Art & Music Audiobooks | Non-Fiction

The Small World of Dominic Holland: The Complete BBC Radio Comedy Series, plus Holland’s Shorts

Two series of stand-up comedy and sketches from the hilarious, award-winning comic Dominic Holland “A comedian who makes you feel glad to be alive” The Guardian “The UK master of observational comedy” The Sunday Times Since winning the Perrier Best Newcomer Award at the Edinburgh Festival in 1993, Dominic Holland has gone on to become one of the UK’s best loved comedians. He’s worked with Armando Iannucci, Rob Brydon and supported Eddie Izzard on tour. He is also the father of Tom Holland (best known for starring in the blockbuster Spider-man movies) and made the brilliant 2017 Dominic Holland Eclipsed Edinburgh Fringe show out of the experience of being a superhero’s dad. The Small World of Dominic Holland will have you laughing out loud as the comedian points out the pitfalls of growing up, becoming an adult and having children. He shares his thoughts in a series of stand-up routines and sketches illustrating the minutiae of life - from what we do with our leisure time and how we shop, to exploring fear and pain and the perils of domesticity. Holland’s unique powers of observation make for hilariously addictive listening. In Holland’s Shorts Dominic shares the varied contents of his mind in a series of rapid-fire monologues. He uses a pay-and-display car park, ponders the mysteries of airport shopping, considers the Theory of Evolution, deliberates TV chefs, cereal manufacturers and teachers, discusses the perils of the kidney bean and ponders how to steal a cash machine. And wonders, perhaps most pressingly of all, is there really anything tastier than chicken? Enjoy these two series, available together as a download for the first time. Credits: The Small World of Dominic Holland Written and presented by Dominic Holland Produced by Maria Esposito with Simon Greenall, Sally Grace and Dave Lamb First Broadcast BBC Radio 4, 15 August – 19 September 2000 Holland’s Shorts Written and presented by Dominic Holland Produced by Victoria Lloyd Music by Jim Howard with Margaret Cabourn-Smith, Martin Hyder and Ed Weeks First Broadcast BBC Radio 4, 24 August – 28 September 2006 ©2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Dominic Holland (Author), Dominic Holland (Narrator)

Audiobook

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)

Audiobook

Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio

Bands like R.E.M., U2, Public Enemy, and Nirvana found success as darlings of college radio, but the extraordinary influence of these stations and their DJs on musical culture since the 1970s was anything but inevitable. As media deregulation and political conflict over obscenity and censorship transformed the business and politics of culture, students and community DJs turned to college radio to defy the mainstream-and they ended up disrupting popular music and commercial radio in the process. In this first history of US college radio, Katherine Rye Jewell reveals that these eclectic stations in major cities and college towns across the United States owed their collective cultural power to the politics of higher education as much as they did to upstart bohemian music scenes coast to coast. Jewell uncovers how battles to control college radio were about more than music-they were an influential, if unexpected, front in the nation's culture wars. These battles created unintended consequences and overlooked contributions to popular culture that students, DJs, and listeners never anticipated. More than an ode to beloved stations, this book will resonate with both music fans and observers of the politics of culture.

Katherine Rye Jewell (Author), Natasha Soudek (Narrator)

Audiobook

Revolutions in American Music: Three Decades That Changed a Country and Its Sounds

How did a European social dance craze become part of an American presidential election? Why did the recording industry become racially divided? Where did rock 'n' roll really come from? And how do all these things continue to reverberate in today's world? In Revolutions in American Music, award-winning author Michael Broyles shows the surprising ways in which three key decades-the 1840s, the 1920s, and the 1950s-shaped America's musical future. Drawing connections between new styles of music like the minstrel show, jazz, and rock 'n' roll, and emerging technologies like the locomotive, the first music recordings, and the transistor radio, Broyles argues that these decades fundamentally remade our cultural landscape in enduring ways. These connections revealed racial fault lines running through the business of music, in an echo of American society as a whole. Broyles combines broad historical perspective with an eye for the telling detail and presents a variety of characters to serve as focal points, including the original Jim Crow, a colorful Hungarian dancing master named Gabriel de Korponay, 'Empress of the Blues' Bessie Smith, and the singer Johnnie Ray, whom Tony Bennett called 'the father of rock 'n' roll.' Their stories, and many others, animate Broyles's masterly account of how American music became what it is today.

Michael Broyles (Author), John Mclain (Narrator)

Audiobook

Dirty Days

DIRTY DAYS is a nonfiction narrative. The Setting - the tough Irish bars of New York City in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. A place where life can change in an unforeseen instant. As a Bleecker street bouncer and musician during the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s in Greenwich Village, author and narrator Kevin Patrick Corrigan relives true stories of old school New York City. Kevin Patrick Corrigan has been a fixture in the New York City Irish bar and music scene for three decades. He estimates he's been in over 200 street and bar fights. He smiles when he says he has a record of 147 wins and 72 loses. He has had a major record deal. He has toured the country telling stories and singing songs. He has also written a nationally distributed comedy series. DIRTY DAYS spans from a seven year old Kevin's interaction with Times Square hookers in the 1970s to a full grown adult helping a distraught Gulf War Marine avoid a PTSD situation on Bleecker Street in 2003. DIRTY DAYS is a journey that follows author and narrator Kevin Patrick Corrigan from bloody Halloween street fights - to being taught sage wisdom from baseball legend Yogi Berra - to opening for Alice Cooper, The Scorpions, and KISS - to being in a riot with 200 drunk sailors during Fleet week - to being asked to take a bullet for Snoop Dog. Those are just a sample of some of the many true accounts in this book. DIRTY DAYS is a ride back in time to the underbelly of New York City's long-lost rough and tumble, grimy era.

Kevin Patrick Corrigan (Author), Kevin Patrick Corrigan (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Last Living Slut

Raw, Unvarnished, provocative, and poetically written, 'The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran, Bred Backstage' is the memoir of Roxana Shirazi, who was raised during Iran's revolution within a politically active family and sent to England by her family aged ten during the Iran/Iraq war, and led far astray by the sound - and the sex appeal - of rock and roll. Alone in England and feeling a loss of identity, she found a new 'home' in the world of rock 'n' roll with bands like Guns 'n' Roses, Motley Crue and Velvet Revolver and discovered that there is no such things as rock 'n' roll: a place where only men are allowed to be transgressive, and sexually wild. A place where women are demonised for doing what men do. With heart-breaking accounts of child abuse, abortion and domestic violence, TLLS reads like an Iranian female Bukowski: raw, working class and poetic.

Roxana Shirazi (Author), Roxana Shirazi (Narrator)

Audiobook

It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

'A brutally real and unrelentingly raw memoir.'--Kirkus (starred review) War photographer Lynsey Addario's memoir It's What I Do is the story of how the relentless pursuit of truth, in virtually every major theater of war in the twenty-first century, has shaped her life. What she does, with clarity, beauty, and candor, is to document, often in their most extreme moments, the complex lives of others. It's her work, but it's much more than that: it's her singular calling. Lynsey Addario was just finding her way as a young photographer when September 11 changed the world. One of the few photojournalists with experience in Afghanistan, she gets the call to return and cover the American invasion. She makes a decision she would often find herself making-not to stay home, not to lead a quiet or predictable life, but to set out across the world, face the chaos of crisis, and make a name for herself. Addario finds a way to travel with a purpose. She photographs the Afghan people before and after the Taliban reign, the civilian casualties and misunderstood insurgents of the Iraq War, as well as the burned villages and countless dead in Darfur. She exposes a culture of violence against women in the Congo and tells the riveting story of her headline-making kidnapping by pro-Qaddafi forces in the Libyan civil war. Addario takes bravery for granted but she is not fearless. She uses her fear and it creates empathy; it is that feeling, that empathy, that is essential to her work. We see this clearly on display as she interviews rape victims in the Congo, or photographs a fallen soldier with whom she had been embedded in Iraq, or documents the tragic lives of starving Somali children. Lynsey takes us there and we begin to understand how getting to the hard truth trumps fear. As a woman photojournalist determined to be taken as seriously as her male peers, Addario fights her way into a boys' club of a profession. Rather than choose between her personal life and her career, Addario learns to strike a necessary balance. In the man who will become her husband, she finds at last a real love to complement her work, not take away from it, and as a new mother, she gains an all the more intensely personal understanding of the fragility of life. Watching uprisings unfold and people fight to the death for their freedom, Addario understands she is documenting not only news but also the fate of society. It's What I Do is more than just a snapshot of life on the front lines; it is witness to the human cost of war.

Lynsey Addario (Author), Lynsey Addario, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Ballad of Speedball Baby: A Memoir

The Ballad of Speedball Baby is the thrilling, extremely funny, and heart-wrenchingly vulnerable story of Ali Smith’s coming of age in ’90s New York as she commits to the messy, exhilarating life of a musician and must survive the slings and arrows society reserves for women who refuse to comply. As an only child reeling from the demolition of her parents’ toxic marriage, the New York City underground music scene offers a young Ali a different family of misfits and talented outsiders to belong to. She becomes the bass player for edgy band Speedball Baby, a decision that will take her around the world—from onstage at the legendary CBGBs to the red-light district of Amsterdam. She’s often the only girl in a broken-down tour van, being strip-searched at the Croatian border, chased by lunatics, and navigating the seedy underbelly of a male-dominated music scene full of addiction, violence, and misogyny—all while keeping her sharp wit and dark humor intact. Rimmed with heavy black eyeliner and smelling faintly of cheap booze, The Ballad of Speedball Baby is a pulse-quickening, unpredictable ride through the ’90s music scene—alternately terrifying, hilarious, and painfully evocative—as well as a love letter to the power of female solidarity.

Ali Smith (Author), Ali Smith, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Black Yearbook [Portraits and Stories]

A gripping exploration of the joys, hardships, and truths of Black students through intimate, honest dialogues and stunning photography, author of Heavy "A radical, reverential, and restorative document of community."-Rebecca Bengal, author of Strange Hours: Photography, Memory, and the Lives of Artists When photographer Adraint Bereal graduated from the University of Texas, he self-published an impressive volume of portraits, personal statements, and interviews that explored UT's campus culture and offered an intimate look at the lives of Black students matriculating within a majority white space. Bereal's work was inspired by his first photo exhibition at the George Washington Carver Museum in Austin, entitled 1.7, that unearthed the experiences of the 925 Black men that made up just 1.7% of UT's total 52,000 student body. Now Bereal expands the scope of his original project and visits colleges nationwide, from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to predominantly white institutions to trade schools and more. Rather than dwelling on the monolith of trauma often associated with Black narratives, Bereal is dedicated to using honest dialogue to share stories of true joy and triumph amidst the hardships, prejudices, and internal struggles. Using an exciting and eclectic design approach to accompany the portraits and stories, each individual profile effectively conveys the interviewee's unique voice, tone, and background. The Black Yearbook reframes society's stereotypical perception of higher education by representing and celebrating the wide range of Black experiences on campuses.

Adraint Khadafhi Bereal (Author), Adraint Khadafhi Bereal, André Santana, Angel Pean, Benjamin Charles, Henriette Zoutomou, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Keylor Leigh, Kiese Laymon, Malik Rashad, Marcella Cox, Reynaldo Piniella, Ron Butler, TBD, Torian Brackett, Zoleka Vundla (Narrator)

Audiobook

[German] - Eine Handvoll Sonnenschein: Vom kurzen Leben meines Sternenkindes & der Ironie des Schick

Ein Mutmach- und Mitfühlbuch In Deutschland sterben durchschnittlich 4 von 1.000 neugeborenen Kindern. Doch wie wird man mit solch einem Schicksalsschlag fertig? Gibt es ein Leben danach? Stefanie Goldbrich musste schon mehrfach Kinder gehen lassen, die in ihr wuchsen. Als endlich ein Baby lebend zur Welt kommt, ist die Freude groß. Um wie viel schlimmer muss dann die Verzweiflung sein, wenn auch dieses Kind stirbt? Stefanie berichtet authentisch und mit liebendem Herzen vom Wunder eines Sternenkindes, der Trauer und der Heilung danach. Sie will verwaisten Eltern Mut machen und allen Nicht-Betroffenen aufzeigen, was hilft und welche Unterstützung guttut. Möchtest du mehr über Stefanies Verlust und die Berg- und Talfahrt ihrer Gefühle während der Trauerbewältigung erfahren? Dann lege dir ein Taschentuch bereit (du wirst es spätestens für die Freudentränen brauchen) und hole dir dieses Buch!

Stefanie Goldbrich (Author), Franziska Peterhänsel (Narrator)

Audiobook

Fonging for the World

This audiobook Fonging for the World, narrated by five time Grammy winner Roy 'Futureman' Wooten, tells the fictional story of several musicians traveling around the globe attempting to bring peace to the world through a crazy musical and spiritual practice called fonging, i.e., by tapping into the healing sounds of the universe through the use of oven racks and other implements. The book explores transcendent topics, such as vibrational healing, synergies, telepathy, and plant medicines, to demonstrate that humans can overcome fear and insecurities to help achieve peace of mind individually as well as peace and harmony for the world. This audio version of the book Fonging for the World read by Roy Wooten is a complement to the Full Soundtrack version of the audiobook and book with the same title.

Jefferson Glassie (Author), Roy 'futureman' Wooten (Narrator)

Audiobook

[Arabic] - Sabrina

Amro Ahmed Tawfiq (Author), Khaled Mahgoub Gouba (Narrator)

Audiobook

Art & Music Audiobooks in Non-Fiction