General Audiobooks | Science & Technology

Lazy B: Growing up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest

What was it in Sandra Day O'Connor's background and early life that helped make her the woman she is today-the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and one of the most powerful women in America? In this beautiful, illuminating, and unusual book, Sandra Day O'Connor, with her brother, Alan, tells the story of the Day family and of growing up on the harsh yet beautiful land of the Lazy B Ranch in Arizona. Laced throughout these stories about three generations of the Day family, and everyday life on the Lazy B, are the lessons Sandra and Alan learned about the world, about people, self-reliance, and survival, and the reader will learn how the values of the Lazy B shaped them and their lives. Sandra's grandfather first put some cattle on open grazing land in 1886, and the Lazy B developed and continued to prosper as Sandra's parents, who eloped and then lived on the Lazy B all their lives, carved out a frugal and happy life for themselves and their three children on the rugged frontier. As you read about the daily adventures, the cattle drives and roundups, the cowboys and horses, the continual praying for rain and fixing of windmills, the values instilled by a self-reliant way of life, you see how Sandra Day O'Connor grew up. This fascinating glimpse of life in the American Southwest in the last century recounts an interesting time in our history, and gives us an enduring portrait of an independent young woman on the brink of becoming one of the most prominent figures in America today.

H. Alan Day, Sandra Day O'Connor (Author), Sandra Day O'Connor (Narrator)

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A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive

Dave Pelzer's astonishing, disturbing account of his early years describes one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. This book has spent over 175 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Dave was in first grade when his unstable alcoholic mother began attacking him. Until he was in fifth grade, she starved, beat and psychologically ravaged her son. Eventually denying even his identity, Dave's mother called him an "it" instead of using his name. Relentlessly, she drove him to the brink of death before authorities finally stepped in. With faith and hope, Dave grew determined to survive. He also knew that he needed to share his story. A Child Called "It" is the first of three books that chronicle his life. Through publications and public appearances, Dave is now recognized as one of the nation's most effective and respected speakers about child abuse.

Dave Pelzer (Author), Brian Keeler (Narrator)

Audiobook

Simone Weil

A patriot and a mystic, an unruly activist plagued by self-doubt, a pampered intellectual with a credo of manual labor, and an ascetic who craved sensuous beauty, Simone Weil died at the age of 34 after a long struggle with anorexia. But her tremendous intellectual legacy foresaw many of the 20th century's great changes and continues to influence philosophy today. Simone Weil traces this seminal thinker's transformation from privileged Parisian student to union organizer, activist, and philosopher, as well as the complex evolution of her ideas on Christianity, politics, and sexuality. In this thoughtful and compelling biography, du Plessix Gray illuminates an enigmatic figure and early feminist whose passion and pathos will fascinate a wide audience of listeners.

Francine Du Plessix Gray (Author), Donada Peters (Narrator)

Audiobook

Special Agent

A twenty-year veteran of the FBI, Candice DeLong worked on some of the toughest hig-stakes criminal investigations of our time. As a field profiler, DeLong collected evidence at the scene of the crime to creat a specific portrait of criminals via behavioral patterns, character traits, background, etc. Special Agent is her remarkable personal story– of drama and danger on the front lines of law enforcement, of the art and science of criminal profiling, and of the challenge of maintaining courage, wise-cracking humor, and grace under fire. Candice DeLong tailed terrorists and helped track the notorious Tylenol killer; she was one of three agents hand-picked to mastermind the Montana manhunt for the Unabomber; and she went undercover for major stings, sometimes in such exotic roles as a gangster’s moll, and as a madam of a call-girl ringdubbed the "Candy Store." As Profiling Coordinator, she was Chicago’s and until her recent retirement, San Francisco’s link to the Bureau’s legendary Behavioral Science Unit, spearheading investigations into the most recondite serial murders and sex crimes. Packed with fascinating details about her job, Special Agent reveals what life is like for a woman and for an agent on the front lines.

Candice DeLong (Author), Candice DeLong (Narrator)

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Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table

In Ruth Reichl’s latest book — one that will delight her fans and convert those as yet uninitiated to her charming tales — the author brings to life her adventures in pursuit of good meals and good company. Picking up where Tender at the Bone leaves off, Comfort Me with Apples recounts Reichl’s transformation from chef to food writer, a process that led her through restaurants from Bangkok to Paris to Los Angeles and brought lessons in life, love, and food. It is an apprenticeship by turns delightful and daunting, one told in the most winning and engaging of voices. Reichl’s anecdotes from a summer lunch with M.F.K. Fisher, a mad dash through the produce market with Wolfgang Puck, and a garlic feast with Alice Waters are priceless. She is unafraid — even eager — to poke holes in the pretensions of food critics, making each meal a hilarious and instructive occasion for novices and experts alike. The New York Times has said, “While all good food critics are humorous .. few are so riotously, effortlessly entertaining as Ruth Reichl.” In Comfort Me with Apples, Reichl once again demonstrates her inimitable ability to combine food writing, humor, and memoir into an art form.

Ruth Reichl (Author), Ruth Reichl (Narrator)

Audiobook

Jane Austen

With the same sensitivity and artfulness that are the trademarks of her award-winning novels, Shields here explores the life of a writer whose own novels have delighted readers for the past two hundred years. In Jane Austen, Shields follows this superb novelist from her early family life in Steventon to her later years in Bath, her broken engagement, and her intense relationship with her sister Cassandra. She reveals both the very private woman and the accomplished author behind the enduring classics Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. With its fascinating insights into the writing process from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Carol Shields' magnificent biography of Jane Austen is also a compelling meditation on how great fiction is created.

Carol Shields (Author), Donada Peters (Narrator)

Audiobook

It's Always Something

A month before her death on May 20, 1989, Gilda Radner entered a Los Angeles recording studio to deliver what would be her final performance - this remarkable audio autobiography, in which she reveals the inspirational story of her struggle with cancer...a private, personal battle in which the humor and humanity that has touched millions became her most powerful weapon.

Gilda Radner (Author), Gilda Radner (Narrator)

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The Deal Maker: How William C. Durant Made General Motors

Author of fourteen biographies, Axel Madsen chronicles the people who shaped the 20th century. In The Deal Maker, he sheds light on a man whose tireless optimism led to the formation of the first super-corporation. A charismatic salesman in the late 19th century, William Durant started a cart-building business after accepting an especially comfortable ride one day. By the time he turned forty, he was a millionaire wondering what to do with the rest of his life. When he was approached by retired plumber David Buick and a group of friends from his hometown of Flint, Michigan, Durant had only ridden in an automobile twice. His ensuing creation of General Motors essentially invented modern-day corporate America, gaining and losing him three fortunes in the process. Durant's story highlights the uneasy relationship between inventors and those who control the capital to exploit those inventions. Nelson Runger's narration takes listeners to a time when men like Durant, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, and Pierre du Pont were making decisions that would shape America's future.

Axel Madsen (Author), Nelson Runger (Narrator)

Audiobook

My Grandfather's House: A Genealogy of Doubt and Faith

Author of the Edgar Award-winning mystery, Mr. White's Confession, Robert Clark explores mysteries of a different nature in this powerful history of doubt, faith, and religious belief. Culminating in the author's own conversion to the Catholic Church, this thought-provoking book documents five centuries of his family's spiritual evolution. When Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church at the end of the Middle Ages, Robert Clark's ancestors went with him. Eventually the Puritans among them made it to the American colonies. One of them, a doctor, was present at the Salem witch trials. A more recent relative, a cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson, added Transcendentalism to the Clark legacy. Using a genealogy more colorful than most, Robert Clark has created an insightful, historically rich autobiography. Brian Keeler's warm narration leaves listeners inspired by the author's personal journey and invites them to ask some thoughtful questions of their own.

Robert Clark (Author), Brian Keeler (Narrator)

Audiobook

Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found

With the startling emotional immediacy of a fractured family photo album, Jennifer Lauck's incandescent memoir is the story of an ordinary girl growing up at the turn of the 1970s and the truly extraordinary circumstances of a childhood lost. Wrenching and unforgettable, Blackbird will carry your heart away. The house on Mary Street was home to Jennifer; her older brother B.J.; their hardworking father, who smelled like aftershave and read her Snow White; and their mother, who called her little daughter Sunshine and embraced Jackie Kennedy's sense of style. Through a child's eyes, the skies of Carson City were forever blue, and life was perfect -- a world of Barbies, Bewitched, and the Beatles. Even her mother's pain from her mysterious illness could be patted away with hairspray, powder, and a kiss on the cheek...But soon, everything Jennifer has come to love and rely on begins to crumble, sending her on a roller coaster of loss and loneliness. In a world unhinged by tragedy, where beautiful mothers die and families are warped by more than they can bear, a young girl must transcend a landscape of pain and mistreatment to discover her richest resource: her own unshakable will to survive.

Jennifer Lauck (Author), Jennifer Lauck (Narrator)

Audiobook

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf's life as part of the avant-garde Bloomsbury Group has captured the imagination of millions. Now Nigel Nicolson, the distinguished son of British writers Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West (Vita was one of Woolf's closest and most intimate friends) threads his personal reminiscences through the narrative of her life. In so doing, he paints an astonishing portrait of one of the most remarkable women in history. Nicolson recalls childhood times with Woolf: from her walk around his ancestral home as she planned Orlando to her writing of the modern classics Mrs. Dalloway and A Room of One's Own. Virginia Woolf probes keenly her stance on women's issues and the nature of war, drawing new connections between the woman and the literary genius.

Nigel Nicolson (Author), Karesa McElheny (Narrator)

Audiobook

Cherry

Mary Karr told the prize-winning tale of her hardscrabble Texas childhood with enough literary verve to spark a renaissance in memoir. The Liar’s Club rode the top of The New York Times bestseller list for more than a year, and publications ranging from The New Yorker to People picked it as one of the best books of the year. But it left people wondering: How’d that scrappy kid make it outta there? Cherry dares to tell that story. Karr picks up the trail and dashes off into her teen years with customary sass, only to run up against the paralyzing self-doubt of a girl in bloom. In this long-awaited sequel, we see Karr ultimately trying to run from the thrills and terrors of her sexual awakwening by butting against authority in all its forms. She lands all too often in the principal’s office and—in one instance—a jail cell. Looking for a lover or heart’s companion who’ll make her feel whole, she hooks up with an outrageous band of surfers and heads, wannabe yogis and bona fide geniuses. Karr’s edgy, brilliant prose careens between hilarity and tragedy, and Cherry takes readers to a place never truly explored—deep inside a girl’s stormy, ardent adolescence. Parts will leave you gasping with laughter. But its soaring close proves that from even the smokiest beginnings a solid self can form, one capable of facing down all manner of monsters.

Mary Karr (Author), Mary Karr (Narrator)

Audiobook

General Audiobooks in Science & Technology