General Audiobooks | Science & Technology

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know Audiobook

Ranulph Fiennes has travelled to the most dangerous and inaccessible places on earth, almost died countless times, lost nearly half his fingers to frostbite, raised millions of pounds for charity and been awarded a polar medal and an OBE. He has been an elite soldier, an athlete, a mountaineer, an explorer, a bestselling author and nearly replaced Sean Connery as James Bond. In his autobiography he describes how he led expeditions all over the world and became the first person to travel to both poles on land. He tells of how he discovered the lost city of Ubar in Oman and attempted to walk solo and unsupported to the North Pole - the expedition that cost him several fingers, and very nearly his life. His most recent challenge was scaling the north face of the Eiger, one of the most awesome mountaineering challenges in the world. Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes OBE, 3rd Baronet, looks back on a life lived at the very limits of human endeavour. (P)2007 Hodder & Stoughton Audiobooks

Ranulph Fiennes (Author), Ranulph Fiennes (Narrator)

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Shaggy Muses

In Shaggy Muses, we visit Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Flush, the golden Cocker Spaniel who danced the poet away from death, back to life and human love. We roam the wild Yorkshire moors with Emily Bronte, whose fierce Mastiff mix, Keeper, provided a safe and loving outlet for the writer's equally fierce spirit. We enter the creative sanctum of Emily Dickinson, which she shared only with Carlo, the gentle, giant Newfoundland who soothed her emotional terrors. We mingle with Edith Wharton, whose ever-faithful Pekes warmed her lonely heart during her restless travels among Europe and America's social and intellectual elite. We are privileged guests in the fragile universe of Virginia Woolf, who depended for emotional support and sanity not only on her human loved ones but also on her dogs, especially Pinka-a gift from her lover, Vita Sackville-West-a black Cocker Spaniel who soon became a strong, bright thread in the fabric of Virginia and Leonard Woolf's life together. Based on diaries, letters, and other contemporary accounts-and featuring many illustrations of the writers and their dogs-these five miniature biographies allow us unparalleled intimacy with women of genius in their hours of domestic ease and inner vulnerability. Shaggy Muses also enchants us with a pack of new friends: Flush, Keeper, Carlo, Foxy, Linky, Grizzle, Pinka, and all the other devoted canines who loved and served these great writers. ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Shaggy Muses "An intimate look at famous women authors whose lives were more difficult than we would ever have imagined. Their dogs helped them to survive and create their great works of classic English literature. Lovers of literature and all those interested in the human-animal bond should read this fascinating book." -Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation "I so enjoyed Shaggy Muses. It manages very successfully to bring into focus exactly why these dogs were important to these writers-providing some with confidence, some with love, some with protection, and all of them with a curious sense of identification with another spirit that, sometimes, fueled their writing. No mean feat." -Margaret Forster, author of Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Biography "Shaggy Muses gives readers an intriguing new approach to these five authors. Writing can be a lonely profession. As a dog lover and writer, it's wonderful for me to think of how these important authors all seem to have needed the kind of comfort and love that dogs give best." -Diana Wells, author of My Therapist's Dog: Lessons in Unconditional Love

Maureen Adams (Author), Polly Stone (Narrator)

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Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)

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Peeling the Onion: A Memoir

In this extraordinary memoir, Nobel Prize–winning author Günter Grass remembers his early life, from his boyhood in a cramped two-room apartment in Danzig through the late 1950s, when his book The Tin Drum was published. During the Second World War, Grass volunteered for the submarine corps at the age of fifteen but was rejected; two years later, in 1944, he was instead drafted into the Waffen-SS. Taken prisoner by American forces as he was recovering from shrapnel wounds, he spent the final weeks of the war in an American POW camp. After the war, Grass resolved to become an artist and moved with his first wife to Paris, where he began to write the novel that would make him famous. Full of the bravado of youth, the rubble of postwar Germany, the thrill of wild love affairs, and the exhilaration of Paris in the early fifties, Peeling the Onion—which caused great controversy when it was published in Germany—reveals Grass at his most intimate.

Gunter Grass (Author), Norman Dietz (Narrator)

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Obama: From Promise to Power

The biography of America's hottest political superstar, Barack Obama, from a journalist who has been covering his career since his successful run for U.S. Senate. Barack Obama's meteoric rise is the stuff of legend. Since his headline-grabbing speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Obama has come to represent the promise of unity among groups of all types, blacks and whites; Democrats, Republicans, and moderates; the upper, middle, and lower classes. In this groundbreaking biography, veteran journalist and Obama chronicler David Mendell gives an in-depth, comprehensive portrait of a man whose last name has become a catchphrase for hope in a politically jaded society desperate for a new star. Mendell has covered Obama since the beginning of Obama's campaign for the Senate and as a result enjoys far-reaching access to the new Senator. His research includes exclusive interviews with Obama's closest aides, mentors, political adversaries, and family. Mendell reveals the surprising, cutthroat campaign tactics sanctioned by Obama, who has steeped his image and reputation on the ideals of clean politics and good government, to win his Senate seat by employing some of the most ruthless operatives in the business. Eye-opening, well-researched, and compulsively readable, Obama: From Promise to Power is a necessary look at the evolution of a politician from public servant to candidate-savior.

David Mendell (Author), Dion Graham (Narrator)

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Occupational Hazzards

At the age of thirty, Rory Stewart was appointed coalition deputy Governor of two provinces in the Marsh region of southern Iraq. He kept a journal of his experiences struggling to control assassinations and tribal conflict, rebuild the region's infrastructure and establish a new Iraqi government before the hand over of power in June 2004. His time in the Marsh region culminated in a terrifying siege during which he and his team were under sustained attack by insurgents. Haunted by his previous work and travels in Asia, Rory brings a unique sensitivity and perspective to the daily interactions between Iraqis and the coalition and to the perils and even comedy of foreign occupation.

Rory Stewart (Author), Rory Stewart (Narrator)

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Rainbow's End

This searingly honest memoir describes growing up on an African farm during the Rhodesian Bush War and the twilight years of white colonialism in the 1970s. It also explores the shock yet euphoria of Zimbabwean independence in the 1980s as St John navigates her way through the immense personal and political changes. The abundance and beauty of Africa and its people, as well as childhood innocence, are superbly contrasted with the insidiousness of racism, war and nationalist propaganda to create an unforgettable read - eloquent, affecting and utterly spellbinding.

Lauren St. John (Author), Bianca Amato (Narrator)

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Pistol: The Life of Pete Maravich

Pistol is more than the biography of a ballplayer. It's the stuff of classic novels: the story of a boy transformed by his father's dream---and the cost of that dream. Even as Pete Maravich became Pistol Pete---a basketball icon for baby boomers---all the Maraviches paid a price. Now acclaimed author Mark Kriegel has brilliantly captured the saga of an American family: its rise, its apparent ruin, and, finally, its redemption.

Mark Kriegel (Author), Lloyd James, Lloyd James (Narrator)

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Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab

This is a hauntingly moving memoir of the relationship between a cadaver named Eve and the first-year medical student who cuts her open. Christine Montross brings an uncommon perspective to the emotional difficulty of the first year of medical school, and her disturbing, often entertaining anecdotes enrich this exquisitely crafted memoir, endowing an eerie beauty to the world of a doctor-in-training.

Christine Montross (Author), Renee Raudman, Renée Raudman (Narrator)

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No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner

From his unique perspective, Robert Shrum gives us an epic and personal story of the struggle for power in America during the past four decades. With wit and humor, rare candor, and a wealth of detail, Shrum vividly recounts the real personalities and real forces that shaped the outcome of the closest and most important elections of our time.

Robert Shrum (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)

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The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries

The Blair Years is the most compelling and revealing account of contemporary politics you will ever read. Taken from Alastair Campbell's daily diaries, it charts the rise of New Labour and the tumultuous years of Tony Blair's leadership, providing the first important record of a remarkable decade in our national life. Here are the defining events of our time, from Labour's new dawn to the war on terror, from the death of Diana to negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland, from Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, through to the Hutton Inquiry of 2003, the year Campbell resigned his position at No 10. But above all here is Tony Blair up close and personal, taking the decisions that affected the lives of millions, under relentless and often hostile pressure. Often described as the second most powerful figure in Britain, Alastair Campbell is no stranger to controversy. Feared and admired in equal measure, hated by some, he was pivotal to the founding of New Labour and the sensational election victory of 1997. As Blair's press secretary, strategist and trusted confidant, Campbell spent more waking hours alongside the Prime Minister than anyone. His diaires - at times brutally frank, often funny, always compelling - take the reader right to the heart of government. The Blair Years is a story of politics in the raw, of progress and setback, of reputations made and destroyed, under the relentless scrutiny of a 24-hour media. Unflinchingly told, it covers the crises and scandals, the rows and resignations, the ups and downs of Britain's hothouse politics. But amid the big events are insights and observations that make this a remarkably human portrayal of some of the most powerful people in the world. There has never been so riveting a book about life at the very top, nor a more human book about politics, told by a man who saw it all.

Alastair Campbell (Author), Alastair Campbell (Narrator)

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Dog Days: Dispatches from Bedlam Farm

Best-selling author Jon Katz, often called the heir to James Herriot, has earned a devoted following for his heartwarming tales of the dogs in his life. In this book Katz learns that living with four dogs on a rural New York farm is one thing. But what happens when you add a couple cows, four donkeys, a growing flock of sheep, a few hens, a temperamental rooster, and even Mother (a barn cat) to the mix?

Jon Katz (Author), Tom Stechschulte (Narrator)

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General Audiobooks in Science & Technology