Tom Perkins has narrated 89 audiobooks on Listento.it by 113 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 705 ratings. The most-rated is Whoever Fights Monsters.
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature
Summary
Abraham H. Maslow was one of the foremost spokespersons of humanistic psychology. In The Farthest Reaches of Human Nature, an extension of his classic Toward a Psychology of Being, Maslow explores the complexities of human nature by using both the empirical methods of science and the aesthetics of philosophical inquiry. With essays on biology, synergy, creativity, cognition, self-actualization, and the hierarchy of needs, this posthumous work is a wide-ranging synthesis of Maslow's inspiring and influential ideas.
©1971 Bertha G. Maslow (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Landlord Entrepreneur
Summary
In his first book, real estate expert Bryan Chavis created the ultimate how-to guide for buying and managing rental properties, with practical, realistic ways to build lasting, long-term wealth. Now, he takes his acclaimed program one step further. The Landlord Entrepreneur shifts the focus from dealing exclusively with residential real estate to building a dynamic property management business. By following the step-by-step instructions in this new guide, anyone can create a fully functioning, professional property management company in only 10 days. With Chavis's modern take on real estate, you will learn the five phases of property management and the skills needed to successfully move through them - as well as the hacks and tricks to build your profitable business from the ground up. Full of smart, practical business advice, The Landlord Entrepreneur is the only guide you need to become a successful property manager in today's real estate market. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2017 Bryan Chavis (P)2017 Tantor
What School Could Be
Summary
Innovation expert Ted Dintersmith took an unprecedented trip across America, visiting all 50 states in a single school year. He originally set out to raise awareness about the urgent need to reimagine education to prepare students for a world marked by innovation, but America's teachers one-upped him. All across the country, he met teachers in ordinary settings doing extraordinary things, creating innovative classrooms where children learn deeply and joyously as they gain purpose, agency, and real knowledge. Together, these new ways of teaching and learning offer a vision of what school could be and a model for transforming schools throughout the United States and beyond. Better yet, teachers and parents don't have to wait for the revolution to come from above. They can readily implement small changes that can make a big difference. America's clock is ticking. Our archaic model of education trains our kids for a world that no longer exists, and accelerating advances in technology are eliminating millions of jobs. But the trailblazing of many American educators gives us reasons for hope. Capturing bold ideas from teachers and classrooms across America, What School Could Be provides a realistic, and profoundly optimistic, roadmap for creating cultures of innovation and real learning in all our schools. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2018 Ted Dintersmith (P)2018 Tantor
The Decline and Rise of Democracy
Summary
Historical accounts of democracy's rise tend to focus on ancient Greece and pre-Renaissance Europe. The Decline and Rise of Democracy draws from global evidence to show that the story is much richer - democratic practices were present in many places at many other times. David Stasavage makes the case that understanding how and where these democracies flourished - and when and why they declined - can provide crucial information not just about the history of governance, but about the ways modern democracies work and where they could manifest in the future. Drawing from examples spanning several millennia, Stasavage first considers why states developed either democratic or autocratic styles of governance and argues that early democracy tended to develop in small places with a weak state and, counterintuitively, simple technologies. When central state institutions (such as a tax bureaucracy) were absent - as in medieval Europe - rulers needed consent from their populace to govern. When central institutions were strong - as in China or the Middle East - consent was less necessary and autocracy more likely. He then explores the transition from early to modern democracy, which first took shape in England and then the United States, illustrating that modern democracy arose as an effort to combine popular control with a strong state over a large territory.
©2020 Princeton University Press (P)2020 Tantor
The Nazi Titanic
Summary
Built in 1927, the German ocean liner Cap Arcona was the greatest ship since the Titanic. When the Nazis seized control, she was stripped down for use as a floating barracks and troop transport. Hitler's minister, Joseph Goebbels, later cast her as a "star" in the epic propaganda film about the sinking of the legendary Titanic. In the Third Reich's final desperate days, when SS Cap Arcona was mistakenly bombed by the British Air Force, concentration camp prisoners packed the ship. Although the British government sealed many documents pertaining to the ship's sinking, Robert P. Watson has unearthed forgotten records and conducted many interviews. The Nazi Titanic is a riveting and astonishing story about an enigmatic ship that played a devastating role in World War II.
©2016 Robert P. Watson (P)2016 Tantor
Disconnected Kids
Summary
Each year an estimated 1.5 million children - one out of every six - are diagnosed with autism, Asperger's syndrome, ADHD, dyslexia, and obsessive compulsive disorder. Dr. Robert Melillo brings a fundamentally new understanding to the cause of these conditions with his revolutionary Brain Balance Program™. It has achieved real, fully documented results that have dramatically improved the quality of life for children and their families in every aspect: behavioral, emotional, academic, and social. Disconnected Kids shows parents how to use this drug-free approach at home, including: Fully customizable exercises that target physical, sensory, and academic performance A behavior modification plan Advice for identifying food sensitivities that play a hidden role A follow-up program that helps to ensure lasting results PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2009 Roelty Corporation (P)2015 Tantor
Warren Buffett's Ground Rules
Summary
Using the letters Warren Buffett wrote to his partners between 1956 and 1970, a veteran financial advisor presents the renowned guru's "ground rules" for investing - guidelines that remain startlingly relevant today. In the 14 years between his time in New York with value-investing guru Benjamin Graham and his start as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett managed Buffett Partnership Limited, his first professional investing partnership. Over the course of that time - a period in which he experienced an unprecedented record of success - Buffett wrote semiannual letters to his small but growing group of partners, sharing his thoughts, approaches, and reflections. Compiled for the first time, and with Buffett's permission, the letters spotlight his contrarian diversification strategy, his almost religious celebration of compounding interest, his preference for conservative rather than conventional decision making, and his goal and tactics for bettering market results by at least 10 percent annually. Demonstrating Buffett's intellectual rigor, they provide a framework to the craft of investing that had not existed before: Buffett built upon the quantitative contributions made by his famous teacher, Benjamin Graham, demonstrating how they could be applied and improved. Jeremy Miller reveals how these letters offer us a rare look into Buffett's mind and offer accessible lessons in control and discipline - effective in bull and bear markets alike and in all types of investing climates - that are the bedrock of his success. Warren Buffett's Ground Rules paints a portrait of the sage as a young investor during a time when he developed the long-term value-oriented strategy that helped him build the foundation of his wealth - rules for success every investor needs today. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2016 Jeremy C. Miller (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers
Counting Backwards
Summary
For many of the 40 million Americans who undergo anesthesia each year, it is a source of great fear and fascination. In Counting Backwards, Dr. Henry Jay Przybylo - an anesthesiologist with more than 30 years of experience - has written an unforgettable account of the routine procedure's daily dramas and fundamental mysteries. Przybylo has administered anesthesia more than 30,000 times in his career - erasing consciousness, denying memory, and immobilizing the body before reversing all of these effects - on newborn babies, screaming toddlers and sullen teenagers, his own son, and even a gorilla. With compassion and candor, he weaves his experiences into intimate stories that explore the nature of consciousness, the politics of pain relief, and the wonder of modern medicine. Through its intense and humane tales of mistakes, near-disasters, life-saving successes, and moments of grace, Counting Backwards shines a light on one of the most fascinating but unexplored corners of the medical world.
©2017 Henry Jay Przybylo, MD (P)2017 Tantor
The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack
Summary
In his new book, The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack, human paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall argues that a long tradition of "human exceptionalism" in paleoanthropology has distorted the picture of human evolution. Drawing partly on his own career - from young scientist in awe of his elders to crotchety elder statesman - Tattersall offers an idiosyncratic look at the competitive world of paleoanthropology, beginning with Charles Darwin 150 years ago, continuing through the Leakey dynasty in Africa, and concluding with the latest astonishing findings in the Caucasus. The book's title refers to the 1856 discovery of a clearly very old skull cap in Germany's Neander Valley. The possessor had a brain as large as a modern human but a heavy, low braincase with a prominent brow ridge. Scientists tried hard to explain away the inconvenient possibility that this was not actually our direct relative. One extreme interpretation suggested that the preserved leg bones were curved by both rickets and by a life on horseback. The pain of the unfortunate individual's affliction had caused him to chronically furrow his brow in agony, leading to the excessive development of bone above the eye sockets. The subsequent history of human evolutionary studies is full of similarly fanciful interpretations.
©2015 Ian Tattersall (P)2015 Tantor
Think Smarter
Summary
Train your brain for better decisions, problem solving, and innovation. Think Smarter: Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills is the comprehensive guide to training your brain to do more for you. Written by a critical-thinking trainer and coach, the book presents a pragmatic set of tools to apply critical-thinking techniques to everyday business issues. Think Smarter is filled with real-world examples that demonstrate how the tools work in action, in addition to dozens of practice exercises applicable across industries and functions. Think Smarter is a versatile resource for individuals, managers, students, and corporate-training programs. Thinking is the foundation of everything you do, but we rely largely on automatic thinking to process information, often resulting in misunderstandings and errors. Shifting over to critical thinking means thinking purposefully using a framework and toolset, enabling thought processes that lead to better decisions, faster problem solving, and creative innovation. Think Smarter provides clear, actionable steps toward improving your critical-thinking skills, plus exercises that clarify complex concepts by putting theory into practice. Features include: A comprehensive critical-thinking framework Over 25 "tools" to help you think more critically Critical-thinking implementation for functions and activities Examples of the real-world use of each tool Learn what questions to ask, how to uncover the real problem to solve, and mistakes to avoid. Recognize assumptions your can rely on versus those without merit, and train your brain to tick through your mental toolbox to arrive at more innovative solutions. Critical thinking is the top skill on the wish list in the business world, and sharpening your ability can have profound affects throughout all facets of life. Think Smarter: Critical Thinking to Improve Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Skills provides a road map to more effective and productive thought. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2014 Mike Kallet (P)2018 Gildan Media
The Silent Service in World War II
Summary
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the US Navy had a total of 111 submarines. However, this fleet was not nearly as impressive as the number suggests. It was mostly a collection of aging boats from the late teens and early twenties, with only a few of the newer, more modern Gato-class boats. Fortunately, with the war in Europe was already two years old and friction with Japan ever increasing, help from what would become known as the Silent Service in the Pacific was on the way: there were 73 of the new fleet submarines under construction. The Silent Service in World War II tells the story of America's intrepid underwater warriors in the words of the men who lived the war in the Pacific against Japan. The enemy had already begun to deploy advanced boats, but the U.S. was soon able to match them. By 1943, the new Gato-class boats were making a difference, carrying the war not just to the Japanese Imperial Navy but to the vital merchant fleet that carried the vast array of materiel needed to keep the land of the Rising Sun afloat. As the war progressed, American success in the Solomons, starting with Guadalcanal, began to constrict the Japanese sea lanes, and operating singly or in wolfpacks, they were able to press their attacks on convoys operating beyond the range of our airpower, making daring forays even into the home waters of Japan itself in the quest for ever more elusive targets. Also taking on Japanese warships, as well as rescuing downed airmen (such as the grateful first President Bush), US submarines made an enormous contribution to our war against Japan.
©2012 Edward Monroe-Jones and Michael Green (P)2018 Tantor
Bush
Summary
George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, almost single-handedly decided to invade Iraq. It was possibly the worst foreign-policy decision ever made by a president. The consequences dominated the Bush administration and still haunt us today. In Bush, Jean Edward Smith demonstrates that it was not Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, or Condoleezza Rice but President Bush himself who took personal control of foreign policy. Bush drew on his deep religious conviction that important foreign-policy decisions were simply a matter of good versus evil. Domestically, he overreacted to 9/11 and endangered Americans' civil liberties. Smith explains that it wasn't until the financial crisis of 2008 that Bush finally accepted expert advice, something that "the Decider", as Bush called himself, had previously been unwilling to do. As a result he authorized decisions that saved the economy from possible collapse, even though some of those decisions violated Bush's own political philosophy.
©2016 Jean Edward Smith (P)2016 Tantor
Dangerous Ground
Summary
In September 2011, M. William Phelps made a bold decision that would change the landscape of reality-based television - and his own life. He asked a convicted serial killer to act as a consultant for his TV series. Under the code name Raven, the murderer shared his insights into the minds of other killers and helped analyze their crimes. As the series became an international sensation, Raven became Phelps' unlikely confidant, ally - and friend. In this deeply personal account, Phelps traces his own family's dark history and takes us into the heart and soul of a serial murderer. He also chronicles the complex relationship he developed with Raven. From questions about morality to Raven's thoughts on the still-unsolved, brutal murder of Phelps' sister-in-law, the author found himself grappling with an unwanted, unexpected, unsettling connection with a cold-blooded killer. Drawing on over 700 minutes of letters, dozens of hours of recorded conversations, personal and Skype visits, and a friendship five years in the making, Phelps sheds new light on Raven's bloody history, including details of an unknown victim, the location of a still-buried body - and a jaw-dropping admission.
©2017 M. William Phelps (P)2017 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
Summary
To the original text of what has become a classic of American historical literature, Bernard Bailyn adds a substantial essay, "Fulfillment", as a postscript. Here he discusses the intense nationwide debate on the ratification of the Constitution, stressing the continuities between that struggle over the foundations of the national government and the original principles of the Revolution. This detailed study of the persistence of the nation's ideological origins adds a new dimension to the book and projects its meaning forward into vital current concerns.
©1992 The President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2017 Tantor
The Last 100 Days
Summary
The first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency are justly famous, viewed as a period of political action without equal in American history. Yet as historian David B. Woolner reveals, the end of FDR's presidency might very well surpass it in drama and consequence. Drawing on new evidence, Woolner shows how FDR used every ounce of his diminishing energy to pursue the things that mattered most to him: the establishment of the United Nations, the reinvigoration of the New Deal, the possibility of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and some quiet moments with his closest companions. We see a president shorn of the usual distractions of office, a man whose sense of duty and personal responsibility for the fate of the American people, and the world, bore heavily upon him. From his final Christmas at Hyde Park to his death on April 12, 1945, FDR strove to finish the work he had started 12 long years before.
©2017 David B. Woolner (P)2017 Tantor
Fueling Freedom
Summary
Fossil fuel energy is the lifeblood of the modern world. Before the Industrial Revolution, humanity depended on burning wood and candle wax. But with the ability to harness the energy in oil and other fossil fuels, quality of life and capacity for progress increased exponentially. Thanks to incredible innovations in the energy industry, fossil fuels are as promising, safe, and clean an energy resource as has ever existed in history. Yet, highly politicized climate policies are pushing a grand-scale shift to unreliable, impractical, incredibly expensive, and far less efficient energy sources. Today, "fossil fuel" has become such a dirty word that even fossil fuel companies feel compelled to apologize for their products. In Fueling Freedom, energy experts Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White make an unapologetic case for fossil fuels, turning around progressives' protestations to prove that if fossil fuel energy is supplanted by "green" alternatives for political reasons, humanity will take a giant step backwards and the planet will be less safe, less clean, and less free.
©2016 Stephen Moore and Kathleen Hartnett White (P)2016 Tantor
Strange Tools
Summary
In Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë raises a number of profound questions: What is art? Why do we value art as we do? What does art reveal about our nature? Drawing on philosophy, art history, and cognitive science, and making provocative use of examples from all three of these fields, Noë offers new answers to such questions. He also shows why recent efforts to frame questions about art in terms of neuroscience and evolutionary biology alone have been and will continue to be unsuccessful.
©2015 Alva Noë (P)2015 Tantor
Every Living Thing
Summary
Biologist Rob Dunn's Every Little Thing is the story of man's obsessive quest to catalog life, from nanobacteria to new monkeys. In the tradition of E. O. Wilson, this engaging and fascinating work of popular science follows humanity's unending quest to discover every living thing in our natural world-from the unimaginably small in the most inhospitable of places on earth to the unimaginably far away in the unexplored canals on Mars.
©2009 Rob R. Dunn (P)2020 Tantor
Eagle Against the Sun
Summary
Historian Ronald H. Spector, drawing on declassified intelligence files, an abundance of British and American archival material, Japanese scholarship and documents, and the research and memoirs of scholars, politicians, and the military men, presents a thrilling narrative of American war in the Pacific. Spector reassesses US and Japanese strategy and offers some provocative interpretations. He shows that the dual advance across the Pacific by MacArthur and Nimitz was less a product of strategic calculation and more a pragmatic solution to bureaucratic, doctrinal, and public relations problems facing the Army and Navy. He also argues that Japan made its fatal error not in the Midway campaign but in abandoning its offensive strategy after that defeat and allowing itself to be drawn into a war of attrition. Combining impeccable research with electrifying detail, Spector vividly recreates the major battles, little-known campaigns, and unfamiliar events of this brutal 44-month struggle.
©1985 Ronald H. Spector (P)2019 Tantor
The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom
Summary
Our relationship with China remains one of the most complex and rapidly evolving and is perhaps one of the most important to our nation's future. Here, John Pomfret, the author of the best-selling Chinese Lessons, takes us deep into these two countries' shared history and illuminates in vibrant, stunning detail every major event, relationship, and ongoing development that has affected diplomacy between these two booming, influential nations. We meet early American missionaries and chart their influence in China and follow a group of young Chinese students who enroll in American universities, eager to soak up Western traditions. We witness firsthand major and devastating events like the Boxer Rebellion and the rise of Mao. We examine both nations' involvement in world events such as World War I and II. Pomfret takes the myriad historical milestones of two of the world's most powerful nations and turns them into one fluid, fascinating story, leaving us with a nuanced understanding of where these two nations stand in relation to one another and the rest of the world.
©2016 John Pomfret (P)2016 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books