Ralph Lister has narrated 153 audiobooks on Listento.it by 117 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 6,747 ratings. The most-rated is The Power of Vulnerability.
Time to Start Thinking
Summary
In Time to Start Thinking, Edward Luce offers an incisive and highly engaging account of America’s economic and geopolitical decline. The Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times for the last four years, Luce has traveled the country interviewing public officials like Lawrence Summers and Senator Don Riegle, business leaders including Jeff Immelt and Bill Gates, as well as teachers, health care workers, and scientists. His interviews are candid and revealing: former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen told Luce about the catch-22–like situation of American defense spending: “We are borrowing money from China to build weapons to face down China.” Mullen is just one of many voices who are united in their belief that America must evolve or face serious consequences. Luce’s research, analysis, and reporting covers areas from education to health care to politics to business and innovation. Luce frames the issues historically, comparing America today to Britain in the early-twentieth century, when U.S. inventors developed the light bulb and the internal combustion engine, usurping Britain’s position as the center of research and development, while Germany took the lead in the chemicals and metallurgy industries. As a result, Britain lost its place at the top of the world’s pecking order. Today, the same situation is evolving in America: Chinese and Korean scientists and innovators are becoming increasingly competitive with those in America, and companies like IBM and General Electric now employ more people outside the United States than inside it. In domestic politics, things are also dire: conversation between Republicans and Democrats has all but ceased - Barney Frank calls it “the dialogue of the deaf,” and the once noisy Senate dining room, specifically designed so that members of different parties would be forced to talk to one another, is now empty most lunch hours. No surprise, when the politicians are busy talking to lobbyists and trying to raise campaign funds. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has more than 2,300 different I.T. systems on which it spends more than $10 billion a year and the crippling bureaucracy in the education system leads more than a fifth of new teachers to leave their jobs within three years.
In what may be the smartest book yet on why and how America is broken, Luce offers a critical, nonpartisan analysis of the issues facing America today and a renowned journalist’s report on a country in economic, social, and political crisis.
©2012 Edward Luce (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
Secular Buddhism
Summary
An essential collection of Stephen Batchelor's most probing and important work on secular Buddhism As the practice of mindfulness permeates mainstream western culture, more and more people are engaging in a traditional form of Buddhist meditation. However, many of these people have little interest in the religious aspects of Buddhism, and the practice occurs within secular contexts such as hospitals, schools, and the workplace. Is it possible to recover from the Buddhist teachings a vision of human flourishing that is secular rather than religious without compromising the integrity of the tradition? Is there an ethical framework that can underpin and contextualize these practices in a rapidly changing world? In this collected volume of Stephen Batchelor's writings on these themes, he explores the complex implications of Buddhism's secularization. Ranging widely - from reincarnation, religious belief, and agnosticism to the role of the arts in Buddhist practice - he offers a detailed description of contemporary Buddhism and its attempt to find a voice in the modern world.
©2017 Stephen Batchelor (P)2017 Audible, Inc.
A History of the Bible
Summary
A literary history of our most influential book of all time, by an Oxford scholar and Anglican priest. In our culture, the Bible is monolithic: It is a collection of books that has been unchanged and unchallenged since the earliest days of the Christian church. The idea of the Bible as "Holy Scripture", a non-negotiable authority straight from God, has prevailed in Western society for some time. And while it provides a firm foundation for centuries of Christian teaching, it denies the depth, variety, and richness of this fascinating text. In A History of the Bible, John Barton argues that the Bible is not a prescription to a complete, fixed religious system, but rather a product of a long and intriguing process, which has inspired Judaism and Christianity, but still does not describe the whole of either religion. Barton shows how the Bible is indeed an important source of religious insight for Jews and Christians alike, yet argues that it must be listened to in its historical context - from its beginnings in myth and folklore to its many interpretations throughout the centuries. It is a book full of narratives, laws, proverbs, prophecies, poems, and letters, each with their own character and origin stories. Barton explains how and by whom these disparate pieces were written, how they were canonized (and which ones weren't), and how they were assembled, disseminated, and interpreted around the world - and, importantly, to what effect. Ultimately, A History of the Bible argues that a thorough understanding of the history and context of its writing encourages religious communities to move away from the Bible's literal wording - which is impossible to determine - and focus instead on the broader meanings of scripture.
©2019 John Barton (P)2019 Penguin Audio
Arabs
Summary
A riveting, comprehensive history of the Arab peoples and tribes that explores the role of language as a cultural touchstone This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia. Mackintosh-Smith reveals how linguistic developments - from pre-Islamic poetry to the growth of script, Muhammad's use of writing, and the later problems of printing Arabic - have helped and hindered the progress of Arab history, and investigates how, even in today's politically fractured post-Arab Spring environment, Arabic itself is still a source of unity and disunity.
©2019 Tim Mackintosh-Smith (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Last Days of New Paris
Summary
A thriller of war that never was - of survival in an impossible city - of surreal cataclysm. In The Last Days of New Paris, China Miéville entwines true historical events and people with his daring, uniquely imaginative brand of fiction, reconfiguring history and art into something new. "Beauty will be convulsive...." It's 1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille, American engineer - and occult disciple - Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group, including surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats, exiled revolutionaries, and avant-garde artists, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares, changing the war and the world forever. It's 1950. A lone surrealist fighter, Thibaut, walks a new, hallucinogenic Paris, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts - and by the forces of hell. To escape the city, he must join forces with Sam, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins, and make common cause with a powerful, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse. But Sam is being hunted. And new secrets will emerge that will test all their loyalties - to each other, to Paris old and new, and to reality itself. Praise for The Last Days of New Paris “Beautiful, stunningly realized... [The Last Days of New Paris] is a brief vacation in alien latitudes, a midnight layover in an imaginary place.” (NPR) “A thoughtful, highbrow novella... Miéville’s self-assured style offers up a strong sense of humanity, while the strange Surrealist monsters give Last Days a fun and complementary mad-science component.” (USA Today) “[A] testament to the necessary, progressive power of art... Both moving and disturbingly timely.” (Newsday) “A novel both unhinged and utterly compelling, a kind of guerrilla warfare waged by art itself, combining both meticulous historical research and Miéville’s unparalleled inventiveness.” (Chicago Tribune) “An extraordinarily original work that foregrounds Mieville’s considerable ingenuity and innovation.” (The Millions) “Hauntingly poetic, strangely beautiful, and erratically intense.” (San Francisco Book Review) “Dazzling...quite a feat.” (The Guardian)
©2016 China Miéville (P)2016 Random House Audio
The Forgiven
Summary
In this stylish, haunting novel, journalist and novelist Lawrence Osborne explores the reverberations of a random accident on the lives of Moroccan Muslims and Western visitors who converge on a luxurious desert villa for a decadent weekend-long party. David and Jo Henniger, a doctor and children's book author, in search of an escape from their less-than-happy lives in London, accept the invitation of their old friends Richard and Dally to attend their annual bacchanal at their home deep in the Moroccan desert - a ksar they have acquired and renovated into a luxurious retreat. On the way, the Hennigers stop for lunch, and the bad-tempered David can't resist consuming most of a bottle of wine. Back on the road, darkness has descended, David is groggy, and the directions to the ksar are vague. Suddenly, two young men spring from the roadside, apparently attempting to interest passing drivers in the fossils they have for sale. Panicked, David swerves toward the two, leaving one dead on the road and the other running into the hills. At the ksar, the festivities have begun: Richard and Dally’s international friends sit down to a lavish dinner prepared and served by a large staff of Moroccans. As the night progresses and the debauchery escalates, the Moroccans increasingly view the revelers as the godless "infidels" they are. When David and Jo show up late with the dead body of the young man in their car, word spreads among the locals that David has committed an unforgivable act. Thus the stage is set for a weekend during which David and Jo must come to terms with David's misdeed, Jo's longings, and their own deteriorating relationship, and the flamboyant Richard and Dally must attempt to keep their revelers entertained despite growing tension from their staff and the Moroccan Berber father who comes to claim his son's body. With spare, evocative prose, searing eroticism, and a gift for the unexpected, Osborne memorably portrays the privileged guests wrestling with their secrets amid the remoteness and beauty of the desert landscape. He also gradually reveals the jolting backstory of the young man who was killed and leaves David’s fate in the balance as the novel builds to a shattering conclusion. Selected by The Economist as one of the Best Books of the Year 2012. Selected by Library Journal as one of the Year's Best Books 2012. Year's Best Books Chosen by Writers, selected by Lionel Shriver, The Guardian 2012.
©2012, 2013 Lawrence Osborne (P)2019 Random House Audio
The Greenlanders
Summary
Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author Jane Smiley's The Greenlanders is an enthralling novel in the epic tradition of the old Norse sagas. Set in the 14th century in Europe's most farflung outpost, a land of glittering fjords, blasting winds, sun-warmed meadows, and high, dark mountains, The Greenlanders is the story of one family - proud landowner Asgeir Gunnarsson; his daughter Margret, whose willful independence leads her into passionate adultery and exile; and his son Gunnar, whose quest for knowledge is at the compelling center of this unforgettable audiobook. Jane Smiley takes us into this world of farmers, priests, and lawspeakers, of hunts and feasts and long-standing feuds, and by an act of literary magic, makes a remote time, place, and people not only real but dear to us.
©1988 Jane Smiley (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Raiders of Gor
Summary
In this sixth book in the Gorean series, former earthman Tarl Cabot finds himself in the most depraved city that Gor has to offer. Port Kar is a city of robbers, brigands and men without allegiance to any cause or kingdom where the weak are quickly consumed by the strong. However, Tarl Cabot is able to flourish in the cutthroat environment of the city, for he is a powerful Tarnsman, used to having his way. He finds that there is much to learn in Port Kar, where the people are celebrated for their skill of training their voluptuous slaves into utter obedience.
©2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.; 1973 John Norman
Basil of Baker Street
Summary
Baker Street mice - beware! So far the twins are safe. They'll stay that way if you do what we say. We've decided to make your Baker Street cellar the headquarters for our gang. Everybody must be out in 48 hours. It's Basil's job to move you all out, just the way he moved you in. Better make it fast! And leave the furniture - we need it. This is the only warning you'll get. And listen - if you don't follow our orders, you'll never set eyes on those twins again!
©2017 Aladdin (P)2017 Oasis Audio
Beasts of Gor
Summary
In this, the 12th book in the famous Gor series, the fight for survival on the primitive, Earthlike world, Gor, continues with a ferocity that matches the rest of the series. On Gor, there are three different kinds of beings that are labeled beasts: There are the Kurii, a monster alien race that is preparing to invade Gor from space; the Gorean warriors, who fight with viciousness almost primitive in its blood lust' and then there are the slave girls of Gor, lowly beasts for men to do with as they see fit, be it as objects of labor or desire. Now all three come together as the Kurii fight to take over Gor with its first beachhead on the planet's polar ice cap. As all three kinds of beasts struggle together, an incredible adventure is told, one that begins in lands of burning heat and ends up in the bitter cold of the polar north among the savage red hunters of the polar ice pack.
©1978 John Norman (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
The Silent Champions: Publisher's Pack
Summary
Burdened with legend. Hardened by battle scars. Hellbent on bloody revenge. Shields in Shadow, book one: As the son of a famous general, Aravon is proud to captain his own company against his people's enemy. But the experienced veteran’s march toward glory dissolves into pain as ruthless barbarians massacre every last one of his soldiers. Burning for vengeance, he leaps at the chance to spearhead a specially trained company and pay back his tragic defeat with blood. Desperate to not repeat his tragic past, Aravon trains his new warriors relentlessly. But the captain fears that all the tactical drills in the world may not matter when they’re forced to defend a helpless village against overwhelming odds. As his quick raids sow chaos amongst the enemy, the bloodthirsty savages threaten to make Aravon's nightmarish history repeat itself... Can the captain take command of his fighting spirit before the kingdom falls to barbarous invaders? Battle for Peace, book two: Captain Aravon fights to honor and avenge those who died under his command. Groomed for battle by his famous father, he’s proud to stand alongside his six special-ops officers against impossible odds. But as enemy forces surround his starving countrymen, a spy within his own ranks could turn Aravon’s mission into his final downfall. Still scrambling to root out the traitor, he must recruit a rival warrior clan to join forces against the barbarian invaders. But when the infiltrator sabotages his plan of attack, the beleaguered captain fears his war-weary legionnaires will fall in another bloody massacre. Outnumbered and under full assault, will Aravon taste vengeance or suffer crushing defeat? The Silent Champions: Publisher's Pack contains the first two books in the action-packed Silent Champions military fantasy series. If you like square-jawed heroes, well-oiled military action, and epic world-building, then you’ll love Andy Peloquin’s gripping series.
©2019 Andy Peloquin (P)2020 Podium Audio
The Silence
Summary
In the darkness of a vast cave system, cut off from the world for millennia, blind creatures hunt by sound. Then there is light, there are voices, and they feed. Swarming from their prison, they multiply and thrive. To scream, even to whisper, is to summon death. Deaf for many years, Ally knows how to live in silence. Now, it is her family's only chance of survival. They must leave their home, shun others, and find a remote haven where they can sit out the plague. But will it ever end? And what kind of world will be left?
©2015 Tim Lebbon (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Addison Cooke and the Treasure of the Incas
Summary
The Goonies meets Indiana Jones and James Patterson's Treasure Hunters in this funny, action-filled adventure series! Twelve-year-old Addison Cooke just wishes something exciting would happen to him. His aunt and uncle, both world-famous researchers, travel to the ends of the earth searching for hidden treasure, dodging dangerous robbers along the way, while Addison is stuck in school all day. Luckily for Addison, adventure has a way of finding the Cookes. After his uncle unearths the first ancient Incan clue needed to find a vast trove of lost treasure, he is kidnapped by members of a shadowy organization intent on stealing the riches. Addison's uncle is the bandits' key to deciphering the ancient clues and looting the treasure...unless Addison and his friends can outsmart the kidnappers and crack the code first. So it's off to South America, where the excitement, danger, gold, booby traps, and car chases are never-ending! Full of laugh-out-loud moments and nonstop action, and perfect for fans of Indiana Jones or James Patterson's Treasure Hunters series, Addison Cooke and the Treasure of the Incas is sure to strike gold with kid listeners.
©2016 Jonathan W. Stokes (P)2016 Listening Library
The Sea Devil's Eye
Summary
Iakhovas has caused more destruction than any force since the Time of Troubles, but his true objective has been a mystery...until now. When a young sailor's journey is complete, an aging bard's final song is sung, and a malenti priestess faces her most challenging test, the Threat from the Sea concludes in an explosive climax that will set all of Faern reeling.
©2000 Wizards of the Coast LLC (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
I Drink Therefore I Am
Summary
We are familiar with the medical opinion that a daily glass of wine is good for the health and also the rival opinion that any more than a glass or two will set us on the road to ruin. Whether or not good for the body, Scruton argues, wine, drunk in the right frame of mind, is definitely good for the soul. And there is no better accompaniment to wine than philosophy. By thinking with wine, you can learn not only to drink in thoughts but to think in draughts. This good-humoured book offers an antidote to the pretentious clap-trap that is written about wine today and a profound apology for the drink on which civilisation has been founded. In vino veritas.
©2009 Roger Scruton (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Mind Gym
Summary
The international best seller that will help you transform your personal and professional life by changing the way you think. Today, the pressure to achieve is intense. To be at our best, we need our minds working at peak potential. But unless you train it, your mind stays on autopilot, stuck in unhealthy thought patterns that lead to self-sabotaging habits and behaviors. As with your body, you have to exercise your mind to get the most out of it. Sebastian Bailey and Octavius Black, founders of Mind Gym, help you change your mental default settings through a series of workouts; that have been tested and experienced by more than one million people from around the world and from companies such as Google, NBCUniversal, Shell, Pfizer, and PepsiCo. This hands-on guide presents a fitness program for the mind that tackles the most common challenges at work and home: How to adopt a positive mindset How to repair broken relationships How to resolve conflict successfully How to influence others How to minimize stress and gain energy How to be more creative Insightful, proven, and practical, Mind Gym is the essential mental workout that will wake up your mind and help you be your best in life. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2014 The Mind Gym, Inc. (P)2014 HarperCollins Publishers
Witch's Boy
Summary
When Ned and his identical twin brother tumble from their raft into a raging, bewitched river, only Ned survives. Villagers are convinced the wrong boy lived. Sure enough, Ned grows up weak and slow, and stays as much as possible within the safe boundaries of his family's cottage and yard. But when a Bandit King comes to steal the magic that Ned's mother, a witch, is meant to protect, it's Ned who safeguards the magic and summons the strength to protect his family and community. In the meantime, in another kingdom across the forest that borders Ned's village lives Áine, the resourceful and pragmatic daughter of the Bandit King. She is haunted by her mother's last words to her: "The wrong boy will save your life and you will save his." But when Áine and Ned's paths cross, can they trust each other long enough to make their way through the treacherous woods and stop the war about to boil over?
©2014 Kelly Barnhill. Published by arrangement with Algonquin Young Readers, an imprint of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a division of Workman Publishing, Inc. (P)2014 HighBridge Company
A Little History of Poetry
Summary
The Bookseller (UK) Editor's Choice A vital, engaging, and hugely enjoyable guide to poetry, from ancient times to the present, by one of our greatest champions of literature What is poetry? If music is sound organized in a particular way, poetry is a way of organizing language. It is language made special so that it will be remembered and valued. It does not always work - over the centuries countless thousands of poems have been forgotten. This little history is about some that have not. John Carey tells the stories behind the world’s greatest poems, from the oldest surviving one written nearly four thousand years ago to those being written today. Carey looks at poets whose works shape our views of the world, such as Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Yeats. He also looks at more recent poets, like Derek Walcott, Marianne Moore, and Maya Angelou, who have started to question what makes a poem “great” in the first place. This little history shines a light on the richness and variation of the world’s poems - and the elusive quality that makes them all the more enticing.
©2020 John Carey (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
By Force Alone
Summary
A retelling of Arthurian myth for the age of Brexit and Trump, from World Fantasy Award-winner Lavie Tidhar, By Force Alone. Everyone thinks they know the story of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. The fact is they don't know sh*t. Arthur? An over-promoted gangster. Merlin? An eldritch parasite. Excalibur? A shady deal with a watery arms dealer. Britain? A clogged sewer that Rome abandoned just as soon as it could. A savage and cutting epic fantasy, equally poetic and profane, By Force Alone is at once a timely political satire, a magical adventure, and a subversive masterwork. A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Books
©2020 Lavie Tidhar (P)2020 Macmillan Audio
Edges
Summary
From the Edge of Apocalypse: Deception Well is a world on the edge, home to an isolated remnant surviving at the farthest reach of human expansion. All across the frontier, other worlds have succumbed to the relentless attacks of robotic alien warships, while hundreds of light years away, the core of human civilization - those star systems closest to Earth, known as the Hallowed Vasties - have all fallen to ruins. Powerful telescopes can see only dust and debris where once there were orbital mega-structures so huge they eclipsed the light of their parent stars No one knows for sure what caused the Hallowed Vasties to fail, but a hardened adventurer named Urban intends to find out. He has the resources to do it. He commands a captive alien starship fully capable of facing the dangers that lie beyond Deception Well. With a ship's company of explorers and scientists, Urban is embarking on a voyage of rediscovery. They will be the first in centuries to confront the hazards of an inverted frontier as they venture back along the path of human migration. Their goal: to unravel the mystery of the Hallowed Vasties and to discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins.
©2019 Linda Nagata (P)2020 Tantor