Walter Isaacson has narrated 2 audiobooks on Listento.it by 4 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 30 ratings. The most-rated is The American Story.
The American Story
Summary
In revealing conversations with our greatest historians, co-founder of the Carlyle Group and patriotic philanthropist David M. Rubenstein takes listeners on a sweeping journey across the grand arc of the American story. These lively dialogues present some of the biggest names in American history exploring the subjects they intimately know and understand. You’ll hear live recordings of: David McCullough on John Adams Ron Chernow on Alexander Hamilton Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin Cokie Roberts on Founding Mothers Doris Kearns Goodwin on Abraham Lincoln A. Scott Berg on Charles Lindbergh Jay Winik on Franklin D. Roosevelt and 1944 Jean Edward Smith on Dwight D. Eisenhower Taylor Branch on Martin Luther King Bob Woodward on Richard Nixon H.W. Brands on Ronald Reagan And a special conversation with Chief Justice John Roberts Through his popular program The David Rubenstein Show, David Rubenstein has established himself as one of today’s most thoughtful interviewers. Now, in The American Story, David shares almost a dozen interviews that capture the brilliance of today’s most esteemed historians, as well as the souls of their subjects. The audiobook presents archival recordings of these interviews and features new introductions by Rubenstein as well as a foreword by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to lead our national library. Through these captivating exchanges, these best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning authors offer fresh insight on pivotal moments from the Founding Era to the late 20th century.
©2019 David M. Rubenstein (P)2019 Simon & Schuster
The Code Breaker
Summary
The best-selling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a gripping account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies. When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would. Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his co-discovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned ?a curiosity ?of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code. Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? What a wonderful boon that would be! And what about preventing depression? Hmmm.... Should we allow parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids? After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is a thrilling detective tale that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.
©2021 Walter Isaacson. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.