Audiobooks narrated by Jonathan Yen

Born with a Tail: The Devilish Life and Wicked Times of Anton Szandor LaVey, Founder of the Church o

A provocative, irreverent biography of Anton Szandor LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, BORN WITH A TAIL chronicles a time when Americans could welcome a macabre showman into their living rooms via TheTonight Show, before a ginned-up hysteria known as the Satanic Panic would put a target on his shiny, shaven head. When Anton LaVey burst onto the San Francisco scene right before the Summer of Love, he parlayed his eerie obsessions into a philosophy and lifestyle that capitalized on a New Age rage. With his signature cape, horn-studded hood, and Ming the Merciless beard, LaVey was a media-savvy provocateur who took what he did seriously, but was always in on the joke. From a spooky old Victorian house, he founded the Church of Satan, where young women squirmed nude on the mantel of his ritual chamber as he delivered a doctrine of self-deification and indulgence that combined the writings of Ayn Rand, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Aleister Crowley with the pulpy fictions of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Later, his book The Satanic Bible (still in print since 1969) struck an ominous chord with the alienated-the fringe dwellers who were goth before there were goths. But LaVey's influence could be felt far beyond his flock, namely in the paranormal and metaphysical entertainment that dominated pop culture in the 1970s and continues to make an impact today. He was a musical prodigy who attracted a cluster of celebrities into his orbit, including Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, and Sammy Davis Jr. But living like a real-life Gomez Addams, complete with a full-grown pet lion, came at an awful price. Deeply researched and featuring dozens of interviews, as well as recently unearthed personal correspondence, BORN WITH A TAIL: The Devilish Life and Wicked Times of Anton Szandor LaVey, Founder of the Church of Satan separates the facts from the fabrications of this uniquely American character's extraordinary life.

Doug Brod (Author), Jonathan Yen, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

In Strange Company: An American Soldier with Multinational Forces in the Middle East and Iraq

The decision to not deploy reoriented, trained Iraqi divisions and other allied forces in numbers significant enough to adequately stabilize the situation in Iraq in 2003–04 resulted in significant shortages of manpower and equipment that eventually led to a less-than-satisfactory ending to the campaign, and significantly challenged the entire Coalition effort in the first year of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The roles and missions assumed by allies were vitally important in the under-resourced effort to bring order to the chaos of Iraq but would remain relatively unheralded. Colonel Tiso's account offers unique insights into the challenges of planning the Iraqi campaign and the intricacies and challenges of multinational service through the lens of his assignments as a war planner at U.S. Central Command, Senior Military Adviser of the Arab Peninsula Shield Force and the Polish-led Multinational Division (Central-South), and Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (C-3) of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team tasked to develop the New Iraqi Army. His firsthand account of operational planning for war in Iraq captures the concerns of the military planners and senior commanders to liberate and stabilize the country, enabling listeners to better understand the challenges of operational war planning, coalition warfare, and more.

Col. Roland J. Tiso Jr. (ret) Us Army (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know ®

Advances in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) have created a new class of computer systems that exhibit astonishing proficiency on a wide variety of tasks with superhuman performance, producing novel text, images, music, and software by analyzing enormous collections of digitized information. Soon, these systems will provide expert medical care; offer legal advice; draft documents; write computer programs; tutor our children; and generate music and art. These advances will accelerate progress in science, art, and human knowledge, but they will also bring new dangers. Have we finally discovered the holy grail of AI-machines that match or exceed human intelligence? Which industries and professions will thrive, and which will wither? What risks and dangers will it pose? How can we ensure that these systems respect our ethical principles? Will the benefits be broadly distributed or accrue to a lucky few? How will GAI alter our political systems and international conflicts? Are we merely a stepping stone to a new form of non-biological life, or are we just getting better at building useful gadgets? Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know® equips listeners with the knowledge to answer these pressing questions.

Jerry Kaplan (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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Gunflint Falling: Blowdown in the Boundary Waters

On July 4, 1999, in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a bizarre confluence of meteorological events resulted in the most damaging blowdown in the region's history. Gunflint Falling tells the story of this devastating storm from the perspectives of those who were on the ground before, during, and after the catastrophic event. The forecasts in Duluth predicted the day would be 'warm and humid. Partly sunny with a 30% chance of thunderstorms.' But as the evening settled, the first eyewitness accounts began to tell a terrifying story. Friends camping on Lake Polly watched in wonder as the sky turned green and the winds began to whip. They scrambled to pull canoes on shore when a tree snapped and struck one of them in the head, rendering her unconscious. Three women enjoying their last day of a camping trip took shelter in their tent as winds increased. Water drenched the nylon walls as trees crashed around them, one flattening the tent and pinning a woman beneath it. A family vacationing at their cabin dodged falling trees and strained against straight-line winds as they sprinted from the cabin to the safest place they knew: a crawl space underneath it. They watched as trees snapped, their twisted root balls torn out of the earth. By the time the storm began to subside, falling trees had injured approximately sixty people, but amazingly, no one died.

Cary J. Griffith (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Gunflint Burning: Fire in the Boundary Waters

The story of the Ham Lake fire, at the time the most destructive wildfire in modern Minnesota history-the blaze, the firefighters' battle, the human toll Gunflint Burning is a comprehensive account of the dramatic events around the Ham Lake fire of 2007, one of the largest wildfires in Minnesota history. In sharp detail, Cary J. Griffith describes the key events of the fire as they unfold, transporting listeners to the front lines of an epic struggle that was at times heroic, tragic, and sublime.

Cary J. Griffith (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial Myths of America's War on Drugs

Beware Euphoria uncovers the roots of America's moral obsession with drug regulation, offering a lively and fascinating history of the nation's racialized fear of intoxication. Challenging the idea that early antidrug laws in the United States arose from racial animus, George Fisher instead shows in textured detail how United States drug laws were driven by a deep-seated cultural taboo against euphoria and a preoccupation with white moral integrity. From nineteenth-century opium dens to the war on cocaine and cannabis, and more, Fisher offers a vivid tour of the sites of conflict, along with a convincing case for how the moral discourses and social contexts of the day pit drugs against the law. Bringing this history up to the present, Fisher shows how the racial dynamic has changed dramatically. As harsher penalties swell prisons with mostly nonwhite dealers, antidrug laws have come under renewed scrutiny as a tool of racial oppression. The book closes with an examination of cannabis legalization, driven in part by the movement for racial justice.

George Fisher (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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The Art of Buying Art: How to evaluate and buy art like a professional collector

'The very best book on the subject ever published' -Bernard Ewell, Personal Property Journal (the trade publication of the American Society of Appraisers) The art world can appear impenetrable to the beginner. This classic book, in print since 1990, is an invaluable primer that will help anyone to penetrate the thickets of inscrutable 'insider info' and esoteric jargon. Updated for today's art market, including online buying, The Art of Buying Art is without a doubt the most accessible book on how to research, evaluate, price, and buy artworks-for anyone who wants to buy art. No previous knowledge of art or the art business is necessary. Topics include: how to research and evaluate art prices like the professionals; how to build a quality collection; how to spot fakes and forgeries; how to buy art at auctions and directly from artists; how to negotiate prices; and how to tell the difference between an original and a reproduction. Bamberger provides the information needed to transform anyone into an informed art consumer, to protect collectors from bad buys, and to help them locate the best art at the correct prices.

Alan Bamberger (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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HBR's 10 Must Reads 2017: The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review

With authors from Clayton M. Christensen to Adam Grant and company examples from Intel to Uber, HBR's 10 Must Reads 2017 brings the most important management conversations to your fingertips. This book will inspire you to rethink the way you work in the face of advancing automation; transform your business using a platform strategy; apply design thinking to create innovative products; identify where too much collaboration may be holding your people back; see the theory of disruptive innovation in a brand new light; and recognize the signs that your cross-cultural negotiation may be falling apart. This collection of articles includes 'Collaborative Overload,' by Rob Cross, Reb Rebele, and Adam Grant; 'Algorithms Need Managers, Too,' by Michael Luca, Jon Kleinberg, and Sendhil Mullainathan; 'Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy,' by Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Geoffrey G. Parker, and Sangeet Paul Choudary; 'What Is Disruptive Innovation?,' by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael Raynor, and Rory McDonald; 'How Indra Nooyi Turned Design Thinking into Strategy,' an interview with Indra Nooyi by Adi Ignatius; 'Engineering Reverse Innovations,' by Amos Winter and Vijay Govindarajan; “The Employer-Led Health Care Revolution,' by Patricia A. McDonald, Robert S. Mecklenburg, and Lindsay A. Martin; and more.

Adam Grant, Clayton M. Christensen, Harvard Business Review, Thomas H. Davenport, Vijay Govindarajan (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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How to Make Things Faster: Lessons in Performance from Technology and Everyday Life

Slow systems are frustrating. They waste time and money. But making consistently great decisions about performance can be easy, if you understand what's going on. This book explains in a clear and thoughtful voice why systems perform the way they do. It's for anybody who's curious about how computer programs and other processes use their time and about what you can do to improve them. Through a mix of personal vignettes and technical use cases, Cary Millsap reviews the process of improving performance and provides best practices for optimizing systems efficiently. You'll learn how to identify the information needed to improve a system, how to find the root causes of performance issues, and how to fix them. You'll also learn how performance optimization is both a skill set and a mindset, and how to develop both over time. If you're a computer professional whose success relies on software that goes fast, by the end of this book you'll be able to identify, view, scope, analyze, and remedy performance issues with consistency and confidence.

Cary Millsap (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773–1776

In Tea James Fichter reveals that despite the so-called Boston Tea Party in 1773, two other large shipments of tea from the East India Company survived and were ultimately drunk in North America. The survival of these shipments shaped the politics of the years ahead and hint at the enduring potency of consumerism in revolutionary politics. Tea protests were widespread in 1774, but, Fichter argues, so were tea advertisements and tea sales. Such protests were noisy and sometimes misleading performances, not clear signs that tea consumption was unpopular. Revolutionaries vilified tea in their propaganda and prohibited the importation and consumption of tea and British goods. Yet merchant ledgers reveal these goods were still widely sold and consumed in 1775. Colonists supported Patriots more than they abided by non-consumption. When Congress ended its prohibition against tea in 1776, it reasoned that the ban was too widely violated to enforce. War was a more effective means to resist Parliament, after all, than was a boycott, and as rebel arms advanced, Patriots seized and used tea and other goods Britons left behind. By 1776 protesters sought tea, and, objecting to its high price, they redistributed rather than destroyed it. But as Fichter demonstrates in Tea, the commodity was not, by then, a symbol of the British state, but of American consumerism.

James R. Fichter (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Shogun: The Life and Times of Tokugawa Ieyasu: Japan's Greatest Ruler

Uncover the true story of the man who unified medieval Japan. For 700 years, Japan was ruled by military commanders who waged war against one another incessantly. Shogun tells the fascinating story of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the man who finally unified and brought lasting peace to the nation. He established a new central government which enabled his descendants to rule Japan for the next 260 years-a period in which Japanese culture as we know it today flourished. The dramatic episodes retold in this book include: - Ieyasu's crushing victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, the largest battle ever fought in Japan - His creation of a new form of government with a centralized system of control that allowed his descendants to rule Japan peacefully for the next fifteen generations - Ieyasu's fateful decision to limit the spread of Christianity in Japan, ultimately banning the religion and massacring tens of thousands of ardent believers This new edition highlights the drama and pageantry of Ieyasu's life and features a new foreword by leading Japanese military historian Alexander Bennett.

A.L. Sadler (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

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The Scandal of Cal: Land Grabs, White Supremacy, and Miseducation at UC Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley-widely known as 'Cal'-is admired worldwide as a bastion of innovation and a hub for progressive thought. Far less known are the university's roots in plunder, warfare, and the promotion of white supremacy. As Tony Platt shows in The Scandal of Cal, these original sins sit at the center of UC Berkeley's history. Platt looks unflinchingly at the university's desecration of graves and large-scale hoarding of Indigenous remains. He tracks its role in developing the racist pseudoscience of eugenics in the early twentieth century. He sheds light on the school's complicity with the military-industrial complex and its incubation of unprecedented violence through the Manhattan Project. And he underscores its deliberate and continued evasions about its own wrongdoings, which echo in the institution's decision-making up to the present day. This book, above all, illuminates Cal's culpability in some of the cruelest chapters of US history and sounds a clarion call for the university to undertake a thorough and earnest reckoning with its past. It is a must-listen for Cal alumni, students, faculty, and staff, and for anyone concerned with the impact of higher education in the United States and beyond.

Tony Platt (Author), Jonathan Yen (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Jonathan Yen