Technology & Engineering Audiobooks | Science & Technology

The Brompton: Engineering for Change Audiobook

Lightweight, compact, distinctively styled, and now, electric: The Brompton isn't the only folding bicycle-or even the first. But everyone who has been on one will enthusiastically testify to its marvelous design (virtually unchanged over decades) and the particular joy of riding it. Will Butler-Adams, CEO of Brompton Bicycles, has been at the company for twenty years. Initially, he worked as an engineer for Andrew Ritchie, the bike's brilliant inventor and the business's founder, before taking the helm in 2008. Butler-Adams's heartfelt mission is to grow and promote sustainable urban transportation and to improve city-dwellers' lives everywhere. Under his leadership, Brompton has grown from making a few hundred bikes a year to over 90,000, with revenue of $130 million. But progress hasn't always been easy: There have been boardroom struggles, supply-chain problems, and conflicts with founder Andrew Ritchie. In The Brompton, Butler-Adams brings to life what it means to grow a company to global scale. He also tells the stories of the people who make the Brompton and the people who ride it. And he explains how customers all around the world fell in love with a brand that never set out to be a brand.

Dan Davies, William Butler-Adams (Author), Julian Elfer (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Wager

'The beauty of The Wager unfurls like a great sail... one of the finest nonfiction books I've ever read' Guardian 'A tour de force' Wall Street Journal THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER From the international bestselling author of KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE LOST CITY OF Z, a mesmerising story of shipwreck, mutiny and murder, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. On 28th January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's ship The Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon, The Wager was wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The crew, marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing 2,500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes. Then, six months later, another, even more decrepit, craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways and they had a very different story to tell. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes - they were mutineers. The first group responded with counter-charges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous captain and his henchmen. While stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death-for whomever the court found guilty could hang.

David Grann (Author), Dion Graham (Narrator)

Audiobook

His Majesty's Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine

From the bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Empire of the Summer Moon comes a stunning historical tale of the rise and fall of the world's largest airship—and the doomed love story between an ambitious British officer and a married Romanian Princess at its heart. The tragic story of the British airship R101—which went down in a spectacular hydrogen-fueled fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later—has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty's Airship, historian S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong. Airships, those airborne leviathans that occupied center stage in the world in the first half of the twentieth century, were a symbol of the future. R101 was not just the largest aircraft ever to have flown and the product of the world's most advanced engineering—she was also the lynchpin of an imperial British scheme to link by air the far-flung areas of its empire from Australia to India, South Africa, Canada, Egypt, and Singapore. No one had ever conceived of anything like this. R101 captivated the world. There was just one problem: beyond the hype and technological wonders, these big, steel-framed, hydrogen-filled airships were a dangerously bad idea. Gwynne's chronicle features a cast of remarkable—and often tragically flawed—characters, including Lord Christopher Thomson, the man who dreamed up the Imperial Airship Scheme and then relentlessly pushed R101 to her destruction; Princess Marthe Bibesco, the celebrated writer and glamorous socialite with whom he had a long affair; and Herbert Scott, a national hero who had made the first double crossing of the Atlantic in any aircraft in 1919—eight years before Lindbergh's famous flight—but who devolved into drink and ruin. These historical figures—and the ship they built, flew, and crashed—come together in a grand tale that details the rocky road to commercial aviation written by one of the best popular historians writing today.

S. C. Gwynne (Author), Nicholas Boulton (Narrator)

Audiobook

Age of Danger: Keeping America Safe in an Era of New Superpowers, New Weapons, and New Threats

An urgent look at how America's national security machine went astray and how it fails to keep us safe-and what we can do to fix it. Again and again, American taxpayers are asked to open their wallets and pay for a national security machine that costs $1 trillion operate. Yet time and time again, the US government gets it wrong on critical issues. So what can be done? Enter bestselling author Thom Shanker and defense expert Andrew Hoehn. With decades of national security expertise between them and access to virtually every expert, they look at what's going wrong in national security and how to make it go right. Age of Danger looks at the major challenges facing America-from superpowers like Russia and China to emerging threats like pandemics, cybersecurity, climate change, and drones-and reimagines the national security apparatus into something that can truly keep Americans safe. Weaving together expert analysis with exclusive interviews from a new generation of national security leaders, Shanker and Hoehn argue that the United States must create an industrial-grade, life-saving machine out of a system that, for too long, was focused only on deterring adversaries and carrying out global military operations. It is a timely and crucial call to action-a call that if heeded, could save Americans lives, money, and our very future on the global stage.

Andrew Hoehn, Thom Shanker (Author), Eric Jason Martin (Narrator)

Audiobook

How to Build Impossible Things: A Carpenter's Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work

Brought to you by Penguin. Wildly irreverent and beautifully warm, this is a story about practice, competence and failure, told through tales in a world most of us never see. 'Life is worth regular examination. I have found a great deal of meaning in learning to make things. Each of us has tidbits of understanding that others might appreciate were we to share them. As a carpenter building high-end homes for New York City's richest, I work on multi-million dollar projects every day. People come to me when they want the impossible. Most are ill conceived; many are inadvisable, some are downright dangerous. But when I'm able to craft something glorious, it's magic. Yet in every project, without fail, things go wrong. Glamour, luxury and refinement are products of a flawed, human process, of missed deadlines, overrun budgets, heated tantrums and scrapped blueprints. Throughout my career I have observed, erred, learned, finessed, apologised, and resisted the urge to say I told you so. I offer these tales from the trade in the hope that others might find them amusing, instructive and inspirational. There are many good reasons to work. Here are a few of them.' ©2023 Mark Ellison (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Mark Ellison (Author), Paul Bellantoni (Narrator)

Audiobook

Man-Made: How the bias of the past is being built into the future

Walkley Award-winning journalist Tracey Spicer exposes the next frontier of feminism. Man-Made aims to open readers' eyes to a transformative technological shift in society and give them the tools to make positive change. `Mum, I want a robot slave.' Broadcaster Tracey Spicer had an epiphany when her young son uttered these six words. Suddenly, her life's work fighting inequality seemed futile. What's the point in agitating to change the present, if bigotry is being embedded into our futures? And so began a quest to uncover who was responsible and hold them to account. Who is the ultimate villain? Big Tech, whose titans refuse to spend money to fix the problem? The world's politicians, who lack the will to legislate? Or should we all be walking into a hall of mirrors and taking a good, hard look at ourselves…? This is a deeply researched, illuminating and gripping ride into an uncertain future, culminating in a resounding call to action that will shake the tech sector to its foundations. Praise for Man-Made 'Exhilarating … The book we need as we grapple with how AI will change our lives and our world.' Dame Quentin Bryce 'Brilliant, hilarious and terrifying. You'll never see Alexa the same way again.' Juanita Phillips 'Tracey Spicer uses her unmistakably human voice to warn us all about the deeply sexist Frankenstein's Monster that is modern AI.' Yumi Stynes

Tracey Spicer (Author), Tracey Spicer (Narrator)

Audiobook

Size: How It Explains the World

Brought to you by Penguin. 100 words: The New York Times bestselling author returns with a mind-opening exploration of how size defines life on Earth. Explaining the key processes shaping size in nature, society and technology, Smil busts myths around proportions - from bodies to paintings and the so-called golden ratio - tells us what Jonathan Swift got wrong in Gulliver's Travels - the giant Brobdingnagian's legs would buckle under their enormous weight - and dives headfirst into the most contentious issue in ergonomics: the size of aeroplane seats. It is no exaggeration to say this fascinating and wide-ranging tour de force will change the way you look at absolutely everything. 10 words: Size, an omnipresent scalar, is the measure of all things. 1 word: Size. © Vaclav Smil 2023 (P) Penguin Audio 2023

Vaclav Smil (Author), Stephen Perring (Narrator)

Audiobook

Crossed Wires: The Conflicted History of US Telecommunications, From The Post Office To The Internet

Telecommunications networks are vast, intricate, hugely costly systems for exchanging messages and information-within cities and across continents. From the Post Office and the telegraph to today's internet, these networks have sown domestic division while also acting as sources of international power. In Crossed Wires, Dan Schiller, who has conducted archival research on United States telecommunications for more than forty years, recovers the extraordinary social history of the major network systems of the United States. Drawing on arrays of archival documents and secondary sources, Schiller reveals that this history has been shaped by sharp social and political conflict and is embedded in the larger history of an expansionary United States political economy. Schiller argues that networks have enabled United States imperialism through a recurrent 'American system' of cross-border communications. This authoritative and comprehensive revisionist history of United States telecommunications argues that not technology but a dominative-and contested-political economy drove the evolution of this critical industry.

Dan Schiller (Author), Christopher Douyard (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Battle of the Beams: The secret science of radar that turned the tide of the Second World War

Brought to you by Penguin. Summer 1939. War is coming. The British believe that, through ingenuity and scientific prowess, they alone have a war-winning weapon: radar. They are wrong. The Germans have it too. They believe that their unique maritime history means their pilots have no need of navigational aids. Flying above the clouds they, like the seafarers of old, had the stars to guide them, and that is all that is required. They are wrong. Most of the bombs the RAF will drop in the first years of the war land miles from their target. They also believe that the Germans, without the same naval tradition, will never be able to find targets at night. They are, again, wrong. In 1939 the Germans don't just have radar to spot planes entering their airspace, they have radio beams to guide their own planes into enemy airspace. War is coming, and it is to be a different kind of war. It will be fought, as expected, on land and sea and in the air. It will also be fought on the airwaves. It will be fought between scientists on both sides at the forefront of knowledge, and the agents and commandos they relied on to bolster that knowledge. Luckily there was one young engineer, Reginald Jones, helping the British government with their own scientific developments. In June 1940, when Jones quietly explained the beams the Germans had devised to a room full of disbelieving sceptics, Churchill later described the moment as like sitting in the parlour while Sherlock Holmes finally reveals the killer. Churchill immediately supported Jones's efforts to develop radar technology that went on to help the Allies win the war. Relying on first-hand accounts from Reginald Jones as well as papers recently released by the Admiralty, The Battle of the Beams fills a huge missing piece in the canon of WW2 literature. It is a tale that combines history, science, derring do and dogged determination and will appeal as much to fans of WW2 history as to those fascinated by the science behind the beams that changed our lives. The radio war of 1939-45 is one of the great scientific battles in history. This is the story of that war. ©2023 Tom Whipple (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Tom Whipple (Author), Tom Whipple (Narrator)

Audiobook

Carbon Queen: The Remarkable Life of Nanoscience Pioneer Mildred Dresselhaus

The life of trailblazing physicist Mildred Dresselhaus, who expanded our understanding of the physical world. As a girl in New York City in the 1940s, Mildred 'Millie' Dresselhaus was taught that there were only three career options open to women: secretary, nurse, or teacher. In Carbon Queen, science writer Maia Weinstock describes how, with curiosity and drive, Dresselhaus defied expectations and forged a career as a pioneering scientist and engineer. Dresselhaus made highly influential discoveries about the properties of carbon and other materials and helped reshape our world in countless ways-from electronics to aviation to medicine to energy. She was also a trailblazer for women in STEM and a beloved educator, mentor, and colleague. Her path wasn't easy. Her graduate adviser felt educating women was a waste of time. But Dresselhaus persisted, finding mentors in Nobel Prize-winning physicists Rosalyn Yalow and Enrico Fermi. Eventually, Dresselhaus became one of the first female professors at MIT, where she would spend nearly six decades. Weinstock explores the basics of Dresselhaus's work in carbon nanoscience accessibly and engagingly, describing how she identified key properties of carbon forms, leading to applications that range from lighter, stronger aircraft to more energy-efficient and flexible electronics.

Maia Weinstock (Author), Eva Wilhelm (Narrator)

Audiobook

[Spanish] - Países Impenetrables Y Fuerzas Letales

Las fuerzas especiales, fuerzas de operaciones especiales o fuerzas de élite, son unidades militares o policiales ágiles y versátiles específicamente entrenadas y formadas para llevar a cabo una serie de tareas específicas, que van desde las «operaciones especiales» dentro de un conflicto convencional a las que implican la guerra no convencional. Por lo general, las fuerzas especiales tienen una formación más amplia y con frecuencia equipos más avanzados que las fuerzas convencionales. Se adaptan para operar como fuerzas asimétricas y capaces de operar de forma independiente, o en apoyo directo de cualquiera de las fuerzas militares convencionales o de otros elementos gubernamentales. Son activos de alto valor, comandados a nivel estratégico y que ofrecen importantes resultados no proporcionados con su reducido tamaño. Una unidad de fuerzas especiales está entrenada para llevar a cabo misiones de combate de acción directa e indirecta. Las operaciones de acción directa son operaciones ofensivas y cubren un amplio espectro de operaciones. Las operaciones indirectas son habitualmente de reconocimiento, destinadas a la obtención de información. Operan sobre la base de grupos pequeños, dependiendo de la misión, con gran autonomía. A treves de este libro el autor comparte contigo ciertos datos sobre algunos países casi impenetrables y unas fuerzas especiales importantes en la defensa y soberanía de una nación.

Onofre Quezada (Author), Anonimo, Onofre Quezada (Narrator)

Audiobook

ORGANIC VEGETABLE GARDENING: How to Grow Your Vegetables and Start a Healthy Garden at Home. A Step-

If you're looking for a fun and delightfully rewarding activity to delve into—literally!—now is the time to take on the pleasant task of cultivating your veggies at home, organically, and healthfully. This book will teach you: - The Fundamentals of Why and How: not just a persuasive list of reasons to get you started with your garden but also a fundamental step-by-step instruction on how to get started. - Soil and Seeds: not just how to get the most out of your soil, but also how to create your compost bin out of inexpensive materials and find the best seeds. - Vegetable Victory: a list of some of the best plants for the organic garden throughout the seasons and tips on companion planting and space optimization. - Pest Preparation: How to Control Pests and Fight Diseases Organically - Healthy Harvest: the fundamentals of weeding and pruning, as well as several suggestions for using all of the lovely stuff you raise, including multiple simple recipe ways for every plant mentioned - Never throw away any of your produce! Canning, freezing, dehydrating, smoking, and fermenting are all methods for extending the life of your product, and additional recipes are available to help you. - Seasonal Survival: How to Make the Most of Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall - Imagining Your Impact: assessing your achievements and appreciating your efforts And more, much more! —- Purchase Organic Vegetable Gardening now! —-

Howell Mcbride (Author), Evan Brown (Narrator)

Audiobook

Technology & Engineering Audiobooks in Science & Technology