Technology & Engineering Audiobooks | Science & Technology

From Pygmalion falling for his chiseled Galatea to Dr. Frankenstein marveling at his creature, humans have been enthralled by the possibilities of emotional relationships with their technological creations. Synthesizing cutting-edge research in robotics with the psychology and cultural history of artificial intelligence, Love and Sex with Robots explores this fascination and its far-reaching implications. David Levy's shocking yet persuasive argument is that the entities we once deemed cold and mechanical will soon become the objects of real companionship and human desire.

David Levy (Author), James Adams (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal

The high-energy tale of how two socially awkward Ivy Leaguers, trying to increase their chances with the opposite sex, ended up creating Facebook. Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends–outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and long-time legacies. They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women. Eduardo figured their ticket to social acceptance–and sexual success–was getting invited to join one of the university’s Final Clubs, a constellation of elite societies that had groomed generations of the most powerful men in the world and ranked on top of the inflexible hierarchy at Harvard. Mark, with less of an interest in what the campus alpha males thought of him, happened to be a computer genius of the first order. Which he used to find a more direct route to social stardom: one lonely night, Mark hacked into the university's computer system, creating a ratable database of all the female students on campus–and subsequently crashing the university's servers and nearly getting himself kicked out of school. In that moment, in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born. What followed–a real-life adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers–makes for one of the most entertaining and compelling books of the year. Before long, Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook created in their relationship faint cracks, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare. The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and money. The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore two best friends apart. The Accidental Billionaires is a compulsively readable story of innocence lost–and of the unusual creation of a company that has revolutionized the way hundreds of millions of people relate to one another. Ben Mezrich, a Harvard graduate, has published ten books, including the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House. He is a columnist for Boston Common and a contributor for Flush magazine. Ben lives in Boston with his wife, Tonya.

Ben Mezrich (Author), Mike Chamberlain (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Last Man On the Moon

This is the story of a unique American hero who came of age as an astronaut during the few dramatic years when man reached the moon. Cernan's career spanned the entire Apollo program, from the tragic fire that killed three of his comrades on Apollo 1, through the moment when he left man's last footprint on the moon as commander of Apollo 17. This is the inside story of how space was conquered, and at what price. Cernan writes candidly not only about the program, but about the high divorce rate among the astronauts, the loss of family privacy that came with celebrity, and the ever-present shadows of death and failure. "With the feeling of a story recalled among friends, this is an appealing down to earth account of the last man to walk on the moon... loved the book." -- Ron Howard, Director, Apollo 13

Eugene Cernan (Author), Eugene Cernan (Narrator)

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Being Digital

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • 'Succinct and readable.... If you suffer from digital anxiety ... here is a book that lays it all out for you.' --Newsday In lively, mordantly witty prose, Negroponte decodes the mysteries--and debunks the hype--surrounding bandwidth, multimedia, virtual reality, and the Internet, and explains why such touted innovations as the fax and the CD-ROM are likely to go the way of the BetaMax.

Nicholas Negroponte (Author), Penn Jillette (Narrator)

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Titanic's Last Secrets: The Further Adventures of Shadow Divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler

Why did Titanic sink as quickly as it did? Two of the greatest wreck divers in the world, the heroes of Shadow Divers, solve the mystery of history's greatest wreck. Titanic's Last Secrets peers into the lives of scientists, financiers, adventurers, and industrialists to bring readers a thrilling and revelatory work of history and contemporary adventure.

Brad Matsen (Author), Henry Leyva (Narrator)

Audiobook

Car Talk Field Guide to the North American Wacko

A radio road trip across America featuring the wackiest calls from the nuttiest specimens ever to phone the show. A high point of every Car Talk show is the call-in segment, when listeners phone in for advice and regale hosts Click and Clack with tales of their own automotive misadventures. Like Dave from Bemidji, Minnesota, who drives his Chevy Cavalier home from Alaska when it already has 350,000 miles on the odometer. And Dinesh, who strolls across Death Valley. Rather than worry about buzzards, he's concerned about how his car will hold up in the heat. Christy wants to know if she fried her dad's Citation. Adrienne frets that a load of rocks might crush her Saab. Single guy John wonders if he should tidy up his car for a first date or reveal its trashy self. And when Ann's husband travels from Georgia to Florida to get his vasectomy reversed, Ann drives like a banshee to bring him back home. Ever since, their Caravan makes strange grinding noises. It seems that lunatics aren't confined to Car Talk Plaza. They're everywhere, and they're dialing the phone. Four hilarious radio shows celebrate the land of the free, home of the wacko.

Ray Magliozzi, Tom Magliozzi (Author), Ray Magliozzi, Tom Magliozzi (Narrator)

Audiobook

Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming

How to harness the great forces of capitalism to save the world from catastrophe. The forecasts are grim and time is running out, but that's not the end of the story. In this book, Fred Krupp, longtime president of the Environmental Defense Fund, brings a stirring and hopeful call to arms: We can solve global warming. And in doing so we will build the new industries, jobs, and fortunes of the twenty-first century. In Earth: The Sequel, listeners will encounter the bold innovators and investors who are reinventing energy and the ways we use it. Among them: a frontier impresario who keeps his ice hotel frozen all summer long with the energy of hot springs; a utility engineer who feeds smokestack gases from coal-fired plants to voracious algae, then turns them into fuel; and a tribe of Native Americans, fishermen in the roughest Pacific waters for 2,000 years, who are now harvesting the fierce power of the waves themselves. These entrepreneurs are poised to remake the world's biggest business and save the planet—if America's political leaders give them a fair chance to compete.

Fred Krupp, Miriam Horn (Author), Dick Hill (Narrator)

Audiobook

The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century

How a Michigan farm boy became the richest man in America is a classic, almost mythic tale, but never before has Henry Ford’s outsized genius been brought to life so vividly as it is in this engaging and superbly researched biography. The real Henry Ford was a tangle of contradictions. He set off the consumer revolution by producing a car affordable to the masses, all the while lamenting the moral toll exacted by consumerism. He believed in giving his workers a living wage, though he was entirely opposed to union labor. He had a warm and loving relationship with his wife, but sired a son with another woman. A rabid anti-Semite, he nonetheless embraced African American workers in the era of Jim Crow. Uncovering the man behind the myth, situating his achievements and their attendant controversies firmly within the context of early twentieth-century America, Watts has given us a comprehensive, illuminating, and fascinating biography of one of America’s first mass-culture celebrities.

Steven Watts (Author), John H. Mayer (Narrator)

Audiobook

Clausewitz's on War

Perhaps the most important book on military strategy ever written, Carl von Clausewitz's On War has influenced generations of generals and politicians and is required reading at military academies to this day. Hew Strachan, one of the world's foremost military historians, explains how and why On War was written, elucidates what Clausewitz meant, and offers insight into the impact it made on conflict and its continued significance in our world today.

Hew Strachan (Author), Simon Vance (Narrator)

Audiobook

Car Talk Classics: Four Perfectly Good Hours

Four all-time favorite episodes from the popular radio show-complete, unexpurgated, and hilarious. Click and Clack may be America's most trusted car repair experts. They are certainly the funniest, as millions of listeners who tune in each week to Car Talk can attest. As each show unfolds, it develops its own zany feeling and rhythm, sometimes due to the strength of the coffee or a particularly large burr in Tommy's undershorts. This Car Talk set is for fans who want to waste another four perfectly good hours. Rather than a 'best of' collection, it's four complete shows-every call, every joke, every 'Don't drive like my brother' admonition, every puzzler, every punny mention of a fictional show staff member (chauffeur Picov Andropov, night club manager Don Kashane), and every maniacal laugh. The four shows include the 2002 Mother's Day extravaganza with Click and Clack's long-suffering mom, and 'You Can't Do It Unless the Number Is Two' from February 2001, the show that gave birth to a new Car Talk mantra and exposed Tommy's radical views on education (like, it should end after seventh grade).

Ray Magliozzi, Tom Magliozzi (Author), Ray Magliozzi, Tom Magliozzi (Narrator)

Audiobook

Too Far From Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space

An incredible true-life adventure set on the most dangerous frontier of all–outer space For a special breed of individual, the call of space is worth the risk it entails: men such as U.S. astronauts Donald Pettit and Kenneth Bowersox, and Russian flight engineer Nikolai Budarin, who in November 2002 left on what was to be a routine fourteen-week mission maintaining the International Space Station. But then, on February 1, 2003, the Columbia exploded beneath them. With the launch program suspended indefinitely, these astronauts had suddenly lost their ride home. TOO FAR FROM HOME chronicles the efforts of the beleaguered Mission Controls in Houston and Moscow as they work frantically against the clock to bring their men safely back to Earth. Chris Jones writes beautifully of the majesty and mystique of space travel, while reminding us all how perilous it is to soar beyond the sky. From the Compact Disc edition.

Chris Jones (Author), Erik Davies (Narrator)

Audiobook

Ten Hours Until Dawn: The True Story of Heroism and Tragedy Aboard the Can Do

During the blizzard of 1978, a tanker floundered on the shoals off the Massachusetts coast. The Coast Guard dispatched a patrol boat that was soon in trouble, too. A pilot-boat captain, Frank Quirk, heard of the Coast Guard's plight on his radio. He gathered his crew of four, readied his forty-nine-foot steel boat, the Can Do, and entered the maelstrom of the blizzard soon to be known as the Storm of the Century. Encountering one of the most monstrous seas ever recorded, Quirk struggled through the night to keep his boat from sinking, maintaining contact through his hand-held battery-powered radio. The Can Do stayed afloat past three a.m. Then there was silence. Through dozens of interviews and radio communications-actual recordings included here-the author provides a devastating, true account of bravery and death at sea. "[A] thundering good sea story, chockfull of drama and real-life nautical details."-Kliatt

Michael J. Tougias (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

Audiobook

Technology & Engineering Audiobooks in Science & Technology