Kevin Young has narrated 23 audiobooks on Listento.it by 26 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 140 ratings. The most-rated is Exponential Organizations.
Star-Spangled Buddhist
Summary
The full story of Buddhism in the United States - illuminated and enlightened for today’s listener. Approximately four million Americans claim to be Buddhist. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of Americans of various faiths read about Buddhism, are interested in its philosophical tenets, or fashionably view themselves as Buddhists. They’re part of what’s been described as the fastest growing religious movement in America: a large group of people dissatisfied with traditional religious offerings and thirsty for an approach to spirituality grounded in logic and consistent with scientific knowledge. Star-Spangled Buddhist is a provocative look at these American Buddhists through their three largest movements in the United States: the Soka Gakkai International, Tibetan/Vajrayana Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism.The practice of each of these American schools, unlike most traditional Asian Buddhist sects, is grounded in the notion that all people are capable of attaining enlightenment in “this lifetime.” But the differences are also profound: The spectrum of philosophical expression among these American Buddhist schools is as varied as that observed between Reformed, Orthodox, and Hasidic Judaism. Star-Spangled Buddhist isn’t written from the perspective of a monk or academic but rather from the irreverent view of author Jeff Ourvan, a lifelong practicing lay Buddhist. As Ourvan explores the American Buddhist movement through its most popular schools, he arrives at a clearer understanding for himself and the listener about what it means to be - and how one might choose to be - a Buddhist in America.
©2013 Jeff Ourvan (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Soiling of Old Glory
Summary
Sometimes a moment can change history. This one took 1/250th of a second. The photograph strikes us with visceral force, even years after the instant it captured. A white man, rage written on his face, lunges to spear a black man who is being held by another white. The assailant’s weapon is the American flag. Boston, April 5, 1976: As the city simmered with racial tension over forced school busing, newsman Stanley Forman hurried to City Hall to photograph that day’s protest, arriving just in time to snap the image that his editor would title "The Soiling of Old Glory". The photo made headlines across the U.S. and won Forman his second Pulitzer Prize. It shocked Boston, and America: Racial strife had not only not ended with the 1960s, it was alive and well in the cradle of liberty. Louis P. Masur’s evocative "biography of a photograph" unpacks this arresting image in a tour de force of historical writing. He examines the power of photography and the meaning of the flag, asking why this one picture had so much impact. Most poignantly, Masur recreates the moment and its aftermath, drawing on extensive interviews with Forman and the figures in the photo to reveal not just how the incident happened, but how it changed the lives of the men in it. The Soiling of Old Glory, like the photograph it is named for, offers a dramatic window onto the turbulence of the 1970s and race relations in America.
©2008 Louis P. Masur (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
Brown
Summary
James Brown. John Brown's raid. Brown v. the Topeka Board of Ed. The prize-winning author of Blue Laws meditates on all things "brown" in this powerful new collection. Divided into "Home Recordings" and "Field Recordings", Brown speaks to the way personal experience is shaped by culture, while culture is forever affected by the personal, recalling a black Kansas boyhood to comment on our times. From "History" - a song of Kansas high-school fixture Mr. W., who gave his students "the Sixties / minus Malcolm X, or Watts, / barely a march on Washington" - to "Money Road", a sobering pilgrimage to the site of Emmett Till's lynching, the poems engage place and the past and their intertwined power. These 32 taut poems and poetic sequences, including an oratorio based on Mississippi "barkeep, activist, waiter" Booker Wright that was performed at Carnegie Hall and the vibrant sonnet cycle "De La Soul Is Dead", about the days when hip-hop was growing up ("we were black then, not yet / African American"), remind us that blackness and brownness tell an ongoing story. A testament to Young's own - and our collective - experience, Brown offers beautiful, sustained harmonies from a poet whose wisdom deepens with time.
©2018 Kevin Young (P)2018 Random House Audio