Audiobooks narrated by Patrick Frederic

George H. W. Bush: The American Presidents Series: The 41st President, 1989-1993

"George Bush was a throwback to a different era. A patrician figure not known for his eloquence, Bush readily dismissed ideology as 'the vision thing.' Yet, as Timothy Naftali argues, there was no person of his generation better prepared for the challenges facing the United States as the Cold War ended. Bush wisely shepherded Soviet reformers through the liberalization of their system and skillfully orchestrated the reunification of Germany. And following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he united the global community to defeat Saddam Hussein. At home, Bush reasserted the principle of fiscal discipline after the excesses of the Reagan years. It was ultimately his political awkwardness that cost George Bush a second term. His toughest decisions widened fractures in the Republican Party, and with his party divided, Bush lost his bid for reelection in 1992. In a final irony, the conservatives who scorned him would return to power eight years later, under his son and namesake, with the result that the elder George Bush would see his reputation soar."

Timothy Naftali (Author), Patrick Frederic (Narrator)

Audiobook

Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far)

"A brilliantly funny look at the tumultuous recent past from the Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist. Remember when everything was going to go to hell when Y2K struck? That didn't happen, right? But what did happen? To provide a little perspective on a really messed-up millennium (so far), the one and only Dave Barry slips into his historian's robe (it's plush terrycloth) and revisits the defining moments in our country's recent history. As an added bonus, Barry quickly-we're busy here-tosses in the complete history of the last millennium, covering crucial turning points such as the invention of the pizza by Leonardo da Vinci and the computer by Charles Babbage (who died in 1871 still waiting to talk to tech support). Fellow Americans, the time has come to bone up with Barry as he puts the hysterical in history."

Dave Barry (Author), Patrick Frederic (Narrator)

Audiobook

Fierce Pajamas: Selected Humor Writing from The New Yorker

"When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, he described it as a “comic weekly.” And although it has become much more than that, it has remained true in its irreverent heart to the founder’s description, publishing the most illustrious literary humorists of the modern era—among them Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Groucho Marx, George S. Kaufman, James Thurber, S. J. Perelman, Peter De Vries, Mike Nichols, Marshall Brickman, Woody Allen, Donald Barthelme, Calvin Trillin, George W. S. Trow, Veronica Geng, Garrison Keillor, Ian Frazier, Roy Blount, Jr., Bruce McCall, Steve Martin, Christopher Buckley, and Paul Rudnick. This anthology gathers together, for the first time, the funniest work of more than seventy New Yorker contributors. Parodists take on not only writers like Hemingway and Kerouac, but TV documentaries, Italian cinema, and etiquette books. (Enough have been published, Robert Benchley maintains, “that there should be no danger of toppling over forward into the wrong soup, or getting into arguments as to which elbow belongs on which arm.”) Other pieces offer perspectives on the heights of fame, the depths of social embarrassment, and the ups and downs of love and sex. Such well-loved sketches as Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” take their place alongside light-hearted essays on food, tennis, and taxis, and flights of fancy that follow an apparently simple premise to the point of no return, and sometimes well beyond. Here you will find large insights (Woody Allen: “Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage”) and hard-earned wisdom (Ian Frazier on dating your mom: “Here is a grown, experienced, loving woman—one you do not have to go to a party or a singles bar to meet, one you do not have to go to great lengths to know”). And, not least, a great deal of helpful advice, including Steve Martin’s on memory and middle age: “Bored? Here’s a way the over-fifty set can easily kill a good half hour: 1. Place your car keys in your right hand. 2. With your left hand, call a friend and confirm a lunch or dinner date. 3. Hang up the phone. 4. Now look for your car keys.” A rich selection of humorous verse includes caustic gems by Dorothy Parker, the effortless whimsy of Phyllis McGinley, and Ogden Nash’s unforgettable slapstick prosody, as well as forays by luminaries who ought to have known better, like Robert Graves, Elizabeth Bishop, and W. H. Auden. A wonderful gift for others, or a delightful treat for oneself, Fierce Pajamas is a treasury of laughter from a publication described by Auden as “the best comic magazine in existence.”"

David Remnick, Henry Finder (Author), Chris Gannon, Patrick Frederic (Narrator)

Audiobook

Flatland

" Flatland, like our own world, is on the verge of the millenium. On the last day of the year 1999, a Square-hitherto undistinguished from the other shapes of his two-dimensional world-receives the Gospel of Three Dimensions, revealed to that world's flat inhabitants only once every a thousand years. Transformed by a truth he is unable to conceal, he is promptly condemned as a heretic. His poignant tale is itself a multi-dimensional creation, for it is not only a challenge to our most basic perceptions of everyday reality, but a sharp social satire and an illuminating mathematical treatise as well. In the tradition of fantasy and social satire that includes Gulliver's Travels , Alice in Wonderland, and Animal Farm, Abbott pokes fun at the rigid class structure and concern for appearances of his Victorian society even as he poses an underlying question that is as provoking today as it was a century ago. Could we and everything we see around us be only a cross section for worlds of higher dimensions?"

Edwin Abbott (Author), Patrick Frederic (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Patrick Frederic