Browse audiobooks narrated by Sean Runnette, listen to samples and when you're ready head over to Audiobooks.com where you can get 3 FREE audiobooks on us
Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency
In Trajectory of Power, leading political scientists William Howell and Terry Moe provide a sweeping account of the historical rise of presidential power, arguing that it has now grown to the point where, in the wrong hands, it threatens to subvert American democracy and replace it with a de facto system of strongman rule, whether led by Donald Trump or someone else. For much of the twentieth century, Republican and Democratic presidents pursued power in very similar ways and almost always within democratic bounds. But Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan, in a transformation that has grown increasingly extreme over time, have gone beyond the 'normal' incentives that have traditionally shaped presidential behavior—and still shape the behavior of Democratic presidents—to pursue a presidency of such expansive unilateral power, and with such disregard for basic democratic requirements, that it puts democracy at serious risk. The book traces this divergence in approach to the backlash of conservatives against the administrative state, and to their epiphany that a war on big government could only be waged through a presidency of extraordinary power. Timely, urgent, and original, Trajectory of Power reveals how the presidency has been profoundly transformed during the modern era—and why it now puts our democracy in imminent danger.
Terry M. Moe, William G. Howell (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)
Audiobook
Dictating the Agenda: The Authoritarian Resurgence in World Politics
Following the end of the Cold War, the world experienced a remarkable wave of democratization. Over the next two decades, numerous authoritarian regimes transitioned to democracies, and it seemed that authoritarianism as a political model was fading. But as recent events have shown, things have clearly changed. In Dictating the Agenda, authors Alexander Cooley and Alexander Dukalskis reveal how today's authoritarian states are actively countering liberal ideas and advocacy surrounding human rights and democracy across various global governance domains. The transformed global context has unlocked for authoritarian states the possibility to contend with Western liberal soft power in new, traditionally 'non-political' ways. Cooley and Dukalskis ultimately advance a theory of authoritarian snapback, the process in which non-democratic states limit the transnational resonance of liberal ideas at home and advance anti-liberal norms and ideas into the global public sphere. Drawing from a range of evidence, this book doesn't just reveal the limits of the liberal influence taken for granted across the world. It offers a novel theory of how authoritarian governments figured out how to exploit and repurpose the same actors, tools, and norms that once exclusively promoted and sustained US-backed liberalism.
Alexander Dukalskis, alexander cooley (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)
Audiobook
The Lost Cause and the Great War: Progressive Reform and Patriotism in the American South
The Lost Cause and the Great War tells the stories of central Tennessee Progressive-era reformers to illustrate the fascinating broader issue of how Southerners steeped in Lost Cause Civil War mythologies simultaneously developed patriotic American fervor. Focusing on Luke Lea, a prominent politician and American army officer who attempted to capture Kaiser Wilhelm II during World War I, the book reveals the intricate interplay between three competing ideas: attachment to the memory of the Confederacy, intense American nationalism, and advocacy for progressive reforms. Hunt shows that Lea and his contemporaries sought either to harmonize these competing loyalties or to compartmentalize them to use when needed. Through insightful accounts of Tennessee's 1928 presidential campaign, the American Legion's response to cuts to veteran benefits in 1933, and the redefinition of America's global role post–World War II, Hunt shows how these reformers achieved a balance that held until the Civil Rights movement disrupted this delicate consensus. Hunt's rich account reveals how Lea and others like him wove national patriotism and Southern collective memory into a cohesive narrative that supported their broader Progressive goals. The book provides vivid examples of how collective memory and narratives shape social and political movements.
Robert E. Hunt (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)
Audiobook
Bridging Our Political Divide: How Liberals and Conservatives Can Understand Each Other and Find Com
Bridging Our Political Divide: How Liberals and Conservatives Can Understand Each Other and Find Common Ground is an essential contribution to a better national conversation. Psychologist Kenneth Barish explains the sources and consistency of our political beliefs and why we continue to disagree about fundamental issues in American life. He offers antidotes to the angry, repetitive, and unproductive arguments that now dominate our political culture. Barish teaches us how to listen, think, and speak about our political opinions in a way that allows us to understand each other's concerns, resist false dichotomies and ideological certainty, see new perspectives and possibilities, and find common ground. The concluding chapter shows how we can move beyond partisan divisions toward pragmatic solutions and a better future for America's children. This fundamentally hopeful book is an essential listen for students in all areas of study, for professionals in the fields of conflict resolution, communication, political science, and social psychology, and for anyone seeking to improve the quality of their conversations with people who may disagree with them, in both politics and in their personal relationships.
Kenneth Barish (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)
Audiobook
Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?
In our modern world of propaganda, social media enclaves, misinformation, and manipulation, the connection between 'the will of the people' and political action has broken down, political divisions are becoming increasingly intractable, and democracies are growing ever more ungovernable. Democracy is in crisis. In Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?, James S. Fishkin argues that deliberative democracy can have surprisingly positive effects on all of these problems and charts a unique path to fixing them with his method of Deliberative Polling. After decades of applying and perfecting the methods of deliberative democracy in countries all over the world, this book synthesizes the results of 150 applications and shows how the method can be applied to resolve many of democracy's seemingly intractable challenges. It can clarify the public will and depolarize our divisions. Fishkin demonstrates that deliberative democracy is a practical solution if applied widely and lays out a vision for how to combine elections with deliberation to build a more deliberative society, one that cures our extreme partisanship and leads to substantive dialogues that foster mutual respect and more engaged voters. Deliberation provides a story of thoughtful empowerment and democratic reform, strengthening but not replacing our current institutions.
James S. Fishkin (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)
Audiobook
The Bergdoll Boys: America's Most Notorious Millionaire Draft Dodgers
Heirs to the renowned German-American Bergdoll Beer fortune at a young age, the Bergdoll boys used their millions to become champion race car drivers and pioneer aviation heroes in the early 1900s. Then, just as Grover is trying to buy a bigger plane to set more records and attempt to fly to Europe a decade before Lindbergh, they're snared by vengeful local military draft officials. Running and hiding from their war duty, the fugitives are so reviled by nationalistic Americans that two older brothers change their names to avoid infamy. Eluding capture for years with financial help from their wealthy German Mutter, the Bergdoll boys are entangled with kidnapping and murder, federal agents and bounty hunters, Nazis, and Congressional investigators, and an incredible story of release and escape from an Army jail with bribery, all the way up to the White House to search for buried gold. Hounded by the unsympathetic press and public, and congress, the Bergdoll fortune is confiscated by the federal government. Their doting mother gets into pistol shootouts with agents trying to search their mansions and country estates. Grover remains one step ahead of bungling lawmen by hiding in Germany and secretly traveling into and out of America on fake passports and producing kinderreiche Familie with his attractive German wife.
Timothy W. Lake (Author), Louis Erwin Bergdoll, Sean Runnette, Timothy W Lake (Narrator)
Audiobook
What Color Is Your Parachute?: Your Guide to a Lifetime of Meaningful Work and Career Success
The groundbreaking, indispensable guide to rewarding work and a fulfilling life-more than ten million copies sold! For more than fifty years, What Color Is Your Parachute? has transformed the way people think about job hunting. Whether searching for that first position, recovering from a layoff, or dreaming of a career change, What Color Is Your Parachute? has shown millions of readers how to network effectively, compose impressive resumes and cover letters, interview with confidence, and negotiate the best possible salary-while discovering how to make their livelihood part of authentic living. More than a job-hunting book, Richard N. Bolles's timeless wisdom and famed self-assessment exercise clarifies seven key dimensions, so you can uncover your greatest passions, most valued traits, and transferable skills to design a life that enables you to flourish. With the job market in constant flux, people everywhere have found that understanding who they are-what they care about, where and how they do their best work, and the most effective way to express their abilities-is the best compass to navigating an ever-changing and challenging professional landscape. It is also how their work can become part of a life filled with passion and purpose. Using the trailblazing advice and enduring guidance of What Color Is Your Parachute?, job-hunters and career changers will have the tools to discover-and land-the work, and life, most meaningful to them.
Richard N. Bolles (Author), Sean Runnette, TBD (Narrator)
Audiobook
Talkin' Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America's Bohemian Music Capital
The definitive history of the revolutionary Greenwich Village music scene, which fostered some of the most iconic musicians in American history--and fought for its identity every step of the way. Although Greenwich Village encompasses less than a square mile in downtown New York, rarely has such a concise area supported and nurtured so many groundbreaking artists and genres. Over the course of decades, Billie Holiday, the Weavers, Sonny Rollins, Bob Dylan, Dave Van Ronk, Ornette Coleman, the Blues Project, and Suzanne Vega are just a few who realized the Village was a sanctuary for innovators, non-conformists, and those looking to invent or reinvent themselves. Those musicians, and so many more, used the Village's smokey coffeehouses and clubs to chronicle the tumultuous Sixties, rewrite jazz history, and take folk and rock & roll into eclectic places it hadn't been before. Based on over 150 new interviews with surviving participants, previously unseen and unheard documents and archives, and author David Browne's years immersed in the scene, Talkin' Greenwich Village lends the saga the epic, panoramic scope it has long deserved. It takes readers from the Fifties fountain sessions in Washington Square Park and into landmark venues like the Gaslight and the Village Vanguard, with stops along the way into the scene's carousing Seventies years (National Lampoon's Lemmings), and Dylan's momentous arrival and numerous returns. In eye-opening fashion, the book chronicles the overlooked people of color who sang alongside Dylan and his peers, reveals how the federal and city government consistently kept its eye on the community and artists like Van Ronk, unearths new aspects of the infamous "beatnik riot" in Washington Square Park, and spins untold stories of the beloved sister band the Roches, who laid the groundwork for so many of today's female singer-songwriters, as well as the falafel joint that begat a new community in the Eighties. In also chronicling the racial tensions, ongoing crackdowns and changes in New York and music that infiltrated the neighborhood, Talkin' Greenwich Village is more than just vivid music history. It also tells the story of the heyday and waning of bohemian culture in America, set to some of the most enduring words, folk songs and jazz jams in music history.
David Browne (Author), Sean Runnette, Tbd (Narrator)
Audiobook
The Bergdoll Boys: America’s Most Notorious Millionaire Draft Dodgers
Heirs to the renowned German-American Bergdoll Beer fortune at a young age, the Bergdoll boys used their millions to become champion race car drivers and pioneer aviation heroes in the early 1900s. Grover, the most notorious, is celebrated for his daring record-setting flights in a Wright Brothers airplane. Erwin drives a powerful Benz to win a prestigious motor car race, the equivalent of the Daytona 500. Then they're snared by vengeful local military draft officials. Running and hiding from their war duty, the fugitives are so reviled by nationalistic Americans that two older brothers change their names to avoid infamy. Eluding capture for years, the Bergdoll boys are entangled with kidnapping and murder, federal agents and bounty hunters, Nazis, and Congressional investigators, and an incredible story of release and escape from an Army jail with bribery, all the way up to the White House to search for buried gold. Hounded by the unsympathetic press and public, and congress, the Bergdoll fortune is confiscated by the federal government. Their doting mother gets into pistol shootouts with agents trying to search their mansions. Grover remains one step ahead of bungling lawmen by hiding in Germany and secretly traveling into and out of America on fake passports and producing kinderreiche Familie with his attractive German wife.
Timothy W. Lake (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)
Audiobook
The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America
A captivating chronicle of the pivotal decade in American sports, when the games invaded prime time, and sports moved from the margins to the mainstream of American culture. Every decade brings change, but as Michael MacCambridge chronicles in THE BIG TIME, no decade in American sports history featured such convulsive cultural shifts as the 1970s. So many things happened during the decade-the move of sports into prime-time television, the beginning of athletes' gaining a sense of autonomy for their own careers, integration becoming-at least within sports-more of the rule than the exception, and the social revolution that brought females more decisively into sports, as athletes, coaches, executives, and spectators. More than politicians, musicians or actors, the decade in America was defined by its most exemplary athletes. The sweeping changes in the decade could be seen in the collective experience of Billie Jean King and Muhammad Ali, Henry Aaron and Julius Erving, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Joe Greene, Jack Nicklaus and Chris Evert, among others, who redefined the role of athletes and athletics in American culture. The Seventies witnessed the emergence of spectator sports as an ever-expanding mainstream phenomenon, as well as dramatic changes in the way athletes were paid, portrayed, and packaged. In tracing the epic narrative of how American sports was transformed in the Seventies, a larger story emerges: of how America itself changed, and how spectator sports moved decisively on a trajectory toward what it has become today, the last truly "big tent" in American culture.
Michael Maccambridge (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)
Audiobook
'Whether a beginner or at the highest level of practice, learn Zen from one of the greatest masters of the twentieth century. Why practice Zen? What sets Zen apart from religion? What are its different practices? These questions, and more, are examined and answered by Zen Master Koun Yamada, whose Dharma heirs include Robert Aitken, Ruben Habito, and David Loy. Through compelling stories and a systematic approach, he guides the reader through creating and sustaining a lifelong practice. Warm and ecumenical in tone, Koun uses the insights of Zen to bring a deeper understanding of faith. Zen: The Authentic Gate is an easy-to-follow guide to creating an effortless and natural practice regardless of background, tradition, or religion.'
Yamada Koun (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)
Audiobook
The U.S. Congress: A Very Short Introduction
Donald A. Ritchie, a congressional historian for forty years, takes listeners on a fascinating, behind-the-scenes tour of Capitol Hill, pointing out the key players, explaining their behavior, and translating parliamentary language into plain English. He also explores the essential necessity of compromise to accomplish anything significant in the legislative arena. However, recent events show that political polarization has hardened and produced gridlock. The 2020 election also produced a more diverse membership in terms of gender, ethnicity, religion, and ideology, with primary elections resulting in the defeat of moderate candidates, making bipartisan compromise harder to achieve. Among the most significant events, the Senate ignored President Obama's last nomination to the Supreme Court and then adopted a 'nuclear option' to streamline future Supreme Court confirmations. The House also twice impeached President Trump, processes that starkly expose the differences between the majority-rule requirements of the House and the super-majority requirements of the Senate. This new edition explains how the parties have changed in light of the unprecedented politics of the past four years, culminating in the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and how this development has affected both the House and the Senate.
Donald A. Ritchie (Author), Sean Runnette (Narrator)
Audiobook
©PTC International Ltd T/A LoveReading is registered in England. Company number: 10193437. VAT number: 270 4538 09. Registered address: 157 Shooters Hill, London, SE18 3HP.
Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer
We use cookies to give you the best online experience. Please let us know if you agree to all of these cookies. To learn more view privacy and cookies policy.