn't seem right. After doing a little digging, he discovered the "sting" he'd seen only had one real victim...him. The PI bust had been a setup. Crooks wasn't a hard-boiled crime reporter. He did lifestyle pieces for a regional magazine. The more he learned about Butler's operation, the more he realized he was in far over his head. But swallowing his fears, he decided he was going to write an expose on Butler and his entire organization. He soon found himself deep in the underbelly of fake sting operations, wannabe celebrities, police corruption, drug-dealing, reality television, double-crossing employees, and more twists and turns than a dozen crime thrillers.
©2015 Pete Crooks (P)2018 Tantor
The Fourth Phase of Water
Summary
World renowned scientist, Dr. Gerald Pollack, takes us on a fantastic voyage through water, showing us a hidden universe teeming with physical activity - providing simple explanations for common everyday phenomena, which you have inevitably seen but not really understood. For instance, have you ever wondered... How do clouds made up of dense water droplets manage to float in the sky? Why don't your joints squeak as they rub together? Why do you sink in dry sand, but not in wet sand? How does capillary action manage to raise water up a 100 foot tree? Why does warm water freeze quicker than cool water? Pollack uses a recent and fundamental scientific finding - EZ water - to help explain these and many other head-scratchers. When touching most surfaces, water transforms itself into so-called EZ (Exclusion Zone) water, also known as structured water or fourth phase water. EZ water, whose formula is H3O2, differs dramatically from H2O. And, there is a lot of it, everywhere. This award-winning book provides ample evidence for the existence of EZ water. Pollack writes in a clear, eloquent style. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2013 Gerald H. Pollack (P)2019 Tantor
Well
Summary
In Well, physician Sandro Galea examines what Americans miss when they fixate on healthcare: health. Americans spend more money on health than people anywhere else in the world. And what do they get for it? Statistically, not much. Americans today live shorter, less healthy lives than citizens of other rich countries, and these trends show no signs of letting up. The problem, Sandro Galea argues, is that Americans focus on the wrong things when they think about health. Our national understanding of what constitutes "being well" is centered on medicine - the lifestyles we adopt to stay healthy, and the insurance plans and prescriptions we fall back on when we're not. While all these things are important, they've not proven to be the difference between healthy and unhealthy on the large scale. Well is a radical examination of the subtle and not-so-subtle factors that determine who gets to be healthy in America. Galea shows how the country's failing health is a product of American history and character - and how refocusing on our national health can usher enlightenment across American life and politics.
©2019 Oxford University Press (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Jackpot
Summary
In the late 1970s and early '80s, a cadre of freewheeling Southern pot smugglers lived at the crossroads of Miami Vice and a Jimmy Buffett song. These irrepressible adventurers unloaded nearly a billion dollars worth of marijuana and hashish through the Eastern Seaboard's marshes. Then came their undoing: Operation Jackpot, one of the largest drug investigations ever and an opening volley in Ronald Reagan's "War on Drugs". In Jackpot, author Jason Ryan takes us back to the heady days before drug smuggling was synonymous with deadly gunplay. During this golden age of marijuana trafficking, the country's most prominent kingpins were a group of wayward and fun-loving Southern gentlemen who forsook college educations to sail drug-laden luxury sailboats across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean. Les Riley, Barry Foy, and their comrades eschewed violence as much as they loved pleasure, and it was greed, lust, and disaster at sea that ultimately caught up with them, along with the law. In a cat-and-mouse game played out in exotic locations across the globe, the smugglers sailed through hurricanes, broke out of jail, and survived encounters with armed militants in Colombia, Grenada, and Lebanon. Based on years of research and interviews with imprisoned and recently released smugglers and the law enforcement agents who tracked them down, Jackpot is sure to become a classic story from America's controversial drug wars.
©2012 Jason Ryan (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Reaching for the Moon
Summary
Fifty years after the Moon landing, a new history of the space race explores the lives of both Soviet and American engineers. At the dawn of the space age, technological breakthroughs in Earth orbit flight were both breathtaking feats of ingenuity and disturbances to a delicate global balance of power. In this short book, aerospace historian Roger D. Launius concisely and engagingly explores the driving force of this era: the race to the Moon. Beginning with the launch of Sputnik 1, in October 1957, and closing with the end of the Apollo program in 1972, Launius examines how early space exploration blurred the lines between military and civilian activities, and how key actions led to space firsts as well as crushing failures. Launius places American and Soviet programs on equal footing - following American aerospace engineers Wernher von Braun and Robert Gilruth, their Soviet counterparts Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko, and astronaut Buzz Aldrin and cosmonaut Alexei Leonov - to highlight key actions that led to various successes, failures, and ultimately the American Moon landing.
©2019 Roger D. Launius (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
REV
Summary
Internationally best-selling science-fiction author T. R. Harris introduces his exciting new military/space opera series about the future of space warfare...and the destiny of mankind. Every kid wanted to be a REV, but very few ever would. Zac Murphy was the most badass REV warrior in the Corps. He'd gone on more Runs and killed more aliens than any single human alive. He'd been one of the early volunteers for the NT-4 program, which used a powerful performance-enhancing drug to turn ordinary Marines into super killing machines. Affectionately called REV, the drug wasn't for everyone. Few made it through the screening process, and fewer still into the Fleet. Zac was the most senior REV alive, a miracle of science and a legend in the Corps. His job was to be the battering ram for the Marines, the first in while revved up on NT-4. During a Run, he was a mindless killing machine, dangerous to both foe and friend alike. That's why his fellow Marines gave him a wide berth until he could be put down with the Twilight drug. At that point, he was somewhat manageable. But something was happening to Zac. Long after most other REVs were dead, burned out or "retired", Zac was growing stronger, more powerful. He was also doing what no REV had ever done before during a Run. He was beginning to think.
©2018 T. R. Harris (P)2018 Tantor
Hell-Bent
Summary
World-class beaches, fragrant frangipani, swaying palms, and hula girls. Most folks think of Hawaii as a vacation destination. Mob-style executions, drug smuggling, and vicious gang warfare are seldom part of the postcard image. Yet, Hawaii was once home to not only Aloha spirit, but also a ruthless, homegrown mafia underworld. From 1960 to 1980, Hawaiian gangsters grew rich off a robust trade in drugs, gambling, and prostitution that followed in the wake of Hawaii's tourist boom. Thus, by 1980 - the year Charles Marsland was elected Honolulu's top prosecutor - the honeymoon island paradise was also plagued by violence, corruption, and organized crime. The zeal that Marsland brought to his crusade against the Hawaiian underworld was relentless, self-destructive, and very personal. Five years earlier, Marsland's son had been gunned down. His efforts to bring his son's killers to justice - and indeed, eradicate the entire organized criminal element in Hawaii - make for an extraordinary tale that culminates with intense courtroom drama. Hawaii Five-O meets Wiseguy in author Jason Ryan's vigorously reported chronicle of brazen gangsters, brutal murders, and a father's quest for vengeance - all set against an unlikely backdrop of seductive tropical beauty.
©2019 Jason Ryan (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
REV: Revelations
Summary
REVs are the super-soldiers of the future, chemically-enhanced Marines who have begun to produce the Rev drug naturally in their bodies. Now there are supermen and -women walking among us,and you wouldn't even know it.... After the defeat of the evil Antaere in the first REV series, Zac and his super warriors carry on, as the hammer used against a myriad of obstinate races. The Union of Affiliated Systems (Earth's new stellar empire) is determined to expand far beyond the Grid, using the REVs as the means of convincing reluctant species to join. After all, its for their own good. Membership in the UAS will benefit all. So what if a little blood has to be spilled in the meantime? Zac didn't want command of the REV force in the first place, and now he's put in an impossible situation with too few troops and other resources to complete his mission. But he's a super-REV in command of an army of REVs. Surely there is no one who can stand against the enhanced Marines of the near future. Are the REVs here to replace the Human race with a new, more powerful version of man? Many think so, and that's why Zac is meeting so much resistance. A reckoning is coming, between the Humans of old and the REVs.
©2020 Tom Harris Creations, LLC (P)2021 Tantor
Race to Hawaii
Summary
Today, a trip to Hawaii is a simple six-hour flight from the West Coast. But almost a century ago, the first flights to Hawaii required a nerve-racking and uncertain 26-hour journey to isolated and elusive islands located in the middle of the world's largest ocean. Pilots prayed they would encounter land after flying a full day and night across 2,400 miles of the open Pacific. Race to Hawaii chronicles the thrilling first flights to Hawaii in the 1920s, during the Golden Age of Aviation. These journeys were fraught with danger. To reach the tiny islands, fearless pilots flew unreliable and fragile aircraft outfitted with primitive air-navigation equipment. The first attempts were made by the US Navy in the flying boat PN-9 No. One, whose crew endured a harrowing crossing. Next were Army Air Corps aviators and a civilian pilot, who informally raced each other to Hawaii in the weeks after Charles Lindbergh landed the Spirit of St. Louis in Paris. Finally came the Dole Derby, an unprecedented 1927 air race in which eight planes set off at once across the Pacific, all eager to reach the islands first and claim a cash prize offered by "Pineapple King" James Dole. Military men, barnstormers, a schoolteacher, a Wall Street bond salesman, a Hollywood stunt flyer, and veteran World War aces all encountered every type of hazard during their perilous flights, from fuel shortages to failed engines, forced sea landings and severe fatigue, to navigational errors. With so many pilots taking aim at the far-flung islands in so many different types of planes, everyone wondered who would reach Hawaii first, or at all.
©2018 Jason Ryan (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
REV: Renegades
Summary
REVs are mankind's ultimate mechanized warriors, chemically-enhanced Marines with super strength, speed and durability, and the closest thing Humanity has to real-life, homegrown supermen. They're also Earth's not-so-secret weapon against the alien Antaere, habitually leaving wide swaths of enemy dead everywhere they go. They're respected by our allies and feared by our foes. That is, until a recent REV mission goes horribly wrong, turning the planets of the Grid against the Humans. Now Lt. Zac Murphy and his team of super REVs are hunted by the aliens and hated by their fellow Humans. Only by proving that the original mission was a setup from the beginning can they clear their names and restore the reputation of the REVs. But that's easier said than done, especially when everyone on a dozen worlds knows your name and your face, and there's nowhere to hide. And as the REVs fight for redemption, Zac learns a terrible truth about the Program, a truth that will impact the future of mankind: Zac is not only a new breed of REV...he's a new breed of man.... From heroes to hunted in the blink of an eye, it's a strange game fate plays. Will the REVs have the skill and ability not only to play the game...but to survive it as well? That remains to be seen.
©2018 T. R. Harris (P)2018 Tantor
The Flight 981 Disaster
Summary
On June 12, 1972, a powerful explosion rocked American Airlines Flight 96 a mere five minutes after its takeoff from Detroit. The explosion ripped a gaping hole in the bottom of the aircraft and jammed the hydraulic controls. Miraculously, despite the damage and ensuing chaos, the pilots were able to land the plane safely. Less than two years later, on March 3, 1974, a sudden, forceful blowout tore through Turk Hava Yollari (THY) Flight 981 from Paris to London. THY Flight 981 was not as lucky as Flight 96: it crashed in a forest in France, and none of the 346 people onboard survived. What caused the mysterious explosions? Were they linked? Could they have been prevented? This book addresses those questions and more, offering a fascinating look at the two dramatic aviation disasters.
©2017 Samme Chittum (P)2017 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Southern Storm
Summary
On the afternoon of April 4, 1977, Georgia housewife Sadie Burkhalter Hurst looked out her front door to see a frantic stranger running toward her, his clothes ablaze, and, behind him, the mangled fuselage of a passenger plane that had just crashed in her yard. The plane, a Southern Airways DC-9-31, had been carrying 81 passengers and four crew members en route to Atlanta when it entered a massive thunderstorm cell that turned into a dangerous cocktail of rain, hail, and lightning. Forced down onto a highway, the plane cut a swath of devastation through the small town of New Hope, breaking apart and killing bystanders on the ground before coming to rest in Hurst's front yard. Ultimately, only 22 people survived, and urgent questions immediately arose: What caused the pilots to fly into the storm instead of away from it? Could the crash have been prevented? Southern Storm addresses these issues and more, offering an insider's look at this disaster and the systemic overhauls that followed it.
©2018 Samme Chittum (P)2018 Dreamscape Media, LLC
North on the Wing
Summary
In late March 2015, ornithologist Bruce M. Beehler set off on a solo three-month trek to track songbird migration and the northward progress of spring through America. Traveling via car, canoe, bike, and on foot, Beehler followed woodland warblers and other neotropical songbird species from the southern border of Texas, where the birds first arrive after their winter sojourns in South America and the Caribbean, northward through the Mississippi drainage to its headwaters in Minnesota and onward to their nesting grounds in the north woods of Ontario. In North on the Wing, Beehler describes both the epic migration of songbirds across the country and the gradual dawning of springtime through the US heartland - the blossoming of wildflowers, the chorusing of frogs, the leafing out of forest canopies - and also tells the stories of the people and institutions dedicated to studying and conserving the critical habitats and processes of spring songbird migration. Inspired in part by Edwin Way Teale's landmark 1951 book North with the Spring, this audiobook - part travelogue, part field journal, and part environmental and cultural history - is a fascinating first-hand account of a once-in-a-lifetime journey. It engages listeners in the wonders of spring migration and serves as a call for the need to conserve, restore, and expand bird habitats to preserve them for future generations of both birds and humans.
©2018 Bruce M. Beehler (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Back Bay Blues
Summary
1985, Boston. In Vietnam, Andy Roark witnessed death and horrifying destruction. But for the soldiers who made it back alive, there are other casualties of war - the loss of tenderness, trust, and connection. Still feeling adrift and unsettled, Andy has struck up a welcome friendship with Nguyen, a Vietnamese restaurant owner. Sipping beer and trading memories after the restaurant shutters, Andy gradually learns of the extraordinary lengths Nguyen took to flee Saigon shortly after its fall. Andy's latest case, too, has ties to Vietnam. His new client, a beautiful and enigmatic young Vietnamese woman, hires him to investigate her uncle's murder. Andy discovers a connection to a group of refugees determined to overthrow the communist government. Led by the sinister Colonel Tran, the Committee is extorting local business owners to raise funds. The search for more answers takes Andy from Boston to Washington DC to San Francisco, and deep into a web of political and personal betrayal. Somewhere near the heart of this mystery is a connection to Nguyen's daring escape from Saigon. Decades may have passed, but sometimes the price of freedom twists allies into enemies, loyalties into betrayals, and truth into a web of lies....
©2020 Peter Colt (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Fears of a Setting Sun
Summary
Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them - including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson - came to deem America's constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation. Fears of a Setting Sun is the first book to tell the fascinating and too-little-known story of the founders' disillusionment. As Dennis Rasmussen shows, the founders' pessimism had a variety of sources: Washington lost his faith in America's political system above all because of the rise of partisanship, Hamilton because he felt that the federal government was too weak, Adams because he believed that the people lacked civic virtue, and Jefferson because of sectional divisions laid bare by the spread of slavery. The one major founder who retained his faith in America's constitutional order to the end was James Madison, and the book also explores why he remained relatively optimistic when so many of his compatriots did not.
©2021 Princeton University Press (P)2021 Tantor
American Foreign Relations
Summary
For better or worse - be it militarily, politically, economically, technologically, or culturally - Americans have had a profound role in shaping the wider world beyond them. The United States has been a savior to some, a curse to others, but either way such views are often based on a caricature of American actions and intentions. American foreign relations, then, is a subject of immense global importance that provokes strong emotions and much debate, but often based on deep misunderstanding. This Very Short Introduction analyzes the key episodes, themes, and individuals in the history of American foreign relations. While discussing diplomacy and the periods of war that have shaped national and international history, it also addresses such topics as industrialization, globalization, imperialism, and immigration. Covering the Revolution through the War on Terror, it examines the connections between domestic politics and foreign affairs as well as the importance of ideals and values. Sharply written and highly engaging, American Foreign Relations offers a clear-eyed narrative of America's role in the world and how it has evolved over time.
©2019 Oxford University Press (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books