Ron Butler has narrated 146 audiobooks on Listento.it by 132 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 3,035 ratings. The most-rated is Kingdom of Ash.
The Wilmington Ten
Summary
In February 1971, racial tension surrounding school desegregation in Wilmington, North Carolina, culminated in four days of violence and skirmishes between white vigilantes and black residents. The turmoil resulted in two deaths, six injuries, more than $500,000 in damage, and the firebombing of a white-owned store before the National Guard restored uneasy peace. Despite glaring irregularities in the subsequent trial, 10 young persons were convicted of arson and conspiracy and then sentenced to a total of 282 years in prison. They became known internationally as the Wilmington Ten. A powerful movement arose within North Carolina and beyond to demand their freedom, and after several witnesses admitted to perjury, a federal appeals court, also citing prosecutorial misconduct, overturned the convictions in 1980. Kenneth Janken narrates the dramatic story of the Ten, connecting their story to a larger arc of Black Power and the transformation of post-civil rights-era political organizing. Grounded in extensive interviews, newly declassified government documents, and archival research, this book thoroughly examines the events of 1971 and the subsequent movement for justice that strongly influenced the wider African American freedom struggle.
©2015 Kenneth Robert Janken (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Sorry for Your Loss
Summary
From Printz Honor winner and Morris Award finalist Jessie Ann Foley comes a comitragic YA novel that will appeal to fans of Jandy Nelson and Jeff Zentner. As the youngest of eight, painfully average Pup Flanagan is used to flying under the radar. He’s barely passing his classes. His lets his longtime crush walk all over him. And he’s in no hurry to decide on a college path. The only person who ever made him think he could be more was his older brother, Patrick. But that was before Patrick died suddenly, leaving Pup with a family who won’t talk about it and acquaintances who just keep saying, “Sorry for your loss.” When Pup excels at a photography assignment he thought he’d bomb, things start to come into focus. His dream girl shows her true colors. An unexpected friend exposes Pup to a whole new world, right under his nose. And the photograph that was supposed to show Pup a way out of his grief ultimately reveals someone else who is still stuck in their own. Someone with a secret regret Pup never could have imagined.
©2019 Jessie Ann Foley (P)2019 HarperAudio
Grand
Summary
National Book Award winner and MacArthur Genius Fellow Charles Johnson reflects on the joys of being a grandparent in this warm, inspiring collection of wisdom and life lessons - the ideal gift for any new parent or grandparent An award-winning novelist, philosopher, essayist, screenwriter, professor, and cartoonist, Charles Johnson has held numerous impressive titles over the course of his incomparable career. Now, for the first time, with his trademark wisdom and philosophical generosity, he turns his attention to his most important role yet: grandparent. In Grand, Johnson shares stories from his life with his six-year-old grandson, Emery, weaving in advice and life lessons that stand the test of time. "Looking at the problems I see in the world around me," Johnson writes, "I realize that there are so many things I want to say to him about the goodness and beauty that life offers. What are the perennial truths that I can impart to Emery that might make his journey through life easier or more rewarding?" Johnson shares these truths and more, offering profound meditations on family, race, freedom and creativity. Joyful, lucid, and deeply comforting, Grand is Johnson at his most accessible and profound, an indispensable compendium for new grandparents and growing grandchildren alike, from one of America’s most revered thinkers.
©2020 Charles Johnson (P)2020 HarperAudio
The Capital of Basketball
Summary
The celebration of Washington, DC basketball is long overdue. The DC metro area stands second to none in its contributions to the game. Countless figures who have had a significant impact on the sport over the years have roots in the region, including E. B. Henderson, the first African American certified to teach public school physical education, and Earl Lloyd, the first African American to take the court in an actual NBA game. The city's Spingarn High School produced two players - Elgin Baylor and Dave Bing - recognized among the NBA’s 50 greatest at the league’s 50th anniversary celebration. No other high school in the country can make that claim. These figures and many others are chronicled in this book, the first-ever comprehensive look at the great high school players, teams, and coaches in the DC metropolitan area. Based on more than 150 interviews, The Capital of Basketball is first and foremost a book about basketball. But in discussing the trends and evolution of the game, McNamara also uncovers the turmoil in the lives of the players and area residents as they dealt with prejudice, educational inequities, politics, and the ways the area has changed through the years.
©2019 Andrea Chamblee (P)2019 Andrea Chamblee
The Groundings with My Brothers
Summary
"I have sat on a little oil drum, rusty and in the midst of garbage, and some black brothers and I have grounded together." (Walter Rodney) In his short life, the Guyanese intellectual Walter Rodney emerged as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the anticolonial revolution, leading movements in North America, South America, the African continent, and the Caribbean. In each locale, Rodney found himself a lightning rod for working class Black Power. His deportation catalyzed 20th century Jamaica's most significant rebellion, the 1968 Rodney riots, and his scholarship trained a generation how to think politics at an international scale. In 1980, shortly after founding of the Working People's Alliance in Guyana, the 38-year-old Rodney would be assassinated. In this classic work published in the heady days of international Black power, Groundings with My Brothers details the global circulation of emancipatory ideas, but also offers first-hand reports of Rodney's mass movement organizing. Introduced and contextualized by leading Caribbean scholar-activists, this updated edition brings Rodney's legacy to a new generation of radicals.
©1969 Walter A. Rodney; copyright 2019 by Walter Rodney Foundation; Contributions copyright 2019 by Contributors (P)2020 Tantor
Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library
Summary
Amid the scholars, poets, authors, and artists of the Harlem Renaissance stood an Afro-Puerto Rican named Arturo Schomburg. This law clerk's life's passion was to collect books, letters, music, and art from Africa and the African diaspora and to bring to light the achievements of people of African descent throughout the ages. When Schomburg's collection became so big that it began to overflow his house (and his wife threatened to mutiny), he turned to the New York Public Library, where he created and curated a collection that was the cornerstone of a new Negro Division. A century later, his groundbreaking collection, known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, has become a beacon to scholars all over the world.
©2017 Carole Boston Weatherford (P)2017 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Cane (AmazonClassics Edition)
Summary
A striking mosaic of prose, poetry, and dramatic dialogue, Jean Toomer’s Cane has come to be considered a masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance. Structured as a series of vignettes ripe with longing, passion, violence, and revenge, the haunting novel gives a powerful voice to the interior lives of African Americans in the rural South and urban North.
Championed for its unsparing honesty and psychological insight by such luminaries as Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou, Cane shines as a beacon to generations of African-American writers who followed.
Revised edition: Previously published as Cane, this edition of Cane (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.
Public Domain (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Bachelor Unbound
Summary
Is an abduction gone wrong... their chance for love? International jeweler and sought-after bachelor Zion Blackstone felt an instant connection to Celine Michaels when he designed a unique gemstone for her. When she shows up at his house in Rome claiming kidnappers are after her, he offers the Hollywood producer’s daughter his protection...and passion. But a shocking revelation could upend his once-in-a-lifetime chance with Celine....
©2018 Brenda Streater Jackson (P)2018 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited
Size Zero
Summary
"A somber, disturbing mystery fused with a scathing look at the fashion industry. Mangin writes in a confident, razor-edged style." (Kirkus Reviews) Condom dresses and space helmets have debuted on fashion runways. A dead body becomes the trend when a coat made of human skin saunters down fashion’s biggest stage. The body is identified as Annabelle Leigh, the teenager who famously disappeared over a decade ago from her boyfriend’s New York City mansion. This new evidence casts suspicion back on the former boyfriend Cecil LeClaire. Now a monk, he is forced to return to his dark and absurd childhood home to clear his name. He teams up with Ava Germaine, a renegade ex-model. And together, they investigate the depraved and lawless modeling industry behind Cecil’s family fortune. They find erotic canes, pet rats living in crystal castles, and dresses made of crushed butterfly wings. But Cecil finds more truth in the luxury goods than in the people themselves. Everyone he meets seems to be wearing a person suit. Terrified of showing their true selves, the glitterati put on flamboyant public personas to make money and friends. Can Cecil find truth in a world built on lies? In high-fashion modeling, selling bodies is organized crime.
©2020 Visage Media LLC (P)2020 Visage Media LLC
Sauerkraut
Summary
A new quirky-funny book from the author of Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer about a boy whose plans for the summer go sideways when the ghost of his great-great-grandmother demands his attention. HD Schenk is a maker - an inventor, someone who builds cool stuff. He's got a plan for the summer: He'll build his own computer and enter it in the county fair. Then everyone will know who he is and what he can do. To earn enough money for the parts he'll need, HD has promised to clear out his uncle's overflowing basement. No big deal, right? But there's more in that basement than HD bargained for. On his first trip down there, a voice only he can hear starts talking to him. About...sauerkraut? Who knew the ghost of his great-great-grandmother was haunting an old pickling crock? She's got a grand plan, too. She wants HD to help make her famous recipe for sauerkraut and enter it in the county fair so that she can be declared pickle queen. After some initial shock, HD is willing enough to help. This ghost is family, after all. But only HD can really see and hear his Oma, which is going to make it hard for her to win on her own.... Kelly Jones spins a wonderfully goofy ghost tale that celebrates creative problem solving, family ties, and makers of every variety.
©2019 Kelly Jones (P)2019 Listening Library
Yesterday Is History
Summary
Weeks ago, Andre Cobb received a much-needed liver transplant. He's ready for his life to finally begin, until one night, when he passes out and wakes up somewhere totally unexpected - in 1969, where he connects with a magnetic boy named Michael. And then, just as suddenly as he arrived, he slips back to present-day Boston, where the family of his donor is waiting to explain that his new liver came with a side effect - the ability to time travel. And they've tasked their youngest son, Blake, with teaching Andre how to use his unexpected new gift. Andre splits his time bouncing between the past and future - between Michael and Blake. Michael is everything Andre wishes he could be, and Blake, still reeling from the death of his brother, Andre's donor, keeps him at arm's length despite their obvious attraction to each other. Torn between two boys, one in the past and one in the present, Andre has to figure out where he belongs - and more importantly who he wants to be - before the consequences of jumping in time catch up to him and change his future for good.
©2021 Kosoko Jackson (P)2021 Dreamscape Media, LLC
One Tough Out
Summary
For 19 seasons, Rod Carew was a maestro in the batter's box. Uncoiling from his crouched stance, he seemed to guide the ball wherever he wanted on the way to a whopping seven batting titles and a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame. If only everything in life had been as easy as he made hitting look. In One Tough Out: Fighting Off Life's Curveballs, Carew reflects on the highlights, anecdotes, and friendships from his outstanding career, describing the abuse, poverty, and racism he overcame to even reach the majors. In conversational, confessional prose, he takes listeners through the challenges he's conquered in the second half of his life, from burying his youngest daughter to surviving several near-fatal bouts with heart disease. He also details the remarkable reason he's alive today: the heart transplant he received from Konrad Reuland, a 29-year-old NFL player he'd met years before. Carew explains how that astonishing connection was revealed and the unique bond he and his wife, Rhonda, have since forged with his donor's family. An important thread running through this mosaic of Carew's life is his faith. He illustrates how his mother instilled those beliefs during their darkest days and how conversations with God helped him fight off every curveball life has thrown his way.
©2020 Rod Carew and Jaime Aron (P)2020 Recorded Books
Follow Your Heart
Summary
"Brenda Jackson writes romance that sizzles and characters you fall in love with." (Lori Foster, New York Times best-selling author) Some things shouldn’t be left to chance.... Victoria Madaris is next on her great-grandmother’s matchmaking list - which suits her just fine. She’s laser-focused on her career and doesn’t have time to concentrate on her love life, too. Knowing that Mama Laverne is vetting unsuitable candidates - like rising US Senator Roman Malone - makes things easy. But Roman unexpectedly ticks all of Victoria’s boxes. The longtime family friend is outrageously sexy, and every time they meet, their chemistry crackles. Being a journalist, though, Victoria just doesn’t trust politicians. Plus, her matchmaker’s expert opinion keeps pointing to the charming and handsome Tanner Jamison. And everybody knows, Mama Laverne is never wrong. Suddenly, Victoria sees Tanner everywhere - as if by fate - but she doesn’t feel any attraction. Meanwhile, the more Victoria gets to know Roman, the harder it is to resist him. Her head is saying play it safe, but is her heart strong enough to go against her better judgment…and Mama Laverne’s?
©2021 Brenda Jackson (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers
High-Risers
Summary
Joining the ranks of Evicted, The Warmth of Other Sons, and classic works of literary nonfiction by Alex Kotlowitz and J. Anthony Lukas, High-Risers braids personal narratives, city politics, and national history to tell the timely and epic story of Chicago's Cabrini-Green, America's most iconic public housing project. Built in the 1940s atop an infamous Italian slum, Cabrini-Green grew to 23 towers and a population of 20,000 - all of it packed onto just 70 acres a few blocks from Chicago's ritzy Gold Coast. Cabrini-Green became synonymous with crime, squalor, and the failure of government. For the many who lived there, it was also a much-needed resource - it was home. By 2011, every high-rise had been razed, the island of black poverty engulfed by the white affluence around it, the families dispersed. In this novelistic and eye-opening narrative, Ben Austen tells the story of America's public housing experiment and the changing fortunes of American cities. It is an account told movingly though the lives of residents who struggled to make a home for their families as powerful forces converged to accelerate the housing complex's demise. Beautifully written, rich in detail, and full of moving portraits, High-Risers is a sweeping exploration of race, class, popular culture, and politics in modern America that brilliantly considers what went wrong in our nation's effort to provide affordable housing to the poor - and what we can learn from those mistakes.
©2018 Ben Austen (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers
Stages
Summary
Albert Poland, legendary Broadway and Off-Broadway producer and general manager, presents Stages: A Theater Memoir. The Shows Little Shop of Horrors, The Grapes of Wrath, Long Day's Journey into Night, Glengarry Glen Ross, As Is, The Boy from Oz, Steel Magnolias, One Mo' Time, The Fantasticks, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, The Neon Woman, A Lie of the Mind, Let My People Come, Marry Me a Little, The Waverly Gallery, and many others! The Stars Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Hugh Jackman, Vanessa Redgrave, Uta Hagen, Truman Capote, Sam Shepard, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charles Busch, Charles Pierce, Yoko Ono, Mike Nichols, Arthur Miller, David Mamet, Tommy Tune, Liza Minnelli, Quentin Tarantino, Steve Martin, Lotte Lenya, Divine, and many more.
©2019 Albert Poland (P)2021 Tantor
The Hustle of Kim Foxx (The Marshall Project)
Summary
After the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald by a white police officer, Chicagoans demanded change. Can a new state’s attorney, the first black woman to hold the position, bring real reform to a broken system? With a brick on her desk from the Cabrini-Green housing project where she spent her childhood, Kim Foxx must adapt her hard-won ideals to the realities of criminal justice in Chicago. In this intimate narrative by award-winning author Steve Bogira, Foxx reveals: “My mother taught me how to be a hustler. Hustle in the sense of work hard, grind - find a way out of no way.” Steve Bogira’s The Hustle of Kim Foxx is part of Southside, a collection of five true stories about racism and reform, crime and corruption, justice and injustice in Chicago - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning team at The Marshall Project. Each story can be listened to in a single sitting.
©2018 Steve Bogira (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
The Gun King (The Marshall Project)
Summary
When a middle-class kid from the suburbs was caught using Facebook to distribute firearms bought legally at Indiana gun shows to notorious gangsters across the border - was he a kingpin or a scapegoat? David Lewisbey received perhaps the harshest sentence ever in a gun-trafficking trial. A college student from the suburban outskirts of Chicago, he allegedly embodied the enterprising swagger of his favorite rap lyrics, moving weapons for stacks of cash. John H. Richardson tours Chicago’s gun-soaked South Side with Lewisbey’s clientele and meets with the “Big Man” himself to unpack the truth. John H. Richardson’s The Gun King is part of Southside, a collection of five true stories about racism and reform, crime and corruption, justice and injustice in Chicago - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning team at The Marshall Project. Each story can be listened to in a single sitting.
©2018 John H. Richardson. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
A Grain of Wheat
Summary
Set in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952-1960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested.
©1967, 1986 Ngugi wa Thiong’o (P)2019 Tantor
Washington and Hamilton
Summary
In the wake of the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers faced a daunting task: overcome their competing visions to build a new nation, the likes of which the world had never seen. Washington and Hamilton chronicles the unlikely collaboration between two conflicting characters working together to protect their hard-won freedoms. Yet while Washington and Hamilton's different personalities often led to fruitful collaboration, their conflicting ideals also tested the boundaries of their relationship - and threatened the future of the new republic. From the rumblings of the American Revolution through the fractious Constitutional Convention and America's turbulent first years, this captivating history reveals the stunning impact of this unlikely duo that set the United States on the path to becoming a superpower.
©2015 Stephen F. Knott and Tony Williams (P)2016 Dreamscape Media, LLC
Agile Conversations
Summary
A successful digital transformation must start with a conversational transformation. Today, software organizations are transforming the way work gets done through practices like Agile, Lean, and DevOps. But as commonly implemented as these methods are, many transformations still fail, largely because the organization misses a critical step: transforming their culture and the way people communicate. Agile Conversations brings a practical, step-by-step guide to using the human power of conversation to build effective, high-performing teams to achieve truly agile results. Consultants Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick show listeners how to utilize the five conversations to help teams build trust, alleviate fear, answer the “whys,” define commitments, and hold everyone accountable. These five conversations give teams everything they need to reach peak performance, and they are exactly what’s missing from too many teams today. Stop focusing on processes and practices that leave your organization stuck with culture-less rituals. Instead, unleash the unique human power of conversation. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2020 Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick (P)2020 Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick