Best Full-Length Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, History & Culture

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/333114 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Henry VIII (Penguin Monarchs): The Quest for Fame Series: #1 of Penguin Monarchs Author: John Guy Narrator: John Banks Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 3 hours 25 minutes Release date: June 28, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.2 of Total 5 Ratings of Narrator: 3.5 of Total 2 Genres: Europe Publisher's Summary: Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Henry VIII: The Quest for Fame by John Guy, read by John Banks. Henry VIII's reign transformed the physical and spiritual landscape of England. Magnificent, tyrannical, a strong ruler, a 'pillager of the commonwealth', this most notorious of kings remains a figure of extreme contradictions: a devout traditionalist who oversaw a cataclysmic rupture with the church in Rome; a talented, charismatic, imposing figure who nevertheless could not bear to meet people's eyes when he talked to them. In this revealing new account, John Guy explores how Henry himself understood the world and his place in it - from his sheltered and increasingly isolated upbringing and the blazing glory of his accession; to his desperate quest for recognition, fame and an heir, and the terrifying paranoia of his last, agonising, 54-inch-waisted years - and in doing so casts new light on his choice of wives and ministers, his impact on the European stage, and his extraordinary legacy.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/333115 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Athelstan (Penguin Monarchs): The Making of England Series: #2 of Penguin Monarchs Author: Tom Holland Narrator: Roy McMillan Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 2 hours 45 minutes Release date: June 28, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Athelstan: The Making of England by Tom Holland, read by Roy McMillan. The formation of England happened against the odds - the division of the country into rival kingdoms, the assaults of the Vikings, the precarious position of the island on the edge of the known world. But King Alfred ensured the survival of Wessex, his son Eadweard expanded it, and his grandson Æthelstan finally united Mercia and Wessex, conquered Northumbria and became Rex totius Britanniae. Tom Holland recounts this extraordinarily exciting story with relish and drama. We meet the great figures of the age, including Alfred and his daughter Æthelflæd, 'Lady of the Mercians', who brought Æthelstan up at the Mercian court. At the end of the book we understand the often confusing history of the Anglo-Saxon kings better than ever before.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/333116 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Charles I (Penguin Monarchs): An Abbreviated Life Series: #4 of Penguin Monarchs Author: Mark Kishlansky Narrator: John Sackville Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 3 hours 30 minutes Release date: June 28, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Charles I: An Abbreviated Life by Mark Kishlansky, read by John Sackville. The tragedy of Charles I dominates one of the most strange and painful periods in British history as the whole island tore itself apart over a deadly, entangled series of religious and political disputes. In Mark Kishlansky's brilliant account it is never in doubt that Charles created his own catastrophe, but he was nonetheless opposed by men with far fewer scruples and less consistency who for often quite contradictory reasons conspired to destroy him. This is a remarkable portrait of one of the most talented, thoughtful, loyal, moral, artistically alert and yet, somehow, disastrous of all this country's rulers.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/333781 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Call Me American: A Memoir Author: Abdi Nor Iftin Narrator: Abdi Nor Iftin, Prentice Onayemi Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 36 minutes Release date: June 19, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.57 of Total 7 Ratings of Narrator: 4.67 of Total 3 Genres: Social Science Publisher's Summary: Abdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar. As a child, he learned English by listening to American pop and watching action films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. When U.S. marines landed in Mogadishu to take on the warlords, Abdi cheered the arrival of these Americans, who seemed as heroic as those of the movies. Sporting American clothes and dance moves, he became known around Mogadishu as Abdi American, but when the radical Islamist group al-Shabaab rose to power in 2006, it became dangerous to celebrate Western culture. Desperate to make a living, Abdi used his language skills to post secret dispatches, which found an audience of worldwide listeners. Eventually, though, Abdi was forced to flee to Kenya. In an amazing stroke of luck, Abdi won entrance to the U.S. in the annual visa lottery, though his route to America did not come easily. Parts of his story were first heard on the BBC World Service and This American Life. Now a proud resident of Maine, on the path to citizenship, Abdi Nor Iftin's dramatic, deeply stirring memoir is truly a story for our time: a vivid reminder of why America still beckons to those looking to make a better life.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/333822 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran Author: Masih Alinejad Narrator: Widdi Turner Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 15 hours 0 minutes Release date: May 29, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.27 of Total 15 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 3 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: An extraordinary memoir from an Iranian journalist in exile about leaving her country, challenging tradition and sparking an online movement against compulsory hijab. A photo on Masih's Facebook page: a woman standing proudly, face bare, hair blowing in the wind. Her crime: removing her veil, or hijab, which is compulsory for women in Iran. This is the self-portrait that sparked 'My Stealthy Freedom,' a social media campaign that went viral. But Masih is so much more than the arresting face that sparked a campaign inspiring women to find their voices. She's also a world-class journalist whose personal story, told in her unforgettably bold and spirited voice, is emotional and inspiring. She grew up in a traditional village where her mother, a tailor and respected figure in the community, was the exception to the rule in a culture where women reside in their husbands' shadows. As a teenager, Masih was arrested for political activism and was surprised to discover she was pregnant while in police custody. When she was released, she married quickly and followed her young husband to Tehran where she was later served divorce papers to the shame and embarrassment of her religiously conservative family. Masih spent nine years struggling to regain custody of her beloved only son and was forced into exile, leaving her homeland and her heritage. Following Donald Trump's notorious immigration ban, Masih found herself separated from her child, who lives abroad, once again. A testament to a spirit that remains unbroken, and an enlightening, intimate invitation into a world we don't know nearly enough about, The Wind in My Hair is the extraordinary memoir of a woman who overcame enormous adversity to fight for what she believes in, and to encourage others to do the same.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/334105 to listen full audiobooks. Title: In My Hands: Compelling Stories from a Surgeon and His Patients Fighting Cancer Author: Steven A. Curley Narrator: Steven A. Curley Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 38 minutes Release date: May 22, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: In In My Hands, surgical oncologist Dr. Steven Curley shares the empowering lessons he's learned over 25 years from his cancer patients' unique stories of struggle, perseverance, and triumph. As Chief of Surgical Oncology at Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Steven Curley has worked with cancer patients for over two decades. While his life's work has been to help his patients live longer lives, he found that they helped him in ways he never could have expected. In My Hands is a rare, often emotional look at some of Dr. Curley's real patients and real situations in modern cancer care. These stories of resilience, hope, and determination changed and inspired Dr. Curley, and he uses these same stories to encourage patients dealing with the fear and uncertainty coupled with a diagnosis of cancer. Every story in the book has a theme inspired by his patients: Hope, Courage, Strength, Determination, Wonder, Cooperation, Creativity, Diligence, Service, Perseverance, Wisdom, Grace, Consideration, Gratitude, Discernment, Reverence, Resourcefulness, Faith, Beauty, Acceptance, and Empathy. Some are positive messages, reminding us of the importance of maintaining balance between family, work, and leisure activities. Others are examples of the remarkable resilience of the human spirit when facing the reality of and the surgical risks that accompany a cancer diagnosis. Realistically, despite remarkable advances in multidisciplinary cancer care, some remind us cancer is still a potentially lethal and destructive disease affecting patients and the family and friends supporting them. While many people are told that there is no hope in their situation, Dr. Curley's patients taught him to always provide hope, to push the envelope and give people a chance, and that hope is a critical component of treatment and care. In My Hands is medical narrative at its finest, and provides insight into medicine and patient care along with fascinating details about one of our most feared diseases.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/332987 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist Author: Franchesca Ramsey Narrator: Franchesca Ramsey Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 15 minutes Release date: May 22, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 4.5 of Total 2 Genres: Arts & Entertainment Publisher's Summary: A sharp and timely exploration of race, online activism, and real communication in the age of social media rants, trolls, and call-out wars, from veteran video blogger and star of MTV's Decoded Franchesca Ramsey. Franchesca Ramsey didn't set out to be an activist. Or a comedian. Or a commentator on identity, race, and culture, really. But then her YouTube video 'What White Girls Say . . . to Black Girls' went viral. Twelve million views viral. Faced with an avalanche of media requests, fan letters, and hate mail, she had two choices: Jump in and make her voice heard or step back and let others frame the conversation. After a crash course in social justice and more than a few foot-in-mouth moments, she realized she had a unique talent and passion for breaking down injustice in America in ways that could make people listen and engage. In her first book, Ramsey uses her own experiences as an accidental activist to explore the many ways we communicate with each other--from the highs of bridging gaps and making connections to the many pitfalls that accompany talking about race, power, sexuality, and gender in an unpredictable public space...the internet. Well, that Escalated Quickly includes Ramsey's advice on dealing with internet trolls and low-key racists, confessions about being a former online hater herself, and her personal hits and misses in activist debates with everyone from bigoted Facebook friends and misguided relatives to mainstream celebrities and YouTube influencers. With sharp humor and her trademark candor, Ramsey shows readers we can have tough conversations that move the dialogue forward, rather than backward, if we just approach them in the right way.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/334206 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library Author: Edward Wilson-Lee Narrator: Richard Trinder Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 6 minutes Release date: May 17, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: WINNER OF THE 2019 PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE The fascinating history of Christopher Columbus’s illegitimate son Hernando, guardian of his father’s flame, courtier, bibliophile and catalogue supreme, whose travels took him to the heart of 16th-century Europe’ Honor Clerk, Spectator, Books of the Year This is the scarcely believable – and wholly true – story of Christopher Columbus' bastard son Hernando, who sought to equal and surpass his father's achievements by creating a universal library. His father sailed across the ocean to explore the known boundaries of the world for the glory of God, Spain and himself. His son Hernando sought instead to harness the vast powers of the new printing presses to assemble the world’s knowledge in one place, his library in Seville. Hernando was one of the first and greatest visionaries of the print age, someone who saw how the scale of available information would entirely change the landscape of thought and society. His was an immensely eventual life. As a youth, he spent years travelling in the New World, and spent one living with his father in a shipwreck off Jamaica. He created a dictionary and a geographical encyclopaedia of Spain, helped to create the first modern maps of the world, spent time in almost every major European capital, and associated with many of the great people of his day, from Ferdinand and Isabel to Erasmus, Thomas More, and Dürer. He wrote the first biography of his father, almost single-handedly creating the legend of Columbus that held sway for many hundreds of years, and was highly influential in crafting how Europe saw the world his father reached in 1492. He also amassed the largest collection of printed images and of printed music of the age, started what was perhaps Europe's first botanical garden, and created by far the greatest private library Europe had ever seen, dwarfing with its 15,000 books every other library of the day. Edward Wilson-Lee has written the first major modern biography of Hernando – and the first of any kind available in English. In a work of dazzling scholarship, The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books tells an enthralling tale of the age of print and exploration, a story with striking lessons for our own modern experiences of information revolution and Globalisation.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/332122 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles Author: Gary Krist Narrator: Rob Shapiro Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 55 minutes Release date: May 15, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.67 of Total 3 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: From bestselling author Gary Krist, the story of the metropolis that never should have been and the visionaries who dreamed it into reality   Little more than a century ago, the southern coast of California—bone-dry, harbor-less, isolated by deserts and mountain ranges—seemed destined to remain scrappy farmland. Then, as if overnight, one of the world’s iconic cities emerged. At the heart of Los Angeles’ meteoric rise were three flawed visionaries: William Mulholland, an immigrant ditch-digger turned self-taught engineer, designed the massive aqueduct that would make urban life here possible. D.W. Griffith, who transformed the motion picture from a vaudeville-house novelty into a cornerstone of American culture, gave L.A. its signature industry. And Aimee Semple McPherson, a charismatic evangelist who founded a religion, cemented the city’s identity as a center for spiritual exploration. All were masters of their craft, but also illusionists, of a kind. The images they conjured up—of a blossoming city in the desert, of a factory of celluloid dreamworks, of a community of seekers finding personal salvation under the California sun—were like mirages liable to evaporate on closer inspection. All three would pay a steep price to realize these dreams, in a crescendo of hubris, scandal, and catastrophic failure of design that threatened to topple each of their personal empires. Yet when the dust settled, the mirage that was LA remained. Spanning the years from 1900 to 1930, The Mirage Factory is the enthralling tale of an improbable city and the people who willed it into existence by pushing the limits of human engineering and imagination.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/332844 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Last Cowboys: A Pioneer Family in the New West Author: John Branch Narrator: John Pruden Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 9 minutes Release date: May 15, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 9 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 3 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: A Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter’s gripping portrait of one western family struggling to hold on to age-old American ways New York Times reporter and bestselling author John Branch takes listeners to the magnificent red soil and rocky arroyos of southern Utah, where the Wright family of Smith Mesa have for generations raised cattle and world-champion saddle-bronc riders—some call them the most successful rodeo family in history. Filled with vivid scenes of cattle ranching and the high drama of rodeo, The Last Cowboys follows three generations of Wrights through the seasons as they are battered by drought, the falling price of beef, battles over land-use and federal regulation, and rodeo’s ever-present risks of serious injury. This is an epic but intimate story of real-life cowboys squeezed by social change in the twenty-first century, their soiled boots planted firmly in the past while they optimistically build a future.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/329727 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock Author: Steven Hyden Narrator: Patrick Lawlor Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 57 minutes Release date: May 8, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: The author of the critically acclaimed Your Favorite Band is Killing Me offers an eye-opening and frank assessment of the state of classic rock, assessing its past and future, the impact it has had, and what it’s loss would mean to an industry, a culture, and a way of life. Since the late 1960s, a legendary cadre of artists—including the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Black Sabbath, and the Who—has revolutionized popular culture and the sounds of our lives. While their songs still get airtime and some of these bands continue to tour, its idols are leaving the stage permanently. Can classic rock remain relevant as these legends die off, or will this major musical subculture fade away as many have before, Steven Hyden asks. In this mix of personal memoir, criticism, and journalism, Hyden stands witness as classic rock reaches the precipice. Traveling to the eclectic places where geriatric rockers are still making music, he talks to the artists and fans who have aged with them, explores the ways that classic rock has changed the culture, investigates the rise and fall of classic rock radio, and turns to live bootlegs, tell-all rock biographies, and even the liner notes of rock’s greatest masterpieces to tell the story of what this music meant, and how it will be remembered, for fans like himself. Twilight of the Gods is also Hyden’s story. Celebrating his love of this incredible music that has taken him from adolescence to fatherhood, he ponders two essential questions: Is it time to give up on his childhood heroes, or can this music teach him about growing old with his hopes and dreams intact? And what can we all learn from rock gods and their music—are they ephemeral or eternal?

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/331332 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Language of Kindness: A Nurse's Story Author: Christie Watson Narrator: Christie Watson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 59 minutes Release date: May 8, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.67 of Total 3 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A moving, lyrical, beautifully-written portrait of a nurse and the lives she has touched Christie Watson spent twenty years as a nurse, and in this intimate, poignant, and remarkably powerful book, she opens the doors of the hospital and shares its secrets. She takes us by her side down hospital corridors to visit the wards and meet her unforgettable patients.    In the neonatal unit, premature babies fight for their lives, hovering at the very edge of survival, like tiny Emmanuel, wrapped up in a sandwich bag. On the cancer wards, the nurses administer chemotherapy and, long after the medicine stops working, something more important--which Watson learns to recognize when her own father is dying of cancer. In the pediatric intensive care unit, the nurses wash the hair of a little girl to remove the smell of smoke from the house fire. The emergency room is overcrowded as ever, with waves of alcohol and drug addicted patients as well as patients like Betty, a widow suffering chest pain, frail and alone. And the stories of the geriatric ward--Gladys and older patients like her--show the plight of the most vulnerable members of our society.  Through the smallest of actions, nurses provide vital care and kindness. All of us will experience illness in our lifetime, and we will all depend on the support and dignity that nurses offer us; yet the women and men who form the vanguard of our health care remain unsung. In this age of fear, hate, and division, Christie Watson has written a book that reminds us of all that we share, and of the urgency of compassion.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/332126 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Times of My Life and My Life with The Times Author: Max Frankel Narrator: Max Frankel Format: Abridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 54 minutes Release date: April 24, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Since 1949, when Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Max Frankel began to write for The New York Times, readers have looked to his work as a lens through which they could witness America's role in a rapidly changing world. In this vivid and unforgettable memoir, Frankel chronicles the times of his extraordinary life as he experienced them...within the context of the news stories that defined an era. A quintessentially American story, The Times of My Life traces Frankel's riveting personal relationship with history...his harrowing escape from Nazi Germany...his life as an immigrant on the streets of New York...and his extraordinary half-century-long career at The Times. In a rich first-person account that moves from Hitler's Berlin to Cold War Moscow, from Castro's Havana to the newsroom of America's most influential newspaper, this powerful, compelling work interweaves Frankel's personal and professional lives with the era's greatest stories, from Sputnik to the Pentagon Papers to the collapse of the Berlin Wall. And it reveals Frankel's fascinating off-the-record encounters with Nikita Khrushchev, Henry Kissinger, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and a host of other history-makers who shaped their times--and ours. Guiding readers through Hitler's Berlin, Khrushchev's Moscow, Castro's Havana, and the Washington of Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, THE TIMES OF MY LIFE reevaluates the Cold War, and interweaves Frankel's personal and professional life with the greatest stories of the era. -->

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/332178 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Marx and Marxism Author: Gregory Claeys Narrator: Michael Gould Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 13 hours 45 minutes Release date: April 24, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.33 of Total 3 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: A new biography of Karl Marx, tracing the life of this titanic figure and the legacy of his work Karl Marx remains the most influential and controversial political thinker in history. He died quietly in 1883 and a mere eleven mourners attended his funeral, but a year later he was being hailed as 'the Prophet himself' whose name and writings would 'endure through the ages.' He has been viewed as a philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, even a literary craftsman. But who was Marx? What informed his critiques of modern society? And how are we to understand his legacy? In Marx and Marxism, Gregory Claeys, a leading historian of socialism, offers a wide-ranging, accessible account of Marx's ideas and their development, from the nineteenth century through the Russian Revolution to the present. After the collapse of the Soviet Union his reputation seemed utterly eclipsed, but now a new generation is reading and discovering Marx in the wake of the recurrent financial crises, growing social inequality, and an increasing sense of the injustice and destructiveness of capitalism. Both his critique of capitalism and his vision of the future speak across the centuries to our times, even if the questions he poses are more difficult to answer than ever.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/331143 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Miss Ex-Yugoslavia: A Memoir Author: Sofija Stefanovic Narrator: Sofija Stefanovic Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 36 minutes Release date: April 17, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: A “funny and tragic and beautiful in all the right places” (Jenny Lawson, #1 New York Times bestseller author of Furiously Happy) memoir about the immigrant experience and life as a perpetual fish-out-of-water, from the acclaimed Serbian-Australian storyteller. Sofija Stefanovic makes the first of many awkward entrances in 1982, when she is born in socialist Yugoslavia. The circumstances of her birth (a blackout, gasoline shortages, bickering parents) don’t exactly get her off to a running start. While around her, ethnic tensions are stoked by totalitarian leaders with violent agendas, Stefanovic’s early life is filled with Yugo rock, inadvisable crushes, and the quirky ups and downs of life in a socialist state. As the political situation grows more dire, the Stefanovics travel back and forth between faraway, peaceful Australia, where they can’t seem to fit in, and their turbulent homeland, which they can’t seem to shake. Meanwhile, Yugoslavia collapses into the bloodiest European conflict in recent history. Featuring warlords and beauty queens, tiger cubs and Baby-Sitters Clubs, Sofija Stefanovic’s memoir is a window to a complicated culture that she both cherishes and resents. Revealing war and immigration from the crucial viewpoint of women and children, Stefanovic chronicles her own coming-of-age, both as a woman and as an artist. Refreshingly candid, poignant, and illuminating, “Stefanovic’s story is as unique and wacky as it is important” (Esquire).

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/331722 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Meghan: A Hollywood Princess Author: Andrew Morton Narrator: Charles Armstrong Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 0 minutes Release date: April 17, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.19 of Total 21 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Arts & Entertainment Publisher's Summary: The New York Times bestselling biography of Meghan Markle, the American actress who won Prince Harry's heart. Women who smash the royal mold have always fascinated the public, from Grace Kelly to Princess Diana. Now acclaimed royal biographer Andrew Morton, the New York Times bestselling author of Diana: Her True Story, brings us a revealing, juicy, and inspiring look at Meghan Markle, the confident and charismatic duchess whose warm and affectionate engagement interview won the hearts of the world. When Meghan Markle and Prince Harry were set up by a mutual friend on a blind date in July 2016, little did they know that the resulting whirlwind romance would lead to their engagement in November 2017 and marriage in May 2018. Morton goes back to Meghan's roots to uncover the story of her childhood growing up in The Valley in Los Angeles, her studies at an all-girls Catholic school, and her fraught family life-a painful experience mirrored by Harry's own background. Morton also delves into her previous marriage and divorce in 2013, her struggles in Hollywood as her mixed heritage was used against her, her big break in the hit TV show Suits, and her work for a humanitarian ambassador-the latter so reminiscent of Princess Diana's passions. Finally, we see how the royal romance played out across two continents but was kept fiercely secret, before the news finally broke and Meghan was thrust into the global media's spotlight. Drawing on exclusive interviews with her family members and closest friends, and including never-before-seen photographs, Morton introduces us to the real Meghan as he reflects on the impact that she has already had on the rigid traditions of the House of Windsor, as well as what the future might hold.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/329734 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Duchess: Camilla Parker Bowles and the Love Affair That Rocked the Crown Author: Penny Junor Narrator: Jenny Funnell Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 40 minutes Release date: April 10, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.8 of Total 5 Ratings of Narrator: 3 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: In the first in-depth biography of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall—the infamous other woman who made the marriage of Britain’s Prince Charles and Princess Diana ''a bit crowded''—esteemed royal biographer Penny Junor tells the unlikely and extraordinary story of the woman reviled as a pariah who, thanks to numerous twists of fate, became the popular princess consort. Few know the Windsor family as well as veteran royal biographer and journalist Penny Junor. In The Duchess, she casts her insightful, sensitive eye on the intriguing, once widely despised, and little-known Camilla Parker Bowles, revealing in full, for the first time, the remarkable rise of a woman who was the most notorious mistress in the world. As Camilla’s marriage to Charles approached in 2005, the British public were upset at the prospect that this woman, universally reviled for wrecking the royal marriage, would one day become queen. Sensitive to public opinion, the palace announced that this would never happen; when Charles eventually acceded to the throne, Camilla would be known as the princess consort. Yet a decade later British public sentiment had changed, with a majority believing that Camilla should become queen. Junor argues that although Camilla played a central role in the darkest days of the modern monarchy—Charles and Diana’s acrimonious and scandalous split—she also played a central role in restoring the royal family’s reputation, especially that of Prince Charles. A woman with no ambition to be a princess, a duchess, or a queen, Camilla simply wanted to be with, and support, the man who has always been the love of her life. Junor contends that their marriage has reinvigorated Charles, allowing him to finally become comfortable as the heir to the British throne.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/329738 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Fox Hunt: A Refugee's Memoir of Coming to America Author: Mohammed Al Samawi Narrator: Assaf Cohen Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 10 minutes Release date: April 10, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 8 Ratings of Narrator: 4.5 of Total 2 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: A young man’s moving story of war, friendship, and hope in which he recounts his harrowing escape from a brutal civil war in Yemen with the help of a daring plan engineered on social media by a small group of interfaith activists in the West. Born in the Old City of Sana’a, Yemen, to a pair of middle-class doctors, Mohammed Al Samawi was a devout Muslim raised to think of Christians and Jews as his enemy. But when Mohammed was twenty-three, he secretly received a copy of the Bible, and what he read cast doubt on everything he’d previously believed. After connecting with Jews and Christians on social media, and at various international interfaith conferences, Mohammed became an activist, making it his mission to promote dialogue and cooperation in Yemen. Then came the death threats: first on Facebook, then through terrifying anonymous phone calls. To protect himself and his family, Mohammed fled to the southern port city of Aden. He had no way of knowing that Aden was about to become the heart of a north-south civil war, and the battleground for a well-funded proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. As gunfire and grenades exploded throughout the city, Mohammed hid in the bathroom of his apartment and desperately appealed to his contacts on Facebook. Miraculously, a handful of people he barely knew responded. Over thirteen days, four ordinary young people with zero experience in diplomacy or military exfiltration worked across six technology platforms and ten time zones to save this innocent young man trapped between deadly forces— rebel fighters from the north and Al Qaeda operatives from the south. The story of an improbable escape as riveting as the best page-turning thrillers, The Fox Hunt reminds us that goodness and decency can triumph in the darkest circumstances.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/329741 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Francis I: The Maker of Modern France Author: Leonie Frieda Narrator: Carole Boyd Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 13 hours 15 minutes Release date: April 10, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.67 of Total 3 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 3 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: The bestselling author of Catherine de Medici returns to sixteenth-century Europe in this evocative and entertaining biography that recreates a remarkable era of French history and brings to life a great monarch—Francis I—who turned France into a great nation. Catherine de Medici’s father-in-law, King Francis of France, was the perfect Renaissance knight, the movement’s exemplar and its Gallic interpreter. An aesthete, diplomat par excellence, and contemporary of Machiavelli, Francis was the founder of modern France, whose sheer force of will and personality molded his kingdom into the first European superpower. Arguably the man who introduced the Renaissance to France, Francis was also the prototype Frenchman—a national identity was modeled on his character. So great was his stamp, that few countries even now are quite so robustly patriotic as is France. Yet as Leonie Frieda reveals, Francis did not always live up to his ideal; a man of grand passions and vision, he was also a flawed husband, father, lover, and king. With access to private archives that have never been used in a study of Francis I, Frieda explores the life of a man who was the most human of the monarchs of the period—and yet, remains the most elusive. Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/331048 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots Author: Nancy Goldstone Narrator: Laura Kirman Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 14 hours 0 minutes Release date: April 10, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.13 of Total 32 Ratings of Narrator: 4.43 of Total 7 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: The thrilling family saga of five unforgettable women who remade Europe. From the great courts, glittering palaces, and war-ravaged battlefields of the seventeenth century comes the story of four spirited sisters and their glamorous mother, Elizabeth Stuart, granddaughter of the martyred Mary, Queen of Scots. Upon her father's ascension to the illustrious throne of England, Elizabeth Stuart was suddenly thrust from the poverty of unruly Scotland into the fairytale existence of a princess of great wealth and splendor. When she was married at sixteen to a German count far below her rank, it was with the understanding that her father would help her husband achieve the kingship of Bohemia. The terrible betrayal of this commitment would ruin 'the Winter Queen,' as Elizabeth would forever be known, imperil the lives of those she loved and launch a war that would last for thirty years. Forced into exile, the Winter Queen and her family found refuge in Holland, where the glorious art and culture of the Dutch Golden Age indelibly shaped her daughters' lives. Her eldest, Princess Elizabeth, became a scholar who earned the respect and friendship of the philosopher René Descartes. Louisa was a gifted painter whose engaging manner and appealing looks provoked heartache and scandal. Beautiful Henrietta Maria would be the only sister to marry into royalty, although at great cost. But it was the youngest, Sophia, a heroine in the tradition of a Jane Austen novel, whose ready wit and good-natured common sense masked immense strength of character, who fulfilled the promise of her great-grandmother Mary and reshaped the British monarchy, a legacy that endures to this day. Brilliantly researched and captivatingly written, filled with danger, treachery, and adventure but also love, courage, and humor, Daughters of the Winter Queen follows the lives of five remarkable women who, by refusing to surrender to adversity, changed the course of history.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/331995 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Unmapped Mind: A Memoir of Neurology, Multiple Sclerosis and Learning How to Live Author: Christian Donlan Narrator: Daniel Weyman Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 9 minutes Release date: April 5, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Penguin Audio presents The Unmapped Mind by Christian Donlan, read by Daniel Weyman. 'My daughter took her first steps on the day I was diagnosed - a juxtaposition so perfect, so trite, so filled with the tacky artifice of real life that I am generally too embarrassed to tell anybody about it.' Shortly after his daughter Leontine was born, Christian Donlan's world shifted an inch to the left. He started to miss light switches and door handles when reachingfor them. He would injure himself in a hundred stupid ways every day. First playful and then maddening, these strange experiences were the early symptoms of multiple sclerosis, an incurable and degenerative neurological disease. Ashis young daughter starts to investigate the world around her, he too finds himself exploring a new landscape - the shifting and bewildering territory ofthe brain. He is a tourist in his own body, a stranger in a place that plays bizarre tricks on him, from dizzying double vision to mystifying memory loss. Determined to master his new environment, Christian takes us on a fascinating and illuminating journey: through the history of neurology, the joys andanxieties of parenthood, and the ultimate realisation of what, after everything you take for granted has been stripped away from you, is truly important in life. An Unmapped Mind is a profoundly personal, uplifting and enriching memoir that will change the way you see your body, your mind, and the world around you.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/330196 to listen full audiobooks. Title: My Sixty Years on the Plains: Trapping, Trading, and Indian Fighting Author: W. T. Hamilton Narrator: Traber Burns Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 8 minutes Release date: April 3, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: In 1842, following the doctor’s orders for a change of climate, William Thomas Hamilton found himself accompanying a party of trappers on a yearlong expedition. Heading into the wild, Hamilton would prove himself to be a fast learner, as adept with a firearm as with sign language: this early experience would be the making of him. As the nineteenth century progressed, along with many other trappers, Hamilton found himself drawn into the Indian Wars brought about by territorial expansion. Exploring, trapping, trading, and fighting, Hamilton shows how every aspect of a mountain man’s life relied on his wits and knowledge in order survive the inhospitable environments. First published in 1905, when the experiences of such pushing, adventurous, and fearless men were becoming a thing of the past, Hamilton’s unassuming memoir relates an extraordinary life in a disappearing American West.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/329048 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Because We Are Bad: OCD and a Girl Lost in Thought Author: Lily Bailey Narrator: Lily Bailey Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 54 minutes Release date: April 3, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Written with the indelible power of Girl, Interrupted, Brain on Fire, and Reasons to Stay Alive, a lyrical, poignant memoir by a young woman about her childhood battle with debilitating obsessive compulsive disorder, and her hard-won journey to recovery. By the age of thirteen, Lily Bailey was convinced she was bad. She had killed someone with a thought, spread untold disease, and ogled the bodies of other children. Only by performing an exhausting series of secret routines could she make up for what she’d done. But no matter how intricate or repetitive, no act of penance was ever enough. Beautifully written and astonishingly intimate, Because We Are Bad recounts a childhood consumed by obsessive compulsive disorder. As a child, Bailey created a second personality inside herself—''I'' became ''we''—to help manifest compulsions that drove every minute of every day of her young life. Now she writes about the forces beneath her skin, and how they ordered, organized, and urged her forward. Lily charts her journey, from checking on her younger sister dozens of times a night, to ''normalizing'' herself at school among new friends as she grew older, and finally to her young adult years, learning—indeed, breaking through—to make a way for herself in a big, wide world that refuses to stay in check. Charming and raw, harrowing and redemptive, Because We Are Bad is an illuminating and uplifting look into the mind and soul of an extraordinary young woman, and a startling portrait of OCD that allows us to see and understand this condition as never before.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/328838 to listen full audiobooks. Title: A Survivor's Journey: From Victim to Advocate Author: Natasha Simone Alexenko Narrator: Natasha Simone Alexenko Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 4 hours 5 minutes Release date: April 3, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: An inspiring true story of love, hope, and victory—and of one woman who was determined to make a difference in the wake of a crime. On August 6, 1993, twenty-year-old Natasha Alexenko was assaulted at gunpoint. After nearly a decade, her backlogged rape kit was finally tested and her rapist, who roamed free for ten years, was brought to justice. On the day he was sentenced, Alexenko vowed that she would no longer be a statistic and would do whatever she could to help police on behalf of other rape victims. In 2011, she founded Natasha’s Justice Project (NJP), a nonprofit committed to ending the rape-kit backlog. This unflinching memoir chronicles her journey from trauma to triumph. Despite personal setbacks and bureaucratic obstacles, Alexenko refuses to give up on her determination to raise awareness of a problem even worse than she imagined, as tens of thousands of untested rape kits languish in crime storage facilities across the country. Written for fellow survivors, their families, law enforcement, and anyone impacted by rape, her deeply personal story is a testament to the power of one person to make a profound change.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/333008 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Hope Circuit: A Psychologist's Journey from Helplessness to Optimism Author: Martin E.P. Seligman Narrator: Kevin Stillwell Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 14 hours 0 minutes Release date: April 3, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 4 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 3 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: One of the most influential living psychologists looks at the history of his life and discipline, and paints a much brighter future for everyone. When Martin E. P. Seligman first encountered psychology in the 1960s, the field was devoted to eliminating misery: it was the science of how past trauma creates present symptoms. Today, thanks in large part to Seligman's Positive Psychology movement, it is ever more focused not on what cripples life, but on what makes life worth living -- with profound consequences for our mental health. In this wise and eloquent memoir, spanning the most transformative years in the history of modern psychology, Seligman recounts how he learned to study optimism -- including a life-changing conversation with his five-year-old daughter. He tells the human stories behind some of his major findings, like CAVE, an analytical tool that predicts election outcomes (with shocking accuracy) based on the language used in campaign speeches, the international spread of Positive Education, the launch of the US Army's huge resilience program, and the canonical studies that birthed the theory of learned helplessness -- which he now reveals was incorrect. And he writes at length for the first time about his own battles with depression at a young age. In The Hope Circuit, Seligman makes a compelling and deeply personal case for the importance of virtues like hope, gratitude, and wisdom for our mental health. You will walk away from this book not just educated but deeply enriched.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/330245 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Hunting El Chapo: The Inside Story of the American Lawman Who Captured the World's Most-Wanted Drug Lord Author: Andrew Hogan, Douglas Century Narrator: Andrew Hogan, Robert Fass Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 25 minutes Release date: April 3, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.29 of Total 41 Ratings of Narrator: 4.75 of Total 4 Genres: True Crime Publisher's Summary: A blend of Manhunt, Killing Pablo, and Zero Dark Thirty, Andrew Hogan and Douglas Century’s sensational investigative high-tech thriller—soon to be a major motion picture from Sony—chronicles a riveting chapter in the twentieth-century drug wars: the exclusive inside story of the American lawman and his dangerous eight-year hunt that captured El Chapo—the world’s most wanted drug kingpin who evaded the law for more than a decade. Every generation has a larger-than-life criminal: Jesse James, Billy the Kid, John Dillinger, Al Capone, John Gotti, Pablo Escobar. But each of these notorious lawbreakers had a ''white hat'' in pursuit: Wyatt Earp, Pat Garrett, Eliot Ness, Steve Murphy. For notorious drug lord Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán-Loera—El Chapo—that lawman is former Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Andrew Hogan. In 2006, fresh out of the D.E.A. Academy, Hogan heads west to Arizona where he immediately plunges into a series of gripping undercover adventures, all unknowingly placing him on the trail of Guzmán, the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, a Forbes billionaire and Public Enemy No. 1 in the United States. Six years later, as head of the D.E.A.’s Sinaloa Cartel desk in Mexico City, Hogan finds his life and Chapo’s are ironically, on parallel paths: they’re both obsessed with the details. In a recasting of the classic American Western on the global stage, Hunting El Chapo takes us on Hogan’s quest to achieve the seemingly impossible, from infiltrating El Chapo’s inner circle to leading a white-knuckle manhunt with an elite brigade of trusted Mexican Marines—racing door-to-door through the cartel’s stronghold and ultimately bringing the elusive and murderous king-pin to justice. This cinematic crime story following the relentless investigative work of Hogan and his team unfolds at breakneck speed, taking the reader behind the scenes of one of the most sophisticated and dangerous counter-narcotics operations in the history of the United States and Mexico.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/328866 to listen full audiobooks. Title: You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor's Stories of Life, Death, and in Between Author: Daniela Lamas Narrator: Daniela Lamas, Susannah Jones Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 0 minutes Release date: March 27, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.5 of Total 10 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: For readers of Atul Gawande and Jerome Groopman, a book of beautifully crafted stories about what life is like for patients kept alive by modern medical technology. Modern medicine is a world that glimmers with new technology and cutting-edge research. To the public eye, medical stories often begin with sirens and flashing lights and culminate in survival or death. But these are only the most visible narratives. As a critical care doctor treating people at their sickest, Daniela Lamas is fascinated by a different story: what comes after for those whose lives are extended by days, months, or years as a result of our treatments and technologies? You Can Stop Humming Now, Lamas explores the complex answers to this question through intimate accounts of patients and their families. A grandfather whose failing heart has been replaced by a battery-operated pump; a salesman who found himself a kidney donor on social media; a college student who survived a near fatal overdose and returned home, alive but not the same; and a young woman navigating an adulthood she never thought she'd live to see -- these moving narratives paint a detailed picture of the fragile border between sickness and health. Riveting, gorgeously told, and deeply personal, You Can Stop Humming Now is a compassionate, uncompromising look at the choices and realities that many of us, and our families, may one day face. 'Gripping, soaring, inspiring.'-Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/329426 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Pleasure Shock: The Rise of Deep Brain Stimulation and Its Forgotten Inventor Author: Lone Frank Narrator: Cassandra Campbell Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 45 minutes Release date: March 20, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: The electrifying, forgotten history of Robert Heath's brain pacemaker, investigating the origins and ethics of one of today's most promising medical breakthroughs: deep brain stimulation The technology invented by psychiatrist Robert G. Heath in the 1950s and '60s has been described as among the most controversial experiments in US history. His work was alleged at the time to be part of MKUltra, the CIA's notorious 'mind control' project. His research subjects included incarcerated convicts and gay men who wished to be 'cured' of their sexual preference. Yet his cutting-edge research and legacy were quickly buried deep in Tulane University's archives. Investigative science journalist Lone Frank now tells the complete sage of this passionate, determined doctor and his groundbreaking neuroscience. More than fifty years after Heath's experiments, this very same treatment is becoming mainstream practice in modern psychiatry for everything from schizophrenia, anorexia, and compulsive behavior to depression, Parkinson's, and even substance addiction. Lone Frank uncovered lost documents and accounts of Heath's trailblazing work. She tracked down surviving colleagues and patients, and she delved into the current support for deep brain stimulation by scientists and patients alike. What has changed? Why do we today unquestioningly embrace this technology as a cure? How do we decide what is a disease of the brain to be cured and what should be allowed to remain unrobed and unprodded? And how do we weigh the decades of criticism against the promise of treatment that could be offered to millions of patients? Elegantly written and deeply fascinating, The Pleasure Shock weaves together biography, scientific history, and medical ethics. It is an adventure into our ever-shifting views of the mind and the fateful power we wield when we tinker with the self.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/328825 to listen full audiobooks. Title: John Bunyan Series: Part of Christian Encounters Series Author: Kevin Belmonte Narrator: Robertson Dean Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 4 hours 5 minutes Release date: March 20, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Christian Encounters, a series of biographies from Thomas Nelson Publishers, highlights important lives from all ages and areas of the Church. Some are familiar faces. Others are unexpected guests. But all, through their relationships, struggles, prayers, and desires, uniquely illuminate our shared experience. The author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, one of the most influential books in English literature, had little formal education. Born in 1628, the son of a tinker, John Bunyan was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. He was allowed to go to school for a few years and purchase a few books, but his apprenticeship in the family business took precedence. Bunyan experienced his first sorrow in adolescence, when both his mother and sister died. It wasn’t his last. Revolutions and wars were all around him, and he was jailed twice for preaching the Gospel. Yet amidst repeated imprisonments, civil war, and violent persecution, Bunyan crafted The Pilgrim’s Progress, a testament unlike any other to the triumph of the human spirit. His simple cadences transformed the language, and his memorable characters became familiar to millions. Bunyan became a public figure, a captivating speaker, and above all, a man known for his unrelenting trust in God.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/328868 to listen full audiobooks. Title: How to American: An Immigrant's Guide to Disappointing Your Parents Author: Jimmy O. Yang Narrator: Mike Judge, Jimmy O. Yang Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 0 minutes Release date: March 13, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.38 of Total 24 Ratings of Narrator: 4.71 of Total 7 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Standup comic, actor and fan favorite from HBO's Silicon Valley and the film Crazy Rich Asians shares his memoir of growing up as a Chinese immigrant in California and making it in Hollywood. 'I turned down a job in finance to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. My dad thought I was crazy. But I figured it was better to disappoint my parents for a few years than to disappoint myself for the rest of my life. I had to disappoint them in order to pursue what I loved. That was the only way to have my Chinese turnip cake and eat an American apple pie too.' Jimmy O. Yang is a standup comedian, film and TV actor and fan favorite as the character Jian Yang from the popular HBO series Silicon Valley. In How to American, he shares his story of growing up as a Chinese immigrant who pursued a Hollywood career against the wishes of his parents: Yang arrived in Los Angeles from Hong Kong at age 13, learned English by watching BET RapCity for three hours a day, and worked as a strip club DJ while pursuing his comedy career. He chronicles a near deportation episode during a college trip Tijuana to finally becoming a proud US citizen ten years later. Featuring those and many other hilarious stories, while sharing some hard-earned lessons, How to American mocks stereotypes while offering tongue in cheek advice on pursuing the American dreams of fame, fortune, and strippers.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/328387 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Wife’s Tale: A Personal History Author: Aida Edemariam Narrator: Adjoa Andoh Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 59 minutes Release date: March 1, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: WINNER OF THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2019 AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR A CBC BOOK OF THE YEAR The extraordinary story of an indomitable 95-year-old woman – and of the most extraordinary century in Ethiopia’s history. A new Wild Swans Featuring exclusive archive recordings from the author and her grandmother. A hundred years ago, a girl was born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar. Before she was ten years old, Yetemegnu was married to a man two decades her senior, an ambitious poet-priest. Over the next century her world changed beyond recognition. She witnessed Fascist invasion and occupation, Allied bombardment and exile from her city, the ascent and fall of Emperor Haile Selassie, revolution and civil war. She endured all these things alongside parenthood, widowhood and the death of children. The Wife’s Tale is an intimate memoir, both of a life and of a country. In prose steeped in Yetemegnu’s distinctive voice and point of view, Aida Edemariam retells her grandmother’s stories of a childhood surrounded by proud priests and soldiers, of her husband’s imprisonment, of her fight for justice – all of it played out against an ancient cycle of festivals and the rhythms of the seasons. She introduces us to a rich cast of characters – emperors and empresses, scholars and nuns, Marxist revolutionaries and wartime double agents. And through these encounters she takes us deep into the landscape and culture of this many-layered, often mis-characterised country – and the heart of one indomitable woman.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/325594 to listen full audiobooks. Title: White like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing Author: Gail Lukasik Narrator: Bernadette Dunne Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 58 minutes Release date: February 27, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.25 of Total 4 Ratings of Narrator: 4.5 of Total 2 Genres: Social Science Publisher's Summary: In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother’s decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother’s fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother’s racial lineage, tracing her family back to eighteenth-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage. With a foreword written by Kenyatta Berry, host of PBS’s Genealogy Roadshow, this unique and fascinating story of coming to terms with oneself breaks down barriers.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/324508 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind Author: Michael Massing Narrator: Tom Parks Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 34 hours 53 minutes Release date: February 27, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: A New York Times Notable Book A deeply textured dual biography and fascinating intellectual history that examines two of the greatest minds of European history—Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther—whose heated rivalry gave rise to two enduring, fundamental, and often colliding traditions of philosophical and religious thought. “A masterly work. Massing manages to juggle the complicated biographies and life work of both Erasmus and Luther while giving the reader a well-written, comprehensive background of pre-Reformation theology.”— Publishers Weekly (starred review) Erasmus of Rotterdam was the leading figure of the Northern Renaissance. At a time when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael were revolutionizing Western art and culture, Erasmus was helping to transform Europe’s intellectual and religious life, developing a new design for living for a continent rebelling against the hierarchical constraints of the Roman Church. When in 1516 he came out with a revised edition of the New Testament based on the original Greek, he was hailed as the prophet of a new enlightened age. Today, however, Erasmus is largely forgotten, and the reason can be summed up in two words: Martin Luther. As a young friar in remote Wittenberg, Luther was initially a great admirer of Erasmus and his critique of the Catholic Church, but while Erasmus sought to reform that institution from within, Luther wanted a more radical transformation. Eventually, the differences between them flared into a bitter rivalry, with each trying to win over Europe to his vision. In Fatal Discord, Michael Massing seeks to restore Erasmus to his proper place in the Western tradition. The conflict between him and Luther, he argues, forms a fault line in Western thinking—the moment when two enduring schools of thought, Christian humanism and evangelical Christianity, took shape. A seasoned journalist who has reported from many countries, Massing here travels back to the early sixteenth century to recover a long-neglected chapter of Western intellectual life, in which the introduction of new ways of reading the Bible set loose social and cultural forces that helped shatter the millennial unity of Christendom and whose echoes can still be heard today. Massing concludes that Europe has adopted a form of Erasmian humanism while America has been shaped by Luther-inspired individualism.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/328372 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Secret Pigeon Service: Operation Columba, Resistance and the Struggle to Liberate Europe Author: Gordon Corera Narrator: William Hope Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 19 minutes Release date: February 22, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Gordon Corera uses declassified documents and extensive original research to tell the story of MI14(d) and the Secret Pigeon Service for the first time. ‘This is an amazing story’ Simon Mayo, BBC Radio 2 Between 1941 and 1944, sixteen thousand plucky homing pigeons were dropped in an arc from Bordeaux to Copenhagen as part of 'Columba' – a secret British operation to bring back intelligence from those living under Nazi occupation. The messages flooded back written on tiny pieces of rice paper tucked into canisters and tied to the legs of the birds. Authentic voices from rural France, the Netherlands and Belgium – they were sometimes comic, often tragic and occasionally invaluable with details of German troop movements and fortifications, new Nazi weapons, radar system or the deployment of the feared V-1 and V-2 rockets that terrorized London. Who were the people who provided this rich seam of intelligence? Many were not trained agents nor, with a few exceptions, people with any experience of spying. At the centre of this book is the ‘Leopold Vindictive’ network – a small group of Belgian villagers prepared to take huge risks. They were led by an extraordinary priest, Joseph Raskin – a man connected to royalty and whose intelligence was so valuable it was shown to Churchill, leading MI6 to parachute agents in to assist him. A powerful and tragic tale of wartime espionage, the book brings together the British and Belgian sides of the Leopold Vindictive’s story and reveals for the first time the wider history of a quirky, quarrelsome band of spy masters and their special wartime operations, as well as how bitter rivalries in London placed the lives of secret agents at risk. It is a book not so much about pigeons as the remarkable people living in occupied Europe who were faced with the choice of how to respond to a call for help, and took the decision to resist.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/328761 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Mother Tongue: A Saga of Three Generations of Balkan Women Author: Tania Romanov Narrator: Becky Parker Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 6 minutes Release date: February 21, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: What is your mother tongue? Sometimes the simplest questions take a book to answer. Such is the case with Tania Romanov's story of exile, emigration and immigration and how native language can be a powerful touchstone for the sense of home. The unrelenting consequences of 100 years of Balkan wars force three generations of Croatian women"Katarina, Zora, and Tania"to flee their homelands multiple times. Family including Russian emigrants are driven out from Yugoslavia as refugees to live in a refugee camp in Italy, speaking Russian and the Serbo-Croatian language. Eventually, Tania, a successfully integrated American immigrant from Eastern Europe, journeys back to her fractured homeland with her mother to unravel the secrets of their shared past. Mother Tongue is an exploration of lives lived in the chaos of the Balkans. It follows countries such as Yugoslavia and Serbia, that dissolved, formed, and reformed. Lands that were conquered and subjugated by Fascists and Nazis and nationalists. Lives lived in exile, in refugee camps, in new worlds.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/323114 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Wallis in Love: The Untold Life of the Duchess of Windsor, the Woman Who Changed the Monarchy Author: Andrew Morton Narrator: Molly Parker Myers Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 0 minutes Release date: February 13, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.09 of Total 22 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 3 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: For fans of the Netflix series The Crown and from the author of the New York Times bestseller 17 Carnations comes a captivating biography of Wallis Simpson, the notorious woman for whom Edward VIII gave up the throne. 'You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance.' -- Wallis Simpson Before she became known as the woman who enticed a king from his throne and birthright, Bessie Wallis Warfield was a prudish and particular girl from Baltimore. At turns imaginative, ambitious, and spoiled, Wallis's first words as recalled by her family were 'me, me.' From that young age, she was in want of nothing but stability, status, and social acceptance as she fought to climb the social ladder and take her place in London society. As irony would have it, she would gain the love and devotion of a king, but only at the cost of his throne and her reputation. In Wallis in Love, acclaimed biographer Andrew Morton offers a fresh portrait of Wallis Simpson in all her vibrancy and brazenness as she transformed from a hard-nosed gold-digger to charming chatelaine. Using diary entries, letters, and other never-before-seen records, Morton takes us through Wallis's romantic adventures in Washington, China, and her entrance into the strange wonderland that is London society. During her journey, we meet an extraordinary array of characters, many of whom smoothed the way for her dalliance with the king of England, Edward VIII. Wallis in Love goes beyond Wallis's infamous persona and reveals a complex, domineering woman striving to determine her own fate and grapple with matters of the heart.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/324124 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family's Search for the American Dream Author: Bryan Mealer Narrator: Bryan Mealer Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 38 minutes Release date: February 6, 2018 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: This program is read by the author 'Think of it as a Texas version of Hillbilly Elegy.' — Bryan Burrough, New York Times bestselling author of The Big Reach and Barbarians at the Gate A brilliant audiobook saga of family, fortune, faith in Texas, where blood is bond and oil is king… In 1892, Bryan Mealer’s great-grandfather leaves the Georgia mountains and heads west into Texas, looking for wealth and adventure in the raw and open country. But his luck soon runs out. Beset by drought, the family loses their farm just as the dead pastures around them give way to one of the biggest oil booms in American history. They eventually settle in the small town of Big Spring, where fast fortunes are being made from its own reserves of oil. For the next two generations, the Mealers live on the margins of poverty, laboring in the cotton fields and on the drilling rigs that sprout along the flatland, weathering dust and wind, booms and busts, and tragedies that scatter them like tumbleweed. After embracing Pentecostalism during the Great Depression, they rely heavily on their faith to steel them against hardship and despair. But for young Bobby Mealer, the author’s father, religion is only an agent for rebellion. In the winter of 1981, when the author is seven years old, Bobby receives a call from an old friend with a simple question, “How'd you like to be a millionaire?” Twenty-six, and with a wife and three kids, Bobby had left his hometown to seek a life removed from the blowing dust and oil fields, and to find spiritual peace. But now Big Spring’s streets are flooded again with roughnecks, money, and sin. Boom chasers pour in from the busted factory towns in the north. Drilling rigs rise like timber along the pastures, and poor men become millionaires overnight. Grady Cunningham, Bobby's friend, is one of the newly-minted kings of Big Spring. Loud and flamboyant, with a penchant for floor-length fur coats, Grady pulls Bobby and his young wife into his glamorous orbit. While drilling wells for Grady's oil company, they fly around on private jets and embrace the honky-tonk high life of Texas oilmen. But beneath the Rolexes and Rolls Royce cars is a reality as dark as the crude itself. As Bobby soon discovers, his return to Big Spring is a backslider’s journey into a spiritual wilderness, and one that could cost him his life. A masterwork of memoir and narrative history, The Kings of Big Spring is an indelible portrait of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself. In telling the story of four generations of his family, Bryan Mealer also tells the story of how America came to be. More praise for The Kings of Big Spring: 'With a Texas accent and a soft-spoken tone, Mealer recounts scenes of drinking and drugs, divorce, and tragedy...Mealer gives listeners a very personal history lesson, showing how changing times and economic cycles affect both a town and a family.' — AudioFile Magazine 'Mr. Mealer, who covered war in the Congo for the Associated Press and Harper’s magazine, has impressive reporter’s chops as well as a native West Texan’s gift for storytelling. The combination produces the best kind of twofer: an engaging history of the oil patch wrapped in an intimate portrait of his own family.' — Wall Street Journal

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/325277 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue Author: Danielle Ofri Narrator: Ann M. Richardson Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 42 minutes Release date: February 6, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: A “finely gifted writer” shares “fifteen brilliantly written episodes covering the years from studenthood to the end of medical residency” (Oliver Sacks, MD, author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat) Singular Intimacies is the story of becoming a doctor by immersion at Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the country—and perhaps the most legendary. It is both the classic inner-city hospital and a unique amalgam of history, insanity, beauty, and intellect. When Danielle Ofri enters these 250-year-old doors as a tentative medical student, she is immediately plunged into the teeming world of urban medicine: mysterious illnesses, life-and-death decisions, patients speaking any one of a dozen languages, and overworked interns devising creative strategies to cope with the feverish intensity of a big-city hospital. Yet the emphasis of Singular Intimacies is not so much on the arduous hours in medical training (which certainly exist here), but on the evolution of an instinct for healing. In a hospital without the luxury of private physicians, where patients lack resources both financial and societal, where poverty and social strife are as much a part of the pathology as any microbe, it is the medical students and interns who are thrust into the searing intimacy that is the doctor-patient relationship. In each memorable chapter, Ofri’s progress toward becoming an experienced healer introduces not just a patient in medical crisis, but a human being with an intricate and compelling history. Ofri learns to navigate the tangled vulnerabilities of doctor and patient—not to simply battle the disease.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/323706 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Audacity of Inez Burns: Dreams, Desire, Treachery, and Ruin in the City of Gold Author: Stephen G. Bloom Narrator: Peter Berkrot Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 13 hours 10 minutes Release date: February 6, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: San Francisco, until the mid-1940s, was a city that lived by its own rules, fast and loose. Formed by the gold rush and destroyed by the 1906 earthquake, it served as a pleasure palace for the legions of men who sought their fortunes in the California foothills. For the women who followed, their only choice was to support, serve, or submit. Inez Burns was different. She put everyone to shame with her dazzling, calculated, stone-cold ambition. Born in the slums of San Francisco to a cigar-rolling alcoholic, Inez transformed herself into one of California’s richest women, becoming a notorious power-broker, grand dame, and iconoclast. A stunning beauty with perfumed charm, she rose from manicurist to murderess to millionaire, seducing one man after another, bearing children out of wedlock, and bribing politicians and cops along the way to secure her place in the San Francisco firmament. Inez ruled with incandescent flair. She owned five hundred hats and a closet full of furs, had two small toes surgically removed to fit into stylish high heels, and had two ribs excised to accentuate her hourglass figure. Her presence was defined by couture dresses from Paris, red-carpet strutting at the San Francisco Opera, and a black Pierce-Arrow that delivered her everywhere. She threw outrageous parties on her sprawling, eight-hundred-acre horse ranch, a compound with servants, cooks, horse groomers, and trainers, where politicians, judges, attorneys, Hollywood moguls, and entertainers gamboled over silver fizzes. Inez was adored by the desperate women who sought her out—and loathed by the power-hungry men who plotted to destroy her. During a time when women risked their lives with predatory practitioners lurking in back alleys, Inez and her team of women, clad in crisp, white nurse’s uniforms, worked night and day in her elegantly appointed clinic, performing fifty thousand of the safest, most hygienic abortions available during a time when even the richest wives, Hollywood stars, and mistresses had few options when they found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy. Inez’s illegal business bestowed upon her power and influence—until a determined politician by the name of Edmund G. (Pat) Brown—the father of current California Governor Jerry Brown—used Inez to catapult his nascent career to national prominence. In The Audacity of Inez Burns, Stephen G. Bloom, the author of the bestselling Postville, reveals a jagged slice of lost American history. From Inez’s riveting tale of glamour and tragedy, he has created a brilliant, compulsively readable portrait of an unforgettable woman during a moment when America’s pendulum swung from compassion to criminality by punishing those who permitted women to control their own destinies.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/324221 to listen full audiobooks. Title: A Prairie Girl's Faith: The Spiritual Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder Author: STEPHEN W. HINES Narrator: Stephen Mendel, Kimberly Farr Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 4 hours 37 minutes Release date: February 6, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: The first in-depth look at the spiritual path of legendary storyteller Laura Ingalls Wilder. With her extraordinary God-given pluck, the creator of the epic Little House series survived the harshness of frontier life—from the heartbreak of sudden crop losses to murderous storms to unrelenting loneliness. Yet in every season, Laura found strength through her relationship with God. Now, several generations later, Laura’s insights about work and rest, trust in the face of hardship, and the value of faith are more relevant than ever. Through Laura’s discerning newspaper pieces as an early advice columnist, interviews with people who knew her personally, and extensive investigation by Stephen Hines, we witness an authentic faith that comes not from pretending all is well but from growing through difficult times. With photos and authentic recipes from the Little House era, A Prairie Girl’s Faith also opens a wider window into the lives of pioneers as it offers a revealing look at the beliefs, character, and culture into which Laura was born and grew to maturity.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/323124 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Monk of Mokha Author: Dave Eggers Narrator: Dion Graham Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 18 minutes Release date: January 30, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.38 of Total 13 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: From the bestselling author of The Circle and What Is the What, the true story of a young Yemeni-American man, raised in San Francisco, who dreams of resurrecting the ancient art of Yemeni coffee but finds himself trapped in Sana'a by civil war. Mokhtar Alkhanshali grew up in San Francisco, one of seven siblings brought up by Yemeni immigrants in a tiny apartment. At age twenty-four, unable to pay for college, he works as a doorman, until a statue of an Arab raising a cup of coffee awakens something in him. He sets out to learn the rich history of coffee in Yemen and the complex art of tasting and identifying varietals. He travels to Yemen and visits countless farms, collecting samples, eager to bring improved cultivation methods to the countryside. And he is on the verge of success when civil war engulfs Yemen in 2015. The US Embassy closes, Saudi bombs began to rain down on the country, and Mokhtar is trapped in Yemen. Desperate to escape, he embarks on a passage that has him negotiating with dueling political factions and twice kidnapped at gunpoint. With no other options, he hires a skiff to take him, and his coffee samples, across the Red Sea. A heart-pounding true story that weaves together the history of coffee, the ongoing Yemeni civil war, and the courageous journey of a young man--a Muslim and a US citizen--following the most American of dreams.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/322779 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America Author: Catherine Kerrison Narrator: Tavia Gilbert Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 17 hours 3 minutes Release date: January 30, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.18 of Total 11 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 2 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: The remarkable untold story of Thomas Jefferson’s three daughters—two white and free, one black and enslaved—and the divergent paths they forged in a newly independent America   FINALIST FOR THE GEORGE WASHINGTON PRIZE • “Beautifully written . . . To a nuanced study of Jefferson’s two white daughters, Martha and Maria, [Kerrison] innovatively adds a discussion of his only enslaved daughter, Harriet Hemings.”—The New York Times Book Review Thomas Jefferson had three daughters: Martha and Maria by his wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, and Harriet by his slave Sally Hemings. Although the three women shared a father, the similarities end there. Martha and Maria received a fine convent school education while they lived with their father during his diplomatic posting in Paris. Once they returned home, however, the sisters found their options limited by the laws and customs of early America. Harriet Hemings followed a different path. She escaped slavery—apparently with the assistance of Jefferson himself. Leaving Monticello behind, she boarded a coach and set off for a decidedly uncertain future.   For this groundbreaking triple biography, history scholar Catherine Kerrison has uncovered never-before-published documents written by the Jefferson sisters, as well as letters written by members of the Jefferson and Hemings families. The richly interwoven stories of these strong women and their fight to shape their own destinies shed new light on issues of race and gender that are still relevant today—and on the legacy of one of our most controversial Founding Fathers.   Praise for Jefferson’s Daughters   “A fascinating glimpse of where we have been as a nation . . . Catherine Kerrison tells us the stories of three of Thomas Jefferson’s children, who, due to their gender and race, lived lives whose most intimate details are lost to time.”—USA Today “A valuable addition to the history of Revolutionary-era America.”—The Boston Globe “A thought-provoking nonfiction narrative that reads like a novel.”—BookPage

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/330031 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Sea is Only Knee Deep - Volume 2 Author: Paulina Zelitsky, Paul Weinzweig Narrator: Paulina Zelitsky Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 46 minutes Release date: January 23, 2018 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: A literate and beautifully written account of a Jewish girl growing up in Stalin's Russia and Castro's Cuba. Her creative approach to the problems of survival and achievement under rigid dictatorships is an example of women's determination and achievement, if and when they take themselves seriously and pursue their objectives with conviction. Paulina's personal crisis came after a violent rape attempt by her Soviet supervisor at work. This moment became a powerful motivator to overcome obstacles and demonstrated the power and potential of the human spirit. Finding herself embroiled in a Cold War drama on the Island of Cuba where Soviet and American military forces are vying for supremacy during a secret nuclear confrontation, Paulina decided on a dangerous escape to freedom with her two small children rather than become an obedient slave and an informant for a cruel and rogue tyrannical state. When in 1970 the KGB attempted to conscript Paulina as an informant, she defected with her two young children to Canada in a bizarre feat of courage and audacity. This episode is sure to elevate your heart rate. Who said that women are the weaker sex? She enacted the assertion of "I am mad as hell, and I am not going to take it anymore" and despite the long odds, succeeded. She became the only defector from a communist country that made such an escape with small children in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada. A seemingly discouraging and difficult situation for a young, penniless immigrant with two small children did not prevent Paulina from rapidly adjusting to a new country. She re-established herself professionally and even brought her parents to Canada 4 years later. Paulina's family proudly integrated into Canadian society. Her boys graduated from Canadian universities as scientists. They became confident, responsible, and independent individuals in the entrepreneurial hi-tech sector. Paulina's memoir provides a highly motivational reading for young girls who are considering a professional career. It is remarkable how this first-hand story of a young female Soviet defector is relevant to the current global situation regarding the Russian Navy, which replaced the Soviet Navy with the obsessive aim of nuclear dominance in the Atlantic ocean, as well as in the Arctic.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/323363 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Stowaway: A Young Man's Extraordinary Adventure to Antarctica Author: Laurie Gwen Shapiro Narrator: Jacques Roy Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 28 minutes Release date: January 16, 2018 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.5 of Total 20 Ratings of Narrator: 3 of Total 4 Genres: World Publisher's Summary: The spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New York’s Lower East Side who stowed away on the most remarkable feat of science and daring of the Jazz Age, The Stowaway is “a thrilling adventure that captures not only the making of a man but of a nation” (David Grann, bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon). It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet’s final frontier? Everyone wanted in on the adventure. Rockefellers and Vanderbilts begged to be taken along as mess boys, and newspapers across the globe covered the planning’s every stage. And then, the night before the expedition’s flagship set off, Billy Gawronski—a mischievous, first-generation New York City high schooler, desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business—jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard. Could he get away with it? From the soda shops of New York’s Lower East Side to the dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to Antarctica’s blinding white and deadly freeze, author Laurie Gwen Shapiro “narrates this period piece with gusto” (Los Angeles Times), taking readers on the “novelistic” (The New Yorker) and unforgettable voyage of a plucky young stowaway who became a Roaring Twenties celebrity, a mascot for an up-by-your bootstraps era.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/329592 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Your Life In My Hands - a junior doctor's story Author: Rachel Clarke Narrator: Cassie Layton Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 58 minutes Release date: December 21, 2017 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 2 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: These are the extraordinary realities of the NHS frontline. From the historic junior doctor strikes to the 'humanitarian crisis' declared by the Red Cross, the overstretched health service is on the precipice. This is a powerful polemic on its systematic degradation, and a letter of optimism to that same health service and those who support it. It captures with tenderness, a new doctor's experiences of an NHS at breaking point.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/312322 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical Author: Jacqueline Jones Narrator: Nylsa Smallwood Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 14 hours 9 minutes Release date: December 5, 2017 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: From a prize-winning historian, a new portrait of an extraordinary activist and the turbulent age in which she lived Goddess of Anarchy recounts the formidable life of the militant writer, orator, and agitator Lucy Parsons. Born to an enslaved woman in Virginia in 1851 and raised in Texas-where she met her husband, the Haymarket 'martyr' Albert Parsons-Lucy was a fearless advocate of First Amendment rights, a champion of the working classes, and one of the most prominent figures of African descent of her era. And yet, her life was riddled with contradictions-she advocated violence without apology, concocted a Hispanic-Indian identity for herself, and ignored the plight of African Americans. Drawing on a wealth of new sources, Jacqueline Jones presents not only the exceptional life of the famous American-born anarchist but also an authoritative account of her times-from slavery through the Great Depression.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/308568 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Believing Author: Sandra Brown Narrator: Sandra Brown Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 0 hours 21 minutes Release date: November 21, 2017 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.75 of Total 4 Ratings of Narrator: 3 of Total 2 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Sandra Brown revisits two pivotal Christmases from her own past in this heartfelt and intimate essay. One needn't be familiar with Brown's previous works to be deeply moved by this personal reflection on the meaning of family, faith, celebration, and generosity: but fans will find it a unique and special insight into the New York Times Bestselling author's life and values. 'If I were to open my Christmas memory box and peer inside, two would stand out from the rest. One would be the Christmas of my sixth year. Perhaps this is the first Christmas of memory and that's why it distinguishes itself in my recollections. The other would be a Christmas much more recent. Only one of these Christmases was happy, as the dictionary defines the word. But in the other, I found a unique joy. These two holidays were celebrated in different locations, with different family members. One was observed through the eyes of a child, while the other was experienced from the perspective of an adult. These Christmases were separated by decades. They actually had nothing in common except the date on the calendar and, for me, the debatable existence of Santa Claus . . . .' -- Sandra Brown (an excerpt from Believing) This essay is based on musings originally published in Ladies Home Journal. 20 years later, Sandra Brown revisits these powerful memories, creating the moving essay heard here, which she delivers in her charming Southern voice, as warm and comforting as a mug of cocoa in view of the Christmas tree.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/307724 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World Author: Maya Jasanoff Narrator: Laurel Lekfow Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 9 minutes Release date: November 7, 2017 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 1 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: “Enlightening, compassionate, superb” —John Le Carré Winner of the 2018 Cundhill History Prize A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 One of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2017 A visionary exploration of the life and times of Joseph Conrad, his turbulent age of globalization and our own, from one of the most exciting young historians writing today Migration, terrorism, the tensions between global capitalism and nationalism, and a communications revolution: these forces shaped Joseph Conrad’s destiny at the dawn of the twentieth century. In this brilliant new interpretation of one of the great voices in modern literature, Maya Jasanoff reveals Conrad as a prophet of globalization. As an immigrant from Poland to England, and in travels from Malaya to Congo to the Caribbean, Conrad navigated an interconnected world, and captured it in a literary oeuvre of extraordinary depth. His life story delivers a history of globalization from the inside out, and reflects powerfully on the aspirations and challenges of the modern world.   Joseph Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857, to Polish parents in the Russian Empire. At sixteen he left the landlocked heart of Europe to become a sailor, and for the next twenty years travelled the world’s oceans before settling permanently in England as an author. He saw the surging, competitive 'new imperialism' that planted a flag in almost every populated part of the globe. He got a close look, too, at the places “beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat lines,” and the hypocrisy of the west’s most cherished ideals.   In a compelling blend of history, biography, and travelogue, Maya Jasanoff follows Conrad’s routes and the stories of his four greatest works—The Secret Agent, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo. Genre-bending, intellectually thrilling, and deeply humane, The Dawn Watch embarks on a spell-binding expedition into the dark heart of Conrad’s world—and through it to our own.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/330506 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The First Iron Lady: A Life of Caroline of Ansbach Author: Matthew Dennison Narrator: Clare Corbett Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 17 minutes Release date: November 2, 2017 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: 'A brilliant study of a brilliant woman' LUCY WORSLEY History has forgotten Caroline of Ansbach, yet in her lifetime she was compared frequently to Elizabeth I and considered by some as ‘the cleverest queen consort Britain ever had’. The intellectual superior of her buffoonish husband George II, Caroline is credited with hastening the Enlightenment to Britain through her sponsorship of red-hot debates about science, religion, philosophy and the nature of the universe. Encouraged by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, she championed inoculation; inspired by her friends Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, she mugged up on Newtonian physics; she embraced a salon culture which promoted developments in music, literature and garden design; she was a regular theatre-goer who loved the opera, gambling and dancing. Her intimates marvelled at the breadth of her interests. She was, said Lord Egmont, ‘curious in everything’. Caroline acted as Regent four times while her husband returned to Hanover, and during those periods she possessed authority over all domestic matters. No subsequent royal woman has exercised power on such a scale. So why has history forgotten this extraordinary queen? In this magnificent biography, the first for over seventy years, Matthew Dennison seeks to reverse this neglect. The First Iron Lady uncovers the complexities of Caroline’s multifaceted life: the child of a minor German princeling who, through intelligence, determination and a dash of sex appeal, rose to occupy one of the great positions of the world and did so with distinction, élan and a degree of cynical realism. It is a remarkable portrait of an eighteenth-century woman of great political astuteness and ambition, a radical icon of female power.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/309122 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The White King: Charles I, Traitor, Murderer, Martyr Author: Leanda De Lisle Narrator: Graeme Malcolm Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 45 minutes Release date: October 31, 2017 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.67 of Total 3 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: From the New York Times bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the tragic story of Charles I, his warrior queen, Britain's civil wars and the trial for his life. Less than forty years after England's golden age under Elizabeth I, the country was at war with itself. Split between loyalty to the Crown or to Parliament, war raged on English soil. The English Civil War would set family against family, friend against friend, and its casualties were immense--a greater proportion of the population died than in World War I. At the head of the disintegrating kingdom was King Charles I. In this vivid portrait -- informed by previously unseen manuscripts, including royal correspondence between the king and his queen -- Leanda de Lisle depicts a man who was principled and brave, but fatally blinkered. Charles never understood his own subjects or court intrigue. At the heart of the drama were the Janus-faced cousins who befriended and betrayed him -- Henry Holland, his peacocking servant whose brother, the New England colonialist Robert Warwick, engineered the king's fall; and Lucy Carlisle, the magnetic 'last Boleyn girl' and faithless favorite of Charles's maligned and fearless queen. The tragedy of Charles I was that he fell not as a consequence of vice or wickedness, but of his human flaws and misjudgments. The White King is a story for our times, of populist politicians and religious war, of manipulative media and the reshaping of nations. For Charles it ended on the scaffold, condemned as a traitor and murderer, yet lauded also as a martyr, his reign destined to sow the seeds of democracy in Britain and the New World.