Michael Quinlan has narrated 10 audiobooks on Listento.it by 12 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 60 ratings. The most-rated is A More Beautiful Question.
A More Beautiful Question
Summary
Audie Award, Business/Educational, 2015 In this groundbreaking book, journalist and innovation expert Warren Berger shows that one of the most powerful forces for igniting change in business and in our daily lives is a simple, underappreciated tool - one that has been available to us since childhood. Questioning - deeply, imaginatively, "beautifully" - can help us identify and solve problems, come up with game-changing ideas, and pursue fresh opportunities. So why are we often reluctant to ask "Why?" Berger’s surprising findings reveal that even though children start out asking hundreds of questions a day, questioning "falls off a cliff" as kids enter school. In an education and business culture devised to reward rote answers over challenging inquiry, questioning isn’t encouraged - and, in fact, is sometimes barely tolerated. And yet, as Berger shows, the most creative, successful people tend to be expert questioners. They’ve mastered the art of inquiry, raising questions no one else is asking - and finding powerful answers. The author takes us inside red-hot businesses like Google, Netflix, IDEO, and Airbnb to show how questioning is baked into their organizational DNA. He also shares inspiring stories of artists, teachers, entrepreneurs, basement tinkerers, and social activists who changed their lives and the world around them - by starting with a "beautiful question". Berger explores important questions, such as: Why aren’t we nurturing kids’ natural ability to question - and what can parents and schools do about that? Since questioning is a starting point for innovation, how might companies and business leaders begin to encourage and exploit it? And most important, how can each of us reignite that questioning spark - and use inquiry as a powerful means to rethink and reinvent our lives? A More Beautiful Question outlines a practical Why/What If/How system of inquiry that can guide you through the process of innovative questioning - helping you find imaginative, powerful answers to your own "beautiful questions".
©2014 Warren Berger (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Unspeakable
Summary
Chris Hedges on the most taboo topics in America, with David Talbot. Chris Hedges has been telling truth to (and against) power since his earliest days as a radical journalist. He is an intellectual bomb-thrower who continues to confront American empire in the most incisive, challenging ways. The kinds of insights he provides into the deeply troubled state of our democracy cannot be found anywhere else. Like many of our most important thinkers, he has been relegated to the margins because of ideas deemed too radical - or true - for public consumption. Whether it is covering the dissolution of former Soviet states or embedding in the Middle East to understand the post-9/11 world, he has been a singular voice pushing against mainstream media disinformation and the amnesia of establishment received wisdom. He is an intellectual heir to American radical heroes such as Thomas Paine and Noam Chomsky and is dedicated to reigniting a shared commitment to radical equality and honesty. Hedges here speaks up about the most pressing issues that currently face our nation. He tackles the rise of a fascist right in support of Donald Trump, which advocates xenophobia and violence in a push for American totalitarianism. He rails against the posturing of inclusivity from establishment elites on both sides of the aisle, who post-Occupy Wall Street continue to advocate for policies that make America uninhabitable for all but the ultra-rich and, as lackeys for corporate interests, continue to expand income inequality in all directions. He tears into the contemporary glamorization of the military and the unchecked, unchallenged hawkishness that defines contemporary American foreign policy. Moreover, he shows his support for contemporary revolts against this twisted order - such as Black Lives Matter - that represent Americans refusing to take the destruction of their country lying down. And that's just the start.
©2016 Chris Hedges (P)2016 Novel Audio
The Book of Beautiful Questions
Summary
From the best-selling author of A More Beautiful Question, hundreds of big and small questions that harness the magic of inquiry to tackle challenges we all face - at work, in our relationships and beyond. When confronted with almost any demanding situation, the act of questioning can help guide us to smart decisions. By asking questions, we can analyse, learn and move forward in the face of uncertainty. But 'questionologist' Warren Berger says that the questions must be the right ones - the ones that cut to the heart of complexity or enable us to see an old problem in a fresh way. In The Book of Beautiful Questions, Berger shares illuminating stories and compelling research on the power of inquiry. Drawn from the insights and expertise of psychologists, innovators, effective leaders and some of the world's foremost creative thinkers, he presents the essential questions readers need to make the best choices when it truly counts, with a particular focus in four key areas: decision-making, creativity, leadership and relationships. The powerful questions in this book can help you: Identify opportunities in your career or industry Generate fresh ideas in business or in your own creative pursuits Check your biases so you can make better judgments and decisions Do a better job of communicating and connecting with the people around you Thoughtful, provocative and actionable, these beautiful questions can be applied immediately to bring about change in your work or your everyday life.
©2018 Warren Berger (P)2018 Audible, Ltd
The Man Who Ran Washington
Summary
From two of America's most revered political journalists comes the definitive biography of legendary White House chief of staff and secretary of state James A. Baker III: the man who ran Washington when Washington ran the world. For a quarter-century, from the end of Watergate to the aftermath of the Cold War, no Republican won the presidency without his help or ran the White House without his advice. James Addison Baker III was the indispensable man for four presidents because he understood better than anyone how to make Washington work at a time when America was shaping events around the world. The Man Who Ran Washington is a pause-resisting portrait of a power broker who influenced America's destiny for generations. A scion of Texas aristocracy who became George H. W. Bush's best friend on the tennis courts of the Houston Country Club, Baker had never even worked in Washington until a devastating family tragedy struck when he was 39. Within a few years, he was leading Gerald Ford's campaign and would go on to manage a total of five presidential races and win a sixth for George W. Bush in a Florida recount. He ran Ronald Reagan's White House and became the most consequential secretary of state since Henry Kissinger. He negotiated with Democrats at home and Soviets abroad, rewrote the tax code, assembled the coalition that won the Gulf War, brokered the reunification of Germany, and helped bring a decades-long nuclear superpower standoff to an end. Ruthlessly partisan during campaign season, Baker governed as the avatar of pragmatism over purity and deal-making over division, a lost art in today's fractured nation. His story is a case study in the acquisition, exercise, and preservation of power in late 20th century America and the story of Washington and the world in the modern era - how it once worked and how it has transformed into an era of gridlock and polarization. This masterly biography by two brilliant observers of the American political scene is destined to become a classic.
©2020 Peter Baker (P)2020 Random House Audio
Lead Yourself First
Summary
Throughout history, leaders have used solitude as a matter of course. Eisenhower wrote memoranda to himself during World War II as a way to think through complex problems. Martin Luther King found moral courage while sitting alone at his kitchen table one night during the Montgomery bus boycott. Jane Goodall used her intuition in the jungles of Central Africa while learning how to approach chimps. Solitude is a state of mind, a space where you can focus on your own thoughts without distraction, with a power to bring mind and soul together in clear-eyed conviction. Like a great wave that saturates everything in its path, however, handheld devices and other media now leave us awash with the thoughts of others. We are losing solitude without even realizing it. To find solitude today, a leader must make a conscious effort. This book explains why the effort is worthwhile and how to make it. Through gripping historical accounts and firsthand interviews with a wide range of contemporary leaders, Raymond Kethledge (a federal court of appeals judge) and Michael Erwin (a West Pointer and three-tour combat veteran) show how solitude can enhance clarity, spur creativity, sustain emotional balance, and generate the moral courage necessary to overcome adversity and criticism. Anyone who leads anyone - including oneself - can benefit from solitude. With a foreword by Jim Collins (author of the best seller Good to Great), Lead Yourself First is a rallying cry to reclaim solitude - and all the benefits, both practical and sublime, that come with it.
©2017 Raymond M. Kethledge, Michael S. Erwin (P)2017 Audible, Ltd
Soar Above
Summary
Success in work, love, and life depends on developing habits that activate the powerful prefrontal cortex when we need it most. Unfortunately, under stress, the human brain tends to revert to emotional habits we forged in toddlerhood: blame, denial, avoidance, reacting to a jerk like a jerk, and turning our connections into cold shoulders - or worse. In Soar Above, renowned relationship expert Dr. Steven Stosny offers a groundbreaking formula for building new, pressure-resistant habits. Based on research in psychology, neurobiology, and anthropology, Stosny will show anyone how to switch to the adult brain automatically when things get tough and to soar above the impulse to make things worse. Filled with engaging examples from his lectures and therapeutic work with more than 6,000 clients, he explains how to use two potent laws of emotion interaction - reciprocity and contagion - to inspire those around you, creating collaboration and community instead of chaos and confusion. Most importantly, listeners will learn how, through practice, they can get off the treadmill of repeating past mistakes to become their best selves at home, at work, and in the world. Stress is inevitable in life, but this illuminating book gives anyone the practical tools to rise above.
©2016 Steven Stosney (P)2016 Audible, Inc.
Microbe Hunters
Summary
This science classic by Paul de Kruif chronicles the pioneering bacteriological work of the first scientists to see and learn from the microscopic world. Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters is a timeless dramatization of the scientists, bacteriologists, doctors, and medical technicians who discovered microbes and invented the vaccines to counter them. De Kruif reveals the now seemingly simple but really fundamental discoveries of science - for instance, how a microbe was first viewed in a clear drop of rain water, and when, for the first time ever, Louis Pasteur discovered that a simple vaccine could save a man from the ravages of rabies by attacking the microbes that cause it.
©1926 Paul de Kruif; renewed 1954 Paul de Kruif (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
Poisoned Soil
Summary
On a cursed Cherokee mountainside, young Ozzie and his family are held prisoner while they await an unspeakable fate. His captor, Blake Savage, will do anything to reclaim the fame he lost, but Blake's mystical wife, Angelica, longs for a simple life that honors her Cherokee tradition. When an egocentric restaurateur offers Blake a fortune to turn Ozzie's family into a delicacy for his supper club, Blake can't resist the temptation. But Ozzie may be more than he seems and will do anything to survive. When dinner is finally served, a Cherokee curse is unleashed that threatens anyone and anything in its path.
©2012 Tim Young (P)2015 Tim Young
Top 10 Ways to Avoid Taxes
Summary
Strategies for building wealth and avoiding excessive taxation from one of the most original finance thinkers of our time. Top 10 Ways to Avoid Taxes will teach you what the top 1 percent know about money and the tools they use to grow, protect, and pass that wealth to their heirs tax free.
©2018 Mark J. Quann (P)2020 Mark J. Quann
Braddock's Defeat
Summary
On July 9, 1755, British and colonial troops under the command of General Edward Braddock suffered a crushing defeat to French and Native American enemy forces in Ohio Country. Known as the Battle of the Monongahela, the loss altered the trajectory of the Seven Years' War in America, escalating the fighting and shifting the balance of power. An unprecedented rout of a modern and powerful British army by a predominantly Indian force, Monongahela shocked the colonial world - and planted the first seeds of an independent American consciousness. The culmination of a failed attempt to capture Fort Duquesne from the French, Braddock's Defeat was a pivotal moment in American and world history. While the defeat is often blamed on blundering and arrogance on the part of General Braddock - who was wounded in battle and died the next day - David Preston's gripping new work argues that such a claim diminishes the victory that Indian and French forces won by their superior discipline and leadership. In fact the French Canadian officer Captain Beaujeu had greater tactical skill, reconnaissance, and execution, and his Indian allies were the most effective and disciplined troops on the field. Preston also explores the long shadow cast by Braddock's defeat over the 18th century and the American Revolution two decades later. The campaign had been an awakening to empire for many British Americans, spawning ideas of American identity and anticipating many of the political and social divisions that would erupt with the outbreak of the revolution. Braddock's Defeat was the defining generational experience for many British and American officers, including Thomas Gage, Horatio Gates, and, perhaps most significantly, George Washington. A rich battle history driven by a gripping narrative and an abundance of new evidence, Braddock's Defeat presents the fullest account yet of this defining moment in early American history.
©2015 David L. Preston (P)2015 Audible, Inc.