Audiobooks narrated by Rachel Maddow

Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past

A searing, vital investigation of the Republican Party’s dangerous campaign to rewrite history in real time, from the Emmy Award-winning Rachel Maddow Show producer and bestselling author of The Impostors. “There is nobody…who has more influence on the way I think about politics than Steve Benen.” —Rachel Maddow For as long as historical records have existed, authoritarian regimes have tried to rewrite history to suit their purposes, using their dictatorial powers to create myths, spread propaganda, justify decisions, erase opponents, and even dispose of crimes. Today, as America’s Republican Party becomes increasingly radicalized, it’s not surprising to see the GOP read from a similarly despotic script. Indeed, the party is taking dangerous, aggressive steps to rewrite history—and not just from generations past. Unable to put a positive spin on Trump-era scandals and fiascos, GOP voices and their allies have grown determined to rewrite the stories of the last few years—from the 2020 election results and the horror of January 6th to their own legislative record—treating the recent past as an enemy to be overpowered, crushed, and conquered. The consequences for our future, in turn, are dramatic. Extraordinarily timely and undeniably important, Steve Benen’s new book tells the staggering chronicle of the Republican party’s unsettling attempts at historical revisionism. It reveals not only how dependent they have grown on the tactic, but also how dangerous the consequences are if we allow the party to continue. The stakes, Benen argues, couldn’t be higher: the future of democracy hinges on both our accurate understanding of events and the end of alternative narratives that challenge reality.

Steve Benen (Author), Rachel Maddow, TBD (Narrator)

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Prequel: America's first fight against fascism

Brought to you by Penguin. The runaway #1 New York Times bestseller As Hitler's ascendancy began to make a Second World War inevitable, a clandestine network flooded the United States with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of its war effort and persuading Americans that their natural alliance was with the Axis. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens' confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the US government and installing authoritarian rule. Some of the country's most influential elected officials, including senators and members of Congress, worked to disseminate Nazi talking points, while fascist paramilitaries stockpiled bombs and weapons in preparation for violent insurrection. Prequel unearths the forgotten story of these insurrectionists, as well as the heroic efforts of the journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose their plot and bring them to justice. Deeply researched, the story of how the crisis was averted is also a deeply relevant tale for our own disquieting times. 'A ripping read. . . . The parallels to the present day are strong, even startling' New York Times 'A chilling history lesson... Vivid, urgent, smart' Washington Post © Rachel Maddow 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024

Rachel Maddow (Author), Rachel Maddow, TBD (Narrator)

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Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism

Rachel Maddow traces the fight to preserve American democracy back to World War II, when a handful of committed public servants and brave private citizens thwarted far-right plotters trying to steer our nation toward an alliance with the Nazis. Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens' confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule. That effort worked-tongue and groove-alongside an ultra-right paramilitary movement that stockpiled bombs and weapons and trained for mass murder and violent insurrection. At the same time, a handful of extraordinary activists and journalists were tracking the scheme, exposing it even as it was unfolding. In 1941 the U.S. Department of Justice finally made a frontal attack, identifying the key plotters, finding their backers, and prosecuting dozens in federal court. None of it went as planned. While the scheme has been remembered in history-if at all-as the work of fringe players, in reality it involved a large number of some of the country's most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation. That failure of the legal system had consequences. The tentacles of that unslain beast have reached forward into our history for decades. But the heroic efforts of the activists, journalists, prosecutors, and regular citizens who sought to expose the insurrectionists also make for a deeply resonant, deeply relevant tale in our own disquieting times.

Rachel Maddow (Author), Rachel Maddow (Narrator)

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Pegasus: The Story of the World's Most Dangerous Spyware

The gripping, behind-the scenes story of one of the most sophisticated surveillance weapons ever created, which is threatening democracy and human rights. 'Absorbing . . . a celebration of journalism and hacking being used to unmask the bad guys' - Guardian Pegasus is widely regarded as the most powerful cyber-surveillance system on the market - available to any government that can afford its multimillion-dollar price tag. The system's creator, the NSO group, a private corporation headquartered in Israel, boasts about its ability to thwart terrorists and criminals: 'Thousands of people in Europe owe their lives to hundreds of our company employees', they declared in 2019. That may be true - but the Pegasus system doesn't just catch bad guys. Pegasus has been used by repressive regimes to spy on thousands of innocent people around the world: heads of state, diplomats, human rights defenders, lawyers, political opponents, and journalists. Virtually undetectable, the system can track a person's daily movement in real time, gain control of the device's microphones and cameras at will, and capture all videos, photos, emails, texts, and passwords - encrypted or not. Its full reach is not even known. This is the gripping story of how Pegasus was uncovered, written by Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud, the two intrepid reporters who revealed the scandal in collaboration with an international consortium of journalists. They received a leaked list of 50,000 mobile phone numbers, but they needed to prove NSO's involvement. After a dangerous and secretive investigation spanning the globe, their findings shook the world. Tense and compelling, Pegasus reveals how thousands of lives have been turned upside down by this unprecedented threat, and exposes the chilling new ways governments and corporations are laying waste to human rights - and silencing innocent citizens.

Laurent Richard, Sandrine Rigaud (Author), Andrew Wehrlen, Rachel Maddow, Rachel Perry (Narrator)

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Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Eart

Brought to you by Penguin. Award-winning American news presenter Rachel Maddow investigates remarkable stories from around the globe, all leading back to the same crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry. From Oklahoma, Texas and Washington, to Kyiv, Siberia and Moscow, to Equatorial Guinea and Alaska; from a mansion in Malibu with the world’s largest collection of Michael Jackson memorabilia to luxury hotels in central London; from deep within the earth’s crust to the icy surface of the Arctic seas, Blowout uncovers a web of international corruption. With her trademark black humour, Maddow takes us through the purposeful detonation of a fifty-kiloton nuclear bomb underground near Colarado, man-made earthquakes, murdered cows and the international financial crisis, to the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas, and a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, most notably ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. The oil and gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, 'like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can't really blame the lion. It's in her nature.' Blowout is a call to contain the lion: to stop subsidizing the wealthiest businesses on earth, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of the world's most destructive industry and its enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, 'Democracy either wins this one or disappears.' © Rachel Maddow 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Rachel Maddow (Author), Rachel Maddow (Narrator)

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Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Ear

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Big Oil and Gas Versus Democracy-Winner Take All In 2010, the words "earthquake swarm" entered the lexicon in Oklahoma. That same year, a trove of Michael Jackson memorabilia-including his iconic crystal-encrusted white glove-was sold at auction for over $1 million to a guy who was, officially, just the lowly forestry minister of the tiny nation of Equatorial Guinea. And in 2014, Ukrainian revolutionaries raided the palace of their ousted president and found a zoo of peacocks, gilded toilets, and a floating restaurant modeled after a Spanish galleon. Unlikely as it might seem, there is a thread connecting these events, and Rachel Maddow follows it to its crooked source: the unimaginably lucrative and equally corrupting oil and gas industry. With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, revealing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas along the way, and drawing a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia's rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia's rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the West's most important alliances, and the United States. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, most notably ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. The oil and gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, "like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can't really blame the lion. It's in her nature." Blowout is a call to contain the lion: to stop subsidizing the wealthiest businesses on earth, to fight for transparency, and to check the influence of the world's most destructive industry and its enablers. The stakes have never been higher. As Maddow writes, "Democracy either wins this one or disappears."

Rachel Maddow (Author), Rachel Maddow (Narrator)

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Drift

"One of my favorite ideas is, never to keep an unnecessary soldier," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1792. Neither Jefferson nor the other Founders could ever have envisioned the modern national security state, with its tens of thousands of "privateers"; its bloated Department of Homeland Security; its rusting nuclear weapons, ill-maintained and difficult to dismantle; and its strange fascination with an unproven counterinsurgency doctrine. Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. She offers up a fresh, unsparing appraisal of Reagan's radical presidency. Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the priorities of the national security state to overpower our political discourse. Sensible yet provocative, dead serious yet seriously funny, Drift will reinvigorate a "loud and jangly" political debate about how, when, and where to apply America's strength and power--and who gets to make those decisions.

Rachel Maddow (Author), Rachel Maddow (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Rachel Maddow