Ackerman, Jennifer. The Genius of Birds. HighBridge. ISBN 9781681681283. Reader TBA.
Traveling around the world to the most cutting-edge frontiers of research―the distant laboratories of Barbados and New Caledonia, the bowerbird habitats of Australia, the ravaged mid-Atlantic coast after Hurricane Sandy and the warming mountains of central Virginia and the western states―Ackerman not only tells the story of the recently uncovered genius of birds but also delves deeply into the latest findings about the bird brain itself that are revolutionizing our view of what it means to be intelligent. Consider, as Ackerman does, the Clark’s nutcracker, a bird that can hide as many as 30,000 seeds over dozens of square miles and remember where it put them several months later; the mockingbirds and thrashers, species that can store 200 to 2,000 different songs in a brain a thousand times smaller than ours; and the New Caledonian crow, an impressive bird that makes its own tools.
Aldrin, Buzz. No Dream Is Too High: Life Lessons from a Man Who Walked on the Moon. Blackstone. ISBN 9781504686969. Reader TBA.
Buzz Aldrin, the best known of a generation of astronauts whose achievements surged in just a few years from first man in space to first men on the moon, pauses to reflect and share what he has learned. Still a nonstop traveler and impassioned advocate for space exploration, Aldrin whittles down his event-filled life into a short list of the principles he values, each illustrated by anecdotes and memories. Aldrin discusses how he learned to be proud of being the second man on the moon, the fact that he was rejected the first time he applied to be an astronau, and that for his 80th birthday, he went diving in the Galapagos and hitched a ride on a whale shark.
Alvarez, Elizabeth Hayes. The Valiant Woman: The Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century American Culture. Blackstone. ISBN 9781504685900. Read by Tamara Marston.
Nineteenth-century America was rife with Protestant-fueled anti-Catholicism. Alvarez reveals how Protestants nevertheless became surprisingly and deeply fascinated with the Virgin Mary, even as her role as a devotional figure who united Catholics grew. Documenting the vivid Marian imagery that suffused popular visual and literary culture, Alvarez argues that Mary became a potent, shared exemplar of Christian womanhood around which Christians of all stripes rallied during an era filled with anxiety about the emerging market economy and shifting gender roles.
Bach, Sebastian. 18 and Life on Skid Row. Blackstone. ISBN 9781504697088. Reader TBA.
Throughout his career, Bach has sold more than 20 million records both as the lead singer of Skid Row and as a solo artist. Bach then went on to grace the Broadway stage, with starring roles in Jekyll & Hyde, Jesus Christ Superstar, and The Rocky Horror Show. He also appeared for seven seasons on the hit television show The Gilmore Girls. In his memoir, Bach recounts lurid tales of excess and debauchery as he toured the world with Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Mötley Crüe, Soundgarden, Pantera, Nine Inch Nails, and Guns ’N’ Roses and his life after Skid Row.
Blum, Howard. The Last Goodnight: A World War II Story of Espionage, Adventure, and Betrayal. Blackstone. ISBN 9781504697200. Reader TBA.
Betty Pack was charming, beautiful, and intelligent—and she knew it. As an agent for Britain’s MI-6 and then America’s OSS during World War II, these qualities proved crucial to her success. This is the remarkable story of the woman Time called “Mata Hari from Minnesota” and the passions that ruled her tempestuous life. For decades, much of Pack’s career working for MI-6 and the OSS remained classified. Through access to recently unclassified files, Blum discovers the truth about the attractive blond, codenamed “Cynthia,” who seduced diplomats and military attachés across the globe in exchange for ciphers and secrets; cracked embassy safes to steal codes; and obtained the Polish notebooks that proved key to Alan Turing’s success with Operation Ultra. Beneath Betty’s cool, professional determination, Blum reveals a troubled woman conflicted by the very traits that made her successful: her lack of deep emotional connections and her readiness to risk everything.
Boilen, Bob. Your Song Changed My Life: From Jimmy Page to St. Vincent, Smokey Robinson to Hozier, Thirty-Five Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music That Inspired It. Blackstone. ISBN 9781504697262. Reader TBA.
Is there a unforgettable song that changed your life? NPR’s Boilen posed this question to some musical legends and rising stars such as Jimmy Page, St. Vincent, Bryan Ferry, Smokey Robinson, Cat Power, David Byrne, and Dave Grohl. For Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, it was discovering his sister’s 45 of The Byrds’ “Turn, Turn, Turn.” A young St. Vincent’s life changed the day a box of CDs literally fell off a delivery truck in front of her house. Cat Stevens was transformed when he heard John Lennon cover “Twist and Shout.” A diverse collection of personal experiences, both ordinary and extraordinary, this work illustrates the ways in which music is revived, restored, and revolutionized.
Brower, Kate Andersen. First Women: The Grace and Power of America’s First Ladies. HarperAudio. ISBN 9781504697033. Reader TBA.
The First Lady of the United States must be many things: an inspiring leader with a forward-thinking agenda of her own; a savvy politician, skilled at navigating the treacherous rapids of Washington; a wife and mother operating under constant scrutiny; and an able CEO responsible for the smooth operation of countless services and special events at the White House. Former White House correspondent Brower draws on a wide array of untapped, candid sources—from residence staff and social secretaries to friends and political advisers—to tell the stories of the ten remarkable women who have defined that role since 1960. Brower offers new insights into this privileged group of remarkable women, including Jacqueline Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Patricia Nixon, Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama.
Christian, Brian & Tom Griffiths. Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions. Brilliance. ISBN 9781480560345. Reader TBA.
All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such problems for decades. And the solutions they’ve found have much to teach us. In this interdisciplinary work, author Christian and cognitive scientist Griffiths show how the simple, precise algorithms used by computers can also untangle very human questions.
Clark, Duncan. Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built. Blackstone. ISBN 9781504697040. Reader TBA.
In just a decade and half, Jack Ma, who started out as an English teacher, founded and built Alibaba into one of the world’s largest companies, an e-commerce empire on which hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers depend. Alibaba’s $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the largest global IPO ever. A Rockefeller of his age who is courted by CEOs and presidents around the world, Jack is an icon for China’s booming private sector and the gatekeeper to hundreds of millions of middle-class consumers. Granted unprecedented access to a wealth of new material including exclusive interviews, Clark draws on his own experience as an early advisor to Alibaba and two decades in China chronicling the Internet’s impact on the country to create an authoritative, compelling narrative account of Alibaba’s rise.
Coolidge, Rita with Michael Walker. Delta Lady. HarperAudio. ISBN 9781504716901. Reader TBA.
The two-time Grammy Award–winning singer and songwriter bares her heart and soul in this story of music, stardom, love, family, heritage, and resilience. She inspired songs—Leon Russell wrote “A Song for You” and “Delta Lady” for her; Stephen Stills wrote “Cherokee.” She sang backup for Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker, and Stills before finding fame as a solo artist with such hits as “We’re All Alone” and “(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher.” A muse to some of the twentieth century’s most influential rock musicians, she broke hearts, and broke up bands. Her relationship with drummer Jim Gordon took a violent turn during the legendary 1970 Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour; David Crosby maintained that her triangle with Stills and Graham Nash was the last straw for the group. Her volatile six-year marriage to Kris Kristofferson yielded two Grammys, a daughter, and one of the Baby Boom generation’s epic love stories
Cox, Caroline. Boy Soldiers of the American Revolution. Blackstone. ISBN 978-1-5046-9115-4. Read by Traber Burns.
Between 1819 and 1845, as veterans of the Revolutionary War were filing applications to receive pensions for their service, the government was surprised to learn that many of the soldiers were not men but boys, many of whom were under the age of 16 and some even as young as nine. Cox reconstructs the lives and stories of this young subset of early American soldiers, focusing on how these boys came to join the army and what they actually did in service. Cox traces the evolution of youth in American culture in the late 18th century, as the accepted age for children to participate meaningfully in society—not only in the military—was rising dramatically. Drawing on sources such as diaries, letters, and memoirs, Cox tells the story of a generation of soldiers caught between old and new notions of boyhood.
Crush: Writers Reflect on Love, Longing, and the Lasting Power of Their First Celebrity Crush. Blackstone. Edited by Cathy Alter & Dave Singleton. ISBN 9781504696821. Reader TBA.
Contributors including James Franco, Carrie Fisher, Stephen King, Roxane Gay, Emily Gould, and Hanna Rosin here share intimate memories of that first intense taste of love. The collection includes funny, whimsical, sometimes cringe-worthy tales of falling for River Phoenix, Mary Tyler Moore, Howard Cosell, Jared Leto, and a host of other pop culture icons. A few contributors channeled their devotion into obsessively writing embarrassing fan letters. Some taped pics in school lockers. Others decorated their bedroom walls with posters. For tweenaged Karin Tanabe, it was discovering bad boy Andy Garcia—playing the gun-loving mobster Vincent Corleone in The Godfather III. Barbara Graham unsuccessfully staked out an apartment on Park Avenue for a glimpse of Paul Newman. There was only one puppy for six-year-old Jodi Picoult—Donny Osmond—while Jamie Brisick’s pre-teen addiction was Speed Racer.
de Waal, Frans. Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are? Blackstone. ISBN 978-1-5047-1219-4. Read by Sean Runnette.
What separates your mind from an animal’s? Maybe you think it’s your ability to design tools, your sense of self, or your grasp of past and future―all traits that have helped us define ourselves as the planet’s preeminent species. But in recent decades, these claims have been eroded—or even disproved outright—by a revolution in the study of animal cognition. Octopuses use coconut shells as tools; elephants classify humans by age, gender, and language; and Ayumu, the young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University, has a flash memory puts that of humans to shame. Based on research involving crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, whales, and of course chimpanzees and bonobos, de Waal explores both the scope and the depth of animal intelligence.
Dolin, Eric Jay. Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse. Tantor. ISBN 9781515951353. Read by Tom Perkins.
Dolin presents the most comprehensive history of American lighthouses ever written, telling the story of America through the prism of its beloved coastal sentinels. Set against the backdrop of an expanding nation, the work traces the evolution of America’s lighthouse system, highlighting the political, military, and technological battles fought to illuminate the nation’s hardscrabble coastlines. Dolin treats listeners to a memorable cast of characters, including the penny-pinching Treasury official Stephen Pleasonton, who hamstrung the country’s efforts to adopt the revolutionary “Fresnel Lens,” and presents tales both humorous and harrowing of soldiers, saboteurs, ruthless egg collectors, and the light-keepers themselves.
Druett, Joan. Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World. Tantor. ISBN 9781515952572. Reader TBA.
Auckland Island is a godforsaken place in the middle of the Southern Ocean, 285 miles south of New Zealand. With year-round freezing rain and howling winds, it is one of the most forbidding places in the world. To be shipwrecked there means almost certain death.In 1864 Captain Thomas Musgrave and his crew of four aboard the schooner Grafton wrecked on the southern end of the island. Utterly alone in a dense coastal forest, plagued by stinging blowflies and relentless rain, Captain Musgrave inspired his men to take action. With barely more than their bare hands, they built a cabin and, remarkably, a forge, where they manufactured their tools. Incredibly, at the same time on the opposite end of the island, the Invercauld wrecked during a horrible storm. Nineteen men staggered ashore. Unlike Captain Musgrave, the captain of the Invercauld falls apart given the same dismal circumstances. His men fight and split up; some die of starvation, others turn to cannibalism. Only three survive. Musgrave and all of his men not only endure for nearly two years, they also plan their own astonishing escape, setting off on one of the most courageous sea voyages in history.
Fair, Eric. Consequence. Macmillan Audio. ISBN 9781427268051. Reader TBA.
In 2004, as an interrogator for a government contractor, Fair participated in or witnessed a variety of aggressive interrogation techniques to solicit the cooperation of Iraqi detainees. They included sleep deprivation, stress positions, diet manipulation, exposure, and isolation. Years after his time in Iraq, he is still haunted by what he took part in there. But as his health and his marriage deteriorate, Fair decides to speak out about his experiences. Told in spare and haunting prose devoid of justification,Fair’s memoir is an unrelenting confession of an interrogator and admitted torturer,that questions the very depths of who he, and we as a country, have become.
Galfard, Christophe. The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey through Space, Time, and Beyond. Blackstone. ISBN 9781504684347. Read by Ray Chase.
Quantum physics, black holes, string theory, the big bang, dark matter, dark energy, parallel universes: even if we are interested in these fundamental concepts of our world, their language is the language of math.Stephen Hawking’s protégé Galfard’s mission in life is to spread modern scientific ideas to the general public in entertaining ways. Here he employs simple, direct language to illustrate the theories that underpin everything we know about our universe. Employing everyday similes and metaphors, addressing the listener directly, and writing stories rather than equations renders these astoundingly complex ideas in an immediate and visceral way.
Geroux, William. The Mathews Men: Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler’s U-Boats. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780399567124. Read by Arthur Morey.
Mathews County, VA, is a remote outpost on the Chesapeake Bay that sent an unusually large concentration of sea captains to fight in World War II. Geroux tells that story through the experiences of one family whose seven sons (and their neighbors), U.S. merchant mariners all, suddenly found themselves squarely in the cross-hairs of the U-boats bearing down on the coastal United States in 1942. As the war progressed, men from Mathews sailed the North and South Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, and even the icy Barents Sea in the Arctic Circle, where they braved the dreaded Murmansk Run. Through their experiences we have eyewitnesses to every danger zone, in every kind of ship. Some died horrific deaths. Others fought to survive torpedo explosions, flaming oil slicks, storms, shark attacks, mine blasts, and harrowing lifeboat odysseys—only to ship out again on the next boat as soon as they’d returned to safety.
Haag, Pamela. The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture. Blackstone. ISBN 9781504710831. Read by Bernadette Dunne.
Before he founded the Winchester Company in 1866, Oliver Winchester, like most Americans at the time, had never owned a gun, or even shot one. But his factory in New Haven, CT, was churning out firearms at an astounding rate. If he wanted it to be profitable, he would have to create a robust civilian market for guns. He succeeded: 150 years later, his company has sold more than eight million firearms. Drawing on the company’s voluminous archives, Haag reveals that America has not always been a gun-loving nation, but rather was sold the idea (and the guns that went with it) by gun manufacturers and shrewd marketers. Tracing our current gun culture to its unexpected roots, Haag sheds light on one of American society’s most contentious debates.
Hammer, Joshua. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts. HighBridge. ISBN 9781681681429. Reader TBA.
To save precious centuries-old Arabic texts from Al Qaeda, a band of librarians in Timbuktu pulls off a brazen heist worthy of Ocean’s Eleven. It’s the story of an archivist in the historic city in Mali who smuggled more than 350,000 volumes across the country to prevent them being destroyed. It’s at once a biography of the archivist, Abdel Kader Haidara, a history of the region, and an investigative treasure hunt.
Ilgunas, Ken. Trespassing across America: One Man’s Epic, Never-Done-Before (and Sort of Illegal) Hike Across the Heartland. Blackstone. ISBN 9781504690911. Read by Andrew Eiden.
It started as a far-fetched idea—to hike the entire length of the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline. But in the months that followed, it grew into something more for Ilgunas. It became an irresistible adventure—an opportunity to not only draw attention to global warming but to explore his personal limits. His 1,700-mile trek to from the Alberta tar sands to the XL’s endpoint on the Gulf Coast of Texas was completed entirely on foot, almost exclusively walking across private property. Both a travel memoir and a reflection on climate change, the work is filled with colorful characters, harrowing physical trials, and strange encounters with the weather, terrain, and animals of America’s plains.
Keshavarz, Fatemah. Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran. Brilliance. ISBN 9781511384292. Reader TBA.
Scholar, teacher, and poet Keshavarz challenges popular perceptions of Iran as a society bereft of vitality and joy. Keshavarz introduces listeners to two modern Iranian women writers whose strong and articulate voices belie the stereotypical perception of Iranian women as voiceless victims in a country of villains. She follows with a lively critique of the recent bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, which epitomizes what Keshavarz calls the “New Orientalist narrative,” a view marred by stereotype and prejudice more often tied to current geopolitical conflicts than to an understanding of Iran. Blending in firsthand glimpses of her own life from childhood memories in 1960s Shiraz to her present life as a professor in America, Keshavarz paints a portrait of Iran depicting both cultural depth and intellectual complexity.
Lorr, Benjamin. Hell-Bent : Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga. Brilliance. ISBN 9781511384230. Reader TBA.
Lorr was studying Bikram yoga (or “hot yoga”) when a run-in with a master and competitive yoga champion led him into an obsessive subculture—a group of yogis for whom eight hours of practice a day in 110-degree heat was just the beginning. Populated by athletic prodigies, wide-eyed celebrities, legitimate medical miracles, and predatory hucksters, it’s a nation-spanning trip from jam-packed studios in New York to the athletic performance labs of the University of Oregon to the stage at the National Yoga Asana Championship, where Lorr competes for glory. This account is a look at the science behind a controversial practice, a story of greed, narcissism, and corruption, and a tale of personal transformation.
Mabey, Richard. The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination. Tantor. ISBN 9781515954095. Read by Ralph Lister.
Going back to the beginnings of human history, Mabey shows how flowers, trees, and plants have been central to human experience not just as sources of food and medicine but as objects of worship, actors in creation myths, and symbols of war and peace, life and death. Mabey takes listeners from the Himalayas to Madagascar to the Amazon to our own backyards. He ranges through the work of writers, artists, and scientists and across nearly 40,000 years of human history: Ice Age images of plant life in ancient cave art, Newton’s apple and gravity, Wordsworth’s daffodils, and the ways the sturdy oak became the symbol of British nationhood and the giant sequoia came to epitomize the spirit of America.
McBride, James. Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780147522788. Read by Dominic Hoffman.
James Brown was long a figure of fascination for McBride, a noted professional musician as well as a writer. When he received a tip that promised to uncover the man behind the myth, McBride set off to follow a trail to better understand the personal, musical, and societal influences that created the immensely troubled, misunderstood, and complicated soul genius. McBride’s travels take him to forgotten corners of Brown’s never-before-revealed history: the country town where Brown’s family and thousands of others were displaced by America’s largest nuclear power bomb-making facility; a South Carolina field where a long-forgotten cousin recounts a fuller history of Brown’s sharecropping childhood. McBride seeks out the American expatriate in England who co-created the James Brown sound, visits the trusted right-hand manager who worked with Brown for 41 years, and lays bare the Dickensian legal contest over James Brown’s estate, a fight that has prevented any money from reaching the poor schoolchildren in Georgia and South Carolina, as instructed in his will; cost Brown’s estate millions in legal fees; and left James Brown’s body to lie for more than eight years in a gilded coffin in his daughter’s yard in South Carolina.
McHugh, Erin. Political Suicide: Missteps, Peccadilloes, Bad Calls, Backroom Hijinx, Sordid Pasts, Rotten Breaks, and Just Plain Dumb Mistakes in the Annals of American Politics. Blackstone. ISBN 9781504692250. Read by Lisa Flanagan.
Just in time for the presidential election of 2016 comes a history of the best and most interesting missteps, peccadilloes, bad calls, backroom hijinks, sordid pasts, rotten breaks, and just plain dumb mistakes in the annals of American politics. They have tweeted their private parts to women they’re trying to impress. They have gotten caught on tape doing and saying things they really shouldn’t have. They have denied knowing about the underhanded doings of underlings—only to have a paper trail lead straight back to them. Nowadays, it seems like half of what we hear about politicians isn’t about laws or governing but is instead coverage focused on shenanigans, questionable morals, and scandals too numerous to count. And while we shake our heads in disbelief, we still can’t resist poring over the details of these notorious incidents.
Mendelsohn, Daniel. The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million. Blackstone. ISBN 9781504701778. Read by Bronson Pinchot.
Mendelsohn grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust—an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Mendelsohn set out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives’ fates. That quest eventually takes him to a dozen countries on four continents and forces him to confront the wrenching discrepancies between the histories we live and the stories we tell. And it leads him, finally, back to the small Ukrainian town where his family’s story began and where the solution to a decades-old mystery awaits him.
Miranda, Lin-Manuel, Jeremy McCarter, & Jeffrey Seller. Hamilton: The Revolution. Hachette Audio. ISBN 9781478939351. Reader TBA.
Hamilton has it all—romance, drama, violence, patriotism, and adventure—combined with the foundational story of our nation. Audience members leave the Broadway show wanting more—more details about the many dramatic episodes in Alexander Hamilton’s life and further analysis of the musical’s lyrics and their meaning. This audiobook will include a PDF disc of behind-the-scenes photos of the show that evokes the spirit of the musical, giving listeners the same mix of history, personality, and inspiration that Miranda has achieved on stage.
Plakis, Anastacia Cole. The Farm on the Roof: What Brooklyn Grange Taught Us About Entrepreneurship, Community, and Growing a Sustainable Business. Tantor. ISBN 9781494568498. Read by the author.
In their effort to build the world’s first and largest commercial green rooftop farm, the founders of Brooklyn Grange learned a lot about building and sustaining a business while never losing sight of their mission—to serve their community by providing delicious organic food and changing the way people think about what they eat. But their story is about more than just farming. It serves as an inspirational and instructional guide for anyone looking to start a business that is successful while making a positive impact. The team share valuable lessons about finding the right partners, seeking funding, expanding, and identifying potential sources of revenue without compromising your core values—lessons any socially conscious entrepreneur can apply toward his or her own venture.
Richman, Joe. Contenders: America’s Most Original Presidential Candidates. HighBridge. ISBN 9781681681382. Read by the author.
The arduous, often unpredictable journey to the U.S. presidency has attracted some of the most unusual characters in history. Here Richman shines a spotlight on individuals who were inspired to offer their uncommon perspectives and special talents to lead the nation. From heartbreaking near-misses (Stevenson, Bryan) and historic firsts (Woodhull, Chisolm, Smith), to campaigns that never stood a chance (Allen), the work provides insight into the American political process. The book features Victoria Woodhull, Williams Jennings Bryan, Adlai Stevenson, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisolm, Gracie Allen, and Alben Barkley.
Stolzenburg, William. Heart of a Lion: A Lone Cat’s Walk Across America. Brilliance. ISBN 9781480532083. Read by Mike DelGaudio.
Late one June night in 2011, a large animal collided with an SUV cruising down a Connecticut parkway. Beside the road lay a 140-pound mountain lion. The lion was three years old, with a DNA trail that showed he embarked from South Dakota on a cross-country odyssey eventually passing within thirty miles of New York City. It was the farthest landbound trek ever recorded for a wild animal in America, by a barely weaned teenager venturing solo through hostile terrain. Stolzenburg retraces his two-year journey—from his embattled birthplace in the Black Hills, across the Great Plains and the Mississippi River, through Midwest metropolises and remote northern forests, to his tragic finale on Connecticut’s Gold Coast. Along the way, the lion traverses lands with people gunning for his kind, as well as those championing his cause.
Thomas, Louisa. Louisa: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780147524805. Read by Kirsten Potter.
Born in London to an American father and a British mother on the eve of the Revolutionary War, Louisa Catherine Johnson was raised in circumstances very different from the New England upbringing of the future president John Quincy Adams, whose life had been dedicated to public service from the earliest age. And yet John Quincy fell in love with her, almost despite himself. Their often tempestuous but deeply close marriage lasted half a century. They lived in Prussia, Massachusetts, Washington, Russia, and England, at royal courts, on farms, in cities, and in the White House. Louisa saw more of Europe and America than nearly any other woman of her time. The story of Louisa Catherine Adams is one of a woman who forged a sense of self and found her voice as the country her husband led found its place in the world.
Wilson, Katherine. Only in Naples. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780147524324. Read by the author.
Fresh out of college, Katherine arrived in Naples to intern at the United States Consulate. She met handsome, studious Salvatore and found herself immediately enveloped by his elegant mother, Raffaella, and the rest of the Avallone family. Immersed in Neapolitan culture, traditions, and cuisine, slowly and unexpectedly falling for Salvatore, and longing for Raffaella’s company and guidance, Katherine discovers how to prepare meals that sing, from hearty, thick ragù to comforting rigatoni alla Genovese to pasta al forno, a casserole chock-full of bacon, béchamel, and no fewer than four kinds of cheeses. While Katherine was used to large American kitchens with islands and barstools, she understands the beauty of small, tight Italian ones, where it’s easy to offer a taste from a wooden spoon. Through courtship, culture clashes, Sunday services, marriage, and motherhood Katherine comes to appreciate carnale, the quintessentially Neapolitan sense of comfort and confidence in one’s own skin.
Wright, Alex. Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age. Brilliance. ISBN 9781511383967. Read by John Lee.
Beginning in the late 19th century, Paul Otlet, a librarian by training, worked at expanding the potential of the catalog card, the world’s first information chip. Forty years before the first personal computer and 50 years before the first browser, Otlet envisioned a network of “electric telescopes” that would allow people everywhere to search through books, newspapers, photographs, and recordings, all linked together in what he termed, in 1934, a reseau mondial, essentially, a worldwide web. Otlet’s life achievement was the construction of the Mundaneum, a mechanical collective brain that would house and disseminate everything ever committed to paper. Filled with analog machines such as telegraphs and sorters, the Mundaneum, what some have called a “Steampunk version of hypertext” was the embodiment of Otlet’s ambitions. It was also shortlived. By the time the Nazis, who were pilfering libraries across Europe to collect information they thought useful, carted away Otlet’s collection in 1940, the dream had ended. Broken, Otlet died in 1944. Wright gives Otlet his due, restoring him to his proper place in the long continuum of visionaries and pioneers who have struggled to classify knowledge.
Zacks, Richard. Chasing the Last Laugh. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780553551174. Reader TBA.
In 1895, at age 60, Mark Twain was dead broke and miserable—his recent novels had been critical and commercial failures, and he was bankrupted by his inexplicable decision to run a publishing company. His wife made him promise to pay every debt back in full, so Twain embarked on an around-the-world comedy lecture tour that would take him from the dusty small towns of the American West to the faraway lands of India, South Africa, and Australia. Zacks’s narrative provides a portrait of Twain as a complicated, vibrant individual, and showcases the biting wit and skeptical observation that made him one of the greatest of all American writers. Twain remained abroad for five years, a time of struggle and wild experiences—and ultimately redemption, as he rediscovered his voice as a writer and humorist, and returned, wiser and celebrated. Weaving together a trove of sources, including newspaper accounts, correspondence, and unpublished material from Berkeley’s ongoing Twain Project, Zacks chronicles a chapter of Twain’s life as complex as the author himself, full of foolishness and bad choices, but also humor, self-discovery, and triumph.