Berg, Elizabeth. Make Someone Happy: Favorite Postings. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501954559. Read by the author.
This is a collection of Berg’s most-loved Facebook posts. She was asked by many to put these short essays into book form, to create, as one reader said, something to “take to the beach, or bed, or on an airplane.” 

Bergman, Ofer & Steve Whittaker. The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501958342. Read by Walter Dixon.
Each of us has an ever-growing collection of personal digital data: documents, photographs, PowerPoint presentations, videos, music, emails and texts sent and received. To access any of this, we have to find it. The ease (or difficulty) of finding something depends on how we organize our digital stuff. Personal information management experts Bergman and Whittaker explain why we organize our personal digital data the way we do and how the design of new systems can help us manage our collections more efficiently. 

Coupland, Douglas. Bit Rot: Stories and Essays. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501940385. read by Graham Rowat.
“Bit rot” is a term used in digital archiving to describe the way digital files can spontaneously and quickly decompose. As Coupland writes, “Bit rot also describes the way my brain has been feeling since 2000, as I shed older and weaker neurons and connections and enhance new and unexpected ones.” Bit Rot the book is a fascinating meditation on the ways in which humanity tries to make sense of our shifting consciousness. Coupland, just like the Internet, mixes forms to achieve his ends. Short fiction is interspersed with essays on all aspects of modern life. 

Mann, Don & Lance Burton. Navy SEALs: The Combat History of the Deadliest Warriors on the Planet. HighBridge. ISBN 9781681685991. Read by John Pruden.
From their birth in World War II as combat swimmers clearing the beaches of Normandy to their evolution into fighting men who could operate anywhere in the world by sea, air, or land, the intrepid story of the United States Navy SEALs is one that echoes other great military units of history—the Spartans, the Roman legions, or the samurai. 

Mulcahy, Diane. The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501958311. Read by Marguerite Gavin.
From Uber to the presidential debates, the gig economy has been dominating the headlines—and for good reason. Today, more than a third of Americans are working in the gig economy—mixing together short-term jobs, contract work, and freelance assignments. The Gig Economy is your guide to this uncertain but ultimately rewarding world. Succeeding in it starts with shifting gears to recognize that only you control your future. Next is leveraging your skills, knowledge, and network to create your own career trajectory, one immune to the whims of an employer. 

Rhodes, Robert Hunt. All For the Union: The Civil War Diary and Letters of Elisha Hunt Rhodes. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781490675404. Read by Norman Dietz.
The astonishing and eloquent diary of Elisha Hunt Rhodes, the Union soldier featured in Ken Burns’s PBS television documentary The Civil War. Enlisting as a private in the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry, Rhodes fought in every major campaign waged by the Army of the Potomac, from Bull Run to Appomattox. Here, in his own powerfully moving words, Rhodes reveals why he was willing to die to preserve his beloved Union.

Romolini, Jennifer. Weird in a World That’s Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures. HarperAudio. ISBN 9781538420065. Read by Em Eldridge.
Romolini asserts that being outside the norm and achieving real, high-level success are not mutually exclusive, even if the perception of the business world often seems otherwise, even if it seems like only office-politicking extroverts are set up for reward. Part career memoir, part real-world guide, Weird in a World That’s Not offers relatable advice on how to achieve your dreams, even when the odds seem stacked against you.

Sastry, Anjali & Kara Penn. Fail Better: Design Smart Mistakes and Succeed Sooner. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501941672. Read by Callie Beaulieu.
Whether you’re rolling out a new product from a city-view office or rolling up your sleeves to deliver a social service in the field, learning why and how to embrace failure can help you do better, faster. Smart leaders, entrepreneurs, and change agents design their innovation projects with a key idea in mind: ensure that every failure is maximally useful.

Taylor, Charles. Opening Wednesday at a Theater Or Drive-In Near You: The Shadow Cinema of the American ’70s. HighBridge. ISBN 9781681685120. Read by A.T. Chandler.
When we think of ’70s cinema, we think of classics like The Godfather, Taxi Driver, and The Wild Bunch, but the riches found in the overlooked B movies of the time, rolled out wherever they might find an audience, unexpectedly tell an eye-opening story about post-Watergate, post-Vietnam America. Taylor pays homage to the trucker vigilantes, meat magnate pimps, blaxploitation “angel avengers,” and taciturn factory workers ofl B films such as Prime Cut, Foxy Brown, and Eyes of Laura Mars. He creates a compelling argument for what matters in moviemaking and brings a pivotal American era vividly to life.

Weigel, David. The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock. HighBridge. ISBN 9781681686059. Read by Rudy Sanda.
The behind-the-scenes story of the extraordinary rise and fall of progressive (“prog”) rock, epitomized by such classic, chart-topping bands as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and Emerson Lake & Palmer, and their successors Rush, Styx, and Asia.

Alexander, Stephon. The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe. Dreamscape. ISBN 9781520078144. Reader TBA.
More than 50 years ago, John Coltrane drew the 12 musical notes in a circle and connected them by straight lines, forming a five-pointed star. Inspired by Einstein, Coltrane put physics and geometry at the core of his music. Now, physicist and jazz musician Alexander follows suit, using jazz to investigate physics. Following in the tradition of the great minds that first drew links between music and physics—Pythagoras, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, and Rakim—this work visits both the ancient realm where music, physics, and the cosmos were one and Alexander’s own life. For, in Alexander’s attempts to reconcile and balance his own passion for music and physics, he uncovered a connection between the fundamental waves that make up sound and the fundamental waves that make up everything else-a connection which reveals that, when the ancient poetic idea of the “music of the spheres” is taken seriously, it can clarify some of physics’ most vexing questions.

Bozzo, Donna. What the Fun?: 427 Simple Ways To Have Fantastic Family Fun. Blackstone. ISBN 9781469066042. Read by the author.
Creating more fun in your days will make you a joy to be around and you’ll be a great example to your children. They will learn how to find their own happiness. What more could you want for your kids? Bozzo has shared her prescription for folding tons of fantastic fun into your days with millions of people on television and in magazines.Here she gives listeners 427 easy ideas to help you put more fun in your family’s life any and every day, including five-minute fun fixes; zany ways to shake up the ole (yawn) daily routine; clever bedtime, homework, and chore time struggle stoppers; quick ways to create family memories; and other ways to make each and every day a special occasion.

Crystal, David. Making Sense: The Glamorous Story of the English Language. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501959585. Reader TBA.
Crystal confronts the foe of many: grammar. Once taught relentlessly to all students in the English-speaking world, grammar disappeared from most school curricula, so that terms such as “preposition” and “conjunction” now often confound children and adults alike. Explaining the nuts and bolts of grammar presents a special challenge, because—far more than is the case with spelling and punctuation—the subject is burdened with a centuries-old history of educational practice that many will recall as anything but glamorous. One of the world’s foremost authorities on the English language, Crystal sets out to rid grammar of its undeserved reputation as a dry and intimidating subject, pointing out how essential grammar is to clear and effective speech and writing. He moves briskly through the stages by which children acquire grammar, along the way demystifying grammar’s rules and irregularities and showing us how to navigate its snares and pitfalls.

Danticat, Edwidge. The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story. ISBN 9781501954078. Reader TBA.
At once a personal account of her mother dying from cancer and a deeply considered reckoning with the ways that other writers have approached death in their own work. “Writing has been the primary way I have tried to make sense of my losses,” Danticat notes in her introduction. “I have been writing about death for as long as I have been writing.” The book moves outward from the shock of her mother’s diagnosis and sifts through Danticat’s writing life and personal history, all the while shifting fluidly from examples that range from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude to Toni Morrison’s Sula. The narrative, which continually circles the many incarnations of death from individual to large-scale catastrophes, culminates in a beautiful, heartrending prayer in the voice of Danticat’s mother.

Davis, Angela J., ed. Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538420652. Read by Robin Miles & Kevin Kenerly..
A comprehensive analysis of the key issues of the Black Lives Matter movement, this thought-provoking and compelling anthology features essays by some of the nation’s most influential and respected criminal justice experts and legal scholars. Contributing authors include Bryan Stevenson, director of the Equal Justice Institute, NYU Law professor, and author of the New York Times bestseller Just Mercy; Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice; and many others. Essays range from an explication of the historical roots of racism in the criminal justice system to an examination of modern-day police killings of unarmed black men. The coauthors discuss and explain racial profiling, the power and discretion of police and prosecutors, the role of implicit bias, the racial impact of police and prosecutorial decisions, the disproportionate imprisonment of black men, the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, and the Supreme Court’s failure to provide meaningful remedies for the injustices in the criminal justice system.

Eggerichs, Emerson. Before You Hit Send: Preventing Headache and Heartache. Brilliance. ISBN 978-1536693119. Read by the author.
Our methods of communication today allow for something to potentially be broadcast to everyone from Pekin, IL, to Peking, China. But it’s not only Twitter fanatics who can find themselves in trouble. Every single one of us is capable of falling prey to this growing plague. Every day we have the potential of both verbal and written blunders. It makes no difference if we are talking to a stranger over a meat counter, chatting on a cell phone with our mother, or sending an e-mail to a coworker; we can and do miscommunicate and people can and do get the wrong idea. When we don’t pause long enough to think before speaking or writing, it commonly yields a misunderstanding and leads to a clash. This book is about preventing that misunderstanding and allowing for understanding.

Flair, Ric & Charlotte. Second Nature: The Legacy of Ric Flair and the Rise of Charlotte. Macmillan Audio. ISBN 9781427288943. Reader TBA.
For the first time ever, WWE’s illustrious father-daughter duo “Nature Boy” Ric Flair and Charlotte come together to tell their legendary story. Ric Flair is a 16-time World Champion and two-time WWE Hall of Fame Inductee. Despite his effortless brilliance in front of the cameras, his life away from the cameras includes personal struggles, controversy and family tragedy. Charlotte grew up in the shadow of her famous father, “the dirtiest player in the game,” but now she is poised to take the Flair name to new heights. As the inaugural WWE Women’s Champion, Charlotte has had an impressive career, and she’s just getting started.

Hesse, Monica. American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land. Dreamscape. ISBN 9781520075846. Reader TBA.
Shocked by a five-month arson spree that left rural Virginia reeling, Washington Post reporter Monica Hesse drove down to Accomack County to cover the trial of Charlie Smith, who pled guilty to 67 counts of arson. But Charlie wasn’t lighting fires alone: he had an accomplice, his girlfriend Tonya Bundick. Through her depiction of the dangerous shift that happened in their passionate relationship, Hesse brilliantly brings to life the once-thriving coastal community and its distressed inhabitants, who had already been decimated by a punishing economy before they were terrified by a string of fires they could not explain.

Kean, Sam. Caesar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us. Blackstone. ISBN 9781478950523. Reader TBA.
With every breath, you literally inhale the history of the world. On the ides of March, 44 BC, Julius Caesar died of stab wounds on the Senate floor, but the story of his last breath is still unfolding; in fact, you’re probably inhaling some of it now. Of the sextillions of molecules entering or leaving your lungs at this moment, some might well bear traces of Cleopatra’s perfumes, German mustard gas, particles exhaled by dinosaurs or emitted by atomic bombs, even remnants of stardust from the universe’s creation. Tracing the origins and ingredients of our atmosphere, Kean reveals how the alchemy of air reshaped our continents, steered human progress, powered revolutions, and continues to influence everything we do. Along the way, we’ll swim with radioactive pigs, witness the most important chemical reactions humans have discovered, and join the crowd at the Moulin Rouge for some of the crudest performance art of all time.

McMeekin, Sean. The Russian Revolution. Blackstone. ISBN 9781478994794. Reader TBA.
McMeekin traces the origins and events of the Russian Revolution, which ended Romanov rule, ushered the Bolsheviks into power, and changed the course of world history. Between 1900 and 1920, Russia underwent a complete and irreversible transformation: by the end of these two decades, a new regime was in place, the economy had collapsed, and over 20 million Russians had died during the revolution and what followed. Still, Bolshevik power remained intact due to a remarkable combination of military prowess, violent terror tactics, and the failures of their opposition. And as McMeekin shows, Russia’s revolutionaries were aided at nearly every step by countries like Germany and Sweden who sought to benefit—politically and economically—from the chaotic changes overtaking the country.

Nye, Bill. Everything All at Once: How to Unleash Your Inner Nerd, Tap into Radical Curiosity and Solve Any Problem. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501948992. Read by the author.
Nye believes we’ll never be able to tackle our society’s biggest, most complex problems if we don’t even know how to solve the small ones. Step by step, he shows his readers the key tools behind his everything-all-at-once approach: radical curiosity, a deep desire for a better future, and a willingness to take the actions needed to make it a reality. Problem solving is a skill that anyone can harness to create change, and Bill Nye is here to teach us how. Each chapter describes a principle of problem solving that Nye himself uses—methodical, fact-based approaches to life that aspires to leave no stone unturned. He explains how the nerd mindset leads to a richer and more meaningful life; far more than that, it can help address hunger, crime, poverty, pollution, and even assist the democratic process.

Roosevelt, Curtis. Upstairs at the Roosevelts’: Growing Up with Franklin and Eleanor. Blackstone. ISBN 9781470852511. Read by Robertson Dean.
Curtis Roosevelt knew what it was like to live with a president. His grandfather was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. From the time Curtis, with his sister Eleanor and recently divorced mother, Anna Roosevelt Dall, moved into his grandparents’ new home—the White House—Curtis played, learned, slept, ate, and lived in one of the most famous buildings in the world with one of its most famous residents. Writing about his childhood from that perspective, Curtis Roosevelt offers anecdotes and revelations about the lives of the president and First Lady and the many colorful personalities in this presidential family. From Eleanor’s shocking role in the remarriage of Curtis’s mother to visits from naughty cousins and trips to the “Home Farm,” this work provides an intimate perspective on the dynamics of one of America’s most famous families.

Roy, Arundhati & John Cusack. Things That Can and Cannot Be Said: Essays and Conversations. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538411360. Read by the authors.
In this rich dialogue on surveillance, empire, and power, Roy and Cusack describe meeting with National Security Agency whistleblower Ed Snowden. In late 2014, Roy, Cusack, and Daniel Ellsberg traveled to Moscow to meet with Snowden. In these discussions, Roy and Cusack discuss the nature of the state, empire, and surveillance in an era of perpetual war, the meaning of flags and patriotism, the role of foundations and NGOs in limiting dissent, and the ways in which capital but not people can freely cross borders.

Scottoline, Lisa & Francesca Serritella. I Need a Lifeguard Everywhere but the Pool. Macmillan Audio. ISBN 9781427285904. Read by the authors.
Lisa and Francesca are back with another collection of warm and witty stories that will strike a chord with every woman.

Smith, Gary. Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics. Blackstone. ISBN 9781469066189. Read by Timothy Andres Pabon.
Did you know that baseball players whose names begin with the letter “D” are more likely to die young? Or that Asian Americans are most susceptible to heart attacks on the fourth day of the month? Or that drinking a full pot of coffee every morning will add years to your life, but one cup a day increases the risk of pancreatic cancer? All of these “facts” have been argued with a straight face by credentialed researchers and backed up with reams of data and convincing statistics. Lying with statistics is a time-honored con. Here Smith walks us through the various tricks and traps that people use to back up their own crackpot theories. Sometimes, the unscrupulous deliberately try to mislead us. Other times, the well-intentioned are blissfully unaware of the mischief they are committing. Today, data is so plentiful that researchers spend precious little time distinguishing between good, meaningful indicators and total rubbish. Not only do others use data to fool us, we fool ourselves.

Baldwin, James. The Devil Finds Work. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538425442. Read by Dion Graham.
Baldwin’s personal reflections on movies gathered here in a book-length essay are also a probing appraisal of American racial politics. Offering an incisive look at racism in American movies and a vision of America’s self-delusions and deceptions, Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist. Here are our loves and hates, biases and cruelties, fears and ignorance reflected by the films that have entertained us and shaped our consciousness. And here too is the stunning prose of a writer whose passion never diminished his struggle for equality, justice, and social change.

Chapman, Bob & Raj Sisodia. Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family. Dreamscape. ISBN 9781520078182. Read by Steven Menasche.
In 1997, Bob Chapman pioneered a dramatically different approach to leadership that creates off-the-charts morale, loyalty, creativity, and business performance. They utterly rejected the idea that employees are simply functions, to be moved around, “managed” with carrots and sticks, or discarded at will. Instead, the company, Barry-Wehmiller, manifested the reality that every single person matters, just like in a family-and that understanding of how employees should be thought of and treated has remained the bedrock of their company’s success. Chapman and Sisodia show how any organization can enact this type of leadership, providing clear steps to transform your own workplace, whether you lead two people or two hundred thousand.

Fagone, Jason. The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies. HarperAudio. ISBN 9781538420249. Reader TBA.
In 1912, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the U.S. government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code-breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the “Adam and Eve” of the NSA, Elizebeth’s story, incredibly, has never been told. Fagone chronicles the life of this extraordinary woman, who played an integral role in our nation’s history for forty years. After World War I, Smith used her talents to catch gangsters and smugglers during Prohibition, then accepted a covert mission to discover and expose Nazi spy rings that were spreading like wildfire across South America, advancing ever closer to the United States. As World War II raged, Elizabeth fought a highly classified battle of wits against Hitler’s Reich, cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine used by German spies. Meanwhile, inside an Army vault in Washington, William worked furiously to break Purple, the Japanese version of Enigma—and eventually succeeded, at a terrible cost to his personal life.

Fountain, Henry. The Great Quake: How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet. Books on Tape. ISBN 9781524774189. Read by Robert Fass.
At 5:36 p.m. on March 27, 1964, a magnitude 9.2. earthquake—the second most powerful in world history—struck the young state of Alaska. The violent shaking, followed by massive tsunamis, devastated the southern half of the state and killed more than 130 people. A day later, George Plafker, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, arrived to investigate. His fascinating scientific detective work in the months that followed helped confirm the then-controversial theory of plate tectonics.

Harford, Tim. Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy. Books on Tape. ISBN 9781524776916. Reader TBA.
Harford paints an epic picture of change in an intimate way by telling the stories of the tools, people, and ideas that had far-reaching consequences for all of us. From the plow to artificial intelligence, from Gillette’s disposable razor to IKEA’s Billy bookcase, Harford recounts each invention’s own curious, surprising, and memorable story. Invention by invention, Harford reflects on how we got here and where we might go next. He lays bare often unexpected connections: how the bar code undermined family corner stores and why the gramophone widened inequality. In the process, he introduces characters who developed some of these inventions, profited from them, and were ruined by them, as he traces the principles that helped explain their transformative effects.

Hatmaker, Jen. Of Mess and Moxie: Wrangling Delight Out of This Wild and Glorious Life. Thomas Nelson Audio. ISBN 9781536693539. Read by the author.
Hatmaker believes backbone is the birthright of every woman. Women have been demonstrating resiliency and resolve since forever. They have incredibly strong shoulders to bear loss, hope, grief, and vision. But somehow women have gotten the message that pain and failure mean they must be doing things wrong, that they messed up the rules or tricks for a seamless life. As it turns out, every last woman faces confusion and loss, missteps and catastrophic malfunctions, no matter how much she is doing “right.” Struggle doesn’t mean the’re weak; it means they’re alive. Hatmaker offers another round of hilarious tales, frank honesty, and hope for the woman who has forgotten her moxie, parlaying her own triumphs and tragedies into a sigh of relief for all normal, fierce women everywhere.

Horn, Miriam. Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland. Dreamscape. ISBN 9781520076898. Read by Chris Ciulla.
Many of the men and women doing today’s most consequential environmental work—restoring America’s grasslands, wildlife, soil, rivers, wetlands, and oceans—would not call themselves environmentalists: they would be too uneasy with the connotations of that word. What drives them is their deep love of the land—the iconic terrain where explorers and cowboys, pioneers and riverboat captains forged the American identity. They feel a moral responsibility to preserve this heritage and natural wealth. Horn tells the stories of five representatives of this stewardship movement: a Montana rancher, a Kansas farmer, a Mississippi riverman, a Louisiana shrimper, and a Gulf fisherman.

Losos, Jonathan B. Improbably Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution. Books on Tape. ISBN 9781524778569. Read by Marc Cashman.
Losos reveals what the latest breakthroughs in evolutionary biology can tell us about one of the greatest ongoing debates in science. He takes us around the globe to meet the researchers who are solving the deepest mysteries of life on Earth through their work in experimental evolutionary science. Losos himself is one of the leaders in this exciting new field, and he illustrates how experiments with guppies, fruit flies, bacteria, foxes, and field mice, along with his own work with anole lizards on Caribbean islands, are rewinding the tape of life to reveal just how rapid and predictable evolution can be.

Merchant, Nilofer. The Power of Onlyness: Make Your Wild Ideas Mighty Enough To Dent the World. Books on Tape. ISBN 9781524777739. Read by the author.
Merchant reveals that we have now reached an unprecedented moment of opportunity for your ideas to “make a dent” on the world. Now that the Internet has liberated ideas to spread through networks instead of hierarchies, power is no longer determined by your status, but by “onlyness”—that spot in the world only you stand in, a function of your distinct history and experiences, visions and hopes. If you build upon your signature ingredient of purpose and connect with those who are equally passionate, you have a lever by which to move the world. This new ability is already within your grasp, but to command it, you need to know how to meaningfully mobilize others around your ideas. Through inspirational and instructive stories, Merchant reveals proven strategies to unleash the centrifugal force of a new idea, no matter how weird or wild it may seem.

Miles, Kathryn. Quakeland: On the Road to America’s Next Devastating Earthquake. Books on Tape. ISBN 9781524776794. Reader TBA.
Earthquakes. You need to worry about them only if you’re in San Francisco, right? Wrong. We have been making enormous changes to subterranean America, and Mother Earth, as always, has been making some of her own.The consequences for our real estate, our civil engineering, and our communities will be huge because they will include earthquakes most of us do not expect and cannot imagine. Miles descends into mines in the Northwest, visits the South to see what the Army Corps of Engineers in Memphis is learning about the next major U.S. quake, uncovers the horrific risks of an earthquake in the Northeast, and interviews the people around the country who are addressing this ground-shaking threat.

Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Dreamscape. ISBN 9781520078168. Read by Don Hagen.
Nozick challenges the most commonly held political and social positions of our age—liberal, socialist, and conservative. “Individuals have rights,” Nozick writes in his opening sentence, “and there are things no person or group may do to them without violating their rights.” The work that follows that sentence is a sophisticated and passionate defense of those rights. Arguing that the state is justified only when it is severely limited to the narrow function of protection against force, theft, and fraud and of the enforcement of contracts, Nozick demonstrates that any more extensive activities undertaken by the state will inevitably violate individual rights. In addition to that passionate defense, Nozick also presents a theory of distributive justice, a model of utopia, and an integration of ethics, legal philosophy, and economic theory that will be discussed for years to come.

O’Reilly, Finbarr & Thomas J. Brennan. Shooting Ghosts: A U.S. Marine, a Combat Photographer, and Their Journey Back from War. Books on Tape. ISBN 9781524777654. Read by Mike Chamberlain & David H. Lawrence XVII
Through the unpredictability of war and its aftermath, a decorated Marine sergeant and a world-trotting war photographer became friends, their bond forged as they patrolled together through the dusty alleyways of Helmand province and camped side by side in the desert. It deepened after Sergeant Brennan was injured during a Taliban ambush, and both returned home. Brennan began to suffer from the effects of his injury and from the fallout of his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. But war correspondents experience similar rates of posttraumatic stress as combat veterans. The causes can be different, but guilt plays a prominent role in both. As we enter the fifteenth year of continuous war, it is increasingly urgent not just to document the experiences of the battlefield but also to probe the reverberations that last long after combatants and civilians have returned home, and to understand the many faces trauma takes.

Patterson, Daniel & Mandy Aftel. The Art of Flavor: Practices and Principles for Creating Delicious Food. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538433669. Read by John Lescault.
In a world awash in cooking shows, food blogs, and recipes, the art of flavor has been surprisingly neglected. The multibillion-dollar flavor industry practices its dark arts by manipulating synthetic ingredients, and home cooks are taught to wield the same blunt instruments: salt, acid, sugar, heat. But foods in their natural state are infinitely more nuanced than the laboratory can replicate—and offer far greater possibilities for deliciousness. Chef Patterson and natural perfumer Aftel are experts at orchestrating ingredients, and here they teach listeners how to make the most of nature’s palette via mind-opening and palate-expanding tools and principles: the four basic rules for creating flavor; a flavor “compass” that points the way to transformative combinations of aromatic ingredients; learning to deploy cooking methods for maximum effect; and mastering the seven “dials” that let you fine-tune a dish.

Roscher, Ellie. Play Like a Girl: How a Soccer School in Kenya’s Slums Started a Revolution. Dreamscape. ISBN 9781520076515. Read by Katherine Fenton.
Growing up and living in Kibera, Kenya, Abdul Kassim was well aware of the disproportionate number of challenges faced by women due to the extreme gender inequalities that persist in the slums. After being raised by his aunts, his mother, and his grandmother and having a daughter himself, he felt that he needed to make a difference. In 2002, Kassim started a soccer team for girls called Girls Soccer in Kibera (GSK), with the hope of fostering a supportive community and providing emotional and mental support for the young women in the town. The soccer program was a success, but the looming dangers of slum life persisted, and the young women continued to fall victim to the worst kinds of human atrocities. Indeed, it was the unyielding injustice of these conditions that led Kassim to the conclusion that soccer alone was not enough to create the systemic changes needed. In 2006, the Kibera Girls Soccer Academy (KGSA) was established to begin to help create those changes, and it continues its work today.

Sancton, Tom. The Bettencourt Affair: The World’s Richest Woman and the Scandal That Rocked Paris. Books on Tape. ISBN 9781524776831. Read by Amanda Carlin.
Liliane Bettencourt is the world’s richest woman and the eleventh wealthiest person on the planet, as of 2016. But at 94, she’s embroiled in an incredible controversy that has dominated the headlines and ensnared a former president of France in the controversy. Why? Thanks to an artist and photographer named François-Marie Banier, who was given hundreds of millions of dollars by Liliane. Liliane’s daughter, Françoise, considers Banier a con man and filed a lawsuit against him, but Banier has a far different story to tell. It’s all become Europe’s biggest scandal in years, uncovering a shadowy corporate history, buried World War II secrets, illicit political payoffs, and much more.

Watson, James D., Andrew Berry, & Kevin Davies. DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution. Books on Tape. ISBN 9781524757120. Reader TBA.
Having shown that the secret of life is chemical, modern genetics has set mankind off on a journey unimaginable just a few decades ago. Watson provides the general reader with clear explanations of molecular processes and emerging technologies. He shows us how DNA continues to alter our understanding of human origins, and of our identities as groups and as individuals. And with the insight of one who has remained close to every advance in research since the double helix, he reveals how genetics has unleashed a wealth of possibilities to alter the human condition—from genetically modified foods to genetically modified babies—and transformed itself from a domain of pure research into one of big business as well. It is a sometimes topsy-turvy world full of great minds and great egos, driven by ambitions to improve the human condition as well as to improve investment portfolios.

Acuff, Jon. Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525499312. Read by the author.
Acuff shows chronic starters how to actually finish their goals in an age of bottomless distractions and endless opportunities. Acuff knows the reason why many writers’ novels go unfinished—it’s the same reason why gyms are filled in the first week of January, and empty by the end of the month, and why people stop learning a new language once they get past the easy parts. It’s not just that people lose momentum or get distracted. People give up on projects when they fail to live up to their own high expectations and decide that if they can’t do something perfectly they won’t do it at all. If you’re going to finish, you have to kill perfectionism.

Andersen, Kurt. Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525528159. Read by the author.
Over the course of five centuries—from the Salem witch trials to Scientology to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, from conspiracy theories to our fetish for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials—our peculiar love of the fantastic has made America exceptional in a way that we’ve never fully acknowledged.From the start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams and epic fantasies—every citizen was free to believe absolutely anything, or to pretend to be absolutely anybody. Little by little, and then more quickly in the last several decades, the American invent-your-own-reality legacy of the Enlightenment superseded its more sober, rational, and empirical parts.

Beck, Joseph Madison. My Father and Atticus Finch. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501948589. Read by Tom Stechschulte.
The story of Foster Beck, the author’s late father, whose defense of a black man accused of rape in 1930s Alabama foreshadowed the trial at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird. As a child, Joseph Beck heard the stories—when other lawyers came up with excuses, his father courageously defended a black man charged with raping a white woman. Now a lawyer himself, Beck reconstructs his father’s role in State of Alabama v. Charles White, Alias, a trial that was much publicized when Harper Lee was 12 years old.

Blum, Ben. Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family, and an Inexplicable Crime. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780804166072. Read by Johnathan McClain.
Alex Blum was a good kid with one goal in life: to become a U.S. Army Ranger. In the first hours of his final leave before deployment to Iraq, Alex was supposed to fly home to see his family and beloved girlfriend. Instead, he got into his car with two fellow soldiers and two strangers, drove to a local bank in Tacoma, and committed armed robbery. At first, Alex insisted he thought the robbery was just another exercise in the famously daunting Ranger program. His attorney presented a case based on the theory that the Ranger indoctrination mirrored that of a cult. In the midst of his own personal crisis, and in the hopes of helping both Alex and his splintering family cope, Blum, Alex’s first cousin, delved into these mysteries, growing closer to Alex in the process.

Bouffard, Suzanne. The Most Important Year: Pre-Kindergarten and the Future of Our Children. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525498292. Read by Therese Plummer.
Bouffard takes us inside some of the country’s best pre-K classrooms to reveal the sometimes surprising ingredients that make them work—and to understand why some programs are doing the opposite of what is best for children. It also chronicles the stories of families and teachers from many backgrounds as they struggle to give their children a good start in school.

Brown, Brene. Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage To Stand Alone. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525494904. Reader TBA.
Brown argues that we’re experiencing a spiritual crisis of disconnection, and introduces four practices of true belonging that challenge everything we believe about ourselves and each other.

Dean, Josh. The Taking of K-129: How the CIA Used Howard Hughes to Steal a Russian Sub in the Most Daring Covert Operation in History. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525499725. Read by Neil Hellegers.
A true tale of espionage and engineering set at the height of the Cold War—a mix between The Hunt for Red October and Argo—about how the CIA, the U.S. Navy, and America’s most eccentric mogul spent six years and nearly a billion dollars to steal the nuclear-armed Soviet submarine K-129 after it had sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean; all while the Russians were watching.

Guillebeau, Chris. Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525498896. Read by the author.
What if we could quickly and easily create an additional stream of income without giving up the security of a full-time job? Enter the side hustle. Chris Guillebeau is no stranger to this world, having launched more than a dozen side hustles over his career. Here, he offers a step-by-step guide that takes you from idea to income in just 27 days. Designed for the busy and impatient, this detailed roadmap will show you how to select, launch, refine, and make money from your side hustle in under a month.

Hanson, Jason. Survive Like a Spy: Real CIA Operatives Reveal How They Stay Safe in a Dangerous World and How You Can Too. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525500667. Read by the author.
High-stakes techniques and survival secrets from real intelligence officers in life-or-death situations around the world. Everyone loves a good spy story, but most of the ones we hear are fictional. That’s because the most dangerous and important spycraft is done in secret, often hidden in plain sight. In this powerful new book, bestselling author and former CIA officer Hanson takes the reader deep inside the world of espionage, revealing true stories and expert tactics from real agents engaged in life-threatening missions around the world.

Headlee, Celeste. We Need To Talk: How To Have Conversations That Matter. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538454503. Reader TBA.
Today most of us communicate from behind electronic screens, and studies show that Americans feel less connected and more divided than ever before. The blame for some of this disconnect can be attributed to our political landscape, but the erosion of our conversational skills as a society lies with us as individuals. And the only way forward, says Headlee, is to start talking to each other. She outlines strategies that have made her a better conversationalist—and offers simple tools that can improve anyone’s communication.

Kiernan, Denise. The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home. Brilliance. ISBN 9781501238253. Reader TBA.
Orphaned at a young age, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser claimed lineage from one of New York’s best known families. She grew up in Newport and Paris, and her engagement and marriage to George Vanderbilt was one of the most watched events of Gilded Age society. But none of this prepared her to be mistress of Biltmore House. Before their marriage, the wealthy and bookish Vanderbilt had dedicated his life to creating a spectacular European-style estate on 125,000 acres of North Carolina wilderness. Newlywed Edith was now mistress of an estate nearly three times the size of Washington, DC and benefactress of the village and surrounding rural area. The story of Biltmore spans World Wars, the Jazz Age, the Depression, and features a captivating cast of real-life characters including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Teddy Roosevelt, John Singer Sargent, James Whistler, Henry James, and Edith Wharton.

Markham, Lauren. The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525495765. Read by Cassandra Campbell.
Growing up in rural El Salvador in the wake of the civil war, Ernesto Flores had always had a fascination with the United States, the distant land of skyscrapers and Nikes, while his identical twin, Raul, never felt that northbound tug. But when Ernesto ends up on the wrong side of the region’s brutal gangs he is forced to flee the country, and Raul, because he looks just like his brother, follows close behind. Journalist Markham follows the 17-year-old Flores twins as they make their harrowing journey across the Rio Grande and the Texas desert, into the hands of immigration authorities, and from there to their estranged older brother’s custody in Oakland, CA. Soon these unaccompanied minors are navigating a new school in a new language, working to pay down their mounting coyote debt, and facing their day in immigration court, while also encountering the triumphs and pitfalls of life as American teenagers—girls, grades, Facebook—with only each other for support.

Markova, Dawna & Angie McArthur. Reconcilable Differences: Connecting in a Disconnected World. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525525417. Read by Ellen Archer.
You know what it feels like to be “at odds” with someone. Sometimes it seems like you are speaking completely different languages. Cognitive neuroscientist Markova and communication expert McArthur have spent years developing and implementing tools to help people find common ground. Here they provide the strategies you need to bridge the gap at the heart of your differences with others.

McGovern, Marion. Thriving in the Gig Economy. Blackstone. ISBN 9781536689334. Read by Teri Schnaubelt.
The new “gig economy” seems to constantly be in the news. But most of the media focus is on the low end of the skill spectrum; little attention is being paid to the best-in-class professionals who have chosen an independent path. New digital talent platforms are developing at a rapid clip with a wide variety of business models, many catering to very precise, high-value skill sets. This actionable guidebook outlines ways to maneuver in this new world to create a path that optimizes success.

McPhee, John. Draft No. 4. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501962554. Read by the author.
McPhee shares insights he’s gathered over his career and refined during his long-running course at Princeton University, where he has launched some of the most esteemed writers of several generations. He offers a definitive guide to the crucial decisions regarding structure, diction, and tone that shape nonfiction pieces, and presents extracts from some of his best-loved work, subjecting them to wry scrutiny.

Mendelsohn, Daniel. An Odyssey: A Father, a Song, and an Epic. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525500285. Read by Bronson Pinchot.
When81-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enroll in the undergraduate Odyssey seminar his son teaches at Bard College, the two find themselves on an adventure as profoundly emotional as it is intellectual. For Jay, a retired research scientist, this return to the classroom is his “one last chance” to learn the great literature he’d neglected in his youth—and, even more, a final opportunity to more fully understand his son, a writer and classicist. But through the sometimes uncomfortable months that the two men explore Homer’s great work together—first in the classroom, where Jay persistently challenges his son’s interpretations, and then during a surprise-filled Mediterranean journey retracing Odysseus’s famous voyages—it becomes clear that Daniel has much to learn, too: Jay’s responses to both the text and the travels gradually uncover long-buried secrets that allow the son to understand his difficult father at last.

Rubin, Gretchen. The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People’s Lives Better, Too). Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525496281. Read by the author.
During her multibook investigation into understand human nature, Rubin realized that by asking the seemingly dry question “How do I respond to expectations?” we gain explosive self-knowledge. She discovered that based on their answer, people fit into Four Tendencies: Upholders, Questioners, Obligers, and Rebels. Our Tendency shapes every aspect of our behavior, so using this framework allows us to make better decisions, meet deadlines, suffer less stress, and engage more effectively.

Rydahl, Malene. Happy as a Dane: 10 Secrets of the Happiest People in the World. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501972485. Read by Hillary Huber.
For decades Denmark has ranked at the top of the world’s happiness surveys. How is it that these 5.6 million Danes are so content when they live in a country that is dark and cold nine months of the year and where income taxes are at almost 60 percent? At a time when talk across the Western world is focused on unemployment woes, government overreach, and anti-taxation lobbies, our Danish counterparts seem to breathe a healthier and fresher air. Interweaving anecdotes and research, Rydahl explores how the values of trust, education, and a healthy work-life balance with purpose contribute to a happy population.

Schreier, Jason. Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538453933. Read by Ray Chase.
Developing video games—hero’s journey or fool’s errand? The creative and technical logistics that go into building today’s hottest games can be more harrowing and complex than the games themselves, often seeming like an endless maze or a bottomless abyss. Schreier takes listeners on a fascinating odyssey behind the scenes of video game development, where the creator may be a team of 600 overworked underdogs or a solitary geek genius. Exploring the artistic challenges, technical impossibilities, marketplace demands, and monkey wrenches thrown into the works by corporate, the work reveals how bringing any game to completion is more than Sisyphean—it’s nothing short of miraculous.

Sokolove, Michael. Drama High: The Incredible True Story of a Brilliant Teacher, a Struggling Town, and the Magic of Theater. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525589600. Read by Mark Deakins.
Why would the multimillionaire producer of Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, and Miss Saigon take his limo from Manhattan to the struggling former steel town of Levittown, PA, to see a high school production of Les Misérables? To see the show performed by the astoundingly successful theater company at Harry S Truman High School, run by its legendary director, Lou Volpe. Volpe’s students go on to become Emmy-winning producers, entertainment executives, newscasters, and community-theater founders.Sokolove, a Levittown native and former student of Volpe’s, chronicles the drama director’s last school years and follows a group of student actors as they work through riveting dramas both on and off the stage.

Thomas, Rosanne J. Excuse Me: The Survival Guide to Modern Business Etiquette. Blackstone. ISBN 9781536663280. Read by Teri Schnaubelt.
Blending different generations, genders, and cultures brings energy and fresh perspectives to the workplace. But the flip side is an environment ripe for confusion and social blunders. Mix in increasingly open-plan workplaces and constant connectivity, and the chance that we’ll unintentionally annoy or offend others increases exponentially. Exactly what are the rules these days? Merging classic rules of behavior with new realities of modern business, Thomas spotlights dozens of puzzling situations, with suggestions for bridging divides.

Zomorodi, Manoush. Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self. Macmillan Audio. ISBN 9781427287427. Read by the author.
Has your smartphone become your BFF? Do you feel bored when you’re not checking Facebook or Instagram? Do you feel that the constant ping of social networks is sapping your creativity and ability to think? In 2015, Note To Self podcast host Zomorodi led thousands of her listeners with the same problems through a week of experiments designed to help them rethink their technology habits, unplug for part of each week and jumpstart their creativity. Here she explains the connection between boredom and being unplugged and how that state of mind can ignite original thinking. Through interviews with scientists, famous artists, and regular people, Zomorodi explores why putting greater emphasis on “doing nothing” is vital in an age of constant notifications and digital distractions. She speaks with scientists who have researched the links between boredom and creativity. She also explores how we can harness boredom’s hidden benefits to become our most productive selves.

Arntfeld, Michael. Mad City: The True Story of the Campus Murders that America Forgot. Brilliance. ISBN 9781536666342. Read by Jonathan Davis.
In fall 1967, friends Linda Tomaszewski and Christine Rothschild are freshmen at the University of Wisconsin. The students in the hippie college town of Madison are letting down their hair—and their guards. But amid the peace rallies lurks a killer. When Christine’s body is found, her murder sends shockwaves across college campuses, and the Age of Aquarius gives way to a decade of terror. Linda knows the killer, but when police ignore her pleas, he slips away. For the next 40 years, Linda embarks on a cross-country quest to find him. When she discovers a book written by the murderer’s mother, she learns Christine was not his first victim—or his last. The slayings continue, and a single perpetrator emerges: the Capital City Killer. As police focus on this new lead, Linda receives a disturbing note from the madman himself. Can she stop him before he kills again?

Blakeslee, Nate. American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525493297. Read by Mark Bramhall.
Once abundant in North America, wolves were hunted to near extinction in the lower 48 states by the 1920s. But in recent decades, conservationists have brought wolves back to the Rockies, igniting a battle over the very soul of the West. Blakeslee tells the story of one of these wolves, O-Six, a charismatic alpha female named for the year of her birth. Uncommonly powerful, with gray fur and faint black ovals around each eye, O-Six is a kind and merciful leader, a fiercely intelligent fighter, and a doting mother. She is beloved by wolf watchers, and becomes something of a social media star, with followers around the world. But as she raises her pups and protects her pack, O-Six is challenged on all fronts: by hunters, who compete with wolves for the elk they both prize; by cattle ranchers who are losing livestock and have the ear of politicians; and by other Yellowstone wolves who are vying for control of the park’s stunningly beautiful Lamar Valley.

Brantmark, Niki. Lagom: Not Too Little, Not Too Much: The Swedish Art of Living a Balanced, Happy Life. HarperAudio. ISBN 9781538479629. Reader TBA.
Derived from the Swedish phrase Lagom är bäst, meaning “the right amount is best; in moderation, in balance,” lagom is a deeply held philosophy closely tied to the Swedish cultural and social ideology of fairness and equality. Deeply ingrained in the Swedish psyche, lagom is about enjoying balance in every aspect of life—from work and leisure to family and food and everything in between.

Chernow, Ron. Grant. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525529224. Read by Mark Bramhall.
Ulysses S. Grant’s life has typically been misunderstood. All too often he is caricatured as a chronic loser and an inept businessman, or as the triumphant but brutal Union general of the Civil War. But these stereotypes don’t come close to capturing him, as Chernow shows in this biography, the first to provide a complete understanding of the general and president whose fortunes rose and fell with dizzying speed and frequency.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525494829. Reader TBA.
“We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. Now Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s “first white president.” But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period—and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation’s old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective—the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president.

Dauber, Jeremy. Jewish Comedy: A Serious History. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538432143. Read by the author.
Dauber traces the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from Biblical times to the age of Twitter. Organizing his book thematically into what he calls the seven strands of Jewish comedy—including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar—Dauber explores the ways Jewish comedy has dealt with persecution, assimilation, and diaspora through the ages. He explains the rise and fall of popular comic archetypes such as the Jewish mother, the JAP, and the schlemiel and schlimazel. And he explores an enormous range of comic masterpieces, from Talmudic rabbi jokes, Yiddish satires, Borscht Belt skits, Seinfeld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm to the work of such masters as Sholem Aleichem, Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Joan Rivers, Philip Roth, Sarah Silverman, and Jon Stewart.

Doughty, Caitlin. From Here to Eternity. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501973932. Read by the author.
Fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies, mortician Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for their dead. In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather’s mummified body.She meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette-smoking, wish-granting human skulls), and introduces us to a Japanese kotsuage, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved ones’ bones from cremation ashes. With curiosity and morbid humor, Doughty encounters vividly decomposed bodies and participates in compelling, powerful death practices almost entirely unknown in America.

Duncan, Mike. The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic. Hachette Audio. ISBN 9781549167775. Read by the author.
The creator of the podcast series The History of Rome brings to life the story of the tumultuous years that set the stage for the fall of the Roman Republic. The Roman Republic was one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of civilization. After its founding in 509 BCE, it grew from an unremarkable Italian city-state to the dominant superpower of the Mediterranean world. Through it all, the Romans never allowed a single man to seize control of the state. But then Rome exploded out of Italy and began to conquer a world filled with petty tyrants, barbarian chieftains, and despotic kings, and the very success of the Republic proved to be its undoing.

Elnoury, Tamer & Kevin Maurer. American Radical: Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525589518. Read by Peter Ganim.
A longtime undercover agent, Tamer Elnoury joined an elite counterterrorism unit after September 11. Its express purpose is to gain the trust of terrorists whose goals are to take out as many Americans in as public and as devastating a way possible. It’s a furious race against the clock for Tamer and his unit to stop them before they can implement their plans. Yet as new as this war still is, the techniques are as old as time: listen, record, and prove terrorist intent. Because of his ongoing work for the FBI, Elnoury writes under a pseudonym.

Farzad, Roben. Hotel Scarface: Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525498674. Read by Jonathan Davis.
In the seventies, coke hit Miami with the full force of a hurricane, and no place attracted dealers and dopers like Coconut Grove’s Mutiny at Sailboat Bay. Hollywood royalty, rock stars, and models flocked to the hotel’s club to order bottle after bottle of champagne and to snort lines alongside narcos, hit men, and gunrunners, all while marathon orgies burned upstairs in elaborate fantasy suites. Amid the boatloads of powder and cash reigned the new kings of Miami: three waves of Cuban immigrants vying to dominate the trafficking of one of the most lucrative commodities ever known to man. But as the kilos—and bodies—began to pile up, the Mutiny became target number one for law enforcement.

Feldman, Noah. The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525526025. Reader TBA.
Over the course of his life, James Madison changed the United States three times: First, he designed the Constitution, led the struggle for its adoption and ratification, then drafted the Bill of Rights. As an older, cannier politician he co-founded the original Republican party, setting the course of American political partisanship. Finally, having pioneered a foreign policy based on economic sanctions, he took the United States into a high-risk conflict, becoming the first wartime president and, despite the odds, winning.

Gaines, Chip. Capital Gaines. Brilliance. ISBN 9781543637328. Reader TBA.
Long before the world took notice, Gaines was a serial entrepreneur who was always ready for the next challenge, even if it didn’t quite work out as planned. Whether it was buying a neighborhood laundromat or talking a bank into a loan for some equipment to start a lawn-mowing service, Chip always knew that the most important thing was to take that first step. Here he relives some of his craziest antics and the lessons learned along the way.

Gates, Henry Louis Jr. 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro. Books on Tape. ISBN 9781524755331. Read by the author.
The first edition of Joel Augustus Rogers’s now legendary 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof, published in 1957, was billed as “A Negro ‘Believe It or Not.’” Rogers’s little book was priceless because he was delivering enlightenment and pride, steeped in historical research, to a people too long starved on the lie that they were worth nothing. But Rogers was not always shy about embellishing the “facts” and minimizing ambiguity. Here Gates gives us a corrective yet loving homage to Roger’s work. Relying on the latest scholarship, Gates leads us on a romp through African, diasporic, and African American history in question-and-answer format. Among the one hundred questions: Who were Africa’s first ambassadors to Europe? Why did free black people living in the South before the end of the Civil War stay there? Who was the first black head of state in modern Western history?

Gessen, Masha. The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525497950. Read by the author.
Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own—as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings. Gessen charts their paths against the machinations of the regime that would crush them all, and against the war it waged on understanding itself, which ensured the unobstructed reemergence of the old Soviet order in the form of today’s terrifying and seemingly unstoppable mafia state.

Giovanni, Nikki. A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter. HarperAudio. ISBN 9781538455524. Reader TBA.
Giovanni describes the joy and peril of aging and recalls the violence that permeated her parents’ marriage and her early life. She pays homage to the people who have given her life meaning and joy: her grandparents, who took her in and saved her life; the poets and thinkers who have influenced her; and the students who have surrounded her. Nikki also celebrates her good friend, Maya Angelou, and the many years of friendship, poetry, and kitchen-table laughter they shared before Angelou’s death in 2014.

Gubser, Steven S. & Frans Pretorius. The Little Book of Black Holes. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501976636. Reader TBA.
After introducing the basics of the special and general theories of relativity, this book describes black holes both as astrophysical objects and theoretical “laboratories” in which physicists can test their understanding of gravitational, quantum, and thermal physics. From Schwarzschild black holes to rotating and colliding black holes, and from gravitational radiation to Hawking radiation and information loss, Gubser and Pretorius use creative thought experiments and analogies to explain their subject accessibly. They also describe the decades-long quest to observe the universe in gravitational waves, which recently resulted in the LIGO observatories’ detection of the distinctive gravitational wave “chirp” of two colliding black holes—the first direct observation of black holes’ existence.

Hadeed, Kristen. Permission to Screw Up: How I Learned to Lead by Doing (Almost) Everything Wrong. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525499374. Read by the author.
Hadeed unintentionally launched Student Maid, a cleaning company that hires students, while attending the University of Florida in 2007. Since then, Student Maid has employed hundreds of people and is widely recognized for its industry-leading retention rate and its culture of trust, accountability, and compassion. But Kristen and her company were no overnight sensa­tion. In fact, they were almost nothing at all. A few months into her new venture, disaster struck when 75 percent of her cleaning team quit on the same day. The mistakes leading to that mass walkout weren’t her first, and definitely wouldn’t be her last. But that hu­miliating experience sparked her obsession with learn­ing how to be a better leader and inspired her to make Student Maid a place her people couldn’t imagine leaving.

Haramis, Nick, ed. Courage Is Contagious: And Other Reasons To Be Grateful for Michelle Obama. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525527961. Reader TBA.
Haramis has assembled 19 essays from prizewinning writers, Hollywood stars, and political leaders—all of whom have been moved and influenced by Mrs. Obama’s extraordinary example of grace in power. Here are original testimonials from Gloria Steinem, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Alice Waters, and Charlamagne tha God, among others. Presidential biographer Jon Meacham supplies historical perspective. Actress Tracee Ellis Ross suggests that Mrs. Obama “provided an antidote to all the false representations of black women that have inundated us for centuries.” Anna Wintour and designer Jason Wu celebrate the former first lady’s impact as an international fashion icon. Two eighth-grade girls—one in training to be a boxer—talk about how Mrs. Obama has emboldened them to be themselves.

Harden, Blaine. King of Spies: The Dark Reign of America’s Spymaster in Korea. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525500063. Read by Mark Bramhall.
In 1946, master sergeant Donald Nichols was repairing jeeps on the sleepy island of Guam when he caught the eye of recruiters from the army’s Counter Intelligence Corps. Though he lacked the pedigree of most U.S. spies—Nichols was a 7th grade dropout—he quickly metamorphosed from army mechanic to black ops phenomenon. He insinuated himself into the affections of America’s chosen puppet in South Korea, President Syngman Rhee, and became a pivotal player in the Korean War. But Nichols’s triumphs had a dark side. Immersed in a world of torture and beheadings, he became a spymaster with his own secret base, his own covert army, and his own rules. He recruited agents from refugee camps and prisons, sending many to their deaths on reckless missions. His closeness to Rhee meant that he witnessed—and did nothing to stop or even report—the slaughter of tens of thousands of South Korean civilians in anticommunist purges.

Howard, David. Chasing Phil: The Adventures of Two Undercover Agents with the World’s Most Charming Con Man. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525499213. Reader TBA.
1977, the Thunderbird Motel. J.J. Wedick and Jack Brennan—two fresh-faced, maverick FBI agents—were about to embark on one of their agency’s first wire-wearing undercover missions. Their target? Charismatic, globetrotting con man Phil Kitzer, possibly the world’s greatest swindler. But as the young agents, playing the role of proteges and co-conspirators, became further entangled in Phil’s outrageous schemes over their months on the road, they also grew to respect him—even care for him. Meanwhile, Phil began to think of Jack and J.J. as best friends, sharing hotel rooms and inside jokes with them. Plunging into the field with no undercover training, the agents battled a creaky bureaucracy on their adventures with Phil, hoping the FBI would recognize the importance of their mission. Even as they grew closer to Phil, they recognized that their endgame—the swindler’s arrest—was drawing near.

Jacobs, Alan. How To Think. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525500124. Reader TBA.
Most of us don’t want to think, Jacobs writes. Thinking is trouble. Thinking can force us out of familiar, comforting habits, and it can complicate our relationships with like-minded friends. Finally, thinking is slow, and that’s a problem when our habits of consuming information (mostly online) leave us lost in the spin cycle of social media, partisan bickering, and confirmation bias. Jacobs diagnoses the many forces that act on us to prevent thinking—forces that have only worsened in the age of Twitter, “alternative facts,” and information overload—and he also dispels the many myths we hold about what it means to think well. Jacobs digs into the nuts and bolts of the cognitive process, offering hope that each of us can reclaim our mental lives from the impediments that plague us all.

Lloyd, Jason. The Blueprint: LeBron James, Cleveland’s Deliverance, and the Making of the Modern NBA. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525499701. Reader TBA.
In 2010, LeBron James left the Cleveland Cavaliers. That same year, Lloyd began to cover the team for the Akron Beacon Journal, LeBron’s hometown newspaper. The story he uncovered started as a tragedy but ended in incredible triumph. Back in 2010, starting in the days, weeks, and months after LeBron left, the Cavs hatched a plan to get LeBron back. The plan was daring, audacious, and spectacularly successful. It incorporated several losing seasons, some highly risky draft picks, and an entirely new understanding of how championship teams are built and maintained.

Mahnke, Aaron. The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525595281. Read by the author.
They live in shadows—deep in the forest, late in the night, in the dark recesses of our minds. They’re spoken of in stories and superstitions, relics of an unenlightened age, old wives’ tales, passed down through generations. Yet no matter how wary and jaded we have become, as individuals or as a society, a part of us remains vulnerable to them: werewolves and wendigos, poltergeists and vampires, angry elves and vengeful spirits. The host of the hit podcast Lore serves as a guide on a fascinating journey through the history of these terrifying creatures, exploring not only the legends but what they tell us about ourselves.

Mandela, Nelson & Mandla Langa. Dare Not Linger. Macmillan Audio. ISBN 9781427292353. Reader TBA.
This is the story of Mandela’s presidency, drawing heavily on the memoir he began to write as he prepared to finish his term as president, but was unable to finish. Now the acclaimed South African writer Langa has completed the task using Mandela’s unfinished draft, detailed notes that Mandela made as events were unfolding, and a wealth of previously unseen archival material.

Merriman, John. Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits: The Crime Spree That Gripped Belle Epoque Paris. Blackstone. ISBN 9781549195372. Reader TBA.
Paris, 1911. The Bonnot Gang, led by the coarse Jules Bonnot, captured the minds of a nation with their Robin Hood-esque capers. With guns blazing, the Bonnot Gang robbed banks and wealthy Parisians and killed anyone who got in their way in spectacularly cinematic fashion—all in the name of their particular brand of anarchism. Merriman describes the Bonnot Gang’s murderous tear and the Parisian police force’s botched efforts to stop them. At the heart of the book are two anarchist idealists who wanted to find an alternative to Bonnot’s crimes and the French government’s unchecked violence: Victor Kibaltchiche and Rirette Maîtrejean.

Mipham, Sakyong. The Lost Art of Good Conversation. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525496250. Reader TBA.
In a world of iPhones, social media, and email, we are all in constant connection with one another. Then why are so many people feeling burned out, distant from colleagues, and abandoned by family and friends? Mipham uses the basic principles of the Shambhala tradition—-meditation and a sincere belief in the inherent wisdom, compassion, and courage of all beings—to help readers to listen and speak more mindfully with loved ones, co-workers, strangers, and even ourselves. Mipham provides inspiring ideas and practical tips on how to be more present in your day-to-day life, helping us to communicate in ways that elevates the dignity of everyone involved.

Montillo, Roseanne. Fire on the Track: Betty Robinson and the Triumph of the Early Olympic Women. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780451482525. Read by Adenrele Ojo.
When Betty Robinson assumed the starting position at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, she was participating in what was only her fourth-ever organized track meet. She crossed the finish line as a gold medalist and the fastest woman in the world. But at the top of her game, her career (and life) almost came to a tragic end when a plane she and her cousin were piloting crashed. Betty, once a natural runner who always coasted to victory, soon found herself fighting to walk. While Betty was recovering, the other women of track and field were given the chance to shine in the Los Angeles Games, building on Betty’s pioneering role. Stars like Babe Didrikson and Stella Walsh showed the world what women could do. And—miraculously—through grit and countless hours of training, Betty earned her way onto the 1936 Olympic team, again locking her sights on gold as she and her American teammates went up against the German favorites in Hitler’s Berlin.

Okeowo, Alexis. A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa. Blackstone. ISBN 9781478997023. Reader TBA.
Okeowo weaves together four narratives that form a powerful tapestry of modern Africa: a young couple, kidnap victims of Joseph Kony’s LRA; a Mauritanian waging a lonely campaign against modern-day slavery; a women’s basketball team flourishing amid war-torn Somalia; and a vigilante who takes up arms against the extremist group Boko Haram. This debut book illuminates the inner lives of ordinary people doing the extraordinary—lives that are too often hidden, underreported, or ignored by the rest of the world.

Orth, Maureen. Vulgar Favors: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525591986. Reader TBA.
Two months before Gianni Versace was murdered on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion by Andrew Cunanan, Orth was investigating the serial killer for Vanity Fair. Culled from interviews with more than 400 people and insights from thousands of pages of police reports, Orth tells the complete story of Cunanan, his unwitting victims, and the moneyed, hedonistic world in which they lived and died. She reveals how Cunanan met his superstar victim, why police and the FBI repeatedly failed to catch Cunanan, and why other victims’ families stonewalled the investigation, as well as the controversial findings of the Versace autopsy report.

Puchner, Martin. The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525524588. Read by Arthur Morey.
At the heart of this book are works, some long-lost and rediscovered, that have shaped civilization: the first written masterpiece, the Epic of Gilgamesh; Ezra’s Hebrew Bible, created as scripture; the teachings of Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus; and the first great novel in world literature, The Tale of Genji, written by a Japanese woman known as Murasaki. Visiting Baghdad, Puchner tells of Scheherazade and the stories of One Thousand and One Nights, and in the Americas we watch the astonishing survival of the Maya epic Popol Vuh. Cervantes, who invented the modern novel, battles pirates both real (when he is taken prisoner) and literary (when a fake sequel to Don Quixote is published). Puchner also chronicles the inventions—writing technologies, the printing press, the book itself—that have shaped religion, politics, commerce, people, and history.

Stavis, Rachel H. Sister of Darkness: The Chronicles of a Modern Exorcist. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538455708. Reader TBA.
As a secular exorcist, Stavis has cleansed thousands of tormented people. But for many years, the horror screenwriter and novelist denied her gift. As a little girl, she began to see “monsters” floating around her bedroom or attached to other children. Told it was only her imagination, Stavis learned to mute the things she saw. But a series of events in adulthood forced her to acknowledge her unique ability and embrace her power to heal. Since then, Rachel has dedicated her life to helping others dispel these forces feeding off of us. Performing her services pro bono, she quietly worked in the shadows, until she unknowingly revealed her work to a journalist, who told her story to NPR.

Taibbi, Matt. I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780735288157. Read by Dominic Hoffman.
On July 17, 2014, a43-year-old black man named Eric Garner died on a Staten Island sidewalk after a police officer put him in what has been described as an illegal chokehold during an arrest for selling bootleg cigarettes. The final moments of Garner’s life were captured on video and seen by millions. His agonized last words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for the nascent Black Lives Matter protest movement. A grand jury ultimately declined to indict the officer who wrestled Garner to the pavement. Taibbi’s deeply reported retelling of these events liberates Eric Garner from the abstractions of newspaper accounts and lets us see the man in full—with all his flaws and contradictions intact.

Telfer, Tori. Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History. Dreamscape. ISBN 9781520081618. Read by Sarah Mollo-Christensen.
When you think of serial killers throughout history, the names that come to mind are likely Jack the Ripper, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy. But what about Tillie Klimek, Moulay Hassan, and Kate Bender? Although largely forgotten by history, female serial killers rival their male counterparts in cunning, cruelty, and appetite. Each chapter explores the crimes and history of a different female serial killer and then proceeds to unpack her legacy and her portrayal in the media as well as the stereotypes and sexist cliches that inevitably surround her.

Tucker, Reed. Slugfest: Inside the Epic 50-Year Battle Between Marvel and DC. Blackstone. ISBN 9781478997405. Reader TBA.
The most bruising battle in the superhero world isn’t between spandex-clad characters; it’s between the publishers themselves. For more than 50 years, Marvel and DC have been locked in an epic war, tirelessly trading punches and trying to do to each other what Batman regularly does to the Joker’s face. This is the story of the greatest corporate rivalry never told. It is also an alternate history of the superhero, told through the lens of these two publishers.

Aslan, Reza. God: A Human History. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525524663. Read by the author.
Aslan narrates the history of religion as one long and remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. According to Aslan, this innate desire to humanize God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. But this projection is not without consequences. We bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature—our compassion, our thirst for justice—but all that is bad in it: our greed, our bigotry, our penchant for violence.

Bacon, John U. The Great Halifax Explosion. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538455913. Reader TBA.
On Monday, December 3, 1917, the French freighter SS Mont-Blanc set sail from Brooklyn carrying the largest cache of explosives ever loaded onto a ship. The United States had just recently entered World War I, and the ordnance was bound for the battlefields of France. The explosives were so dangerous that Captain Aimé Le Medec took unprecedented safety measures, including banning the crew from smoking, lighting matches, or even touching a drop of liquor. Sailing north, the Mont-Blanc faced deadly danger, enduring a terrifying snowstorm off the coast of Maine and evading stealthy enemy U-boats hunting the waters of the Atlantic. But it was in Nova Scotia that an extraordinary disaster awaited. As the Mont-Blanc waited to dock in Halifax, it was struck by a Norwegian relief ship, the Imo, charging out of port. A small fire on the freighter’s deck caused by the impact ignited the explosives below, resulting in a horrific blast that, in one fifteenth of a second, leveled 325 acres of Halifax—killing more than one thousand people and wounding nine thousand more.

Berwald, Juli. Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone. ISBN 9780525498018. Read by the author.
Jellyfish are an enigma. They have no centralized brain, but they see and feel and react to their environment in complex ways. They look simple, yet their propulsion systems are so advanced that engineers are just learning how to mimic them. They produce some of the deadliest toxins on the planet and still remain undeniably alluring. As unprecedented jellyfish blooms topple ecosystems and collapse the world’s most productive fisheries, it was unclear was whether these incidents were symptoms of a changing planet or part of a natural cycle. Berwald travels the globe to meet the scientists who devote their careers to jellies; hitches rides on Japanese fishing boats to see giant jellyfish in the wild; raises jellyfish in her dining room; and throughout it all marvels at the complexity of these fascinating and ominous biological wonders.

Chown, Marcus. The Ascent of Gravity: The Quest To Understand the Force That Explains Everything. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525624370. Read by Adjoa Andoh.
Gravity is the weakest force in the everyday world yet it is the strongest force in the universe. It was the first force to be recognized and described yet it is the least understood. It is a “force,” that keeps your feet on the ground—yet no such force actually exists. Gravity, to steal the words of Winston Churchill, is “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” And penetrating that enigma promises to answer the biggest questions in science: what is space? What is time? What is the universe? And where did it all come from?

Lacy, Sarah. A Uterus Is a Feature, Not a Bug. HarperAudio. ISBN 9781538456309. Reader TBA.
Working mothers aren’t a liability. They are assets you—and every manager and executive—want in your company, in your investment portfolio, and in your corner. There is copious academic research showing the benefits of working mothers on families and the benefits to companies who give women longer and more flexible parental leave.  Yet despite this concrete proof that working mothers are a lucrative asset, they still face the “Maternal Wall”—widespread unconscious bias about their abilities, contributions, and commitment. Fortunately, this prejudice is slowly giving way to new attitudes, thanks to more women starting their own businesses, and companies like Netflix, Facebook, Apple, and Google implementing more parent-friendly policies. But the most important barrier to change isn’t about men. Women must rethink the way they see themselves after giving birth.

Levenson, Steven. Dear Evan Hansen: Through the Window. Hachette Audio. ISBN 9781478999522. Reader TBA.
The official behind-the-scenes book of the hit musical. A letter that was never meant to be seen, a lie that was never meant to be told, a life he never dreamed he could have. Evan Hansen is about to get the one thing he’s always wanted: a chance to finally fit in.

McPhee, John. Silk Parachute. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501962486. Read by the author.
The brief essay “Silk Parachute,” which first appeared in The New Yorker over a decade ago, has become McPhee’s most anthologized piece of writing. In the nine other pieces here, McPhee ranges with his characteristic humor and intensity through lacrosse, long-exposure view-camera photography, the weird foods he has sometimes been served in the course of his reportorial travels, a U.S. Open golf championship, and a season in Europe “on the chalk” from the downs and sea cliffs of England to the Maas valley in the Netherlands and the champagne country of northern France. 

Payne, Candace. Laugh It Up! Embrace Freedom and Experience Defiant Joy. Brilliance. ISBN 9781543638318. Reader TBA.
The world knows Payne as “Chewbacca Mom,” the wife and mother of two from Dallas who captured the hearts of nearly 200 million people around the world with a toy Chewbacca mask, a smart phone, and infectious laughter. Candace’s viral moment of simple joy became Facebook Live’s top video. But what the video doesn’t show is Candace’s storied journey of daunting obstacles on the way to the joy-filled life—extreme poverty, past trauma, and struggles with self-worth.

Perry, Michael. Montaigne in Barn Boots. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538489246. Read by the author.
“The journey began on a gurney,” writes Perry, describing the debilitating kidney stone that led him to discover the essays of Michel de Montaigne. Reading the philosopher in a manner he equates to chickens pecking at scraps—including those eye-blinking moments when the bird gobbles something too big to swallow—Perry attempts to learn what he can (good and bad) about himself as compared to a long-dead French nobleman who began speaking Latin at the age of two, went to college instead of kindergarten, worked for kings, and once had an audience with the Pope.

Preston, Diana. Paradise in Chains: The Bounty Mutiny and the Founding of Australia. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501968037. Reader TBA.
The story of the mutiny of the Bounty and William Bligh and his men’s survival on the open ocean for 48 days and 3,618 miles has become the stuff of legend. But few realize that Bligh’s escape across the seas was not the only open-boat journey in that era of British exploration and colonization. Indeed, nine convicts from the Australian penal colony, led by Mary Bryant, also traveled 3,250 miles across the open ocean and some uncharted seas to land at the same port Bligh had reached only months before.

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501976766. Read by Adam Grupper.
In thishistory of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation—that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, he makes clear that it was de jure segregation—the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments—that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day. 

Shorto, Russell. Revolution Song. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501969478. Reader TBA.
With America’s founding principles being debated today as never before, Shorto looks back to the era in which those principles were forged. Drawing on new sources, he weaves the lives of six people into a seamless narrative that casts fresh light on the range of experience in colonial America on the cusp of revolution. While some of the protagonists—a Native American warrior, a British aristocrat, George Washington—play major roles on the field of battle, others—a woman, a slave, and a laborer—struggle no less valiantly to realize freedom for themselves.

Stevens, Norma & Steven M.L. Aronson. Avedon: Something Personal. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525494676. Read by Coleen Marlo.
Richard Avedon was arguably the world’s most famous photographer—as artistically influential as he was commercially successful. Over six decades, he created landmark advertising campaigns, iconic fashion photographs (as the star photographer for Harper’s Bazaar and then Vogue), groundbreaking books, and unforgettable portraits of everyone who was anyone. He also went on the road to find and photograph remarkable uncelebrated faces, with an eye toward constructing a grand composite picture of America. Avedon possessed a mystique so unique it was itself a kind of genius—everyone fell under his spell. But the Richard Avedon the world saw was perhaps his greatest creation.

Fadiman, Anne. The Wine Lover’s Daughter. Recorded Books. ISBN  9781501966873. Reader TBA.
Fadiman examines her relationship with her father, Clifton Fadiman, a renowned literary critic, editor, and radio host whose greatest love was wine. An appreciation of wine—along with a plummy upper-crust accent, expensive suits, and an encyclopedic knowledge of Western literature—was an essential element of Clifton Fadiman’s escape from lower-middle-class Brooklyn to swanky Manhattan. But wine was not just a class-vaulting accessory; it was an object of ardent desire. The Wine Lover’s Daughter traces the arc of a man’s infatuation from the glass of cheap Graves he drank in Paris in 1927; through the Château Lafite-Rothschild 1904 he drank to celebrate his 80th birthday, when he and the bottle were exactly the same age; to the wines that sustained him in his last years, when he was blind but still buoyed, as always, by hedonism.

Hallberg, David. A Body of Work: Dancing to the Edge and Back. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538491386. Read by Vikas Adam.
Hallberg dives deep into life as an artist as he wrestles with ego, pushes the limits of his body, and searches for ecstatic perfection and fulfillment as one of the world’s most acclaimed ballet dancers. Hallberg reflects on themes like inspiration, self-doubt, and perfectionism as he takes listeners into daily class, rigorous rehearsals, and triumphant performances, searching for new interpretations of ballet’s greatest roles. He reveals the loneliness he felt as a teenager leaving America to join the Paris Opera Ballet, the ambition he had to tame as a new member of American Ballet Theatre, and the reasons behind his headline-grabbing decision to be the first American to join the top rank of Bolshoi Ballet, tendered by the artistic director who would later be the victim of a vicious acid attack.

Jeffs, Rachel. Breaking Free: How I Escaped Polygamy, the FLDS Cult, and My Father, Warren Jeffs. HarperAudio. ISBN 9781538456712. Reader TBA.
Born into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Rachel Jeffs was raised in a strict patriarchal culture defined by subordinate sister-wives and men they must obey. No one in this radical splinter sect of the Mormon Church was more powerful or terrifying than its leader, Warren Jeffs—Rachel’s father. Living outside mainstream Mormonism and federal law, Jeffs arranged marriages between under-age girls and middle-aged and elderly members of his congregation. In 2006, he gained international notoriety when the FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted List. Though he is serving a life sentence for child sexual assault, Jeffs’ iron grip on the church remains firm, and his edicts to his followers increasingly restrictive and bizarre.

Lebovitz, David. L’Appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525496434. Read by Graham Halstead.
When Lebovitz began the project of updating his apartment in his adopted home city, he never imagined he would encounter so much inexplicable red tape while contending with the famously inconsistent European work ethic and hours. Lebovitz maintains his distinctive sense of humor with the help of his partner Romain, peppering this renovation story with recipes from his Paris kitchen. In the midst of it all, he reveals the adventure that accompanies carving out a place for yourself in a foreign country—under baffling conditions—while never losing sight of the magic that inspired him to move to the City of Light many years ago, and to truly make his home there.

Murad, Nadia. The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525493235. Read by Ilyana Kadushin.
Nadia Murad was born and raised in Kocho, a small village of farmers and shepherds in northern Iraq. A member of the Yazidi community, she and her brothers and sisters lived a quiet life. Nadia had dreams of becoming a history teacher or opening her own beauty salon. On August 15th, 2014, when Nadia was 21 years old, this life ended. Islamic State militants massacred the people of her village. Six of Nadia’s brothers were killed, and her mother soon after, their bodies swept into mass graves. Nadia was taken to Mosul and forced, along with thousands of other Yazidi girls, into the ISIS slave trade. Finally, she managed a narrow escape through the streets of Mosul, finding shelter in the home of a Sunni Muslim family whose eldest son risked his life to smuggle her to safety.

Byrne, Gary J. Secrets of the Secret Service: The History and Uncertain Future of the U.S. Secret Service. Blackstone. ISBN 9781478999928. Reader TBA.
The United States Secret Service is tasked with one of the world’s most important missions: protecting the President of the United States. Byrne, a former Secret Service officer, reveals the agency’s evolution, studying the major attacks it has thwarted and bringing to life the key players, forces and dramatic shifts that have made it what it is today—an elite but troubled protection force. Secrets of the Secret Service shares action-packed stories from the agency’s past, covering key moments of American history, including the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and John and Robert Kennedy—as well as the foiled attempts on the lives of Jackson, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Ford, Reagan, both Presidents Bush, Clinton, Obama, and Trump.

Foner, Eric. A Short History of Reconstruction. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538510919. Reader TBA.
Foner chronicles the way in which Americans—black and white—responded to the unprecedented changes unleashed by the war and the end of slavery. The book addresses the quest of emancipated slaves’ searching for economic autonomy and equal citizenship, and describes the remodeling of Southern society; the evolution of racial attitudes and patterns of race relations; and the emergence of a national state possessing vastly expanded authority and one committed, for a time, to the principle of equal rights for all Americans.

Jones, Jacqueline. Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical. Blackstone. ISBN 9781549114281. Reader TBA.
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.

Julien, Maude with Adriana Hunter. The Only Girl in the World. Blackstone. ISBN 9781549114120. Reader TBA.
Julien’s parents were fanatics who believed it was their sacred duty to turn her into the ultimate survivor: raising her in isolation, tyrannizing her childhood and subjecting her to endless drills designed to “eliminate weakness.” Maude learned to hold an electric fence for minutes without flinching, and to sit perfectly still in a rat-infested cellar all night long (her mother sewed bells onto her clothes that would give her away if she moved). She endured a life without heat, hot water, adequate food, friendship, or any kind of affectionate treatment. But Maude’s parents could not rule her inner life. Befriending the animals on the lonely estate as well as the characters in the novels she read in secret, young Maude nurtured in herself the compassion and love that her parents forbid as weak. And when, after more than a decade, an outsider managed to penetrate her family’s paranoid world, Maude seized her opportunity.

Kix, Paul. The Saboteur: The Aristocrat Who Became France’s Most Daring Anti-Nazi Commando. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538456781. Read by Malcolm Hillgartner.
A scion of one of the most storied families in France, Robert de La Rochefoucald was raised in magnificent chateaux and educated in Europe’s finest schools. When the Nazis invaded and imprisoned his father, La Rochefoucald escaped to England and learned the dark arts of anarchy and combat—cracking safes and planting bombs and killing with his bare hands—from the officers of Special Operations Executive. With his newfound skills, La Rochefoucauld returned to France and organized Resistance cells, blew up fortified compounds and munitions factories, interfered with Germans’ war-time missions, and executed Nazi officers. The Saboteur recounts La Rochefoucauld’s enthralling adventures, from jumping from a moving truck on his way to his execution, to stealing Nazi limos, to dressing up in a nun’s habit.

May, Elaine Tyler. Fortress America: How We Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy. Blackstone. ISBN 9781549114045. Reader TBA.
For the last sixty years, fear has seeped into every area of American life: Americans own more guns than citizens of any other country, sequester themselves in gated communities, and retreat from public spaces. And yet, crime rates have plummeted, making life in America safer than ever. Why, then, are Americans so afraid–and where does this fear lead? May demonstrates how our obsession with security has made citizens fear each other and distrust the government, making America less safe and less democratic. Fortress America charts the rise of a muscular national culture, undercutting the common good. Instead of a thriving democracy of engaged citizens, we have become a paranoid, bunkered, militarized, and divided vigilante nation.

Millar, Sam. On the Brinks. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525587774. Read by John Keating.
In 1993, $7.4 million was stolen from the Brink’s Armored Car Depot in Rochester, NY, the fifth largest robbery in US history. Millar was a member of the IRA gang who carried out the robbery. He was caught, found guilty, and incarcerated, before being set free by Bill Clinton as an essential part of the Northern Ireland Peace Process. This book is Sam’s story, from his childhood in Belfast, membership in the IRA, time spent in Long Kesh internment camps, and the Brinks heist and aftermath.

Origgi, Gloria. Reputation: What Is It and Why It Matters. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501975691. Read by Stephen Holmes & Noga Arikha.
Reputation touches almost everything, guiding our behavior and choices in countless ways. But it is also shrouded in mystery. Why is it so powerful when the criteria by which people and things are defined as good or bad often appear to be arbitrary? Why do we care so much about how others see us that we may even do irrational and harmful things to try to influence their opinion? Origgi draws on philosophy, social psychology, sociology, economics, literature, and history to offer an illuminating account of an important yet oddly neglected subject. Origgi examines the influence of the Internet and social media, as well as the countless ranking systems that characterize modern society and contribute to the creation of formal and informal reputations in our social relations, in business, in politics, in academia, and even in wine.

Schwartz, David N. The Last Man Who Knew Everything: The Life and Times and Enrico Fermi, Father of the Nuclear Age. Blackstone. ISBN 9781549114205. Reader TBA.
In 1942, a team at the University of Chicago achieved what no one had before: a nuclear chain reaction. At the forefront of this breakthrough stood Enrico Fermi. Straddling the ages of classical physics and quantum mechanics, equally at ease with theory and experiment, Fermi truly was the last man who knew everything-at least about physics. But he was also a complex figure who was a part of both the Italian Fascist Party and the Manhattan Project, and a less-than-ideal father and husband who nevertheless remained one of history’s greatest mentors.

Baatz, Simon. The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. Blackstone. ISBN 9781549140211. Reader TBA.
In 1901, Evelyn Nesbit, the pin-up girl and penniless young actress, dined with Stanford White, the legendary architect, at his 24th St. apartment. Evelyn drank champagne, and lost consciousness. She woke, nearly naked, in bed next to White. White was 47 years old. Evelyn Nesbit was just sixteen. Four years later, Evelyn would marry Harry Thaw, a playboy millionaire rumored to be mentally unstable, and in whom she confided the story of her encounter with Stanford White. One night in 1906, a vengeful Thaw shot and killed White before hundreds of theater-goers during a performance at Madison Square Garden. The city—and the nation that looked to it—erupted with news of the murder and ensuing trial, then the most sensational scandal in history.

Crump, Benjamin. Open Season: The Systemic Legalization of Discrimination. HarperAudio. ISBN 9781538480137. Reader TBA.
Chronicling some of his most memorable legal battles, Crump makes clear how our system is devised for certain people to lose and others to win, and, using evidence and facts, exposes how it is legal to harm—with the intent to destroy—people of color. Crump offers a cogent analysis of legal tenets, including the Thirteenth Amendment, the 1951 Genocide Petition to the United Nations, and controversial Stand Your Ground laws. He compares how race detrimentally influences sentencing, and reveals how police unions protect officers who shoot unarmed civilians. He also makes clear how budget cuts for education, the proliferation of guns, and high unemployment rates all directly contribute to higher crime rates.

Eighmey, Rae Katherine. Stirring the Pot with Benjamin Franklin: A Founding Father’s Culinary Adventures. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538488256. Read by Pam Ward.
Eighmey presents Benjamin Franklin’s experimentation with food throughout his life. At age 16, he began dabbling in vegetarianism. In his early twenties, citing the health benefits of water over alcohol, he convinced his printing press colleagues to abandon their traditional breakfast of beer and bread for “water gruel,” a kind of porridge he enjoyed. Franklin’s curiosity and logical mind extended to the kitchen: he even conducted an electrical experiment to try to cook a turkey. He saw food as key to the developing culture of the United States, penning two essays presenting maize as the defining grain of America. Eighmey revives and re-creates recipes from each chapter in his life.

Fadiman, Anne. The Wine Lover’s Daughter. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501966873. Reader TBA.
An appreciation of wine—along with a plummy upper-crust accent, expensive suits, and an encyclopedic knowledge of Western literature—was an essential element of Clifton Fadiman’s escape from lower-middle-class Brooklyn to swanky Manhattan. But wine was not just a class-vaulting accessory; it was an object of ardent desire. This memoir traces the arc of a man’s infatuation from the glass of cheap Graves he drank in Paris in 1927; through the Château Lafite-Rothschild 1904 he drank to celebrate his eightieth birthday, when he and the bottle were exactly the same age; to the wines that sustained him in his last years, when he was blind but still buoyed, as always, by hedonism.

Haden, Jeff. The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up To Win. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525499428. Read by Ray Porter.
Motivation isn’t the special sauce that we require at the beginning of any major change. In fact, motivation is a result of process, not a cause. Understanding this will change the way you approach any obstacle or big goal. Haden shows listeners how to reframe our thinking about the relationship of motivation to success at the beginning of any big goal we have for our lives, offering practical advice that anyone can use to stop stalling and start working on those dreams.

Hulbert, Ann. Off the Charts: The Hidden Lives and Lessons of American Child Prodigies. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525500407. Read by Kirsten Potter.
Hulbert examines the lives of children whose rare accomplishments have raised hopes about untapped human potential and questions about how best to nurture it. She probes the changing role of parents and teachers, as well as of psychologists and a curious press. Above all, she delves into the feelings of the prodigies themselves. Among the children are the math genius Norbert Wiener, founder of cybernetics, a Harvard graduate student at age fifteen; two girls, a poet and a novelist, whose published work stirred debate in the 1920s; the movie superstar Shirley Temple and the African American pianist and composer Philippa Schuyler; the chess champion Bobby Fischer; computer pioneers and autistic “prodigious savants”; and musical prodigies, present and past.

Jerkins, Morgan. This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America. HarperAudio. ISBN 9781538480465. Reader TBA.
Jerkins here addresses the question: What does it mean to “be”—to live as, to exist as—a black woman today? Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. Jerkins’s varied topics include Sailor Moon, Rachel Dolezal, the stigma of therapy, her complex relationship with her own physical body, the pain of dating when men say they don’t “see color,” being a black visitor in Russia, the specter of “the fast-tailed girl” and the paradox of black female sexuality,  and disabled black women in the context of the Black Girl Magic movement.

Kauffman, Jonathan. Hippie Food: How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat. HarperAudio. ISBN 9781538456217. Reader TBA.
Kauffman chronicles how the longhairs, revolutionaries, and back-to-the-landers rejected the square establishment of Nixon’s America and turned to a more idealistic and wholesome communal way of life and food. From the mystical rock and roll cult known as the Source Family and its legendary vegetarian restaurant in Hollywood to the Diggers’ brown bread in the Summer of Love to the rise of the co-op and the origins of the organic food craze, Kauffman reveals how today’s quotidian whole-foods staples—including sprouts, tofu, yogurt, brown rice, and whole-grain bread—were introduced and eventually became part of our diets.

Khan-Cullors, Patrisse & Asha Bandele. When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir. Macmillan Audio. ISBN 9781427294722. Reader TBA.
Cofounders of the Black Lives Matter movement Khan-Cullors asks listeners to remember that protest in the interest of the most vulnerable comes from love. Leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement have been called terrorists, a threat to America. But in truth, they are loving women whose life experiences have led them to seek justice for those victimized by the powerful.

Krakauer, Jon. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525595953. Reader TBA.
Krakauer delves into the life and work of Christopher Alexander, who sharply criticizes the Modern school of architecture and advocates for an approach in which people reclaim control over their built environment, drawing listeners into a singular vision of human-centered design. Alexander’s work has exerted profound influence in fields from design and planning to sociology and software, and Krakauer’s profile is a personal, organic view of the man behind the work.

McGowan, Rose. Brave. HarperAudio. ISBN 9781538480373. Reader TBA.
Born and raised in the Italian chapter of the Children of God, which was led by her father, McGowan escaped through a cornfield at night, moved to the states, ran away at 13, and landed in Portland, OR, where she lived on and off the streets. At fifteen she became emancipated from her parents and moved to Los Angeles where she was “discovered” on the street and became one of Hollywood’s most desired actresses overnight. Then McGowan was sexually assaulted by a renowned Hollywood producer and threatened with professional ruin if she uttered a word. She was expected to be silent and cooperative. Instead, she was courageous. And angry, smart, fierce, unapologetic, and controversial.

Mitchell, Alanna. The Spinning Magnet: The Force That Created the Modern World—and Could Destroy It. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525527725. Read by P.J. Ochlan.
The history of one of the four fundamental physical forces in the universe: electro-magnetism. From investigations into magnetism in 13th-century feudal France and the realization six hundred years later in the Victorian era that electricity and magnetism were essentially the same, to the discovery that the earth was itself a magnet, spinning in space with two poles and that those poles aperiodically reverse, this is a utterly engrossing narrative history of ideas and science.

Noesner, Gary. Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525634423. Reader TBA.
The FBI’s chief hostage negotiator takes readers on a harrowing tour through many of the most famous hostage crises in the history of the modern FBI, including the siege at Waco, the Montana Freemen standoff, and the DC sniper attacks. Having helped develop the FBI’s nonviolent communication techniques for achieving peaceful outcomes in tense situations, Noesner offers a candid look back at his years as an innovator in the ranks of the Bureau and a pioneer on the front lines.

Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want To Talk About Race. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538475270. Read by Bahni Turpin.
A current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today’s racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that readers of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide. Oluo offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America, addressing head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the “N” word. Perfectly positioned to bridge the gap between people of color and white Americans struggling with race complexities, Oluo answers the questions readers don’t dare ask, and explains the concepts that continue to elude everyday Americans.

Person, Cea Sunrise. North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538499900. Reader TBA.
In the late 1960s, Cea’s family left a comfortable existence in California to live off the land in the Canadian wilderness. Led by Cea’s grandfather Dick, they lived a pot-smoking, free-loving, clothing-optional life without running water, electricity, or heat for the bitter winters. Living out her grandparents’ dream with her teenage mother Michelle, young Cea knew little of the world beyond her forest. Despite fierce storms, food shortages, and the occasional drug-and-sex-infused party for visitors, it seemed to be a mostly happy existence. For Michelle, however, now long separated from Cea’s father, there was one crucial element missing: a man. When Cea was five, Michelle took her on the road with a new boyfriend. As the trio set upon a series of ill-fated adventures, Cea began to question both her highly unusual world and the hedonistic woman at the centre of it—questions that eventually evolved into an all-consuming search for a more normal life. Finally, in her early teens, Cea realized she would have to make a choice as drastic as the one her grandparents once had in order to save herself.

Siegel, Daniel J. & Tina Payne Bryson. The Yes Brain: How To Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525494935. Read by the authors.
Kids can be taught to approach life with openness and curiosity. Parents can foster their children’s ability to say yes to the world and welcome all that life has to offer, even during difficult times. This is what it means to cultivate a Yes Brain. When kids work from a Yes Brain, they’re more willing to take chances and explore. They’re more curious and imaginative, less worried about making mistakes. They’re better at relationships and more flexible and resilient when it comes to handling adversity and big feelings. They work from a clear internal compass that directs their decisions, as well as the way they treat others. Guided by their Yes Brain, they become more open, creative, and resilient. Here, the authors give parents skills, scripts, ideas, and activities to bring kids of all ages into the overwhelmingly beneficial “yes” state.

Soffer, Rebecca & Gabrielle Birkner. Modern Loss: Candid Conversation About Grief—Beginners Welcome. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538480281. Reader TBA.
Let’s face it: most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We’re awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit. Soffer and Birkner can help us do better. Each having lost parents as young adults, they co-founded Modern Loss, responding to a need to change the dialogue around the messy experience of grief. Now they offer the insights of the Modern Loss community to help us cry, laugh, grieve, identify, and—above all—empathize.

Stern, Robin. The Gaslight Effect: How To Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use To Control Your Life. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525633365. Read by Nan Mcnamara.
Gaslighting is an insidious form of emotional abuse and manipulation that is difficult to recognize and even harder to break free from. That’s because it plays into one of our worst fears—of being abandoned—and many of our deepest needs: to be understood, appreciated, and loved. Stern shows how the Gaslight Effect works and tells you how to: know when a relationship is headed for trouble, determine whether you are enabling a gaslighter, recognize gaslighting, refuse to be gaslighted, and develop your own “Gaslight Barometer” so you can decide which relationships can be saved—and which you have to walk away from.

Abrams, Jonathan. All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525529262. Read by January LaVoy, Jonathan Abrams, Prentice Onayemi, & Arthur Bishop.
Since its final episode aired in 2008, HBO’s acclaimed crime drama The Wire has only become more popular and influential. The issues it tackled, from the failures of the drug war and criminal justice system to systemic bias in law enforcement and other social institutions, have become more urgent and central to the national conversation. The show’s actors, such as Idris Elba, Dominic West, and Michael B. Jordan, have gone on to become major stars. Its creators and writers, including David Simon and Richard Price, have developed dedicated cult followings of their own. Universities use the show to teach everything from film theory to criminal justice to sociology. Politicians and activists reference it when discussing policy. When critics compile lists of the Greatest TV Shows of All Time, The Wire routinely takes the top spot. It is arguably one of the great works of art America has produced in the 20th century. But while there has been a great deal of critical analysis of the show and its themes, until now there has never been a definitive, behind-the-scenes take on how it came to be made.

Armstrong, Ken & T. Christian Miller. A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525526360. Read by Hillary Huber & the authors.
Two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists tell the riveting true story of Marie, a teenager who was charged with lying about having been raped, and the detectives who followed a winding path to arrive at the truth. Based on investigative files and extensive interviews with the principals, A False Report is a serpentine tale of doubt, lies, and a hunt for justice, unveiling the disturbing reality of how sexual assault is investigated today—and the long history of skepticism toward rape victims.

Balko, Radley & Tucker Carrington. The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South. Hachette Audio. ISBN 9781478990437. Reader TBA.
This is an account of two tragedies. At the heart of the first is Dr. Steven Hayne, a doctor the State of Mississippi employed as its de facto medical examiner for two decades. Beginning in the late 1980s, he performed anywhere from 1,200 to 1,800 autopsies a year, five times more than is recommended, performed at night in the basement of a local funeral home. Autopsy reports claimed organs had been observed and weighed when, in reality, they had been surgically removed from the body years before. Hayne, the only game in town, also often brought in local dentist and self-styled “bite-mark specialist” Dr. Michael West, who would discover marks on victim’s bodies, at times invisible to the naked eye, and then match those marks—“indeed and without doubt”—to law enforcement’s lead suspect. This leads to the second tragic tale: that of Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, two black men each convicted in separate cases of the brutal rape and murder of young girls. Dr. Hayne’s autopsy and Dr. West’s bite-mark matching formed the bases for their convictions. Combined, the two men served over thirty years in Parchman Farm, Mississippi’s notorious penitentiary, before being exonerated in 2008. Brooks’ and Brewer’s wrongful convictions lie at the intersection of both the most pressing problem facing this country’s criminal justice system—structural injustice built on the historic foundation of race and class—as well as with the much more contemporary but equally egregious problem of invalid forensic science. The old problem is inextricably bound up with and exacerbates the new.

Barth, F. Diane. I Know How You Feel: The Joy and Heartbreak of Friendship in Women’s Lives. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538511459. Read by Erin Bennett.
“Do I have enough friends?” “Why did my friendship end?” and “What makes a good friendship work?” These are questions that F. Diane Barth, a psychotherapist widely recognized for her expertise in women’s relationships, fields all the time. In I Know How You Feel, she draws out engaging stories from a lively and diverse cast of women, many of whom speak about feelings they haven’t shared before. She explores how life changes affect women’s friendships in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Interweaving examples from classic women’s literature to chick flicks, she provides grounded advice on how to manage betrayal and rejection, how to deal with a narcissistic or bossy friend, what to do when your best friend and your family don’t get along, how to let go of a friendship that has stopped working, and much more.

Callow, Simon. Being Wagner: The Story of the Most Provocative Composer Who Ever Lived. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525632443. Read by the author.
Richard Wagner’s music dramas have never been more popular or more divisive. His ten masterpieces, created against the backdrop of a continent in severe political and cultural upheaval, constitute an unmatched body of work. A man who spent most of his life in abject poverty, inspiring both critical derision and hysterical hero-worship, Wagner was a walking contradiction: belligerent, flirtatious, disciplined, capricious, demanding, visionary, and poisonously anti-Semitic. Acclaimed biographer Simon Callow evokes the intellectual and artistic climate in which Wagner lived and takes us through his most iconic works, from his pivotal successes in The Flying Dutchman and Lohengrin, to the musical paradigm shift contained in Tristan and Isolde, to the apogee of his achievements in The Ring of the Nibelung and Parsifal, which debuted at Bayreuth shortly before his death. Being Wagner brings to life this towering figure, creator of the most sublime and most controversial body of work ever known.

Cantú, Francisco. The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525528302. Read by the author.
For Cantú, the border is in the blood. His mother, a second-generation Mexican American, raised him in Arizona’s desert scrublands and the national parks where she worked as a ranger, driven to protect the places she loved. Haunted by the landscape of his youth, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. Stationed at the remote crossroads of a drug route and a smuggling corridor, he learns how to track other humans under the punishing glare of the sun and through dark, frigid nights. He detains the exhausted, the parched, huddled children yearning for their families. He hauls in the bodies from where they have fallen. Plagued by nightmares, Cantú abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when a friend, a regular at the café where he now works, travels back to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantu discovers that the border and its stories have migrated with him.

Garnier, Stéphane. How To Think Like a Cat. Dreamscape. ISBN 9781520098388. Read by George Newbern.
The Cat is calm, observant, charismatic, independent, proud, and joyful; he knows how to strut and is impervious to judgement; he accepts himself as he is and adapts quickly; he knows to say nothing and to avoid conflicts, and yet he knows exactly what he wants and dares to ask for it. The Cat is free. After observing his cat, Ziggy, for years, Stéphane Garnier became convinced that cats have life down to an art form, so he set out to share Ziggy’s je ne sais quoi with the world. Highlighting forty trademark cat qualities that are (almost) entirely applicable to human daily living, Garnier provides insights that are delightfully useful as well as tips for living a day in the life of a cat-and a Q&A to test your “cat quotient” to see how much work you have to do learn the subtle art of living like a feline.

Goddard, Neville. Five Lessons: A Master Class. Dreamscape. ISBN 9781520092935, Read by John Chancer.
In 1948, the modern mystic Neville Goddard presented a groundbreaking series of lessons, which many consider to be his clearest, most penetrating explanation of his methods regarding mental creativity. This audiobook recording of the five-part course he gave to Los Angeles students recreates that master class, preserving his words exactly as those original students heard them. It includes the following lessons: 1. Consciousness Is the Only Reality, 2. Assumptions Harden into Fact, 3. Thinking Fourth-Dimensionally, 4. No One to Change but Self, 5. Remain Faithful to Your Idea.

Knapp, Cheston. Up Up, Down Down. Dreamscape. ISBN 9781520092812. Read by the author.
Knapp tackles Big Questions through seemingly unlikely avenues: an examination of a local professional wrestling promotion becomes a meditation on pain and his relationship with his father; a profile on UFO enthusiasts ends up probing his history in the church and, more broadly, the nature and limits of faith itself; attending an adult skateboarding camp launches him into a virtuosic analysis of nostalgia; and the shocking murder of a neighbor expands into an interrogation of our culture’s prevailing ideas about community and the way we tell the stories of our lives.

Origgi, Gloria. Reputation: What It Is and Why It Matters. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501975691. Read by Andrea Gallo.
Reputation touches almost everything, guiding our behavior and choices in countless ways. But it is also shrouded in mystery. Why is it so powerful when the criteria by which people and things are defined as good or bad often appear to be arbitrary? Why do we care so much about how others see us that we may even do irrational and harmful things to try to influence their opinion? In this engaging book, Gloria Origgi draws on philosophy, social psychology, sociology, economics, literature, and history to offer an illuminating account of an important yet oddly neglected subject. Origgi examines the influence of the Internet and social media, as well as the countless ranking systems that characterize modern society and contribute to the creation of formal and informal reputations in our social relations, in business, in politics, in academia, and even in wine. She highlights the importance of reputation to the effective functioning of the economy and e-commerce. Origgi also discusses the existential significance of our obsession with reputation, concluding that an awareness of the relationship between our reputation and our actions empowers us to better understand who we are and why we do what we do.

Preston, Diana. Paradise in Chains: The Bounty Mutiny and the Founding of Australia. Recorded Books. ISBN 9781501968037. Read by Davina Porter.
The story of the mutiny of the Bounty and William Bligh and his men’s survival on the open ocean for 48 days and 3,618 miles has become the stuff of legend. But few realize that Bligh’s escape across the seas was not the only open-boat journey in that era of British exploration and colonization. Indeed, 9 convicts from the Australian penal colony, led by Mary Bryant, also traveled 3,250 miles across the open ocean and some uncharted seas to land at the same port Bligh had reached only months before.

Schaefer, Kayleen. Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525527541. Read by Lauren Fortgang.
Kayleen Schaefer has experienced (and occasionally, narrowly survived) most every iteration of the modern female friendship. First there was the mean girl cliques of the ’90s; then the teenage friendships that revolved around constant discussion of romantic interests and which slowly morphed into “Sex and the City” spin-offs; the disheartening loneliness of “I’m not like other girls” friendships with only men; the discovery of a platonic soulmate; and finally, the overwhelming love of a supportive female squad (#squad). And over the course of these friendships, Schaefer made a startling discovery: girls make the best friends. And she isn’t the only one to realize this. Through interviews with friends, mothers, authors, celebrities, business women, doctors, screenwriters, and historians (a list that includes Judy Blume, Megan Abbott, The Fug Girls, and Kay Cannon), Schaefer shows a remarkable portrait of what female friendships can help modern women accomplish in their social, personal and work lives. A validation of female friendship unlike any that’s ever existed before, this book is a mix of historical research, the author’s own personal experience, and conversations about friendships across the country. Everything Schaefer uncovers leads to–and makes the case for–the eventual conclusion that these ties among women are making us (both as individuals and as society as a whole) stronger than ever before.

Smith, Patti. Devotion: Why I Write. Blackstone. ISBN 9781538539583. Reader TBA.
Patti Smith first presents an original and beautifully crafted tale of obsession—a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector who ruthlessly seeks his prize, a relationship forged of need both craven and exalted. She then takes us on a second journey, exploring the sources of her story. We travel through the South of France to Camus’ house, and visit the garden of the great publisher Gallimard where the ghosts of Mishima, Nabokov, and Genet mingle. Smith tracks down Simone Weil’s grave in a lonely cemetery, hours from London, and winds through the nameless Paris streets of Patrick Modiano’s novels. Whether writing in a café or a train, Smith generously opens her notebooks and lets us glimpse the alchemy of her art and craft in this arresting and original book on writing.

Smith, Zadie. Feel Free. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525528753. Read by Nikki Amuka-Bird.
Arranged into four sections–In the World, In the Audience, On the Bookshelf, and Feel Free–this new collection poses questions we immediately recognize. What is The Social Network–and Facebook itself–really about? “It’s a cruel portrait of us: 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore.” Why do we love libraries? “Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.” What will we tell our granddaughters about our collective failure to address global warming? “So I might say to her, look: the thing you have to appreciate is that we’d just been through a century of relativism and deconstruction, in which we were informed that most of our fondest-held principles were either uncertain or simple wishful thinking, and in many areas of our lives we had already been asked to accept that nothing is essential and everything changes–and this had taken the fight out of us somewhat.”

Stone, Daniel. The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525531159. Read by the author.
In the 19th century, American meals were about subsistence, not enjoyment. But as a new century approached, appetites broadened, and David Fairchild, a young botanist with an insatiable lust to explore and experience the world, set out in search of foods that would enrich the American farmer and enchant the American eater. Kale from Croatia, mangoes from Manila, and hops from Bavaria. Cashews from China, avocados from Chile, and pomegranates from Malta. Fairchild’s finds weren’t just limited to food: from Egypt he sent back a variety of cotton that revolutionized an industry, and via Japan he introduced the cherry blossom tree, forever brightening our nation’s capital. Along the way, he was arrested, caught diseases, and bargained with island tribes. But his culinary ambition came during a formative era, and through him, America transformed from a blank agricultural canvas to the most diverse food system ever created.

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780525630920. Read by Joe Ochman.
Citing examples ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca, Antaeus the Giant to Donald Trump, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows how the willingness to accept one’s own risks is an essential attribute of heroes, saints, and flourishing people in all walks of life. Taleb challenges long-held beliefs about the values of those who spearhead military interventions, make financial investments, and propagate religious faiths. Among his insights: For social justice, focus on symmetry and risk sharing; Ethical rules aren’t universal; Minorities, not majorities, run the world; You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot; Beware of complicated solutions (that someone was paid to find); and True religion is commitment, not just faith.