General Audiobooks | Science & Technology

Reflections: Life After the White House Audiobook

Barbara Bush was born in Rye, New York, and married George H.W. Bush in 1945. She was the First Lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993. She has five children, including President George W. Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and is the founder of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.

Barbara Bush (Author), Barbara Bush (Narrator)

Audiobook

Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens

The first dual biography of two of the world's most remarkable women-Elizabeth I of England and Mary Queen of Scots-by one of Britain's "best biographers" (The Sunday Times). In a rich and riveting narrative, Jane Dunn reveals the extraordinary rivalry between the regal cousins. It is the story of two queens ruling on one island, each with a claim to the throne of England, each embodying dramatically opposing qualities of character, ideals of womanliness (and views of sexuality) and divinely ordained kingship. As regnant queens in an overwhelmingly masculine world, they were deplored for their femaleness, compared unfavorably with each other and courted by the same men. By placing their dynamic and ever-changing relationship at the center of the book, Dunn illuminates their differences. Elizabeth, inheriting a weak, divided country coveted by all the Catholic monarchs of Europe, is revolutionary in her insistence on ruling alone and inspired in her use of celibacy as a political tool-yet also possessed of a deeply feeling nature. Mary is not the romantic victim of history but a courageous adventurer with a reckless heart and a magnetic influence over men and women alike. Vengeful against her enemies and the more ruthless of the two queens, she is untroubled by plotting Elizabeth's murder. Elizabeth, however, is driven to anguish at finally having to sanction Mary's death for treason. Working almost exclusively from contemporary letters and writings, Dunn explores their symbiotic, though never face-to-face, relationship and the power struggle that raged between them. A story of sex, power and politics, of a rivalry unparalleled in the pages of English history, of two charismatic women-told in a masterful double biography.

Jane Dunn (Author), Donada Peters (Narrator)

Audiobook

All The Best

In lieu of a memoir, All the Best, George Bush collects correspondence and diary entries from the former U.S. president to show, as he says, "what my own heartbeat is, what my values are, what has motivated me in life." The letters begin in 1942--when, fresh out of high school, Bush volunteered for U.S. Navy flight school--and continue to the brink of the 21st century, as the retired chief executive worries about the Melissa virus infecting his office's server and keeping his visiting grandchildren in line. ("I realize," he muses, "Keep the freezer door closed from now on and I mean it lacks the rhetorical depth of This will not stand or Read my lips.") All the Best hits all the highlights of Bush's career, from the Texas oil business to his role as ambassador to China, then CIA director, vice president under Ronald Reagan, and finally president himself. Along the way, he reveals a personality that is at turns compassionate, respectful, silly, doting, and resolute--a man for whom being a father and a grandfather matters as much as, and maybe even more than, being leader of the free world. Fans and detractors alike will find in All the Best an intimate human portrait that offers as sure a self-definition of Bush's personal life as A World Transformed did his presidential career.

Barbara Bush, George Bush, George H.W. Bush (Author), Barbara Bush, George Bush, George H.W. Bush (Narrator)

Audiobook

John Paul Jones

This superlative biography from Newsweek assistant managing editor Thomas (Robert Kennedy, His Life) can hold its own on the shelf with Samuel Eliot Morison's Pulitzer Prize-winning Jones bio, A Sailor's Story. It does not add much to our knowledge of the events of its subject's life (from his birth in lowland Scotland in 1747 to his lonely death in revolutionary Paris in 1792), but it adds interpretations and dimensions to practically every event that has been recorded elsewhere.

Evan Thomas (Author), Dan Cashman (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd: Part 1 & 2

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer. However, Captain William Kidd was no career cut-throat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates. His three year odyssey pitted him against arrogant Royal Navy commanders, jealous East India Company captains, storms, starvation, angry natives, and, above all, flesh-and blood pirates. Across the oceans of the world, the pirate hunter, Kidd, pursued the pirate, Culliford. One man would hang in the harbor; the other would walk away with the treasure. The Pirate Hunter is both a masterpiece of historical detective work and a page-turner

Richard Zacks (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Story of My Father: A Memoir

In the fall of 1988, Sue Miller found herself caring for her father as he slipped into the grasp of Alzheimer's disease. She was, she claims, perhaps the least constitutionally suited of all her siblings to be in the role in which she suddenly found herself, and in The Story of My Father she grapples with the haunting memories of those final months and the larger narrative of her father's life. With compassion, self-scrutiny, and an urgency born of her own yearning to rescue her father's memory from the disorder and oblivion that marked his dying and death, Sue Miller takes us on an intensely personal journey that becomes, by virtue of her enormous gifts of observation, perception, and literary precision, a universal story of fathers and daughters. James Nichols was a fourth-generation minister, a retired professor from Princeton Theological Seminary. Sue Miller brings her father brilliantly to life in these pages-his religious faith, his endless patience with his children, his gaiety and willingness to delight in the ridiculous, his singular gifts as a listener, and the rituals of church life that stayed with him through his final days. She recalls the bitter irony of watching him, a church historian, wrestle with a disease that inexorably lays waste to notions of time, history, and meaning. She recounts her struggle with doctors, her deep ambivalence about many of her own choices, and the difficulty of finding, continually, the humane and moral response to a disease whose special cruelty it is to dissolve particularities and to diminish, in so many ways, the humanity of those it strikes. She reflects, unforgettably, on the variable nature of memory, the paradox of trying to weave a truthful narrative from the threads of a dissolving life. And she offers stunning insight into her own life as both a daughter and a writer, two roles that swell together here in a poignant meditation on the consolations of storytelling. With the care, restraint, and consummate skill that define her beloved and best-selling fiction, Sue Miller now gives us a rigorous, compassionate inventory of two lives, in a memoir destined to offer comfort to all sons and daughters struggling-as we all eventually must-to make peace with their fathers and with themselves. From the Hardcover edition.

Sue Miller (Author), Sue Miller (Narrator)

Audiobook

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Suspense, excess, danger, and exuberant fun come together in Chuck Barris's unlikely autobiography-the tale of a wildly flamboyant '70s televsion producer nationally know as the host of The Gong Show. What most people don't know is that Barris also spent close to two decades as a decorated covert assassin for the CIA, claiming to have killed over thirty people. Honestly. Barris, who achieved tremendous success as the creator of the hit game show The Newlywed Game, joined the CIA as an agent in the early 1960s. He infiltrated the Civil Rights movement, met with militant Muslims in Harlem, and was sent abroad to kill enemies of the American state, even as his game shows began to soar to ratings success. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is a wild and improbable tale spiced with intrigue, sex, bad behavior, and plenty of one-liners.

Chuck Barris (Author), Chuck Barris (Narrator)

Audiobook

Kitchen Privileges: Memoirs of a Bronx Girlhood

Even as a young girl, growing up in the Bronx, Mary Higgins Clark knew she wanted to be a writer, The gift of storytelling was a part of her Irish ancestry, so it followed naturally that she would later use her sharp eye, keen intelligence, and inquisitive nature to create stories. Along with all Americans, citizens of the Bronx suffered during the Depression. So when Mary's father died, her mother opened the family home to boarders and placed a discreet sign next to the front door that read, "Furnished Rooms. Kitchen Privileges." The family's struggle to make ends meet; her days as a scholarship student in an exclusive girls academy; the death of her beloved older brother in World War II; her marriage to Warren Clark; writing stories at the kitchen table; finally selling the first one for one hundred dollars, after six years and forty rejections -- all these experiences figure into Kitchen Privileges. Her husband's untimely death left her a widowed mother of five young children. Determined to care for her family and to make a career for herself, she wrote scripts for a radio show. In her spare time she began writing novels. Where Are The Children? became an international bestseller and launched her career. When asked if she might consider giving up writing for a life of leisure, Marv has replied, "Never. To be happy for a year, win the lottery. To be happy for life, do what you love.

Mary Higgins Clark (Author), Mary Higgins Clark (Narrator)

Audiobook

Blind Faith: The Miraculous Journey of Lula Hardaway, Stevie Wonder's Mother

Hardship, sacrifice, determination and ultimate triumph make up Blind Faith, the frank and compelling biography of Lula Hardaway, mother of superstar musician and singer Stevie Wonder. A motherless child born in a sharecropper's shack in Alabama, Lula was passed from relative to relative, unwanted and unloved. As a teenager she was sent to Chicago where she married a much older man who abused her and forced her to work as a prostitute. Determined to build a better life for her children, she eventually made her escape to Detroit. Although Stevland Judkins was blind virtually from birth, Lula noticed that this little boy impressed everyone with his outgoing personality, his intelligence, charm, and his incredible musical talent. Berry Gordy dubbed the boy Little Stevie Wonder and launched him into musical history when he signed Stevie to his Motown label. When Innervisions won a Grammy award for Album of the Year in 1973, Stevie Wonder refused to accept the award unless Lula walked with him to the podium where he proclaimed, "her strength has led us to this place." Indeed, it was Lula's drive and her willingness to sacrifice the now for the future that saw them through. Blind Faith is not only the story of the birth of a superstar, but a stirring testament to a mother's love

Dennis Love, Stacy Brown (Author), Viola Davis (Narrator)

Audiobook

Motherhood and Hollywood

"The really important things in life are your family and friends. And what will people say about you at your funeral-that you won an Emmy once, or that you were a good person, kind and generous? Well, as for me, I hope it's the latter. And the fact that I recently commissioned an Emmy-shaped coffin just eliminates the need for anyone to bring it up." Everybody knows that Patricia Heaton plays the hilarious, wise, and tempestuous married-with-kids everywoman on Everybody Loves Raymond. What they might not know is that in real life she is married, has four boys under eight years old, and is just as funny offscreen as on. Motherhood and Hollywood is Patricia Heaton's humorous and poignant collection of essays on life, love, marriage, child-rearing, show business, having parents, being a parent, spousal rage, surviving fame, success, and the shame of underarm flab. She is warm, witty, and refreshingly irreverent. Heaton grew up in suburban Cleveland, one of five children of devout Roman Catholic parents. Her father was a noted sportswriter for The Plain Dealer; her mother died suddenly and unexpectedly when Heaton was twelve. Love, fast food, and an unflagging sense of humor held the clan together and propelled Patricia on a showbiz career that began with hilariously nightmarish struggles in New York, eventually leading to a triumphant move to Los Angeles. In Motherhood and Hollywood, Patricia Heaton pours out her heart and minces no words. She's taking all prisoners for cookies and a glass of Jack Daniel's and diet ginger ale. Laughter ensues.

Patricia Heaton (Author), Patricia Heaton (Narrator)

Audiobook

Lauryn Hill

Meg Greene (Author), Carine Montbertrand (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Lost Boy: A Foster Child's Search for the Love of a Family

The Lost Boy has spent over two years on the New York Times best-seller list and has profoundly influenced more than one million readers' lives. Following the tremendous success of Pulitzer Prize nominee A Child Called "It", this book continues the extraordinary tale of author Dave Pelzer's childhood. On the verge of adolescence, Dave is rescued from his terrifyingly abusive, alcoholic mother and made a permanent ward of the court. Then the real journey begins. He is moved from one foster home to another searching for identity and family. A rebellious, defiant boy, Dave seeks attention by shoplifting, and even spends time in juvenile detention when suspected of arson. Finally, after five sets of foster parents, he finds a mother and father who love him. Pelzer--who has received commendations from Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton--travels throughout the world inspiring others through speeches and work to prevent child abuse. His courageous story is enhanced by Brian Keeler's thoughtful narration.

Dave Pelzer (Author), Brian Keeler (Narrator)

Audiobook

General Audiobooks in Science & Technology