Current Affairs Audiobooks | Politics

David Halberstam's masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy, with a new Foreword by Senator John McCain. Using portraits of America's flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, The Best and the Brightest reckons magnificently with the most important abiding question of our country's recent history: Why did America become mired in Vietnam, and why did we lose? As the definitive single-volume answer to that question, this enthralling book has never been superseded. It is an American classic.

David Halberstam (Author), David Clennon, Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

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The Political Pope: How Pope Francis Is Delighting the Liberal Left and Abandoning Conservatives

The untold story of the left's efforts to politicize the Vatican and the battle to stop it-before the Catholic Church as we know it is destroyed. Pope Francis is the most liberal pope in the history of the Catholic Church. He is not only championing the causes of the global Left, but also undermining centuries-old Catholic teaching and practice. In the words of the late radical Tom Hayden, his election was "more miraculous, if you will, than the rise of Barack Obama in 2008." But to Catholics in the pews, his pontificate is a source of alienation. It is a pontificate, at times, beyond parody: Francis is the first pope to approve of adultery, flirt with proposals to bless gay marriages and cohabitation, tell atheists not to convert, tell Catholics to not breed "like rabbits," praise the Koran, support a secularized Europe, and celebrate Martin Luther. At a time of widespread moral relativism, Pope Francis is not defending the Church's teachings but diluting them. At a time of Christian persecution, he is not strengthening Catholic identity but weakening it. Where other popes sought to save souls, he prefers to "save the planet" and play politics, from habitual capitalism-bashing to his support for open borders and pacifism. In THE POLITICAL POPE, George Neumayr gives readers what the media won't: a bracing look at the liberal revolution that Pope Francis is advancing in the Church. To the radical academic Cornel West, "Pope Francis is a gift from heaven." To many conservative Catholics, he is the worst pope in centuries.

George Neumayr (Author), Holden Still (Narrator)

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The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis--and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Relianc

This program is read by the author. America's youth are in crisis. Raised by well-meaning but overprotective parents and coddled by well-meaning but misbegotten government programs, they are ill-equipped to survive in our highly-competitive global economy. Many of the coming-of-age rituals that have defined the American experience since the Founding: learning the value of working with your hands, leaving home to start a family, becoming economically self-reliant--are being delayed or skipped altogether. The statistics are daunting: 30% of college students drop out after the first year, and only 4 in 10 graduate. One in three 18-to-34 year-olds live with their parents. From these disparate phenomena: Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse who as president of a Midwestern college observed the trials of this generation up close, sees an existential threat to the American way of life. In The Vanishing American Adult, Sasse diagnoses the causes of a generation that can't grow up and offers a path for raising children to become active and engaged citizens. He identifies core formative experiences that all young people should pursue: hard work to appreciate the benefits of labor, travel to understand deprivation and want, the power of reading, the importance of nurturing your body--and explains how parents can encourage them. Our democracy depends on responsible, contributing adults to function properly--without them America falls prey to populist demagogues. A call to arms, The Vanishing American Adult will ignite a much-needed debate about the link between the way we're raising our children and the future of our country.

Ben Sasse (Author), Ben Sasse (Narrator)

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Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times

Radical Hope is a collection of letters—to ancestors, to children five generations from now, to strangers in grocery lines, to any and all who feel weary and discouraged—written by award-winning novelists, poets, political thinkers, and activists. Provocative and inspiring, Radical Hope offers readers a kaleidoscopic view of the love and courage needed to navigate this time of upheaval, uncertainty, and fear, in view of the recent US presidential election. Including letters by Junot Díaz, Alicia Garza, Roxana Robinson, Lisa See, Jewelle Gomez, Hari Kunzru, Faith Adiele, Parnaz Foroutan, Chip Livingston, Mohja Kahf, Achy Obejas, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Cherríe Moraga, Kate Schatz, Boris Fishman, Karen Joy Fowler, Elmaz Abinader, Aya de León, Jane Smiley, Luis Alberto Urrea, Mona Eltahawy, Jeff Chang, Claire Messud, Meredith Russo, Reyna Grande, Katie Kitamura, iO Tillett Wright, Francisco Goldman, Celeste Ng, Peter Orner, and Cristina García.

Carolina De Robertis (Author), Adenrele Ojo, Kaleo Griffith (Narrator)

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A Middletownmerica

Fifty people never came home to Middletown, New Jersey, after September 11th. Wall Street fathers, young Port Authority police, single working moms, the beloved coach of the championship girls traveling basketball team. Three toddlers in one church pre-school lost their daddies. Dozens of widows, young and beautiful girls in their 20s and 30s, some still nursing newborns, watched their dreams literally go up in smoke in that amphitheater of death across the river. Gail Sheehy traveled to Middletown shortly after the disaster and began in-depth interviews with many of the bereaved. Middletown, America was written as the year progressed, following parallel and intertwining stories of selected individuals and their families. A mother who was doubly bereft when she lost her only son as he tried to fill the shoes of her absentee husband; the sole survivor in an office of 67 people who escaped the 88th floor of Tower 2 seconds before the floor was decimated. Here are the fire-fighters, rescue workers and front-line public health volunteers, now training to be soldiers in this new war. Of equal importance, however, is the way these very real individuals dealt with this disaster and the trauma that followed. Middletown, America is also a story of recovery and of the ways people finally learn to deal with seemingly insurmountable grief and an incomprehensible physical and financial disaster.

Gail Sheehy (Author), Sandra Burr (Narrator)

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Practise the Great Habit of Relaxation with Conscious Relaxation

This breakthrough programme is for all who wish to acquire practice tools that will minimise stress and enhance their ability to think and act clearly. Are you stressed too much of the time and on edge? Relaxation can be practiced so you find it easier to achieve, like playing the piano or learning tennis. This Relax kit gives you tools to help you do this. And so you must try them all out and see which works for you when. You can keep using them whenever you wish and as part of a regular wellbeing self help programme. There are seven audios in this Conscious Relaxation programme: R1 Introduction (7 mins) R1 sets the scene and explains why relaxation practice is so beneficial. R2 Three Techniques (10 mins) R2 teaches three simple relaxation techniques for you to practice so they are there for you, when you need to be calmer in real life situations. R3 Priming (8 mins) R3 is short but will extend your capacity to achieve a more relaxed state in your day to day lives. R4 Anchoring (9 mins) R4 teaches a method that connects calm feelings to the physical. R5 Progressive Muscle Relaxation (12 mins) R5 is slightly longer body scan practice – a classic of its type (12 mins) R6 Breathing Meditation (16 mins) R6 is designed to enhance your capacity to breathe in a relaxing way whenever you need to. R7 Anxiety Control (21 mins) R7 focuses on anxious feelings and how to use them and control them in the right kind of way. Email access to Andrew Richardson I want to hear how you have got on with Conscious Relaxation and be available for you with advice, mentoring and if needed personalised one on one help – so you can truly recover and find the optimism and energy that is your birthright.

Andrew Richardson (Author), Andrew Richardson (Narrator)

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Stolen Girls: Survivors of Boko Haram Tell Their Story

One night in April 2014, members of the terrorist organization Boko Haram raided the small town of Chibok in northeast Nigeria and abducted 276 young girls from the local boarding school. The event caused massive, international outrage. Using the hashtag "Bring Back Our Girls," politicians, activists, and celebrities from all around the world-among them First Lady Michelle Obama and Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai-protested. Some of the girls were able to escape and award winning journalist Wolfgang Bauer spent several weeks with them as they recounted their ordeal. In Stolen Girls, he gives voice to these girls, allowing them to speak for themselves-about their lives before the abduction, about the horrors during their captivity, and their dreams of a better future. Bauer's reportage is complemented by over a dozen stunning portraits by award winning photographer Andy Spyra. Bauer also examines the historical and political background of the Islamist terror in the heart of Africa, showing how Boko Haram works and describing the damage it has done to the fragile balance of ethnicities and cultures in one of the world's most diverse regions.

Wolfgang Bauer (Author), Bahni Turpin (Narrator)

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Defeating ISIS: Who They Are, How They Fight, What They Believe

ISIS-the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria-has taken on the mantle of being the single most dangerous terrorist threat to global security since al-Qaeda. In Defeating ISIS, internationally renowned intelligence veteran, author, and counterterrorism expert Malcolm Nance gives an insider's view to explain the origins of this occult group, its violent propaganda, and how it spreads its ideology throughout the Middle East and to disaffected youth deep in the heart of the Western world. Most importantly, Defeating ISIS gives a step-by-step analysis of the street-level tactics the group has employed in assaults against fortified targets, in urban combat, and during terrorist operations such as those in Paris during the November 13 attacks. As much as ISIS is a threat to Western targets and regional stability in the Middle East, Nance describes not only its true danger as a heretical death cult that seeks to wrest control of Islam through young ideologues and redefine Islam as a fight to the death against all comers, but also how to defeat it. Defeating ISIS is the first highly detailed look into the organization by one of the world's foremost authorities in counterterrorism.

Malcolm Nance (Author), Michael Kramer (Narrator)

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The Sex Effect: Baring Our Complicated Relationship with Sex

A gripping exploration of the relationship between sex and our society, with a foreword by bestselling author A. J. Jacobs Why do political leaders become entangled in so many sex scandals? How did the U.S. military inadvertently help make San Francisco a mecca of gay culture? And what was the original purpose of vibrators? Find out the answers to all these questions and more as journalist Ross Benes delves into the complicated relationship between everyday human life-including religion, politics, and technology-and our sexuality. Drawing on history, psychology, sociology, and more, The Sex Effect combines innovative research and analysis with captivating anecdotes to reveal just how much sex shapes our society-and what it means for us as humans as we continue to struggle with the wide-ranging effects our sexuality has on the world around us.

Ross Benes (Author), Rudy Sanda (Narrator)

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Two Paths: America Divided or United

This program is read by the author. When Ohio governor John Kasich ran for president, his powerful message of hope and togetherness struck a chord with American voters. In Two Paths: America Divided or United, he carries that message forward by reflecting on the tumultuous 2016 campaign, sharing his concerns for America and his hopes for our future, and sounding a clarion call to reason and purpose, humility and dignity, righteousness and calm. The country never looked so grand and magnificent as it did from ten thousand feet, he writes of his time on the campaign trail, and it was always a thrilling, faith-affirming thing to look out our window and see the sun splashing across Bryce Canyon in Utah, or the lights of the New York skyline at night as we flew past the Statue of Liberty, or an open field in the heartland that ran as far as our eyes could see.... I'd look out and think what an honor it would be to lead this great nation, what a blessing. To be sure, the full story of the 2016 Presidential race will be written over time, but to understand what it was to be on the front lines of one of the most divisive and corrosive campaign battlegrounds in history, listeners won't find a richer, more thoughtful firsthand account than this one a frank, refreshing assessment of the American dynamic and a clear path we might follow toward a more promising tomorrow. As Governor Kasich reminds us in these pages, America is great because America is good and because Americans have stayed true to who we are: one nation, under God, indivisible.

John Kasich (Author), John Kasich (Narrator)

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A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

"Sure to be controversial."--Fortune magazine What happens when a society is run by people who are anti-social? Welcome to Baby Boomer America. In A Generation of Sociopaths, Bruce Cannon Gibney shows how America was hijacked by the Boomers, a generation whose reckless self-indulgence degraded the foundations of American prosperity. A former partner in a leading venture capital firm, Gibney examines the disastrous policies of the most powerful generation in modern history, showing how the Boomers ruthlessly enriched themselves at the expense of future generations. Acting without empathy, prudence, or respect for facts--acting, in other words, as sociopaths--the Boomers turned American dynamism into stagnation, inequality, and bipartisan fiasco. The Boomers have set a time bomb for the 2030s, when damage to Social Security, public finances, and the environment will become catastrophic and possibly irreversible--and when, not coincidentally, Boomers will be dying off. Gibney, whose 2011 essay "What Happened to the Future?" transfixed the investment world, argues that younger generations have a fleeting window to hold the Boomers accountable and begin restoring America. Distilling deep research into a witty, colorful indictment of the Boomers and an urgent defense of the once-unquestioned value of society, A Generation of Sociopaths is poised to become one of the most controversial books of the year. **Contact Customer Service for Additional Documents**

Bruce Cannon Gibney (Author), Wayne Pyle (Narrator)

Audiobook

How Change Happens

Human society is full of would-be "change agents," a restless mix of campaigners, lobbyists, and officials, both individuals and organizations, set on transforming the world. They want to improve public services, reform laws and regulations, guarantee human rights, get a fairer deal for those on the sharp end, achieve greater recognition for any number of issues, or simply be treated with respect. Striking then, why so many universities lack programs for social activists, to which students can turn for advice and inspiration. Instead, scholarly discussions of change are fragmented with few conversations crossing disciplinary boundaries, rarely making it onto the radar of those actively seeking change. This audiobook bridges the gap between academia and practice, bringing together the best research from a range of academic disciplines and the evolving practical understanding of activists to explore the topic of social and political change. Drawing on many first-hand examples from the global experience of Oxfam, one of the world's largest social justice NGOs, as well as the author's insights from studying and working on international development, it tests ideas on how change happens and offers the latest thinking on what works to achieve progressive change.

Duncan Green (Author), Christopher Preece (Narrator)

Audiobook

Current Affairs Audiobooks in Politics