Kenneth Ray has narrated 7 audiobooks on Listento.it by 2 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 2 ratings. The most-rated is Captain John Franklin's Lost Expedition.
Captain John Franklin's Lost Expedition
Summary
"The sad story takes us back to the June of 1845. The two discovery ships, the Erebus and Terror, are at sea, with the transport containing their supplies in attendance on them. The time is noon; the place on the ocean is near the island of Rona, 70 or 80 miles from Stromness; and the two steamers, Rattler and Blazer, are taking leave - a last, long leave - of the Arctic voyagers." - The Living Age, 1859 Most anyone who has received a basic education in world history knows the story of how "in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Most also know that Christopher Columbus made first contact with the Americas while searching for a water route to Asia. However, far fewer people remember that the search for such a route continued for centuries after Columbus' death. After the discovery of the Americas, several European countries were interested in finding the route, and nations from France to Spain sent out explorers searching for the mysterious route. While these voyages did not reveal the hoped for route, they did result in large parts of both North and South America being mapped, and as more of the new land mass was determined, the parameters of the search for such a route were narrowed. By the 18th century, explorers began to seek such a route to the north, looking for the legendary Northwest Passage.
©2016 Charles River Editors (P)2017 Charles River Editors
Frank Lloyd Wright
Summary
Perhaps America's most innovative and prolific architect, the works of Frank Lloyd Wright are almost too vast and diverse to list. Recognized for designing unique churches and distinctive commercial buildings, and admired for his geometric style house designs, Wright has been widely imitated, and his work continues to influence architecture not only in the United States but around the world. Laymen often think they know the definition of "a Frank Lloyd Wright", but they probably don't fully understand the brilliant mind of the man, nor the intricacies of his Prairie Style. Yet it endures because he has made it so. In many ways, Wright's architectural career has overshadowed other aspects of his life. In the course of creating innovative kinds of offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums, not to mention furniture and stained glass decorations, Wright wrote over a dozen books and toured America and Europe at large, often giving widely acclaimed speeches. Despite a somewhat hardscrabble start to life in the Midwest, Wright became known for his flamboyant and entertaining lifestyle, which included multiple marriages and scandals like the murders at his Taliesin studio in 1914. But through it all, Wright continued working nearly up until his death, and in 1991 the American Institute of Architects recognized him as "the greatest American architect of all time".
©2016 Charles River Editors (P)2017 Charles River Editors
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Summary
The most famous church in Jerusalem for nearly 2,000 years, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, often called the Church of the Resurrection, was built in the era of St. Constantine, and the church as a structure has no history separable from the city of Jerusalem and its environs. It is venerated as being on the site where Jesus was crucified and buried, and naturally, making it a crucial pilgrimage site for Christians, and it is now the home of the Greek Orthodox Jerusalem Patriarchate. Moreover, it was the site of many important councils, some of which altered Christian history forever. In short, the Sepulchre was and is synonymous with Jerusalem, and it was essentially the nodal center of the city. Naturally, the Church has had a turbulent history just as Jerusalem has. Under the Emperor Vespasian, Jerusalem was attacked and depopulated by Roman forces in 70 CE, and from 131-134, the Jewish revolt invited another Roman reprisal. Over and over again, Jerusalem has been decimated, sacked and razed. In 135, Hadrian rebuilt the city as a Roman outpost and called it "Aelia Capitolina" (Sicker, 2-3), and even the era of St. Constantine provided no respite from wars and dislocation. The Emperor Hadrian also removed Jews from the city upon its renovation (Sicker, 2-4). In 313, Constantine the Great converted the Roman Empire and stopped the persecution of Christians, but the problems were far from over in Jerusalem. Jerusalem at the time was a center of pagan worship, with the emperor's main sanctuary being the temple of "Jupiter Capitolinus". The persecution had ended, but the hostility between Christians and non-Christians continued.
©2016 Charles River Editors (P)2017 Charles River Editors
The Spanish Inquisition
Summary
In many modern societies, laws have been put in place to protect citizens from discrimination based on their gender, beliefs, race, and sexuality. The sheer thought of having these rights impeded upon in any way is something people in the West often consider unthinkable. In this day and age, people will fight tooth and nail to right cases of discrimination and injustice, from seeking legal action to filing criminal charges against the discriminating party. Multiple organizations around the world exist to help combat and protect its citizens from prejudicial inequities. Social media has also become a channel for those around the world to voice these injustices. Those around the world who empathize with the discriminated band together and condemn the accused bigots. Resulting boycotts, petitions, and negative backlash from social media and the Internet have been known to play a significant role in contributing to the downfall of individuals and corporations that have been accused of discrimination of any kind. The road to the modern age of cultural harmony and acceptance is one of the finest feats of human progress, but having said that, there was once a time when the mere doubt of a religious figure's existence was not only punishable by law, it could very well cost a man his life. This was the crime of heresy.
©2016 Charles River Editors (P)2016 Charles River Editors
American Legends: The Life of Chuck Norris
Summary
A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. It is not uncommon for a culture to create intricate mythologies around its combat arts champions, but those celebrity fighters who have produced enough tangible accomplishments to merit such adulation are generally limited to a few in each generation. In the second half of the 20th century, boxer Muhammad Ali commanded such reverence, and in the martial arts, two stars have primarily reestablished the entire combat genre for the international movie-going population. In terms of raw popularity, Chuck Norris represents the West. Whereas Bruce Lee developed a cinematic market by attaching scripts and formulaic plots to his masterful athleticism and martial arts skills that are still considered exotic to many Westerners, American Chuck Norris built his resume with little fanfare or sense of peripheral fantasy by studying and mastering the Korean karate form Tang Soo Do and by dominating in international competition for six consecutive years. Along the way, he came to study numerous related styles as well, attaining advanced black belt degrees in several.
©2015 Charles River Editors (P)2017 Charles River Editors
American Legends: The Life of Rod Serling
Summary
A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. The "Golden Age" of television was in part so named because it was the era in which new technology was pioneered and industry rules were still being written. Here was a fascinating new medium, founded by executives with no previous body of experience, and a myriad of directions in which to proceed. Numerous factions spent the next generation wresting control over content and the content/product relationship. Some envisioned a public service and educational medium, while others sought sophisticated entertainment. With profit as the determining motive, executives and sponsors sought only what would evoke the most lucrative response. The term "Golden Age" also applies to the reality that much of the television programming in the 1950s was offered up as live performance, a dangerous and exciting time for both writers and actors. As pioneer director John Frankenheimer put it, "There were no old days. We were the old days." Frankenheimer went on to associate with one of the age's best and most prolific TV writers, Rod Serling, an enduring name in the realm of philosophical fright and ironic reflections of human injustice.
©2016 Charles River Editors (P)2017 Charles River Editors
The Tuskegee Airmen
Summary
The United States has no shortage of famous military units, from the Civil War's Iron Brigade to the 101st Airborne, but one would be hard pressed to find one that had to go through as many hardships off the field as the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African American fighter pilots who overcame Jim Crow at home and official segregation in the military to serve their country in the final years of World War II. In fact, it required a concerted effort by groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the extreme circumstances brought about by World War II that the military eventually decided to establish the "Tuskegee Experiment". The black crews trained at Tuskegee before being sent overseas, and even then, they faced discrimination from those who didn't trust them to do more than escort bombers flown by white pilots.
©2016 Charles River Editors (P)2017 Charles River Editors