History Audiobooks | LoveReading

When Freedom Is the Question, Abolition Is the Answer: Reflections on Collective Liberation

An esteemed activist invites us to consider the complex idea of abolition as much more than a strategy or a set of tactics-at a deeper level, abolition is an entire political framework, culture, and orientation Blending history and political theory and weaving in examples from literature, social movements, and his personal life, this book is a useful resource and primer for those interested in fighting for social justice. Guided by questions like what is freedom?, how do we get free?, and what are the freedom dreams that encourage us and drive us forward?, esteemed activist Bill Ayers explores the concept of freedom in eight essays: - Freedom/Unfreedom takes off from the Black Freedom Movement in the 20th Century as a template for social justice movements that followed, and begins to illuminate the idea of freedom in light of what folks come together to oppose. - Freedom's Paradox offers examples of a contradiction (from Frederick Douglass to the French Resistance to the Panthers)-even, or especially, in the most dire circumstances, people testify to "being free" at the moment they identify and unite to oppose unfreedom. - Social Freedom/Individual Liberty directly takes on the link between the individual and the social when freedom is the question. - Freedom, Anarchism, and Socialism takes off from the idea that freedom without socialism is predation and exploitation, and that socialism without freedom is bondage and subjugation. - Freedom, Truth, and Repair considers reparations as a necessary step in any honest attempt toward authentic reconciliation. - Organizing Freedom is a primer on organizing, strategy, and tactics for freedom fighters. - Teach Freedom considers what an education for free people entails. - Freedom and Abolition connects an enriched understanding of what freedom entails with an embrace of abolitionist politics.

Bill Ayers (Author), Bill Ayers, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cassino '44: The Bloodiest Battle of the Italian Campaign

Brought to you by Penguin. There are no such thing as an easy victory in war but after triumph in Tunisia, the sweeping success of the Sicilian invasion, and with the Italian surrender, the Allies were confident that they would be in Rome before Christmas 1943. And yet it didn't happen. Hitler ordered his forces to dig in and fight for every yard, thus setting the stage for one of the grimmest and most attritional campaigns of the Second World War. By the start of 1944, the Allies found themselves coming up against the Gustav Line: a formidable barrier of wire, minefields, bunkers and booby traps, woven into a giant chain of mountains and river valleys that stretched the width of Italy where at its strongest point perched the Abbey of Monte Cassino. It would take five long bitter winter months and the onset of summer before the Allies could finally bludgeon their way north and capture Rome. By then, more than 75,000 troops and civilians had been killed and the historic abbey and entire towns and villages had been laid waste. Following a rich cast of characters from both sides - from frontline infantry to aircrew, from clerks to battlefield commanders, and from politicians and civilians caught up in the middle of the maelstrom - James Holland has drawn widely on diaries, letters and contemporary sources to write the definitive account of this brutal battle. The result is a compelling and often heart-breaking narrative, told in the moment, as the events played out, and from the perspective of those who lived, fought and died there. ©2024 James Holland (P)2024 Penguin Audio

James Holland (Author), Al Murray, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Burdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis

An urgent investigation of student debt in America revealing the corrupt systems, rotten policies, and bad actors that have created a $1.7 trillion crisis. College costs more today than ever and is worth less. Tuition at public colleges has more than tripled in the past 50 years. Over the same period student debt has grown from virtually nothing to more than $1.7 trillion, second only to home mortgages. Skyrocketing student-loan burdens are leading an entire generation to put off the traditional milestones of adulthood: buying homes, getting married, starting families, and saving for retirement. The burden weighs heavier on women and black Americans, and with almost 10 percent of student debtors now over the age of 60, it is a crisis no longer limited to the young. Ryann Liebenthal’s Burdened tells the maddening story of how the power plays of legislators and presidents, the commodification of higher ed, and the rapacious practices of for-profit colleges and private lenders have created today’s student-debt lava pit. As the notion of student-loan cancellation percolates into the political mainstream, Liebenthal offers a deeply researched, sweeping narrative of our broken system. Rather than give in to despair, she boldly charts a way out, offering hopeful solutions to this seemingly unfixable problem.

Ryann Liebenthal (Author), Eileen Stevens, Tbd (Narrator)

Audiobook

A History of Britain in Ten Enemies: The perfect gift for grown-ups by the Horrible Histories author

Brought to you by Penguin. Ah, Britain. So special. The greatest nation on earth, some say. And we did it all on our own. Didn’t we? Well, as it happens Britannia got its name from the Romans, and almost none of the kings and queens of England were actually English. But then, as Horrible Histories author Terry Deary argues, nations and their leaders are defined by the enemies they make. The surprisingly sadistic Boudica would be forgotten if it weren't for the Ninth Legion, Elizabeth I a minor royal without the Spanish Armada, and Churchill an opposition windbag without the Nazis. Britain loves its heroes so much we have been known to pickle them in brandy to keep them fresh. And after all, every nation sometimes needs a bit of Blitz spirit (although no one wants to be the chap who captured Hitler and accidentally let him go). The British have a proud history of choosing their enemies, from the Romans to the Germans. You might even say they made Britain what it is today... A History of Britain in Ten Enemies is an entertaining gallop through history that will have you laughing as you find out what they didn't teach you in school. ©2024 Terry Deary (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Terry Deary (Author), TBD, Toby Longsworth, Toby Longworth (Narrator)

Audiobook

Chernobyl Roulette: A War Story

Serhii Plokhy (Author), Leighton Pugh, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them

Brought to you by Penguin. Richly imaginative and powerfully empathetic, an intimate portrait of five remarkable Black men, and a meditation on race, estrangement and the search for home. In the western imagination, a Black man is always a stranger. Outsider, foreigner, intruder, alien. One who remains associated with their origins irrespective of how far they have travelled from them. One who is not an individual in their own right but the representative of a type. What kind of performance is required for a person to survive this condition? And what happens beneath the mask? In answer, Ekow Eshun conjures the voices of five very different men. Ira Aldridge: nineteenth century actor and playwright. Matthew Henson: polar explorer. Frantz Fanon: psychiatrist and political philosopher. Malcolm X: activist leader. Justin Fashanu: million-pound footballer. Each a trailblazer in his field. Each haunted by a sense of isolation and exile. Each reaching for a better future. Ekow Eshun tells their stories with breathtaking lyricism and empathy, capturing both the hostility and the beauty they experienced in the world. And he locates them within a wider landscape of Black art, culture, history and politics which stretches from Africa to Europe to North America and the Caribbean. As he moves through this landscape, he maps its thematic contours and fault lines, uncovering traces of the monstrous and the fantastic, of exile and escape, of conflict and vulnerability, and of the totemic central figure of the stranger. ©2024 Ekow Eshun (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Ekow Eshun (Author), Ako Mitchell, Ekow Eshun, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Quiet Company of Dangerous Men: The Forgotten British Special Operations Soldiers of World War II

The untold story of four special operations officers who fought together behind enemy lines across multiple theaters of World War II, and then continued to serve, officially and unofficially, for decades after in the hottest parts of the Cold War There have always been special warriors; Achilles and his Myrmidons are the obvious classical examples. What we now think of as "special operations," however, were born in World War II, and one of the earliest and most exciting units formed was Britain's SOE. In the early years of the war, when Britain stood alone against the Nazis, Winston Churchill put them on a mission to "set Europe ablaze": to foment local revolt, to gather intelligence, to blow up bridges, and to do anything that could help to disrupt the Axis cause. A Quiet Company of Dangerous Men follows four SOE officers who distinguished themselves in this fight: the Spanish Civil War veteran Peter Kemp, the demolitions expert David Smiley, the born guerrilla leader Billy McLean, and the political natural Julian Amery. With new and extensive research, including unprecedented access to private family papers that reveal the men's unbreakable bonds and vibrant personalities, Shannon Monaghan has uncovered a story of war in the twentieth century that, due to the secretive nature of the SOE's work, has remained largely unknown. A Quiet Company of Dangerous Men is a thrilling and inspiring story of four remarkable men who, through sheer determination and daring, as well as unwavering friendship and loyalty, fought for a better world.

Shannon Monaghan (Author), George Weightman, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life

A groundbreaking history of how the decades-long war on terror changed virtually every aspect of American life, from the erosion of citizenship down to the cars we bought and TV we watched-by an acclaimed n+1 writer For twenty years after September 11, the war on terror was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere. With all of the military violence occurring overseas even as the threat of sudden mass death permeated life at home, Americans found themselves living in two worlds at the same time. In one of them, soldiers fought overseas so that nothing at home would have to change at all. In the other, life in the United States took on all kinds of unfamiliar shapes, changing people's sense of themselves, their neighbors, and the strangers they sat next to on airplanes. In Homeland, Richard Beck delivers a gripping exploration of how much the war changed life in the United States and explains why there is no going back. Though much has been made of the damage that Donald Trump did to the American political system, Beck argues that it was the war on terror that made Trump's presidency possible, fueling and exacerbating a series of crises that all came to a head with his rise to power. Homeland brilliantly isolates and explores four key issues: the militarism that swept through American politics and culture; the racism and xenophobia that boiled over in much of the country; an economic crisis that, Beck convincingly argues, connects the endurance of the war on terror to at least the end of the Second World War; and a lack of accountability that produced our "impunity culture"-the government-wide inability or refusal to face consequences that has transformed how the U.S. government relates to the people it governs. To see American life through the lens of Homeland's sweeping argument is to understand the roots of our current condition. In its startling analysis of how the war on terror hollowed out the very idea of citizenship in the United States, Beck gives the most compelling explanation yet offered for the ongoing disintegration of America's social, political, and cultural fabric.

Richard Beck (Author), Patrick Harrison, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Into Unknown Skies: Eight Americans, One Race, and the First Flight Around the World

Equal parts The Right Stuff and The Boys in the Boat, Into Unknown Skies tells the unbelievable history of the 1924 race to circumnavigate the globe for the first time by air, a nail-biting contest that pitted underdog US pilots against their better-funded European rivals, created technology that changed aviation, and convinced America that its future was in the sky. In the early 1920s, America’s faith in aviation was in shambles. Twenty years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight, most Americans believed airplanes were for delivering the mail or performing daredevil stunts in front of crowds. The dream of commercial air travel remained just that. Even the American military was a skeptic—rather than pay to bring its planes back from Europe following World War I, the War Department chose to burn most of them instead. All that changed with a single race in 1924. It was not just any race, though—it was a race to become the first to circle the globe in an airplane, pitting a team of four underdog American pilots against the best aviators in the world from England, Italy, Portugal, France, and Argentina. Rooted in the same daring spirit that pushed early twentieth-century explorers to attempt crossings of the Antarctic ice or locate the source of the Nile, this race was an adventure unlike anything the world had seen before. The obstacles were daunting—from experimental planes, to dangerous landings in uncharted territory, to the simple navigational gauges that could lead pilots hundreds of miles off course. Failure seemed all but guaranteed—the suspense less about who would win than how many would perish for the honor of being the first. Now on the race’s centennial, award-winning author David K. Randall tells the story of this riveting, long-forgotten race. Through larger-than-life characters, treacherous landings, disease, and ultimately triumph, Into Unknown Skies demonstrates how one race returned America to aviation greatness. A story of underdog teammates, bold exploration, and American ingenuity, Into Unknown Skies is an untold adventure tale showing the power of flight to bring the world together.

David K. Randall, David Randall (Author), Adam Verner, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Nexus: FROM THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SAPIENS

Brought to you by Penguin. The story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Sapiens. For the last 100,000 years, humans have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI – a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. If we are so wise, why are we so self-destructive? NEXUS considers how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age through the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence. Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. NEXUS explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and of rediscovering our shared humanity. Praise for Yuval Noah Harari ‘The great thinker of our age’ The Times on 21 Lessons for the 21st Century ‘Interesting and provocative’ Barack Obama on Sapiens ‘One of my favourite writers and thinkers’ Natalie Portman on Sapiens ‘Sweeps the cobwebs out of your brain . . . Radiates power and clarity’ Sunday Times on Sapiens ‘It altered how I view our species and our world’ Guardian on Sapiens ©2024 Yuval Noah Harari (P) 2024 Penguin Audio

Yuval Noah Harari (Author), TBD, Vidish Athavale (Narrator)

Audiobook

From the Ashes: Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire

The politics of grief, in an era marked by loss, shows us how we can find our humanity once more. From one of our most vital and far-seeing social critics. Our era is one of significant and substantial loss, yet we barely have time to acknowledge it. The losses range from the personal grief of a single COVID death to the planetary disaster wrought by climate change. We are in an age of unraveling hopes and expectations, of dreams curtailed, of aspirations desiccated. What can we do? This is capitalism's death phase. It has become clear that the cost of wealth creation for a few is enormous destruction for others. The marginalized and the vulnerable have been feeling the crisis for a long time, but it is increasingly coming for all of us. At the same time, we are denied the means of mourning the futures that are being so brutally curtailed. At such a moment, taking the time to grieve is a radical act. Through in-depth reporting intertwined with memoir, Sarah Jaffe shows how public memorialization has become more than a refusal or a protest: it is a path to imagining a better world. When we are able to mourn the lives, the homes, the worlds we have lost, we are better prepared to fight for a transformed future.

Sarah Jaffe (Author), Sarah Jaffe, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Unknown Warrior: A Personal Journey to the Heart of a Lost Generation

John Nichol (Author), Michael Fenner, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook