Audiobooks by Charles Fishman

A Curious Mind Expanded Edition: The Secret to a Bigger Life

In this specially combined edition with a new foreword, Academy Award–winning producer Brian Grazer and acclaimed author Charles Fishman blend their insights from bestselling books A Curious Mind and Face to Face to transform the art of connecting with and through curiosity. In A Curious Mind, deemed "a captivation account of how the simple act of asking questions can change your life" by Malcolm Gladwell, Grazer offers a brilliant peek into the "curiosity conversations" that inspired him to create some of the world's most iconic movies and television shows. He shows how curiosity has been the "superpower" that fueled his rise as one of Hollywood's leading producers and creative visionaries. And in the captivating follow-up Face to Face, Grazer reveals that the secret to a more fulfilling life lies in personal connections, sparked through curiosity, learning through his interactions with people like Taraji P. Henson, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Eminem, and Prince. Now with a new foreword with fresh insights about curiosity from the last decade, A Curious Mind Expanded invites you to consider your personal journey of human connection. A fascinating page-turner, this combined edition offers a blueprint for how we can awaken our own curiosity and use it as a superpower in our own lives.

Brian Grazer, Charles Fishman (Author), Norbert Leo Butz, Steven Weber (Narrator)

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One Giant Leap: The Impossible Mission That Flew Us to the Moon

The remarkable story of the trailblazers and the ordinary Americans on the front lines of the epic mission to reach the moon. President John F. Kennedy astonished the world on May 25, 1961, when he announced to Congress that the United States should land a man on the Moon by 1970. No group was more surprised than the scientists and engineers at NASA, who suddenly had less than a decade to invent space travel. When Kennedy announced that goal, no one knew how to navigate to the Moon. No one knew how to build a rocket big enough to reach the Moon, or how to build a computer small enough (and powerful enough) to fly a spaceship there. No one knew what the surface of the Moon was like, or what astronauts could eat as they flew there. On the day of Kennedy's historic speech, America had a total of fifteen minutes of spaceflight experience—with just five of those minutes outside the atmosphere. Russian dogs had more time in space than U.S. astronauts. Over the next decade, more than 400,000 scientists, engineers, and factory workers would send 24 astronauts to the Moon. Each hour of space flight would require one million hours of work back on Earth to get America to the Moon on July 20, 1969. Fifty years later, One Giant Leap is the sweeping, definitive behind-the-scenes account of the furious race to complete one of mankind's greatest achievements. It's a story filled with surprises—from the item the astronauts almost forgot to take with them (the American flag), to the extraordinary impact Apollo would have back on Earth, and on the way we live today. Charles Fishman introduces readers to the men and women who had to solve 10,000 problems before astronauts could reach the Moon. From the research labs of MIT, where the eccentric and legendary pioneer Charles Draper created the tools to fly the Apollo spaceships, to the factories where dozens of women sewed spacesuits, parachutes, and even computer hardware by hand, Fishman captures the exceptional feats of these ordinary Americans. One Giant Leap is the captivating story of men and women charged with changing the world as we knew it—their leaders, their triumphs, their near disasters, all of which led to arguably the greatest success story, and the greatest adventure story, of the twentieth century.

Charles Fishman (Author), Fred Sanders (Narrator)

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A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life

Every week, for decades, film and TV producer Brian Grazer has scheduled a weekly "curiosity conversation" with an accomplished person he doesn't know. He's met scientists, spies, adventurers, leaders - anyone willing to answer his questions for a few hours. These curiosity conversations ultimately inspired many of his movies and TV shows - Splash, 24, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, Arrested Development, 8 Mile, J. Edgar, and many, many others. A Curious Mind is a brilliantly entertaining, fascinating, and inspiring paean to the power of curiosity and the ways in which it deepens and improves us. It will make you a better manager and a better romantic partner. It will change your life. ***Please contact Member Services for additional documents***

Brian Grazer, Charles Fishman (Author), Norbert Leo Butz (Narrator)

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The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water

The water coming out of your tap is four billion years old and might have been slurped by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. We will always have exactly as much water on Earth as we have ever had. Water cannot be destroyed, and it can always be made clean enough for drinking again. In fact, water can be made so clean that it actually becomes toxic. As Charles Fishman brings vibrantly to life in this delightful narrative excursion, water runs our world in a host of awe-inspiring ways, which is both the promise and the peril of our unexplored connections to it. Taking listeners from the wet moons of Saturn to the water-obsessed hotels of Las Vegas, and from a rice farm in the Australian outback to a glimpse into giant vats of soup at Campbell's largest factory, he reveals that our relationship to water is conflicted and irrational, neglected and mismanaged. Whether we will face a water scarcity crisis has little to do with water and everything to do with how we think about water—how we use it, connect with it, and understand it. Portraying and explaining both the dangers—in 2008, Atlanta came just ninety days from running completely out of drinking water—and the opportunities, such as advances in rainwater harvesting and businesses that are making huge breakthroughs in water productivity, The Big Thirst will forever change the way we think about water, our crucial relationship to it, and the creativity we can bring to ensuring we always have plenty of it.

Charles Fishman (Author), Stephen Hoye (Narrator)

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The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works and How It's Transforming th

Award-winning journalist Charles Fishman breaks through the wall of secrecy to reveal the many astonishing ways Wal-Mart's power affects our lives and reaches all around the world. The Wal-Mart Effect: The overwhelming impact of the world's largest company--due to its relentless pursuit of low prices--on retailers and manufacturers, wages and jobs, the culture of shopping, the shape of our communities, and the environment; a global force of unprecedented nature. Wal-Mart is not only the world's largest company; it is also the largest company in the history of the world. Americans spend $26 million every hour at Wal-Mart, twenty-four hours of every day, every day of the year. Is the company a good thing or a bad thing? On the one hand, market guru Warren Buffett estimates that the company's low prices save American consumers $10 billion a year. On the other, the behemoth is the #1 employer in thirty-seven of the fifty states yet has never let a union in the door. Though 70 percent of Americans now live within a fifteen-minute drive of a Wal-Mart store, we have not even begun to understand the true power of the company and the many ways it is shaping American life. We know about the lawsuits and the labor protests, but what we don't know is how profoundly the "Wal-Mart effect" is shaping our lives. Fast Company senior editor Fishman takes us on an unprecedented behind-the-scenes investigative expedition deep inside the many worlds of Wal-Mart. He reveals the radical ways in which the company is transforming America's economy, our workforce, our communities, and our environment. Fishman penetrated the secrecy of Wal-Mart headquarters, interviewing twenty-five high-level ex-executives; he journeyed into the world of a host of Wal-Mart's suppliers to uncover how the company strong-arms even the most established brands; and journeyed to the ports and factories, the fields and forests where Wal-Mart's power is warping the very structure of the world's market for goods. Wal-Mart is not just a retailer anymore, Fishman argues. It has become a kind of economic ecosystem, and anyone who wants to understand the forces shaping our world today must understand the company's hidden reach.

Charles Fishman (Author), Alan Sklar (Narrator)

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