Robert Whitfield has narrated 34 audiobooks on Listento.it by 18 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 85 ratings. The most-rated is Six Days of War.
Six Days of War
Summary
In Israel and the West, it is called the Six Day War. In the Arab world, it is known as the June War or, simply, as "the Setback". Never has a conflict so short, unforeseen, and largely unwanted by both sides so transformed the world. The Yom Kippur War, the war in Lebanon, the Camp David accords, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the intifada, and the rise of Palestinian terror are all part of the outcome of those six days of intense Arab-Israeli fighting in the summer of 1967. Michael B. Oren spotlights all the participants: Arab, Israeli, Soviet, and American, as well as all the world leaders involved in this earth-shaking clash that transformed the world.
©2002 Michael B. Oren (P)2003 Blackstone Audiobooks
The Great Escape
Summary
It was a split-second operation as delicate and as deadly as a time bomb. It demanded the concentrated devotion and vigilance of more than six hundred men for every hour, every day, and every night for more than a year. With only their bare hands and crude homemade tools, they sank shafts, built underground railroads, forged passports, drew maps, faked weapons, and tailored German clothes. They developed a fantastic security system to protect themselves from the Germans who tenaciously prowled the compounds. And against all odds, they pulled off a daring mass escape from a German POW camp.
©1978 Paul Brickhill (P)1997 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
![Cover art for The Idiot [Blackstone]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41XO98tJ7HL._SL500_.jpg)
The Idiot [Blackstone]
Summary
Despite the harsh circumstances besetting his own life - abject poverty, incessant gambling, and the death of his firstborn child - Dostoevsky produced a second masterpiece, The Idiot, just two years after completing Crime and Punishment. In it, a saintly man, Prince Myshkin, is thrust into the heart of a society more concerned with wealth, power, and sexual conquest than the ideals of Christianity. Myshkin soon finds himself at the center of a violent love triangle in which a notorious woman and a beautiful young girl become rivals for his affections. Extortion, scandal, and murder follow, testing the wreckage left by human misery to find "man in man."
©2000 Blackstone Audiobooks. Originally published in 1880 in Russia.
God's Smuggler
Summary
As a boy, he dreamed of being an undercover spy behind enemy lines. As a man, he found himself undercover for God. Brother Andrew was his name, and for decades, his life story has awed and inspired millions. This best-selling memoir recounts the incredible efforts of the young Dutch factory worker to transport Bibles across closed borders, and the miraculous ways in which God provided for him every step of the way. Told it was impossible to minister behind the Iron Curtain, Andrew knew that nothing was too hard for God. "Lord," he prayed, "in my luggage I have Scripture I want to take to Your children. When You were on earth, You made blind eyes see. Now, I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see those things You do not want them to see." And they never did.
©1967 Brother Andrew with John and Elizabeth Sherrill (P)1998 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
The Question of God
Summary
Renowned psychiatrist and educator Armand Nicholi here presents a fascinating comparison of the beliefs of Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis. For all the variety of specific religious beliefs, there are fundamentally only two kinds of people: believers and nonbelievers. In the 20th century, no spokesman was more prominent for nonbelief than Sigmund Freud, and no one argued for belief more successfully than C. S. Lewis. From pain and suffering to love and sex, from God to morality, Lewis and Freud carefully argued opposing positions and even considered the chief objections to their positions. Based on Nicholi’s years of studying both men, including wide access to Freud’s letters, this debate on the greatest of subjects strikes at the deepest chords in our souls.
©2002 Armand Nicholi (P)2002 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Spinoza in 90 Minutes
Summary
Spinoza's brilliant metaphysical system was derived neither from reality nor experience. Starting from basic assumptions, with a series of geometric proofs he built a universe which was also God, one and the same thing, the classic example of pantheism. Although his system seems an oddity today, Spinoza's conclusions are deeply in accord with modern thought, from science (the holistic ethics of today's ecologists) to politics (the idea that the state exists to protect the individual). Both Spinoza's system and conclusions have compelling beauty unequaled in the history of philosophy. In Spinoza in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Spinoza's life and ideas, and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Spinoza's work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Spinoza within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.
©1998 Paul Strathern (P)2004 Blackstone Audiobooks
Gormenghast
Summary
In Volume 2 of the classic Gormenghast Trilogy, a doomed lord, an emergent hero, and an array of bizarre creatures haunt the world of Gormenghast Castle. This trilogy, along with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, reigns as one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. At the center of everything is the 77th Earl, Titus Groan, who stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle and its kingdom. In this second volume, Titus comes of age within the walls of Gormenghast Castle and discovers various family intrigues. His twin aunts, Cora and Clarice, have been imprisoned in their own apartments, believing that they alone among the castle inhabitants were free of a hideous disease referred to as "Weasel plague." Titus has discovered secret hiding places in abandoned parts of the castle from which he can watch and learn, unobserved: for he has been "exiled" to grow up with the common children until the age of 15. And so, not feeling connected to his future responsibilities, Titus drifts back and forth between the complicated social world he will grow up to govern, and a world of fantasy and daydream.
©2000 Mervyn Peake (P)2000 Blackstone Audiobooks
Titus Alone
Summary
In Volume 3 of the classic Gormenghast Trilogy, a doomed lord, an emergent hero, and an array of bizarre creatures haunt the world of Gormenghast Castle. This trilogy, along with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, reigns as one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. At the center of everything is the 77th Earl, Titus Groan, who stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle and its kingdom. In this third volume, Titus turns against the iron discipline of Gormenghast's ritual and sets forth on an uncertain quest - to find himself. His pilgrimage leads to encounters with mysteriously omnipotent, ruthless police, and a battle to the death with Veil, a gaunt ogre with a body like whips and a face that moves "like the shiftings of the gray slime of the pit". Titus, in his quest for independence from his legacy, despite the fantastical trappings of his odyssey, captures successfully the humanistic conception of contemporary man.
©1967, 1968 Mervyn Peake (P)2000 Blackstone Audiobooks
The Children's Homer
Summary
This reissue of the 1919 classic combines the immortal stories from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into one glorious saga of heroism and magical adventure. Beloved by generations, Padraic Colum's masterful retelling of these epic adventures is remarkably fresh, consistently spellbinding, and unmatched for its richness and poetry. It carries a new generation of young readers to ancient Greece with Odysseus and Achilles who, guided by the gods, seek vengeance against the Trojans, and follows Odysseus on his perilous journey, through the land of the Cyclopes, past Circe the Enchantress, the terrible Charybdis and the six-headed serpent Scylla.
(P)2000 Blackstone Audiobooks
Descartes in 90 Minutes
Summary
Rene Descartes spent most of his childhood in solitude, a situation that also came to characterize his adult life. Fortunately, these countless lonely hours helped Descartes produce the declaration that changed all philosophy: "I think, therefore I am." Eventually convincing himself to doubt and disregard sensory knowledge, Descartes found he could prove his existence through his thoughts. This internal information, he believed, was the true reality and external forces were hopelessly deceiving. In Descartes in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Descartes' life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world.
©1996 Paul Strathern (P)2003 Blackstone Audiobooks
Kant in 90 Minutes
Summary
Immanuel Kant taught and wrote prolifically about physical geography yet never traveled further than forty miles from his home in Kvnigsberg. How appropriate it is then that in his philosophy he should deny that all knowledge was derived from experience. Kant's aim was to restore metaphysics. He insisted that all experience must conform to knowledge. According to Kant, space and time are subjective; along with various "categories," they help us to see the phenomena of the world-though never its true reality. In Kant in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Kant's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world.
©1996 Paul Strathern (P)2003 Blackstone Audiobooks
Socrates in 90 Minutes
Summary
Just a century after it had begun, philosophy entered its greatest age with the appearance of Socrates, who spent so much of his time talking about philosophy on the streets of Athens that he never got around to writing anything down. His method of aggressive questioning, called dialectic, was the forerunner of logic; he used it to cut through the twaddle of his adversaries and arrive at the truth. Rather than questioning the world, he believed, we would be better off questioning ourselves. Socrates placed philosophy on the sound basis of reason. He saw the world as not accessible to our senses, only to thought. Finally, charged with impiety and the corruption of youth, he was tried and sentenced to death, and ended his life by drinking the judicial hemlock. In Socrates in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Socrates' life and ideas, and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Socrates' work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Socrates within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.
©1997 Paul Strathern (P)2005 Blackstone Audiobooks
Kierkegaard in 90 Minutes
Summary
Kierkegaard wasn't really a philosopher in the academic sense. Yet he produced what many people expect of philosophy. He didn't write about the world, he wrote about life, about how we live and how we choose to live. His subject was the individual and his or her existence, the "existing being." In Kierkegaard's view, this purely subjective entity lay beyond the reach of reason, logic, philosophical systems, theology, or even "the pretenses of psychology." Nonetheless, it was the source of all these subjects. The branch of philosophy to which Kierkegaard gave birth has come to be known as existentialism. In Kierkegaard in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Kierkegaard's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world.
©1996 Paul Strathern (P)2003 Blackstone Audiobooks
Greenmantle
Summary
In Greenmantle, Richard Hannay, the South African mining engineer and war hero first introduced in Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps, travels across war-torn Europe in search of a German plot and an Islamic messiah. He is joined by three others: John S. Blenkiron, an American who is determined to battle the Kaiser; Peter Pienaar, an old Boer Scout; and the colorful Sandy Arbuthnot, who is modeled on Lawrence of Arabia. Disguised, they travel through Germany to Constantinople and the Russian border to confront their enemies, the hideous Stumm and the evil beauty Hilda von Einem. Their success or failure could change the outcome of the First World War.
(P)1996 Blackstone Audio Inc.
Plato in 90 Minutes
Summary
In an age when philosophers had scarcely glimpsed the horizons of the mind, a boy named Aristocles decided to forgo his ambitions as a wrestler. Adopting the nickname Plato, he embarked instead on a life in philosophy. In 387 B.C. he founded the Academy, the world's first university, and taught his students that all we see is not reality but merely a reproduction of the true source. And in his famous Republic he described the politics of "the highest form of state." In Plato in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Plato's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world.
©1996 Paul Strathern (P)2003 Blackstone Audiobooks
Sartre in 90 Minutes
Summary
During his lifetime, Jean-Paul Sartre enjoyed unprecedented popularity for a philosopher, due partly to his role as a spokesman for existentialism at the opportune moment, when this set of ideas filled the spiritual gap left amidst the ruins of World War II. Existentialism was a philosophy of action and showed the ultimate freedom of the individual. In Sartre's hands, it became a revolt against European bourgeois values. In Sartre in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Sartre's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. This audiobook also includes selections from Sartre's work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Sartre within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.
©1998 Paul Strathern (P)2007 Blackstone Audio Inc.
Men of Iron
Summary
This is a story of the days of chivalry in England and of young Myles Falworth, son of a lord unjustly disgraced for treason, who was forced to make his fortune as best he might in the days when men seemed made of iron. How he entered the service of a powerful lord, rose to knighthood, defeated his father's old enemy in thrilling combat, and at last won the friendship of the king is told against a background of the dangerous times of the 14th century that makes them live again.
(P)2003 Blackstone Audiobooks
Hegel in 90 Minutes
Summary
With Hegel, philosophy became very difficult indeed. His dialectical method produced the most grandiose metaphysical system known to man. Even Hegel conceded that "only one man understands me, and even he does not." Hegel's system included absolutely everything, but its most vital element was the dialectic of the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This method sprang from Hegel's ambition to overcome the deficiencies of logic and ascended toward mind as the ultimate reality. His view of history as a process of humanity's self-realization ultimately inspired Marx to synthesize his philosophy of dialectical materialism. In Hegel in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Hegel's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world. The book also includes selections from Hegel's work, a brief list of suggested readings for those who wish to delve deeper, and chronologies that place Hegel within his own age and in the broader scheme of philosophy.
©1997 Paul Strathern (P)2005 Blackstone Audiobooks
Nietzsche in 90 Minutes
Summary
With Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy was dangerous not only for philosophers but for everyone. Nietzsche ended up going mad, but his ideas presaged a collective madness that had horrific consequences in Europe in the early 1900s. Though his philosophy is more one of aphorisms and insights than a system, it is brilliant, persuasive, and incisive. His major concept is the will to power, which he saw as the basic impulse for all our acts. Christianity he saw as a subtle perversion of this concept, thus Nietzsche's famous pronouncement, "God is dead." In Nietzsche in 90 Minutes, Paul Strathern offers a concise, expert account of Nietzsche's life and ideas and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world.
©1996 Paul Strathern (P)2003 Blackstone Audiobooks
Absolute Truths
Summary
Charles Ashworth, the bishop of Starbridge, is a man of great accomplishment, confidence, and conviction, with a reputation as a no-nonsense bishop - until his beloved wife dies. Bereavement overwhelming his spiritual equilibrium, his strict morality is quickly revealed to him to be nothing more than a facade. Spiralling downwards, Ashworth knows he must find his way out of the maze of his own psyche. In doing so, he must face the absolute truths - both good and bad - of his past that may be the only keys to his future.
©1994 Leaftree Limited (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.