Technology & Engineering Audiobooks | Science & Technology

The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge

Published on the fortieth anniversary of its initial publication, this edition of the classic book contains a new Preface by David McCullough, "one of our most gifted living writers" (The Washington Post).Built to join the rapidly expanding cities of New York and Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Bridge was thought by many at the start to be an impossibility destined to fail if not from insurmountable technical problems then from political corruption. (It was the heyday of Boss Tweed in New York.) But the Brooklyn Bridge was at once the greatest engineering triumph of the age, a surpassing work of art, a proud American icon, and a story like no other in our history. Courage, chicanery, unprecedented ingenuity and plain blundering, heroes, rascals, all the best and worst in human nature played a part. At the center of the drama were the stricken chief engineer, Washington Roebling and his remarkable wife, Emily Warren Roebling, neither of whom ever gave up in the face of one heartbreaking setback after another. The Great Bridge is a sweeping narrative of a stupendous American achievement that rose up out of its era like a cathedral, a symbol of affirmation then and still in our time.

David McCullough (Author), Nelson Runger (Narrator)

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Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

We will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman, and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions of people. This book is an antidote to pessimism by tech-entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler. Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing—fast. The authors document how four forces—exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion—are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. Abundance establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic road map for governments, industry, and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism. Examining human need by category—water, food, energy, health care, education, and freedom—Diamandis and Kotler introduce dozens of innovators making great strides in each area: Larry Page, Steven Hawking, Dean Kamen, Daniel Kahneman, Elon Musk, Bill Joy, Stewart Brand, Jeff Skoll, Ray Kurzweil, Ratan Tata, Craig Venter, and many, many others.

Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler (Author), Arthur Morey (Narrator)

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The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care

Until very recently, if you were to ask most doctors, they would tell you there were only two kinds of medicine: the quack kind, and the evidence-based kind. The former is baseless, and the latter based on the best information human effort could buy, with carefully controlled double-blind trials, hundreds of patients, and clear indicators of success. Well, Eric Topol isn't most doctors, and he suggests you entertain the notion of a third kind of medicine, one that will make the evidence-based state-of-the-art stuff look scarcely better than an alchemist trying to animate a homunculus in a jar. It turns out plenty of new medicines—although tested with what seem like large trials—actually end up revealing most of their problems only once they get out in the real world, with millions of people with all kinds of conditions mixing them with everything in the pharmacopeia. The unexpected interactions of drugs, patients, and diseases can be devastating. And the clear indicators of success often turn out to be minimal, often as small as one fewer person dying out of a hundred (or even a thousand), and often at exorbitant cost. How can we avoid these dangerous interactions and side-effects? How can we predict which person out of a hundred will be helped by a new drug, and which fatally harmed? And how can we avoid having to need costly drugs in the first place? It sure isn't by doing another four hundred-person trial. As Topol argues in The Creative Destruction of Medicine, it's by bringing the era of big data to the clinic, laboratory, and hospital, with wearable sensors, smartphone apps, and whole-genome scans providing the raw materials for a revolution. Combining all the data those tools can provide will give us a complete and continuously updated picture of every patient, changing everything from the treatment of disease, to the prolonging of health, to the development of new treatments. As revolutionary as the past twenty years in personal technology and medicine have been—remember phones the sizes of bricks that only made calls, or when the most advanced "genotyping" we could do involved discerning blood types and Rh-factors?—Topol makes it clear that we haven't seen a thing yet. With an optimism matched only by a realism gained through twenty-five years in a tough job, Topol proves the ideal guide to the medicine of the future—medicine he himself is deeply involved in creating.

Eric Topol, MD (Author), Dick Hill (Narrator)

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The Conundrum: How Scientific Innovation, Increased Efficiency, and Good Intentions Can Make Our Ene

Hybrid cars, fast trains, compact florescent lightbulbs, solar panels, carbon offsets: everything you've been told about being green is wrong. The quest for a breakthrough battery or a 100 mpg car is a dangerous fantasy. We are consumers, and we like to consume greenly and efficiently. But David Owen argues that our best intentions are still at cross-purposes to our true goal: living sustainably while caring for our environment and the future of the planet. Efficiency, once considered the holy grail of our environmental problems, turns out to be part of the problem—we have little trouble turning increases in efficiency into increases in consumption. David Owen's elegant narrative, filled with fascinating information and anecdotes, takes you through the history of energy and the quest for efficiency. Owen introduces the listener to some of the smartest people working on solving our energy problems. He details the arguments of efficiency's proponents and its antagonists—and in the process overturns most traditional wisdom about being green. This is a book that will change how you look at the world. Scientific geniuses will not invent our way out of the energy and economic crisis we're in. We already have the technology and knowledge we need to live sustainably. But will we do it? That is the conundrum.

David Owen (Author), Patrick Lawlor (Narrator)

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Titanic, The Voices From The BBC Archive

The RMS Titanic sailed from Southampton en route for New York on her maiden voyage with 2228 passengers and crew on board. On the 14th April at twenty minutes before midnight, sailing at almost full speed, she struck an iceberg and sank in just two and a half hours. Over 1500 lives were lost. This is the story of a great tragedy described by the surviving passengers, officers and crew who were on board that night. Firsthand accounts help to explain why so few of the passengers took to the lifeboats and later describe the miraculous survival of those forced to jump into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. The story of the Titanic is ultimately one of simple human loss and these laconic Edwardian voices bring it vividly to life. The hold that these events have on our imagination is as strong now as it ever has been in the 100 years since the great ship went down.

Mark Jones (Author), Tim Pigott-Smith (Narrator)

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The Emergency State: America's Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs

David C. Unger (Author), Michael Prichard (Narrator)

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The Titanic: Disaster of the Century

Wyn Craig Wade (Author), Robertson Dean (Narrator)

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The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the Amer

A man-made wonder, a connective network, an economic force, a bringer of blight and sprawl and the possibility of escape—the U.S. interstate system transformed America. The Big Roads presents the surprising history of how we got from dirt tracks to expressways in the space of a single lifetime. Earl Swift brings to light the visionaries who created these essential highways as well as the critics and citizens who questioned their headlong expansion throughout the country, including: Carl Fisher, the irrepressible car-racing entrepreneur who spurred the push for good roads in the early years of the automobile, built the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and made a fortune creating Miami Beach, only to lose it all; Thomas MacDonald, chief among a handful of driven engineers who conceived of the interstates and how they would work, years before President Eisenhower knew the plans existed; Lewis Mumford, the critic whose crusade against America's budding love affair with the automobile—and the ever bigger roads it required—now seems prescient; Joe Wiles, an African American family man turned activist, one of thousands of ordinary citizens in dozens of cities who found their homes and communities targeted by the concrete juggernaut—and were unwilling to be uprooted in the name of progress. In mapping a fascinating route through the dreams, discoveries, and protests that shaped these mighty roads, Swift shows that the interstates embody the wanderlust, grand scale, and conflicting notions of citizenship that define America.

Earl Swift (Author), Rob Shapiro (Narrator)

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The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the Worl

The industrial revolution, powered by oil and other fossil fuels, is spiraling into a dangerous endgame: the prices of energy and food are climbing, unemployment remains high, the housing market has tanked, consumer and government debt are soaring, and the recovery is slowing. Facing the prospect of a second collapse of the global economy, humanity is desperate for a sustainable economic game plan to take us into the future. Here, Jeremy Rifkin explores how Internet technology and renewable energy are merging to create a powerful "Third Industrial Revolution." He asks us to imagine hundreds of millions of people producing their own green energy in their homes, offices, and factories and sharing it with each other in an "energy Internet," just like how we create and share information online. Rifkin describes how the five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution will create thousands of businesses and millions of jobs and usher in a fundamental reordering of human relationships—from hierarchical power to lateral power—that will impact the way we conduct commerce, govern society, educate our children, and engage in civic life. Rifkin's vision is already gaining traction in the international community. The European Parliament has issued a formal declaration calling for its implementation, and other nations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas are quickly preparing their own initiatives for transitioning into this new economic paradigm. The Third Industrial Revolution is an insider's account of the next great economic era, including a look into the personalities and players—heads of state, global CEOs, social entrepreneurs, and NGOs—who are pioneering its implementation around the world.

Jeremy Rifkin (Author), Kevin Foley (Narrator)

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Ich und mein iPhone. Geschichten mit dem iPhone (Ungekürzt)

Es wird gepflegt, gehätschelt, und der kleinste Kratzer bedeutet meist schon ein großes Drama. Die einen lieben es heiß und innig, die anderen verweigern sich ihm (noch): das iPhone ist das Kult-Handy schlechthin! Kein anderes Smartphone hat eine derart magische Anziehungskraft und spielt in so vielen Anekdoten aus dem Alltag mindestens eine wichtige Nebenrolle. Aus diesem Grund hat steinbach sprechende bücher gemeinsam mit dem Falkemedia Verlag einen Kurzgeschichten-Wettbewerb ausgerufen: Für das erste iPhone-Hörbuch wurden die besten Geschichten gesucht - witzige, spannende, abenteuerliche, romantische oder auch besinnliche Geschichten rund um das beste Smartphone der Welt. Und das sind die besten 16 Einsendungen, die es auf das Hörbuch geschafft haben: '12G oder: Das Ende der Einsamkeit' von Sascha Deckel 'Mehr iPhones in Geschichten!' von Sibylle Ortner 'Tann wimmen!' von Susanne Feiner 'Das verbrannte iPhone' von Deike Lautenschläger 'Hommage' von Nadin Wedel 'OlliPhone' von Jennifer Wellen 'Lovestory' von Jürgen Heidenreich 'Xavier und die Sache mit Bens iPhone' von Christina Stein 'Für immer verbunden' von Daniel Berger 'Der gestohlene Schatz' von Martina Ernst 'Ich und mein iPhone. Ein modernes Märchen' von Simone Bauer 'Die spanische Armada' von Stefan Müller '8 Uhr 20, Linie 5' von Karin Koenicke 'App-ostolisches iPhone-Bekenntnis' von Veronika Fischer 'Die Winkerkrabbe. Ein GPS-Abenteuer' von Wolff Rump 'iPhone. You phone?' von Patrik Sebastian Schmidt

Johannes Steck (Author), Johannes Steck (Narrator)

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On the Slow Train Again

Brought to you by Penguin. Michael Williams has spent the past year travelling along the fascinating rail byways of Britain for this new collection of journeys. Here is the 'train to the end of the world' running for more than four splendid hours through lake, loch and moorland from Inverness to Wick, the most northerly town in Britain. He discovers a perfect country branch line in London's commuterland, and travels on one of the slowest services in the land along the shores of the lovely Dovey estuary to the far west of Wales. He takes the stopping train across the Pennines on a line with so few services that its glorious scenery is a secret known only to the regulars. Here, too, is the Bittern Line in Norfolk and the Tarka Line in North Devon as well as the little branch line to the fishing port of Looe in Cornwall, rescued from closure in the 1960s and now celebrating its 150th anniversary taking families on holiday to the seaside. From the most luxurious and historic - aboard the Orient Express - to the most futuristic - on the driverless trains of London's Docklands Light Railway - here is a unique travel companion celebrating the treasures of our railway heritage from one of Britain's most knowledgeable railway writers. © Michael Williams 2011 (P) Penguin Audio 2011

Michael Williams (Author), Michael Tudor Barnes (Narrator)

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Steve Jobs

FEATURING A NEW EPILOGUE READ BY THE AUTHOR FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE BESTSELLING BIOGRAPHIES OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND ALBERT EINSTEIN, THIS IS THE EXCLUSIVE BIOGRAPHY OF STEVE JOBS. Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years-as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues-Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted. Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple's hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

Walter Isaacson (Author), Dylan Baker (Narrator)

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Technology & Engineering Audiobooks in Science & Technology