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.
A Rabble of Dead Money
Summary
There is no single theory of what caused the Great Depression and never will be, Morris argues. Macreconomics is a social science, and such a massive event always takes its shape from a terrible confluence of factors. The mismanagement of the gold standard, the growth in consumer credit, the insistence on deflation by some of the best minds in finance, the spread of "Fordism" through the manufacturing sector, the global agricultural catastrophe, and the inability of the major European belligerents of World War I to agree on a reconstruction agenda are just a few of the shocks that in aggregate pushed the world into an economic Armageddon. Morris does not fail to provide lessons that modern listeners can learn from the Great Crash. It's tempting to pontificate about events of 80 years ago, but as Morris reminds us, our modern macroeconomics is still coming to terms with its failure to forecast how directly the much-trumpeted Great Moderation would lead to the Great Financial Crash of 2008.
©2017 Charles R. Morris (P)2017 HighBridge, a Division of Recorded Books
Fighting the Great War at Sea
Summary
While the overriding image of World War I is of the bloody stalemate on the Western Front, the overall shape of the war arose out of its maritime character. It was essentially a struggle about access to worldwide resources, most clearly seen in Germany's desperate attempts to counter the American industrial threat, which ultimately drew the United States into the war. This radical new book concentrates on the way in which each side tried to use or deny the sea to the other, and in so doing describes rapid wartime changes not only in ship and weapons technology but also in the way naval warfare was envisaged and fought. Melding strategic, technical, and tactical aspects, Friedman approaches World War I from a fresh perspective and demonstrates how its perceived lessons dominated the way navies prepared for World War II.
©2014 Norman Friedman (P)2019 Tantor
Republic of Dirt: International Edition
Summary
Prudence Burns is an overly idealistic Brooklyn girl who has inherited a derelict plot of land named Woefield Farm. Her motley crew of farm hands consists of Earl, an elderly, reclusive bluegrass legend; Seth, an agoraphobic heavy-metal blogger in early recovery from alcoholism; and Sara, an 11-year-old girl with a flock of elite show poultry. When Prudence is felled by a thyroid condition, things on the farm begin to fall apart, resulting in valiant and sometimes ill-advised attempts to restore domestic bliss. Efforts are complicated by a renegade mule, attempts to turn a hideously ugly child's playhouse into a high-yield roadside farm stand, and an electrical station's worth of crossed wires. Will Prudence get well? Will Seth finally get rid of his pesky virginity? Will Earl rescue Sara? And will anyone, ever, admit they might be wrong? Told in four highly distinct, unforgettably hilarious, and sometimes heartbreaking voices, The Republic of Dirt is about what happens when passions collide with pride and what it takes to save each other, our small part of the planet, and ourselves.
©2020 Susan Juby (P)2020 Recorded Books, Inc.
Pacific Thunder
Summary
On 27 October 1942, four "Long Lance" torpedoes fired by the Japanese destroyers Makigumo and Akigumo exploded in the hull of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8). Minutes later, the ship that had launched the Doolitte Raid six months earlier slipped beneath the waves of the Coral Sea 100 miles northeast of the island of Guadalcanal and just north of the Santa Cruz Islands, taking with her 140 of her sailors. With the loss of Hornet, the United States Navy now had one aircraft carrier left in the South Pacific, USS Enterprise (CV-6), herself badly damaged in the two previous days of the Battle of Santa Cruz. For the American naval aviators, it would be difficult to imagine that within 24 months of this event, Zuikaku, the last survivor of the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor, would lie at the bottom of the Philippine Sea north of Cape Engano on the island of Luzon, alongside the other surviving Japanese carriers, sacrificed as lures in a failed attempt to block the American invasion of the Philippines, and that the United States Navy's Task Force 38, composed of 16 fleet carriers, would reign supreme on the world's largest ocean.
©2017 Thomas McKelvey Cleaver (P)2017 Tantor
Worst. President. Ever.
Summary
Worst. President. Ever. flips the great presidential biography on its head, offering an enlightening - and highly entertaining - account of poor James Buchanan's presidency to prove once and for all that, well, few leaders could have done worse. But author Robert Strauss does much more, leading listeners out of Buchanan's terrible term in office - meddling in the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, exacerbating the Panic of 1857, helping foment the John Brown uprisings and "Bloody Kansas", virtually inviting a half-dozen states to secede from the Union as a lame duck, and on and on - to explore with insight and humor his own obsession with presidents, and ultimately the entire notion of ranking our presidents. He guides us through the POTUS rating game of historians and others who have made their own Mount Rushmores - or Marianas Trenches - of presidential achievement, showing why Buchanan easily loses to any of the others, but also offering insights into presidential history buffs like himself, the forgotten "lesser" presidential sites, sex and the presidency, the presidency itself, and how and why it can often take the best measures out of even the most dedicated men.
©2016 Robert Strauss (P)2016 Tantor
The Prince of Providence
Summary
Welcome to Providence, Rhode Island, where corruption is entertainment and Mayor Buddy Cianci presided over the longest-running lounge act in American politics. In The Prince of Providence, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mike Stanton tells a classic story of wiseguys, feds, and politicians on a carousel of crime and redemption. Buddy Cianci was part urban visionary, part Tony Soprano - a flawed political genius in the mold of Huey Long and James Michael Curley. His lust for power cost him his marriage, his family, and close friendships. Yet he also revitalized the city of Providence, where ethnic factions jostle with old-moneyed New Englanders and black-clad artists from the Rhode Island School of Design rub shoulders with scam artists from City Hall. For nearly a quarter of a century, Cianci dominated this uneasy melting pot. During his first administration, 22 political insiders were convicted of corruption. In 1984, Cianci resigned after pleading guilty to felony assault, for torturing a man he suspected of sleeping with his estranged wife. In 1990, in a remarkable comeback, Cianci was elected mayor once again; he went on to win national acclaim for transforming a dying industrial city into a trendy arts and tourism mecca.
©2004 Mike Stanton (P)2018 Tantor
Helping Your Anxious Child
Summary
Most children are afraid of the dark. Some fear monsters under the bed. But 10 percent of children have excessive fears and worries - phobias, separation anxiety, panic attacks, social anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive disorder - that can hold them back and keep them from fully enjoying childhood. If your child suffers from any of these forms of anxiety, the program in this book offers practical, scientifically proven tools that can help. Now in its second edition, Helping Your Anxious Child has been expanded and updated to include the latest research and techniques for managing child anxiety. You'll learn how to help your child overcome intense fears and worries and find out how to relieve anxious feelings while parenting with compassion. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2008 Ron Rapee, Ann Wignall, Susan Spence,Vanessa Cobham, and Heidi Lyneham (P)2016 Tantor
Sweetness and Power
Summary
In this eye-opening study, Sidney W. Mintz shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar and reveals how closely interwoven sugar's origins are as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies, with its use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial proletariat. Finally, he considers how sugar has altered work patterns, eating habits, and our diet in modern times.
©1985 Sidney W. Mintz (P)2017 Tantor
The Quartermaster
Summary
Born to a well-to-do, connected family in 1816, Montgomery C. Meigs graduated from West Point as an engineer. He helped build America's forts and served under Lt. Robert E. Lee to make navigation improvements on the Mississippi River. As a young man, he designed the Washington aqueducts in a city where people were dying from contaminated water. He built the spectacular wings and the massive dome of the brand-new US Capitol. Introduced to President Lincoln by Secretary of State William Seward, Meigs became Lincoln's quartermaster. It was during the Civil War that Meigs became a national hero. He commanded Ulysses S. Grant's base of supplies that made Union victories possible. He sustained Sherman's army in Georgia and the March to the Sea. After the war Meigs built Arlington Cemetery. Robert O'Harrow Jr. brings Meigs alive in the commanding and intensely personal Quartermaster. We get to know this major military figure whom Lincoln and his cabinet and generals called the key to victory and learn how he fed, clothed, and armed the Union Army using his ingenuity and devotion. O'Harrow tells the full dramatic story of this fierce, loyal, forward-thinking major American figure.
©2016 Robert O'Harrow Jr. (P)2016 Tantor
Surface at the Pole
Summary
On 17 March 1959, the USS Skate became the first submarine to surface at the North Pole. Under the guidance of James Calvert this nuclear submarine had navigated through polar ice packs, braved atrociously cold conditions, and broken through layers of thick ice to arrive at their destination; the northernmost point of the world. This mission, however, was not just about completing a seemingly impossibly feat of Arctic exploration. It also had huge implications for military strategy during the height of the Cold War. Now that submarines were able to travel under and break through the ice, it gave the US military the capability of being avoid detection under the ice while being able to launch their Polaris missiles from points far closer to the Soviet Union. James Calvert's remarkable account of his two voyages to the Arctic with the USS Skate provides vivid insight into life in a nuclear submarine and how these men were able to complete this treacherous mission.
Public Domain (P)2020 Tantor
Tidal Wave
Summary
The United States Navy won such overwhelming victories in 1944 that had the Navy faced a different enemy the war would have been over at the conclusion of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. However, in the moment of victory on October 25, 1944, the US Navy found itself confronting an enemy that had been inconceivable until it appeared. The kamikaze, meaning 'divine wind' in Japanese, was something Americans were totally unprepared for; a violation of every belief held in the West. The attacks were terrifying: regardless of the damage inflicted on an attacking airplane, there was no certainty of safety aboard the ship until that airplane was completely destroyed. Based on first-person accounts, Tidal Wave is the story of the naval campaigns in the Pacific from the victory at Leyte Gulf to the end of the war, in which the US Navy would fight harder for survival than ever before.
©2018 Thomas McKelvey Cleaver (P)2018 Tantor Audio
Killing for You
Summary
Twenty-six-year-old actor Daniel Wozniak was unemployed, facing eviction, and deep in debt for his upcoming wedding. So he devised a diabolical plan: He asked his neighbor Sam Herr, a young war veteran, to help him move some things into the attic of an empty theater. There, Wozniak shot Herr twice in the head before taking his ATM card and cell phone. Hours later Wozniak performed onstage with his fiancée in a local production of the musical Nine, convinced that he had gotten away with murder.... Wozniak dismembered his victim's body and hid the pieces. Then he lured Herr's college friend Juri "Julie" Kibuishi to Herr's apartment and shot her twice in the head. The police immediately declared Herr a prime suspect - just as Wozniak had planned. But when Herr was declared missing and his ATM withdrawals led authorities to Wozniak at his bachelor party, the actor was forced to play the role of a lifetime in a shocking murder investigation that would be his greatest - and final - performance.
©2017 Keith Elliot Greenberg (P)2017 Tantor
Napa at Last Light
Summary
Not so long ago, wine was an exclusively European product. Now it is thoroughly American; emblematic of Napa Valley, an area idealized as the epicenter of great wines and foods and a cultural tourist destination. But the romanticized accounts you find about it and its denizens is not what you'll encounter in James Conaway's candid book. Napa at Last Light exposes the often shadowy side of the latter days of Napa Valley - marked by complex personal relationships, immense profits, passionate beliefs, and sometimes desperate struggles to prevail. In the balance hang fortunes and personal relationships made through hard work and, in too many cases, manipulation of laws, people, and institutions. Napans who grew up trusting in the beneficence of the "vintner" class now confront in the 21-century multinational corporations and their allies who have stealthily subsumed the old family landmarks and abandoned the once glorious conviction that agriculture is the highest and best use of the land. Inherent in that conviction is the sanctity of the place, threatened now by a relentless drive for profits at the expense of land, water, and even life.
©2018 James Conaway (P)2018 Tantor
Wanted
Summary
The oft-told exploits of Billy the Kid and Ned Kelly survive vividly in the public imaginations of their respective countries, the United States and Australia. But the outlaws' reputations are so weighted with legend and myth that the truth of their lives has become obscure. In this adventure-filled double biography, Robert M. Utley reveals the true stories and parallel courses of the two notorious contemporaries who lived by the gun, were executed while still in their 20s, and remain compelling figures in the folklore of their homelands. Billy was a fun-loving, expert sharpshooter who excelled at escape and lived on the run after an indictment for his role in the Lincoln Country War. Bush-raised Ned, the son of an Irish convict father and Irish mother, was a man whose outrage against British colonial authority inspired him to steal cattle and sheep, kill three policemen, and rob banks for the benefit of impoverished Irish sympathizers. Utley recounts the exploits of these notorious young men with accuracy and appeal. He discovers their profound differences, despite their shared fates, and illuminates the worlds in which they lived on opposite sides of the globe.
©2015 Robert M. Utley (P)2015 Tantor
First to Jump
Summary
The first into combat and the last out, their advance jumps into enemy territory were considered suicide missions by those who sent them into action. World War Two's special operations commandos, the U.S. Army Pathfinders relied on their stealth, expert prowess, and matchless courage and audacity to set the stage for airborne drops and glider landings throughout Europe. After the invasion of Sicily almost ended in disaster, General Jim Gavin was determined to form an all-new unit of specialized soldiers who would jump ahead of the airborne forces without any additional support, stealing across enemy terrain to scout and mark out drop zones with a unique array of homing equipment. Sporting Mohawk haircuts, war paint, and an attitude of brash confidence, they were the best of the best. Their heroic feats behind the lines were critical to nearly all of the Allies' major victories from Normandy to Bastogne - where they saved the day for thousands of besieged American troops.
©2014 Jerome Preisler (P)2014 Tantor
Tin Cans and Greyhounds
Summary
This action-packed narrative history of destroyer-class ships begins with destroyers' first incarnation as torpedo boats in 1898 through the last true combat service of the ships in the Vietnam War. Nicknamed "tin cans" or "greyhounds", destroyers were quick naval ships used to defend larger battleships - and they proved indispensable in America's military victories. In Tin Cans and Greyhounds, author Clint Johnson brings listeners inside the quarter-inch hulls of destroyers to meet the men who manned the ships' five-inch guns and fought America's wars from inside a "tin can" - risking death by cannon shell, shrapnel, bomb, fire, drowning, exposure, and sharks.
©2019 Clint Johnson (P)2019 Tantor
The Golden Fleece
Summary
In the fall of 1965, West Point cadet Tom Carhart and five of his classmates from the US Military Academy pulled off a feat of extraordinary ingenuity, precision, and raw guts: the theft of the billy goat mascot from their rival, the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, just before the biggest game of the year. The US forces in Vietnam were then at 200,000 and growing, and the men in West Point's class of 1966 were well aware that they would serve, and quite possibly die, in that far-off war. But West Point's motto, "Duty, Honor, Country," affirms that its graduates will obey the decisions of our elected government, and the men of '66 were dutiful: of the 579 who graduated, 30 died in Vietnam, and roughly five times that number were wounded. Since this would be the men's last Army-Navy football game as cadets, they wanted to go out with a bang, not a whimper. Carhart tells the incredible true story of how, in stealing that Navy goat, the cadets unknowingly reenacted the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece from Greek mythology. The caper is interwoven with an insider's narrative about the private lives of six West Point cadets in the early 1960s, who, against all odds, hurled their last hurrah of triumph to America before flying off to fight the war in Vietnam.
©2017 Tom Carhart (P)2017 Tantor
First to Fly
Summary
If the Wright brothers' 1903 flights in Kitty Hawk marked the birth of aviation, World War I can be called its violent adolescence - a brief but bloody era that completely changed the way planes were designed, fabricated, and flown. The war forged an industry that would redefine transportation and warfare for future generations. In First to Fly, historian Charles Bracelen Flood tells the story of the men who were at the forefront of that revolution: the daredevil Americans of the Lafayette Escadrille. As citizens of a neutral nation from 1914 to early 1917, Americans were prohibited from serving in a foreign army, but many brave young souls soon made their way into European battle zones as ambulance drivers, nurses, and, more dangerously, soldiers in the French Foreign Legion. It was partly from the ranks of the latter group that the Lafayette Escadrille was formed in 1916 as the first and only all-American squadron in the French Air Service. Flying rudimentary planes against one-in-three odds of being killed, these fearless young men gathered reconnaissance and shot down enemy aircraft, participated in the Battle of Verdun, and faced off with the Red Baron. Drawing on rarely seen primary sources, Flood chronicles the startling success of that intrepid band and gives a compelling look at the rise of aviation and a new era of warfare.
©2015 Charles Bracelen Flood (P)2015 Tantor
Kitty Cornered
Summary
Bob Tarte had his first encounter with a cat when he was two and a half years old. He should have learned his lesson then, from Fluffy. But as he says, "I listened to my heart instead, and that always leads to trouble." In this tell-all of how the Tarte household grew from one recalcitrant cat to six - including a hard-to-manage stray named Frannie - Tarte confesses to allowing these interlopers to shape his and his wife's life, from their dining habits to their sleeping arrangements to the placement and furriness of their furniture. But more than that, Bob begins seeing Frannie and the other cats as unlikely instructors in the art of achieving contentment, even in the face of illness and injury. Bewitched by the unknowable nature of domesticated cats, he realizes that sometimes wildness and mystery are exactly what he needs. With the winning humor and uncanny ability to capture the soul of the animal world that made Enslaved by Ducks a success, Tarte shows us that life with animals gives us a way out of our narrow human perspective to glimpse something larger, more enduring, and more grounded in the simplicities of love - and catnip.
©2012 Bob Tarte (P)2017 Tantor
The Pain Antidote
Summary
Approximately 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, and many of them use prescribed painkillers to treat it. It's a dangerous course that may lead to dependency, addiction, and, paradoxically, increased pain. Opioid overdoses kill more people than car accidents and cocaine and heroin addictions combined. The innovative program at the acclaimed Las Vegas Recovery Center, where Dr. Mel Pohl serves as medical director, has helped thousands of chronic pain sufferers learn to thrive and reduce their pain's intensity without painkillers. Now, for the first time, The Pain Antidote shares this concrete program, which combines up-to-date research with state-of-the-art treatments and non-narcotic medications. The Pain Antidote offers tools and strategies - including a four-week jump-start plan - to help anyone with chronic pain ease their suffering, restore their happiness, and live a rich, full life.
©2015 Mel Pohl, MD, and Katherine Ketcham (P)2015 Tantor