Audiobooks narrated by Barry Abrams

Emotion lies at the heart of all national movements, and Zionism is no exception. For those who identify as Zionist, the word connotes liberation and redemption, uniqueness and vulnerability. Yet for many, Zionism is a source of distaste if not disgust, and those who reject it are no less passionate than those who embrace it. The power of such emotions helps explain why a word originally associated with territorial aspiration has survived so many years after the establishment of the Israeli state. Zionism: An Emotional State expertly demonstrates how the energy propelling the Zionist project originates from bundles of feeling whose elements have varied in volume, intensity, and durability across space and time. Beginning with an original typology of Zionism and a new take on its relationship to colonialism, Penslar then examines the emotions that have shaped Zionist sensibilities and practices over the course of the movement's history. The resulting portrait of Zionism reconfigures how we understand Jewish identity amidst continuing debates on the role of nationalism in the modern world.

Derek J. Penslar (Author), Barry Abrams (Narrator)

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The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market

The Little Book of Common Sense Investing is the classic guide to getting smart about the market. Legendary mutual fund pioneer John C. Bogle reveals his key to getting more out of investing: low-cost index funds. Bogle describes the simplest and most effective investment strategy for building wealth over the long term: buy and hold, at very low cost, a mutual fund that tracks a broad stock market Index such as the S&P 500. While the stock market has tumbled and then soared since the first edition of Little Book of Common Sense was published in April 2007, Bogle's investment principles have endured and served investors well. This tenth anniversary edition includes updated data and new information but maintains the same long-term perspective as in its predecessor. Bogle has also added two new chapters designed to provide further guidance to investors: one on asset allocation, the other on retirement investing. A portfolio focused on index funds is the only investment that effectively guarantees your fair share of stock market returns. Bogle shows you how to make index investing work for you and help you achieve your financial goals, and finds support from some of the world's best financial minds, including Warren Buffett, Benjamin Graham, Paul Samuelson, Burton Malkiel, Yale's David Swensen, Cliff Asness of AQR, and many others.

John C. Bogle (Author), Barry Abrams (Narrator)

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A Life for Liberty: The Making of an American Originalist

From prosecuting murderers in Chicago, to arguing before the Supreme Court, to authoring more than a dozen books, Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett has played an integral role in the rise of originalism—the movement to identify, restore, and defend the original meaning of the Constitution. Thanks in part to his efforts, by 2018 a majority of sitting Supreme Court justices self-identified as 'originalists.' After writing seminal books on libertarianism and contract law, Barnett pivoted to constitutional law. His mission to restore 'the lost Constitution' took him from the schoolhouse to the courthouse, where he argued the medical marijuana case of Gonzeles v. Raich in the Supreme Court—a case now taught to every law student. Later, he devised and spearheaded the constitutional challenge to Obamacare. All this earned him major profiles in such publications as the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times. Now he recounts his compelling journey from a working-class kid in Calumet City, Illinois, to 'Washington Power Breaker,' as the Congressional Quarterly Weekly called him. The engaging story of his rise from obscurity to one of the most influential thinkers in America is an inspiring how-to guide for anyone seeking real-world advancement of justice and liberty for all.

Randy E. Barnett (Author), Barry Abrams (Narrator)

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Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People

Imagine having the entire Jewish people over for dinner—and hosting a raucous, creative, riveting debate about their collective future. Jewish Priorities offers, for the first time, a wide-ranging, ambitious, and genuinely 'pan-Jewish' conversation. Encompassing more than sixty top authors from around the Jewish world—Israelis and Diaspora writers; younger influencers and veteran opinion leaders; rabbinic and communal leaders, journalists and scholars, and literary and cultural figures, ranging from secular to ultra-Orthodox—each contributor offers a different priority for the Jewish people. These essays are all original and come from some of our greatest luminaries—thought leaders like Natan Sharansky, Dara Horn, Yossi Klein Halevi, Ruth Wisse, Shaul Magid, David Wolpe, Fania Oz-Salzberger, and many more. Their topics vary widely, from Zionism and antisemitism to education and philanthropy; from the Holocaust to Jewish intimacy; from the quest for God to the failure of Jewish institutions, to the best way to study the Torah in an age of viral videos. Jewish Priorities offers an unprecedented snapshot of the cultural, political, and religious currents driving an entire generation of Jews—but also the deepest aspirations and dreams of this beautiful, unique people at a pivotal moment in our history.

David Hazony (Author), Barry Abrams (Narrator)

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Diary of a Crisis: Israel in Turmoil

Searching reflections on the crisis in Israel and Gaza by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the Holocaust Diary of a Crisis explores the past tumultuous and traumatic year in Israel-Palestine. The eminent historian Saul Friedländer began a diary of Israeli politics in January 2023 as the country was convulsed by protests against Netanyahu's attempt to overhaul the judiciary. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets to demonstrate against this threat to democracy. But the protests said nothing about the Palestinian question—the 'elephant in the room,' according to Friedländer, who resumed his diary after Hamas's October 7 assault on southern Israel. Israel was facing one of the worst crises in its history, he observes, under the worst possible internal conditions. Friedländer weaves together profound reflections on a national history in which he has been an active participant. He describes how Prime Minister Golda Meir once flatly declared to him, 'There is no Palestinian people.' For Friedländer, on the other hand, the fight for democracy is inseparable from equality of treatment for Arab and Jewish citizens and an end to Israeli domination over Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. He argues that despite the continuing bloodshed, a two-state solution remains the only long-term answer to this most intractable of conflicts.

Saul Friedländer (Author), Barry Abrams (Narrator)

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The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering

This iconoclastic study was one of the most widely debated books of 2000. Finkelstein indicts with vigor and honesty those who exploit the tragedy of the Holocaust for their own personal political and financial gain. This new edition includes updated material discussing the initial reception to the book's publication. In a controversial new study, Norman G. Finkelstein moves from an interrogation of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in American culture to a disturbing examination of recent Holocaust compensation agreements. Leaders of America's Jewish community were delighted that Israel was now deemed a major strategic asset and, Finkelstein contends, exploited the Holocaust to enhance this newfound status. Their interpretations of the tragedy are often at variance with historical events and are employed to deflect any criticism of Israel and its supporters. Finkelstein contends that the main danger posed to the memory of Nazism's victims comes not from the distortions of Holocaust deniers but from prominent, self-proclaimed guardians of Holocaust memory. The Holocaust Industry is all the more disturbing and powerful because the issues it deals with are so rarely discussed.

Norman G. Finkelstein (Author), Barry Abrams (Narrator)

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The Big Book of Baseball Stories: Timeless and Compelling Tales of Our National Game

As abundant and layered as the National Pastime itself, The Big Book of Baseball Stories takes the listener on a rich journey that circles the bases of the game's history and literature—its Giants, its dramas, its tragedies, and its laughs—as it rolls through the typewriters of some of the game's mightiest scribes, from Walt Whitman and Mark Twain to Grantland Rice and Ring Lardner, even Abbott and Costello. Rediscover the feats of Babe Ruth, Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb, and Frank Merriwell; bask in the prose of P.G. Wodehouse, Paul Gallico, and Zane Gray; and dive into the very mystery of the meaning of the seventh-inning stretch. If you love baseball, you'll love The Big Book of Baseball Stories. Whitman called baseball 'our game . . . America's game.' It was then. It still is. The words within these pages invite you to remember why.

Jeff Silverman (Author), Barry Abrams (Narrator)

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Boston Ball: Rick Pitino, Jim Calhoun, Gary Williams, and the Forgotten Cradle of Basketball Coaches

Collectively, Rick Pitino, Jim Calhoun, and Gary Williams have won more than 2,300 games and six national championships and reached thirteen Final Fours. Before Pitino became the face of the Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville programs, before Calhoun turned UConn into a national power, and before Williams brought Maryland to its first national championship, these coaches cut their teeth in front of modest-sized crowds in college gymnasiums of Boston during the '70s and '80s. Boston Ball charts how this trio of coaches, seemingly out of nowhere, started a basketball revolution: Pitino at Boston University, Calhoun at Northeastern University, and Williams at Boston College. Toiling in relative obscurity, they ignited a renaissance of the 'city game,' a style of play built on fast-breaking up-tempo offense, pressure defense, and board crashing. Part of a fraternity of great coaches—including Mike Jarvis, Kevin Mackey, and Tom Davis—they unknowingly invented Boston Ball, a simultaneously old and new path to the top of college basketball. Pitino, Calhoun, and Williams took advantage of the ample coaching opportunities in 'America's College Town' to craft their respective blueprints for building a winning program and turn their schools into regional powers, and these early coaching years served as their respective springboards to big-time college basketball.

Clayton Trutor (Author), Barry Abrams (Narrator)

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Business Secrets from the Bible: Spiritual Success Strategies for Financial Abundance (2nd Edition)

In the newly revised second edition of Business Secrets from the Bible, renowned keynote speaker, consultant, and advisor Rabbi Daniel Lapin delivers an inspiring and practical guide to achieving your financial goals by deploying timeless truths from the Bible. In the book, you'll explore the secrets of creating revenue using timeless spiritual strategies, as well as concrete guidance on developing your self-discipline, integrity, and moral strength. The author explains how to develop the right financial and spiritual mindsets, showing you effective, Bible-based strategies to improve your life and increase your bottom-line. You'll also find brand-new updates and revisions to the widely read original, demonstrating how a focus on service and the well-being of others will be reflected in your own prosperity; hands-on strategies for self-transformation in the face of fear and uncertainty; and how to seed and nurture new relationships that become part of the tapestry of your exciting financial reality. A must-read resource for anyone interested in simultaneously getting closer to God and doing good by doing well. Escalating the financial destiny of readers around the world, Business Secrets from the Bible is the biblical, spiritual, and practical roadmap to prosperity that you have been waiting for.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Susan Lapin (Author), Barry Abrams (Narrator)

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The Bogleheads' Guide to the Three-Fund Portfolio: How a Simple Portfolio of Three Total Market Inde

Twenty benefits from the three-fund total market index portfolio. The Bogleheads' Guide to The Three-Fund Portfolio describes the most popular portfolio on the Bogleheads forum. This all-indexed portfolio contains over 15,000 worldwide securities, in just three easily-managed funds, that has outperformed the vast majority of both professional and amateur investors. If you are a new investor, or an experienced investor who wants to simplify and improve your portfolio, The Bogleheads' Guide to The Three-Fund Portfolio is a short, easy-to-listen-to guide to show you how.

Taylor Larimore (Author), Barry Abrams (Narrator)

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Speaking Yiddish to Chickens: Holocaust Survivors on South Jersey Poultry Farms

Most Holocaust survivors who came to the US after WWII settled in big cities, but some chose an alternative way of life on American farms. More of these accidental farmers wound up raising chickens in southern New Jersey than anywhere else. Speaking Yiddish to Chickens is the first book to chronicle this chapter in American Jewish history when these refugees-including the author's grandparents-found an unlikely gateway to new lives in the US on poultry farms. This book relies on interviews, oral histories, and archival records to tell how they learned to farm while coping with unimaginable grief. They built small synagogues within walking distance of their farms and hosted Yiddish cultural events. Like refugees today, they embraced their new identities and enriched the community where they settled, working hard in unfamiliar jobs for often meager returns. Within a decade, falling egg prices and the rise of industrial-scale agriculture would drive most of these novice poultry farmers out of business, many into bankruptcy. Some hated every minute here; others would remember their time on south Jersey farms as their best years in America. They enjoyed a quieter way of life and more space than in the crowded New York City apartments where so many settled. This is their remarkable story of loss, renewal, and perseverance in the most unexpected of settings.

Seth Stern (Author), Barry Abrams (Narrator)

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The Gas and Flame Men: Baseball and the Chemical Warfare Service during World War I

The Gas and Flame Men is the first full account of Major League ballplayers who served in the Chemical Warfare Service during World War I. Four players, two club executives, and a manager served in the small and hastily formed branch, six of them as gas officers. Remarkably, five of the seven-Christy Mathewson, Branch Rickey, Ty Cobb, George Sisler, and Eppa 'Jeptha' Rixey-are now enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York. The son of a sixth Hall of Famer, player and manager Ned Hanlon, was a young officer killed in action in France with the First Gas Regiment. Prominent chemical soldiers also included veteran Major League catcher and future manager George 'Gabby' Street and Boston Braves president and former Harvard football coach Percy D. Haughton. The Gas and Flame Men explores how these famous baseball men, along with an eclectic mix of polo players, collegiate baseball and football stars, professors, architects, and prominent social figures all came together in the Chemical Warfare Service. Jim Leeke examines their service and its long-term effects on their physical and mental health-and on Major League Baseball and the world of sports. The Gas and Flame Men also addresses historical inaccuracies and misperceptions surrounding Christy Mathewson's early death from tuberculosis, long attributed to wartime gas exposure.

Jim Leeke (Author), Barry Abrams (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Barry Abrams