Mel Foster has narrated 117 audiobooks on Listento.it by 121 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 1,054 ratings. The most-rated is Bright Line Eating.
The First Paul
Summary
Paul is second only to Jesus as the most important person in the birth of Christianity, and yet he continues to be controversial, even among Christians. How could the letters of Paul be used both to inspire radical grace and to endorse systems of oppression - condoning slavery, subordinating women, condemning homosexual behavior? Borg and Crossan use the best of biblical and historical scholarship to explain the reasons for Paul's mixed reputation and reveal to us what scholars have known for decades: that the later letters of Paul were created by the early church to dilute Paul's egalitarian message and transform him into something more "acceptable." They argue there are actually "Three Pauls" in the New Testament: "The Radical Paul" (of the seven genuine letters), "The Conservative Paul" (of the three disputed epistles), and "The Reactionary Paul" (of the three inauthentic letters). By closely examining this progression of Paul's letters - from the authentic to the inauthentic - the authors show how the apostle was slowly but steadily "deradicalized" to fit Roman social norms in regards to slavery, patriarchy, and patronage. In truth, Paul was an appealing apostle of Jesus whose vision of life "in Christ" - one of his favored phrases - is remarkably faithful to the message of Jesus himself.
©2009 Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan (P)2019 Tantor
Talk Is (Not!) Cheap
Summary
Jim McCann has spent his career talking. For McCann, the founder and CEO of the world’s leading florist, 1-800-Flowers.com, being open and ready to speak to a variety of audiences is his most powerful leadership tool. In Talk Is (Not!) Cheap, McCann illustrates how the art of conversation leadership - the process he developed to engage others and create forward momentum in the workplace - can be used to inspire, innovate, and win. Using a blend of how-to and insightful personal stories, this audiobook argues that the gift of gab may just be the most critical (and undervalued) skill set in today’s workplace. Lessons include how to overcome hesitation when diving into conversation with strangers and knowing when to just “shut up and listen!” McCann’s practical advice comes from 20 years of experience as the voice of small business, and from meeting and exchanging ideas with other influential business leaders around the world. Whether you’re interacting with customers, pitching new business to a client, or seeking to be heard within your own company, Talk Is (Not!) Cheap will strategically transform the way you communicate and listen. With McCann as your guide, this important audiobook will teach you how the art of conversation leadership can improve and joyously change your life.
©2014 Jim McCann (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved
Plastic Ocean
Summary
A prominent seafaring environmentalist and researcher shares his shocking discovery of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean, which inspired a fundamental rethinking of the Plastic Age and a growing global health crisis. In the summer of 1997, Charles Moore set sail from Honolulu with the sole intention of returning home after competing in a trans-Pacific race. To get to California, he and his crew took a shortcut through the seldom-traversed North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a vast oceanic "desert" where winds are slack and sailing ships languish. There, Moore realized his catamaran was surrounded by a "plastic soup". He had stumbled upon the largest garbage dump on the planet - a spiral nebula where plastic outweighed zooplankton, the ocean's food base, by a factor of six to one. In Plastic Ocean, Moore recounts his ominous findings and unveils the secret life and hidden properties of plastics. From milk jugs to polymer molecules small enough to penetrate human skin or be unknowingly inhaled, plastic is now suspected of contributing to a host of ailments including infertility, autism, thyroid dysfunction, and some cancers. A call to action as urgent as Rachel Carson's seminal Silent Spring, Moore's sobering revelations will be embraced by activists, concerned parents, and seafaring enthusiasts concerned about the deadly impact and implications of this man-made blight.
©2011 Captain Charles Moore and Cassandra Phillips (P)2011 Tantor
Midnight Guardians
Summary
Max is back, trawling the trailer parks and waterways of south Florida, where amid the gorgeous beaches and abundant foliage there lies a stunning range of brutality. After Max is hired to investigate a conspiracy involving fake claims to Medicare, he quickly realizes the scheme is much more dangerous than anyone assumed. And when the Brown Man, a former drug kingpin who once helped Max nab a serial killer, reappears in a slick new guise, Max must reclaim his street instincts to protect not just the citizens of south Florida, but also his girlfriend, Detective Sherry Richards - the one person he can’t afford to lose.
©2010 Jonathon King (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Malice
Summary
The scent is unmistakable - gardenias, sweet and delicate, the same perfume that his beautiful first wife, Jennifer, always wore. Opening his eyes in the hospital room where he's recovering from an accident, New Orleans detective Rick Bentz sees her standing in the doorway. Then Jennifer blows him a kiss and disappears. But it couldn't have been Jennifer. She died 12 years ago....
Once out of the hospital, Bentz begins to see Jennifer everywhere. Could she still be alive? But it was Bentz who identified Jennifer's body after her horrible car wreck, and there had been no question in his mind that it was her crumpled form behind the wheel, her clothes, her wedding ring. He's never doubted it - until now. He can't tell his new wife, Olivia, about the sightings or his secret fear that he's losing his mind. But Olivia is also hiding a secret....
When a copy of Jennifer's death certificate arrives in the mail, emblazoned with a red question mark, Bentz follows the postmark trail to Los Angeles, returning to the painful memories he's tried so hard to forget, and straight into a killer's web.
Someone's been waiting patiently, silently. Someone who knows exactly what happened that night 12 years ago and has been anticipating Bentz's every move.
Soon it will be Bentz's turn to suffer for his sins. But he won't be the only one made to pay the ultimate price. For a diabolical killer has now made Olivia the prime target...
©2009 Lisa Jackson (P)2009 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
First Over There
Summary
At first light on Tuesday, May 28th, 1918, waves of American riflemen from the US Army's First Division climbed from their trenches, charged across the shell-scarred French dirt of no-man's-land, and captured the hilltop village of Cantigny from the grip of the German Army. Those who survived the enemy machine-gun fire and hand-to-hand fighting held on for the next two days and nights in shallow foxholes under the sting of mustard gas and crushing steel of artillery fire. Thirteen months after the United States entered World War I, these 3,500 soldiers became the first "doughboys" to enter the fight. The operation, the first American attack ever supported by tanks, airplanes, and modern artillery, was ordered by the leader of America's forces in Europe, General John "Black Jack" Pershing, and planned by a young staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel George C. Marshall, who would fill the lead role in World War II 26 years later. Drawing on the letters, diaries, and reports by the men themselves, Matthew J. Davenport's First Over There tells the inspiring, untold story of these soldiers and their journey to victory on the Western Front in the Battle of Cantigny.
©2015 Matthew J. Davenport. (P)2016 Tantor
The Grandees
Summary
The New World's earliest Jewish immigrants and their unique, little-known history: A New York Times bestseller from the author of Life at the Dakota. In 1654, twenty-three Jewish families arrived in New Amsterdam (now New York) aboard a French privateer. They were the Sephardim, members of a proud orthodox sect that had served as royal advisors and honored professionals under Moorish rule in Spain and Portugal but were then exiled from their homeland by intolerant monarchs. A small, closed, and intensely private community, the Sephardim soon established themselves as businessmen and financiers, earning great wealth. They became powerful forces in society, with some, like banker Haym Salomon, even providing financial support to George Washington's army during the American Revolution. Yet despite its major role in the birth and growth of America, this extraordinary group has remained virtually impenetrable and unknowable to outsiders. From author of "Our Crowd", Stephen Birmingham, The Grandees delves into the lives of the Sephardim and their historic accomplishments, illuminating the insulated world of these early Americans. Birmingham reveals how these families, with descendants including poet Emma Lazarus, Barnard College founder Annie Nathan Meyer, and Supreme Court Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo, influenced - and continue to influence - American society.
©1971 by Stephen Birmingham. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
The Court of Last Resort
Summary
The creator of Perry Mason's Edgar Award - winning account of miscarriages of justice, wrongful convictions, legal battles, and landmark reversals. In 1945, Erle Stanley Gardner, noted attorney and author of the popular Perry Mason mysteries, was contacted by an overwhelmed California public defender who believed his doomed client was innocent. William Marvin Lindley had been convicted of the rape and murder of a young girl along the banks of the Yuba River, and was awaiting execution at San Quentin. After reviewing the case, Gardner agreed to help - it seemed the fate of the "Red-Headed Killer" hinged on the testimony of a colorblind witness. Gardner's intervention sparked the Court of Last Resort. The Innocence Project of its day, this ambitious and ultimately successful undertaking was devoted to investigating, reviewing, and reversing wrongful convictions owing to poor legal representation, prosecutorial abuses, biased police activity, bench corruption, unreliable witnesses, and careless forensic-evidence testimony. The crimes: rape, murder, kidnapping, and manslaughter. The prisoners: underprivileged and vulnerable men wrongly convicted and condemned to life sentences or death row with only one hope - the devotion of Erle Stanley Gardner and the Court of Last Resort. Featuring Gardner's most damning cases of injustice from across the country, The Court of Last Resort won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime. Originating as a monthly column in Argosy magazine, it was produced as a dramatized court TV show for NBC. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©1952, 1954 Erle Stanley Gardner. (P)2017 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Finding Peter
Summary
William Peter Blatty, the best-selling author and Oscar Award-winning screenwriter of The Exorcist, lived a charmed life among the elite stars of Hollywood. His son, Peter, born over a decade after The Exorcist, grew from an apple-cheeked boy into an "imposing young man with a quick, warm smile". But when Peter died very suddenly from a rare disorder, Blatty's world turned upside down. As he and his wife struggled through their unrelenting grief, a series of strange and supernatural events began occurring, and Blatty became convinced that Peter was sending messages from the afterlife. A true and unabashedly personal story, Finding Peter will remind those in grief that our loved ones truly do live on.
©2015 William Peter Blatty (P)2015 Tantor
The Golden Ratio
Summary
Throughout history, thinkers from mathematicians to theologians have pondered the mysterious relationship between numbers and the nature of reality. In this fascinating book, Mario Livio tells the tale of a number at the heart of that mystery: phi, or 1.6180339887.... This curious mathematical relationship, widely known as "The Golden Ratio", was discovered by Euclid more than 2,000 years ago because of its crucial role in the construction of the pentagram, to which magical properties had been attributed. Since then it has shown a propensity to appear in the most astonishing variety of places, from mollusk shells, sunflower florets, and rose petals to the shape of the galaxy. Psychological studies have investigated whether the Golden Ratio is the most aesthetically pleasing proportion extant, and it has been asserted that the creators of the Pyramids and the Parthenon employed it. It is believed to feature in works of art from Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa to Salvador Dali's The Sacrament of the Last Supper, and poets and composers have used it in their works. It has even been found to be connected to the behavior of the stock market! The Golden Ratio is a captivating journey through art and architecture, botany and biology, physics and mathematics. It tells the human story of numerous phi-fixated individuals, including the followers of Pythagoras who believed that this proportion revealed the hand of God; astronomer Johannes Kepler, who saw phi as the greatest treasure of geometry; such Renaissance thinkers as mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa; and such masters of the modern world as Goethe, Cezanne, Bartok, and physicist Roger Penrose. Wherever his quest for the meaning of phi takes him, Mario Livio reveals the world as a place where order, beauty, and eternal mystery will always coexist.
©2008 Mario Livio (P)2013 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Boss Rove
Summary
Karl Rove, the man who masterminded the rise of George W. Bush from governor of Texas to the presidency, who advised Bush during two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who some claim helped seize the 2004 election for Bush, and who was at the center of the Bush administration's two biggest scandals - the Valerie Plame Wilson affair and the U.S. attorneys scandal - is back. Since exiting the Bush administration, Rove has quietly become the country's greatest Republican power broker. His pulpit is much vaster than his role as a commentator on Fox News and his regular columns for the Wall Street Journal suggest. His real strength is his ability to mobilize immense sums through the SuperPAC American Crossroads and similar organizations, and channel that money on behalf of Republican candidates. Knowing that Rove remains connected and powerful, Unger investigates Rove's politically controversial activities of times past, shedding important new light on them, and shows their relevance to his activities today. He scrutinizes Rove's roles in the Valerie Plame Wilson affair, the U.S. attorneys scandal, the strange events in Ohio on the night of the 2004 presidential election, and much more. But now that Rove is back in control of GOP political strategy and funding, there are pressing new questions: How did Rove do an end run around on the Republican National Committee and build his own, more powerful organization? In what ways did he subtly, and not so subtly, influence the 2012 Republican primary process? What did he say (and do) regarding candidates Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum? How did he placate the Tea Party, which he privately despises, even as he cleverly marginalized its importance? How did he and Mitt Romney draw closer as the GOP convention neared? How will he further benefit from a Romney victory? And if Romney loses, why will Rove remain powerful? Unger has the answers. As demonstrated in his previous books, Unger is adept at combining incisive reporting with the journalistic record to create a master narrative that sheds new light on a political subject. Detailed, fascinating, and entertaining, Boss Rove will interest not only listeners who want to know more about the 2012 election but also those keen to understand the forces endangering American democracy. This up-to-the-minute journalistic report sheds crucial light on Rove's vital behind-the-scenes role in this fall's presidential election and in the future of American politics.
©2012 Craig Unger (P)2012 Tantor
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Thanks Dad - 31 Stories about Stepping Up to the Plate, Through Thick and Thin, and Making Gray Hairs Fathering Teenagers
Summary
Thanks Dad gives fathers the pat on the back they deserve. Children of all ages share their heartfelt words of thanks and loving memories in these stories. Thanks Dad will bring any father joy, inspiration, and humor, and maybe even the realization that his kids did pay attention after all.
©2010 Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
"The Rest of Us"
Summary
The New York Times - bestselling history of the Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland who altered the American landscape from New York to Hollywood. The wave of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who swept into New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by way of Ellis Island were not welcomed by the Jews who had arrived decades before. These refugees from czarist Russia and the Polish shtetls who came to America to escape pogroms and persecution were considered barbaric, uneducated, and too steeped in the traditions of the "old country" to be accepted by the more refined and already well-established German-Jewish community. But the new arrivals were tough, passionate, and determined, and in no time they were moving up from the ghetto tenements of New York's Lower East Side to make their marks and their fortunes across the country in a variety of fields, from media and popular music to fashion, motion pictures, and even organized crime. Among the unforgettable personages author Stephen Birmingham profiles are radio pioneer David Sarnoff, makeup mogul Helena Rubinstein, Hollywood tycoons Samuel Goldwyn and Harry Cohn, Broadway composer Irving Berlin, and mobster Meyer Lansky. From the author of "Our Crowd", comes this treasure trove of fascinating tales and unforgettable "rags-to-riches" success stories that celebrates the indomitable spirit of a unique community.
©1984 Stephen Birmingham (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. From “The East European Immigrant Jew in America (1881–1981): Isaac Don Levine, Letters of an Immigrant,” American Jewish Archives, April 1981, Volume XXXIII, Number 1. By permission of American Jewish Archives. From The New York Times, September 1, 1967. © 1967 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. From BRONFMAN DYNASTY by Peter C. Newman. © 1978 by Peter C. Newman. Reprinted by permission of the author and the Canadian publishers, McClelland and Stewart Limited, Toronto.
Don't Count on It!
Summary
Reflections on investment illusions, capitalism, "mutual" funds, indexing, entrepreneurship, idealism, and heroes Throughout his legendary career, John Bogle - founder of the Vanguard mutual fund group and creator of the first index mutual fund - has helped investors build wealth the right way, while, at the same time, leading a tireless campaign to restore common sense to the investment world. A collection of essays based on speeches delivered to professional groups and college students in recent years, Don't Count on It is organized around eight themes: Illusion versus reality in investing Indexing to market returns Failures of capitalism The flawed structure of the mutual fund industry The spirit of entrepreneurship What is enough in business, and in life Advice to America's future leaders The unforgettable characters who have shaped his career Widely acclaimed for his role as the conscience of the mutual fund industry and a relentless advocate for individual investors, in Don't Count on It, Bogle continues to inspire, while pushing the mutual fund industry to measure up to their promise
©2011 John C. Bogle (P)2012 Audible, Inc.
"Our Crowd"
Summary
The New York Times bestselling history of the rise of the most powerful and privileged Jewish families in America They immigrated to America from Germany in the nineteenth century with names like Loeb, Sachs, Seligman, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. From tenements on the Lower East Side to Park Avenue mansions, this handful of Jewish families turned small businesses into imposing enterprises and amassed spectacular fortunes. But despite possessing breathtaking wealth that rivaled the Astors and Rockefellers, they were barred by the gentile establishment from the lofty realm of "the 400," a register of New York's most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds. In response, they created their own elite "100," a privileged society as opulent and exclusive as the one that had refused them entry. "Our Crowd" is the fascinating story of this rarefied society. Based on letters, documents, diary entries, and intimate personal remembrances of family lore by members of these most illustrious clans, it is an engrossing portrait of upper-class Jewish life over two centuries; a riveting story of the bankers, brokers, financiers, philanthropists, and business tycoons who started with nothing and turned their family names into American institutions.
©1967 Stephen Birmingham (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. The Macmillan Company for the letters of Otto Kahn which appeared in "The Many Lives of Otto Kahn" by Mary Jane Mate, © 1963 by Margaret D. Ryan.
The Union War
Summary
Even 150 years later, we are haunted by the Civil War---by its division, its bloodshed, and perhaps, above all, by its origins. Today, many believe that the war was fought over slavery. This answer satisfies our contemporary sense of justice, but as Gary W. Gallagher shows in this brilliant revisionist history, it is an anachronistic judgment. In a searing analysis of the Civil War North as revealed in contemporary letters, diaries, and documents, Gallagher demonstrates that what motivated the North to go to war and persist in an increasingly bloody effort was primarily preservation of the Union. Devotion to the Union bonded nineteenth-century Americans in the North and West against a slaveholding aristocracy in the South and a Europe that seemed destined for oligarchy. Northerners believed they were fighting to save the republic, and with it the world's best hope for democracy. Once we understand the centrality of union, we can in turn appreciate the force that made Northern victory possible: the citizen-soldier. Gallagher reveals how the massive volunteer army of the North fought to confirm American exceptionalism by salvaging the Union. Contemporary concerns have distorted the reality of nineteenth-century Americans, who embraced emancipation primarily to punish secessionists and remove slavery as a future threat to union---goals that emerged in the process of war. As Gallagher recovers why and how the Civil War was fought, we gain a more honest understanding of why and how it was won.
©2011 The President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2011 Tantor
The Poison Tree
Summary
Edgar Award Finalist: The shocking account of a Wyoming father who terrorized his family for years - until his children plotted a deadly solution. One cold November night, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, fifteen-year-old Richard Jahnke Jr., ROTC leader and former Boy Scout, waited for his parents to return from celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the night they met. When his father got out of the car, the boy blasted him through the heart with a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun. Richard's seventeen-year-old sister, Deborah, was sitting on the living room couch with a high-powered rifle - just in case her brother missed. Hours later the Jahnke kids were behind bars. Days later they made headlines. So did the truth about the house of horrors on Cowpoke Road. Was it cold-blooded murder? Or self-defense? Richard Jahnke Sr., special agent for the IRS, gun collector, and avid reader of Soldier of Fortune, had been subjecting his wife, Maria, and both children to harrowing abuse - physical, psychological, and sexual - for years. Deborah and her brother conspired to finally put a stop to it themselves. But their fate was in the hands of a prejudiced and inept judicial system, and only public outcry could save them. Written with the full and revealing cooperation of the Jahnkes, this finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime is "the ultimate family nightmare, played out in the heartland of America.... From the night of the murder through both trials, convictions and both youngsters' eventual release...it's gripping reading" (Chicago Tribune).
©1986 Alan Prendergast (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.