History Audiobooks | Politics

Murder in the High Himalaya: Loyalty, Tragedy, and Escape from Tibet

The murder of a young Tibetan nun at the hands of Chinese border guards at the rooftop of the world offers a unique parable for the tale of modern Tibet. Chinese police are instructed to take any measures necessary to protect the border of Tibet. When a group of climbers witness the murder of a young Tibetan nun who is fleeing to India, two men have a choice: turn a blind eye and preserve their climbing careers or alert the world to the grand scale of human injustice played out daily in Tibet. Intrepid journalist Jonathan Green here investigates the clash of cultures at the rooftop of the world. As he gains entrance to a fascinating network of Tibetan guides and safe houses operating in the name of freedom, investigates the tradition of extreme mountaineering in Chinese-occupied Tibet, and establishes contact with surviving refugees, he offers a rare, affecting portrait of modern Tibet and raises enduring questions about morality and the lengths to which we go to achieve freedom. 'For three years, American journalist Green traveled to remote sections of Tibet to investigate the murder of a young nun who died at the hands of Chinese border officials. In clear, concise prose, the author deliberates over China's stranglehold on Tibet, its systematic dismantling of the indigenous culture and the terror tactics employed on families'.Green's steely, factually dense analysis of this unlawful conspiracy sheds light on a perennial human-rights crisis.''Kirkus Reviews

Jonathan Green (Author), William Hughes (Narrator)

Audiobook

Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History

David Aaronovitch (Author), James Langton (Narrator)

Audiobook

American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies That the Government Tells Us

Dick Russell, Jesse Ventura (Author), George K. Wilson (Narrator)

Audiobook

Intellectuals and Society

This is a study of how intellectuals as a class affect modern societies by shaping the climate of opinion in which official policies develop, on issues ranging from economics to law to war and peace. The thesis of Intellectuals and Society is that the influence of intellectuals is not only greater than in previous eras but also takes a very different form from that envisioned by those like Machiavelli and others who have wanted to directly influence rulers. It has not been by shaping the opinions or directing the actions of the holders of power that modern intellectuals have most influenced the course of events, but by shaping public opinion in ways that affect the actions of power holders in democratic societies, whether or not those power holders accept the general vision or the particular policies favored by intellectuals. Even government leaders with disdain or contempt for intellectuals have had to bend to the climate of opinion shaped by those intellectuals. Intellectuals and Society not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyzes the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. One of the most surprising aspects of this study is how often intellectuals have been proved not only wrong, but grossly and disastrously wrong in their prescriptions for the ills of society-and how little their views have changed in response to empirical evidence of the disasters entailed by those views.

Thomas Sowell (Author), Robertson Dean, Tom Weiner (Narrator)

Audiobook

Who Shot JFK?

"After nearly 1000 books, half a dozen journals, two official inquiries, several million pages of declassified documents, dozens of TV documentaries and hundreds of Websites, is there anything left to say about the assassination of President John F Kennedy? Hell, yes. The Kennedy assassination remains both the greatest whodunit of the post-World War Two era and the best route into recent American history. In this short book, taking it as proved that Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed the patsy he claimed to be before he was murdered, Robin Ramsay looks at the assassination through the work of the researchers who refused to buy the official cover-up story that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin. He explores: * The major alternative theories produced by the critics of the official version. * The major landmarks in the Kennedy assassination research. * The disinformation produced on the subject since the event. Robin Ramsay also discusses some startling recent work, which seems - finally - to lead to an answer to the question ""WHO KILLED JFK?

Robin Ramsay (Author), Bob Sinfield (Narrator)

Audiobook

Tear Down This Wall: A City, a President, and the Speech that Ended the Cold War

On June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan addressed a crowd of 20,000 people in West Berlin in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. The words he delivered that afternoon would become among the most famous in presidential history. “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate,” Reagan said. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!” In this riveting and fast-paced audio book, Romesh Ratnesar provides an account of how Reagan arrived at his defining moment and what followed from it. The audio is based on interviews with numerous former Reagan administration officials and American and German eyewitnesses to the speech, as well as recently declassified State Department documents and East German records of the president’s trip. Ratnesar provides new details about the origins of Reagan’s speech and the debate within the administration about how to issue the fateful challenge to Gorbachev. Tear Down This Wall re-creates the charged atmosphere surrounding Reagan’s visit to Berlin and explores the speech’s role in bringing about the fall of the Berlin Wall less than two years later. At the heart of the story is the relationship between two giants of the late twentieth century: Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Departing from the view that Reagan “won” the Cold War, Ratnesar demonstrates that both Reagan and Gorbachev played indispensable roles in bringing about the end of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry. It was the trust that Reagan and Gorbachev built in each other that allowed them finally to overcome the suspicions that had held their predecessors back. Calling on Gorbachev to tear down the Wall, in Reagan’s mind, might actually encourage him to do it. Reagan’s speech in Berlin was more than a good sound bite. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we can now see the speech as the event that marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

Romesh Ratnesar (Author), Wes Bleed (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Origins of Totalitarianism

The book begins with the rise of Anti-Semitism in Central and Western Europe in the early and mid 19th century and continues with an examination of the New Imperialism period from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. "The work of one who has thought as well as suffered....A disquieting, moving, and thought-provoking book."-New York Times Book Review

Hannah Arendt (Author), Nadia May, Nadia May, Wanda Mccaddon (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom

This classic work of political theory and practice offers an account of the modern Machiavellians, a remarkable group who have been influential in Europe and practically unknown in the United States. The book devotes a long section to Machiavelli himself as well as to such modern Machiavellians as Gaetano Mosca, Georges Sorel, Robert Michels and Vilfredo Pareto. Burnham contends that the writings of these men hold the key both to the truth about politics and to the preservation of political liberty. "Burnham is the greatest political analyst of our century and this is his best book."-National Review, 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Century

James Burnham (Author), Jeff Riggenbach (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom

James Burnham (Author), Jeff Riggenbach (Narrator)

Audiobook

What on Earth is Going On?

'Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.' Gertrude SteinREAD BY TOM BAIRD AND ARTHUR HOUSE.The world's a complex and bewildering place. Every day we are bombarded with far information than we can possibly hope to absorb. We don't have the time, energy or patience to process it all and select what's important, and sometimes it's tempting to drop the news section straight in the bin and curl up on the sofa with the colour supplements instead.But there are a lot of things happening in the world that we simply can't afford to ignore. What On Earth Is Going On? fills in the background to the key issues of our times - from Climate Change to the Credit Crunch, Darfur to Devolution - taking the form of an alphabetical glossary that can be consulted at convenient moments. This is a book for the bedside table, the morning commute or the downstairs loo. A rich hotchpotch of world events, current affairs, historical background and amusing trivia, it is a gentle survival guide for people of all ages who wish they knew a little bit more about what on earth is going on.

Arthur House, Tom Baird (Author), Arthur House, Tom Baird (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Predictioneer's Game

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a master of game theory, which is a fancy label for a simple idea: People compete, and they always do what they think is in their own best interest. Bueno de Mesquita uses game theory and its insights into human behavior to predict and even engineer political, financial, and personal events. His forecasts, which have been employed by everyone from the CIA to major business firms, have an amazing 90 percent accuracy rate, and in this dazzling and revelatory book he shares his startling methods and lets you play along in a range of high-stakes negotiations and conflicts. Revealing the origins of game theory and the advances made by John Nash, the Nobel Prize—winning scientist perhaps best known from A Beautiful Mind, Bueno de Mesquita details the controversial and cold-eyed system of calculation that he has since created, one that allows individuals to think strategically about what their opponents want, how much they want it, and how they might react to every move. From there, Bueno de Mesquita games such events as the North Korean disarmament talks and the Middle East peace process and recalls, among other cases, how he correctly predicted which corporate clients of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm were most likely engaged in fraudulent activity (hint: one of them started with an E). And looking as ever to the future, Bueno de Mesquita also demonstrates how game theory can provide successful strategies to combat both global warming (instead of relying on empty regulations, make nations compete in technology) and terror (figure out exactly how much U.S. aid will make Pakistan fight the Taliban). But as Bueno de Mesquita shows, game theory isn't just for saving the world. It can help you in your own life, whether you want to succeed in a lawsuit (lawyers argue too much the merits of the case and question too little the motives of their opponents), elect the CEO of your company (change the system of voting on your board to be more advantageous to your candidate), or even buy a car (start by knowing exactly what you want, call every dealer in a fifty-mile radius, and negotiate only over the phone). Savvy, provocative, and shockingly effective, The Predictioneer's Game will change how you understand the world and manage your future. Life's a game, and how you play is whether you win or lose.

Bruce Bueno De Mesquita (Author), Sean Runnette, Unknown (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Death of Conservatism

Sam Tanenhaus (Author), Alan Sklar (Narrator)

Audiobook

History Audiobooks in Politics