American Politics Audiobooks | Politics

From New York Times bestselling biographer Bob Spitz, a full and rich biography of an epic American life, capturing what made Ronald Reagan both so beloved and so transformational. More than five years in the making, based on hundreds of interviews and access to previously unavailable documents, and infused with irresistible storytelling charm, Bob Spitz's REAGAN stands fair to be the first truly post-partisan biography of our 40th President, and thus a balm for our own bitterly divided times. It is the quintessential American triumph, brought to life with cinematic vividness: a young man is born into poverty and raised in a series of flyspeck towns in the Midwest by a pious mother and a reckless, alcoholic, largely absent father. Severely near-sighted, the boy lives in his own world, a world of the popular books of the day, and finds his first brush with popularity, even fame, as a young lifeguard. Thanks to his first great love, he imagines a way out, and makes the extraordinary leap to go to college, a modest school by national standards, but an audacious presumption in the context of his family's station. From there, the path is only very dimly lit, but it leads him, thanks to his great charm and greater luck, to a solid career as a radio sportscaster, and then, astonishingly, fatefully, to Hollywood. And the rest, as they say, is history. Bob Spitz's REAGAN is an absorbing, richly detailed, even revelatory chronicle of the full arc of Ronald Reagan's epic life - giving full weight to the Hollywood years, his transition to politics and rocky but ultimately successful run as California governor, and ultimately, of course, his iconic presidency, filled with storm and stress but climaxing with his peace talks with the Soviet Union that would serve as his greatest legacy. It is filled with fresh assessments and shrewd judgments, and doesn't flinch from a full reckoning with the man's strengths and limitations. This is no hagiography: Reagan was never a brilliant student, of anything, and his disinterest in hard-nosed political scheming, while admirable, meant that this side of things was left to the other people in his orbit, not least his wife Nancy; sometimes this delegation could lead to chaos, and worse. But what emerges as a powerful signal through all the noise is an honest inherent sweetness, a gentleness of nature and willingness to see the good in people and in this country, that proved to be a tonic for America in his time, and still is in ours. It was famously said that FDR had a first-rate disposition and a second-rate intellect. Perhaps it is no accident that only FDR had as high a public approval rating leaving office as Reagan did, or that in the years since Reagan has been closing in on FDR on rankings of Presidential greatness. Written with love and irony, which in a great biography is arguably the same thing, Bob Spitz's masterpiece will give no comfort to partisans at either extreme; for the rest of us, it is cause for celebration.

Bob Spitz (Author), Paul Michael (Narrator)

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The Next Republic: The Rise of a New Radical Majority

A book for this moment: Both an assessment of our current political leadership and a vision of those who can bring substantive change. Who are the new progressive leaders emerging to lead the post-Trump return to democracy in America? National political correspondent and award-winning author D.D. Guttenplan's The Next Republic is an extraordinarily intense and wide-ranging account of the recent fall and incipient rise of democracy in America. The Next Republic profiles nine successful activists who are changing the course of American history right now:new labor activist and author Jane McAleveyracial justice campaigner (and mayor of Jackson, Mississippi) Chokwe Antar Lumumba environmental activist (and newly elected chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party) Jane Kleeb Chicago’s first openly gay Latino public official Carlos Ramirez-Rosa#ALLOFUS co-founder Waleed Shahidyoung architects of Bernie Sanders amazing rise, digerati Corbin Trent and Zack Exley, founders of Brand New Congressand author and anti-corruption crusader Zephyr Teachout.Additionally, the introduction to The Next Republic ties in the election and first year of the Trump presidency to the current rise of populism of the left, and there are three historical chapters that describe key moments in American history that shed light on current events: the Whiskey Rebellion, the Lincoln Republic, and the Roosevelt Republic. Guttenplan understands the magnitude of the problem of democracy, and at the same time the great possibilities for its resurgence. Like a cross between George Packer's The Unwinding and John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, The Next Republic is both unyielding and deeply hopeful, the first book to come out of the Trump ascendency that stakes a claim for seeing beyond it.

D. D. Guttenplan (Author), D. D. Guttenplan (Narrator)

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American Discontent: The Rise of Donald Trump and Decline of the Golden Age

The 2016 presidential election was unlike any other in recent memory, and Donald Trump was an entirely different kind of candidate than voters were used to seeing. He was the first true outsider to win the White House in over a century and the wealthiest populist in American history. Democrats and Republicans alike were left scratching their heads-how did this happen? In American Discontent, John L. Campbell contextualizes Donald Trump's success by focusing on the long-developing economic, racial, ideological, and political shifts that enabled Trump to win the White House. Campbell argues that Trump's rise to power was the culmination of a half-century of deep, slow-moving change in America, beginning with the decline of the Golden Age of prosperity that followed the Second World War. The worsening economic anxieties of many Americans reached a tipping point when the 2008 financial crisis and Barack Obama's election, as the first African American president, finally precipitated the worst political gridlock in generations. Americans were fed up and Trump rode a wave of discontent all the way to the White House.

John L. Campbell (Author), Peter Berkrot (Narrator)

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Mr. Trump's Wild Ride: The Thrills, Chills, Screams, and Occasional Blackouts of an Extraordinary Pr

A chronicle of the Trump administration from the inside perspective of a White House press correspondent. 'Garrett's assessment of Trump manages the difficult task of being both hard-hitting and even-handed, as well as smartly entertaining...The result is one of the best accounts yet of Trump's impact.' - Publishers Weekly

Major Garrett (Author), Major Garrett (Narrator)

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Fear: Trump in the White House

"Explosive."—The Washington Post "Devastating."—The New Yorker "Unprecedented."—CNN THE INSIDE STORY ON PRESIDENT TRUMP, AS ONLY BOB WOODWARD CAN TELL IT With authoritative reporting honed through eight presidencies from Nixon to Obama, author Bob Woodward reveals in unprecedented detail the harrowing life inside President Donald Trump's White House and precisely how he makes decisions on major foreign and domestic policies. Woodward draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand sources, meeting notes, personal diaries, files and documents. The focus is on the explosive debates and the decision-making in the Oval Office, the Situation Room, Air Force One and the White House residence. Fear is the most intimate portrait of a sitting president ever published during the president's first years in office.

Bob Woodward (Author), Robert Petkoff (Narrator)

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The Deep State: How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and Is Working to Destroy the Trum

Former Congressman and current Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz explains how we ended up with a politicized federal bureaucracy that actively works to promote the Democrat party agenda and undermine Donald Trump. The liberal media loves to characterize the Obama years as free of scandal. They pretend this is true because virtually every office in the executive branch worked to withhold evidence of wrongdoing, silence witness testimony, destroy federal records, classify embarrassing information, and retaliate against truth tellers. Yet these same tight-lipped lifers leaked like a sieve once President Trump was sworn in, freely promoting the illusion that everything he does is the new Watergate. Sometimes even conservatives portray the Deep State as nothing more than dumb inefficient bureaucracy. In fact, it’s the opposite; the Deep State is intentional, unconstitutional, and organized. In Deep State, Jason Chaffetz reveals an entrenched leadership within the civil service that resists exposure, accountability, and responsibility. At the highest levels, they fight back, outlast, and work the system for their own advantage. And they certainly don’t like disruptive forces such as Donald Trump. As Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Chaffetz was the tip of the spear challenging the Deep State and trying to hold them accountable. He and his colleagues took on the powerful forces at the IRS, the EPA, the DOJ, the Department of State, and more. The deeper he dove in, the more shocking he found the brazen approach by the power brokers. The balance of power has shifted. The Deep State has gotten used to operating anonymously and without consequence. This is a problem bigger than we can even imagine and getting worse. Unless we do something dramatic to wrest back control, we risk losing the ability to successfully challenge wrongdoing by the most powerful bureaucracy in the world. In Deep State, Chaffetz highlights the Deep State’s tactics, illuminates the problems, and offers a way to fight back and win. It is important to expose the stories, but if the American People are going to win, Congress is going to have to do things differently. This book helps the concerned citizen understand what must be done--so they can demand real change.

Jason Chaffetz (Author), Jason Chaffetz (Narrator)

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American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment

A ground-breaking and brave inside reckoning with the nexus of prison and profit in America: in one Louisiana prison and over the course of our country's history. In 2014, Shane Bauer was hired for $9 an hour to work as an entry-level prison guard at a private prison in Winnfield, Louisiana. An award-winning investigative journalist, he used his real name; there was no meaningful background check. Four months later, his employment came to an abrupt end. But he had seen enough, and in short order he wrote an exposé about his experiences that won a National Magazine Award and became the most-read feature in the history of the magazine Mother Jones. Still, there was much more that he needed to say. In American Prison, Bauer weaves a much deeper reckoning with his experiences together with a thoroughly researched history of for-profit prisons in America from their origins in the decades before the Civil War. For, as he soon realized, we can't understand the cruelty of our current system and its place in the larger story of mass incarceration without understanding where it came from. Private prisons became entrenched in the South as part of a systemic effort to keep the African-American labor force in place in the aftermath of slavery, and the echoes of these shameful origins are with us still. The private prison system is deliberately unaccountable to public scrutiny. Private prisons are not incentivized to tend to the health of their inmates, or to feed them well, or to attract and retain a highly-trained prison staff. Though Bauer befriends some of his colleagues and sympathizes with their plight, the chronic dysfunction of their lives only adds to the prison's sense of chaos. To his horror, Bauer finds himself becoming crueler and more aggressive the longer he works in the prison, and he is far from alone. A blistering indictment of the private prison system, and the powerful forces that drive it, American Prison is a necessary human document about the true face of justice in America.

Shane Bauer (Author), James Fouhey, Shane Bauer (Narrator)

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Every Man a King: A Short, Colorful History of American Populists

From Fox News' politics editor Chris Stirewalt -- a fun and lively account of America's populist tradition, from Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt, to Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, and Donald Trump. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} Whatever the ideological fad of the moment, American populism has always been home to a fascinating assortment of charismatic leaders, characters, kooks, cranks, and sometimes charlatans who have - with widely varying degrees of success - led the charge of ordinary folks who have gotten wise to the ways of the swamp. This attitude of skeptical resentment also makes populism a fertile field for the work of conspiracy theorists and other enthusiastic apostates from civic convention. After all, if the people in power are found to be rigging one part of the system, why not the rest? EVERY MAN A KING tells the stories of America's populist leaders, from an elderly Andrew Jackson brutally caning his would-be-assassin, to William Jennings Bryan's pre-speech routine that combined equally prodigious quantities of prayer and food, to Ross Perot's military-style campaign that made even volunteers wear badges with stars to show rank. It is a rollicking history of an American attitude that has shaped not only our current moment, but also the long struggle over who gets to define the truths we hold to be self evident.

Chris Stirewalt (Author), Chris Stirewalt (Narrator)

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America is Speaking, When Will Our Hearts Listen: When America Burn, So Does Our Conscience

America has spoken, and now it is time our hearts collectively listen. From the riots in Baltimore, and majority of America's living below the poverty line, it is time we concern ourselves with America's future. This book is a collection of citizens across America that is tired of the problems politicians in Washington is keep ignoring. It is time we stand up against police brutality, domestic violence and deplorable living conditions of those working starvation wages in America.

Kristin Hannah (Author), Books With Voices (Narrator)

Audiobook

House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia

Random House presents the audiobook edition of House of Trump, House of Putin by Craig Unger, read by Jason Culp. House of Trump, House of Putin offers the first comprehensive investigation into the decades-long relationship among Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Mafia that ultimately helped win Trump the White House. It is a chilling story that begins in the 1970s, when Trump made his first splash in the booming, money-drenched world of New York real estate, and ends with Trump's inauguration as president of the United States. That moment was the culmination of Vladimir Putin's long mission to undermine Western democracy, a mission that he and his hand-selected group of oligarchs and associates had ensnared Trump in, starting more than twenty years ago with the massive bailout of a string of sensational Trump hotel and casino failures in Atlantic City. This book confirms the most incredible American paranoias about Russian malevolence. To most, it will be a hair-raising revelation that the Cold War did not end in 1991-that it merely evolved, with Trump's apartments offering the perfect vehicle for billions of dollars to leave the collapsing Soviet Union. In House of Trump, House of Putin, Craig Unger methodically traces the deep-rooted alliance between the highest echelons of American political operatives and the biggest players in the frightening underworld of the Russian Mafia. He traces Donald Trump's sordid ascent from foundering real estate tycoon to leader of the free world. He traces Russia's phoenixlike rise from the ashes of the post-Cold War Soviet Union as well as its ceaseless covert efforts to retaliate against the West and reclaim its status as a global superpower. Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be president. This essential book is crucial to understanding the real powers at play in the shadows of today's world.

Craig Unger (Author), Jason Culp (Narrator)

Audiobook

Addicted to Outrage: How Thinking Like a Recovering Addict Can Heal the Country

Glenn Beck—author of thirteen #1 New York Times bestsellers—issues a startling challenge to people on both sides of the aisle to give up our addiction to outrage. America is addicted to outrage, we're at the height of a twenty-year bender, and we need an intervention. In Addicted to Outrage, New York Times bestselling author Glenn Beck addresses how America has become more and more divided—both politically and socially. Americans are now less accepting, less forgiving, and have lost faith in many of the country's signature ideals, he says. We are quick to point a judgmental finger at the opposing party, are unwilling to doubt their own ideologies, and refuse to have any self-awareness whatsoever. Beck states that our current downward spiral will ultimately lead to the destruction of everything America has fought so hard to preserve. This is not simply a Republican problem. This is not simply a Democratic problem. This is everyone's burden, and we need to think like recovering addicts and change. With a nod to a traditional twelve-step program, each chapter encourages self-reflection and growth and shows us the way to a more hopeful, happy future. Beck draws from his own life experiences and includes relevant examples for each step, from families who learned to forgive killers to remembering to believe in something greater than ourselves to understanding the importance of humility. Addicted to Outrage is a timely and necessary guide for how Americans, right and left, must change to survive.

Glenn Beck (Author), Glenn Beck (Narrator)

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West Wingers: Stories from the Dream Chasers, Change Makers, and Hope Creators Inside the Obama Whit

The Obama White House staff invites us behind-the-scenes of history for a deeply personal and moving look at the presidency and how a president's staff can change the nation When we elect a president, we elect with them an entire team that will join them in the West Wing to help run the country. Each of these staffers has a story to tell, and in West Wingers, Barack Obama's White House staff reveals how these extraordinary citizens shape the presidency and the nation. In these moving and revealing personal stories, eighteen Obama staffers bring us deep inside the presidency, offering intimate accounts of how they made it to the White House, what they witnessed, and what they accomplished there. In each one we see the human face of government, staffers devoting themselves to the issues that have defined their lives. We hear from a married gay staffer pushing the president towards marriage equality; a senior aide working to implement the Affordable Care Act while battling Stage IV cancer; a hijab-wearing Muslim adviser accompanying the President to a mosque. From the triumphs of Obamacare and marriage equality to the tragedy of the Charleston shooting, this book tells the history of the Obama presidency through the men and women who worked tirelessly to support his vision for America. More than just a history though, West Wingers is an inspiring call to arms for public service, a manifesto for the power of committed public servants to make real change, and a powerful testament to what true diversity, inclusivity, and progress can look like in America. Audiobook Table of Contents: Evolution, by Gautam Raghavan, read by the author Becoming a Man, by Michael Strautmanis, read by the author Imagine Joey Lucas, by Leah Katz-Hernandez, read by Kyla Garcia Laughing Between Two Ferns, by Brad Jenkins, read by the author Amazing Grace, by Heather Foster, read by the author Worth It, by Cecilia Muñoz, read by the author Go Toward the Good, by Hope Hall, read by the author Big F'ing Deal, by Michael J. Robertson, read by the author Alaska, by Raina Thele, read by the author A Call to Action, by Lynn Rosenthal, read by the author Behind the Mahogany Doors, by Bill Yosses, read by the author Full Circle, by Darienne Page, read by the author Imposter, by Deesha Dyer, read by the author September 12, by Ned Price, read by the author Sí Se Puede, by Julie Chavez Rodriguez, read by the author Right Where We Belong, by Rumana Ahmed, read by the author Fiery Latinas, by Stephanie Valencia, read by the author Before We Were Us, by Aneesh Raman, read by the author With a preface and additional sections read by author Gautam Raghavan

Gautam Raghavan (Author), , Bill Yosses, Brad Jenkins, Cecilia Muñoz, Darienne Page, Deesha Dyer, Gautam Raghavan, Heather Foster, Hope Hall, Kyla Garcia, Lynn Rosenthal, Michael J. Robertson, Michael Strautmanis, Raina Thele, Various (Narrator)

Audiobook

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