Politics Audiobooks | LoveReading

Spin Cycle: Inside the Clinton Propaganda Machine

Bill Clinton is the most investigated president since Richard Nixon-facing inquiries into Whitewater, campaign fundraising abuses, and sexual misconduct and yet he improbably began 1998 with approval ratings as high as those of Ronald Reagan. But the new year has brought a barrage of new allegations, and the president and his advisers face once again the challenge of spinning the news to their advantage, a challenge they have mastered many times before. In Spin Cycle, award-winning Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz reveals the inside workings of Clinton's well-oiled propaganda machine-arguably the most successful team of White House spin doctors in history. He takes the reader into closed-door meetings where Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Mike McCurry, Lanny Davis, and other top officials plot strategy to beat back the scandals and neutralize a hostile press corps through stonewalling, stage managing, and outright intimidation. He depicts a White House obsessed with spin and pulls back the curtain on events and tactics that the administration would prefer to keep hidden, including: The secret report that Hillary Clinton ordered on a reporter investigating the Whitewater affair as part of a plan to discredit her. A tense, almost paranoid White House atmosphere in which the spinmeisters do not question the President about the various scandals because they don't want to learn information they might have to reveal to prosecutors or the press. The secret meeting between a Clinton operative and the editor of The New York Times that led to a presidential interview in which Clinton knew the questions in advance. Bill Clinton's success in reaping favorable publicity by secretly courting selected reporters and columnists in off-the-record White House meetings. Al Gore's feelings of betrayal as the scandal-hungry press turned on him and jeopardized his presidential candidacy in 2000. Spin Cycle is an all-too-human drama in which political operatives wrestle with their consciences as they struggle to protect the boss. As the scandal drums beat louder and louder, Kurtz shows what it takes for the president and his people to survive, and what happens to the truth along the way.

Howard Kurtz (Author), Howard Kurtz (Narrator)

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Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, Part II - 1963-64

In Pillar of Fire, the second volume of his America in the King Years trilogy, Taylor Branch portrays the civil rights era at its zenith, picking up where the Pulitzer Prize-winning Parting the Waters left off. It is a monumental chronicle of a movement that stirred from Southern black churches to challenge the national conscience during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. In this masterly continuation of the narrative, Branch recounts the climactic struggles as they commanded the national and international stage. This audio adaptation of Pillar of Fire covers the upheavals of the years 1963-1965 -- Dallas, Mississippi Freedom Summer, the far-reaching effects of civil rights legislation, the violent reaction to the end of legalized segregation, Vietnam, Selma. And it provides frank, revealing portraits of the major players: LBJ, Malcolm X, Bob Moses, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others. Participants on all sides stretched themselves and their country to the breaking point over the meaning to simple words: dignity, equal votes, equal souls.

Taylor Branch (Author), CCH Pounder, Joe Morton (Narrator)

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Our Sacred Honor: Stories Letters Songs Poems Speeches Hymns Birth Nation

Millions of American families have turned to The Book of Virtues and The Moral Compass by William J. Bennett for moral guidance in troubled times. Our Sacred Honor offers inspiration and instruction as well -- this time of a particularly American sort. In Our Sacred Honor, Bennett has collected the best that has been thought and said by and about the men and women who founded America. The stories, songs, letters and speeches collected in Our Sacred Honor are an inspiring celebration of American exceptionalism.

William J. Bennett (Author), Barry Bostwick, Philip Bosco, William J. Bennett (Narrator)

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How To Harness Your Psychic Power

Naparstek, a psychotherapist, utilizes her psychic abilities in her private practice. She also tells us we can cultivate our psychic abilities and offers ways to do just that, stressing that psychic ability can often be brought out by intense and traumatic experiences. The best method is to approach them is with compassion and an open heart.

Belleruth Naparstek (Author), Michael Toms (Narrator)

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A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Mark Twain (Author), Stuart Langton (Narrator)

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Cousin Bette

"Bette is Lisbeth Fischer, an excruciatingly cunning poor relation who both depends upon and nurses a terrible grudge against the family of her beautiful cousin, Adeline. That family is slowly being ruined by the uncontrollable sexual appetites of Adeline's husband, Baron Hulot, appetites that will, in time, give Cousin Bette opportunity to exact her vengeance. Balzac described Cousin Bette as one of his 'scenes of Parisian life,' and it is certainly that. It offers us a hypnotic vision of that infinitely varied city during the bright, vital, scandalous, and sexually untrammeled era of King Louis-Philippe. " ** Extended Track Length May Prohibit this title from being Burned to Regular Audio CD.

Honore de Balzac (Author), Johanna Ward (Narrator)

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Cuba

This island was once a clearing house for importing slaves into the New World. It later became one of the world's few remaining bastions of Marxism, proclaiming socio-economic equality. In both forms, Cuba has played a unique and dramatic role in American affairs. This presentation focuses on Cuba's economic and social upheaval, with special attention to how this has affected the United States. The World's Political Hot Spots series explains the basis of conflicts in some of the world's most politically sensitive areas. Many of these regions are in today's headlines, and tensions recently have become violent in virtually all of them. Each presentation covers up to ten centuries of background, revealing how and why today's problems occur.

Joseph Stromberg (Author), Harry Reasoner (Narrator)

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The Fourth Turning

This astonishing book will change the way you see the world--and your place in it. With startling originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about a new American era that will begin just after the millennium.William Strauss and Neil Howe base this vision on a provocative new theory of American history. With the same intellectual audacity that animated their previous best-sellers, Generations and 13th-GEN, the authors look back five hundred years and uncover a distinct pattern: Modern history moves in cycles, each one lasting about the length of a long human life, each composed of four eras--or "turnings"--that last about twenty years and that always arrive in the same order. First comes a High, a period of confident expansion as a new order takes root after the old has been swept away. Next comes an Awakening, a time of spiritual exploration and rebellion against the now-established order. Then comes an Unraveling, an increasingly troubled era in which individualism triumphs over crumbling institutions. Last comes a Crisis--the Fourth Turning--when society passes through a great and perilous gate in history. Together, the four turnings comprise history's seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and rebirth.Strauss and Howe locate today's America as midway through an Unraveling, roughly a decade away from the next era of Crisis. In a brilliant analysis of the post-World War II period, they show how generational dynamics are the key to understanding the cycles of American history. They draw vivid portraits of all the modern generations: the can-do G.I.s, the mediating Silent, the values-absorbed Boomers, the pragmatic 13ers, and the child Millennials. Placed in the context of history's long rhythms, the persona and role of each generation become clear--as does the inevitability of the coming Crisis.By applying the lessons of history, The Fourth Turning makes some bold and hopeful predictions about America's next rendezvous with destiny. It also shows us how we can prepare for what's ahead, both individually and as a nation. As Future Shock did in the 1970s and Megatrends did in the 1980s, this groundbreaking book will have a profound effect on every reader's perception of where we've been and where we're going.From the Hardcover edition.

William Strauss (Author), Neil Howe (Narrator)

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The Place Beyond Words

Ram Dass, much beloved spiritual pilgrim, talks candidly about his own journey and the wisdom he has gained from being at the heart of the consciousness movement. He compares life in New York to life in India, being a psychology professor at Harvard to being shunned by many institutions, consciousness in the 1960s to consciousness the 1990s, and how he dropped out of Western society to explore Eastern mysticism, only to return to a life of social action and service.

Ram Dass (Author), Mark Walstrom (Narrator)

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Blood Sport: The President and His Adversaries

Blood Sport is the explosive national bestseller that became front-page news by exposing the truth about the Clinton White House. With new revelations in this edition, Blood Sport is the definitive account of independent counsel Kenneth Starr's potentially historic investigation of a president and first lady. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Den of Thieves turns his discerning eye and incomparable investigative and storytelling skills to the scandals that have plagued the Clintons. Informative and shocking, Blood Sport reveals the facts about Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster's suicide, the independent counsel investigation, and the rumors of conspiracy and cover-up at the White House. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, Stewart provides an unprecedented close-up view of the Clintons as well as a telling portrait of how political combat is waged today.

James B. Stewart (Author), Boyd Gaines (Narrator)

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We're Right they're Wrong: A Handbook for Spirited Progressives

"They are wrong and we are right and I'm going to prove it to you!" -- Harry S. Truman, Democratic National Convention, 1948 A rousing political manifesto from The New York Times bestselling co-author of All's Fair One of Washington's most prominent Democratic strategists and co-author of the New York Times bestseller All's Fair offers a timely, accessible and entertaining response to the GOP's Contract with America -- just in time for primary season. With the Republican Congress blasting away at the federal government, James Carville, a top advisor to President Clinton, counterattacks. In We're Right, They're Wrong, he uses his trademark mix of pointed argument, homespun wit, and historic lore to deflate GOP claims that nothing is amiss in America that budget-cutting wouldn't cure. Carville staunchly defends a strong government -- one capable of teaching, feeding, healing, defending and sheltering its citizens -- and provides Democrats and progressives with a politically astute program for building upon what's best about our nation. Filled with anecdotes and political myths, We're Right, They're Wrong is a succinct, witty, fact-filled trot for judging the long primary season.

James Carville (Author), James Carville (Narrator)

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Megatrends Asia: Eight Asian Megatrends That Are Reshaping Our World

America's #1 trend forecaster reveals the global transformation that affects the future for us all! The most momentous global development of the 1990s. The #1 bestselling author of Megatrends and Megatrends 2000 now offers a glimpse of your future that begins on the other side of the globe -- where the once isolated nations of Asia are networking into an economic colossus that will soon become a dominant force in the rest of the world. While many Americans continue to focus on Europe, the eyes on the East see a different future -- a time, five years away, when the gross national product of Asia will double Europe's, representing a third of the entire world economy. Describing the dramatic changes now underway in a rapidly modernizing Asia, John Naisbitt identifies the eight significant megatrends that characterize the region's unprecedented transformation, and that will have a profound influence on the way Asia and the West do business with each other for decades to come. A look into the future from the world's most authoritative trend forecaster, Megatrends Asia is your guide to the global shift of the world's economic, political and cultural center of gravity that will have enormous consequences for us all.

John Naisbitt (Author), Jesse Boggs, John Naisbitt (Narrator)

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