Albracht, William & Marvin Wolf. Abandoned in Hell: The Fight for Vietnam’s Fire Base Kate. Recorded Bks. ISBN 9781490656748. Reader to be announced.
In October 1969, Captain William Albracht, the youngest Green Beret in Vietnam, took command of a remote hilltop outpost called Fire Base Kate, held by only 27 American soldiers and 150 Montagnard militiamen. At dawn the next morning, three North Vietnamese Army regiments—some 6,000 men—attacked. Albracht’s men held off repeated ground assaults with fierce hand-to-hand fighting, air support, and a dangerously close B-52 strike. After five days, Kate’s defenders were out of ammo and water. Refusing to allow his men to surrender, Albracht led his troops, including many wounded, off the hill and on a daring night march through enemy lines.
Adam, David. The Man Who Couldn’t Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought. Recorded Bks. ISBN 9781490643571. Read by Daniel Philpott.
This book offers an intimate look at the power of intrusive thoughts, how our brains can turn against us, and what it means to live with obsessive compulsive disorder. In this captivating fusion of science, history, and personal memoir, Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind, and how they drive millions of us towards obsessions and compulsions. David has suffered from OCD for 20 years, and this work is his unflinchingly honest attempt to understand the condition and his experiences.
Axelrod, David. Believer: My Forty Years in Politics. Penguin. ISBN 9781611763638. Read by the author.
As a young newspaperman in the Chicago of the 1970s and 1980s, Axelrod reported on the dissolution of the last of the big city political machines, along with the emergence of a black, independent movement that made Obama’s ascent possible. Axelrod switched careers to become a political strategist, working for pathbreakers such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and morally conflicted characters such as John Edwards.
Browder, Bill. Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man’s Fight for Justice. Recorded Bks. ISBN 9781490649658. Reader to be announced.
Browder, one of the first capitalist investors into Russia after the end of Communism, made billions of dollars by taking on and exposing the Russian oligarchs’ corruption in the nineties. When Vladimir Putin came to power, Browder’s Russian visa was withdrawn and a group of corrupt Russian government officials scammed him out of $230 million. Sergei Magnitsky, Browder’s young lawyer in Moscow, exposed that fraud, then was arrested and beaten to death in a Russian prison. Browder set out to achieve justice for Sergei and his family, shutting down his company and turning himself into a human rights entrepreneur.
Busby, Cylin & John Busby. The Year We Disappeared: A Father-Daughter Memoir. Brilliance. ISBN 9781501237454. Read by Cylin Busby David Baker, & The Full Cast Family.
Police officer John Busby was shot by an unknown assailant and, though horribly wounded, he survived. But the perpetrator remained at large, meaning Busby and his family remained in danger. In alternating chapters, John Busby and his daughter, Cylin, tell the harrowing true story of the year that followed—John from his perspective as parent, Cylin from the point of view of the nine-year-old child that she was. Together, father and daughter craft an unforgettable picture of fear, police corruption, and a malignant thug, as well as redemption, hope, and healing.
Chandra, Vikram. Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty. Tantor Audio. ISBN 9781494508654. Read by Neil Shah.
Chandra (Red Earth and Pouring Rain) has been a computer programmer for almost as long as he has been a novelist. In this extraordinary new book, his first work of nonfiction, he searches for the connections between the worlds of art and technology. Exploring such varied topics as logic gates and literary modernism, the machismo of tech geeks, the omnipresence of an “Indian Mafia” in Silicon Valley, and the writings of the 11th-century Kashmiri thinker Abhinavagupta, this is both an idiosyncratic history of coding and a fascinating meditation on the writer’s art.
Charan, Ram. The Attacker’s Advantage: Turning Uncertainty into Breakthrough Opportunities. HighBridge. ISBN 9781622315000. Read by Mark Bramhall.
Business leaders are operating in an era of persistent uncertainty that moves at an unprecedented rate of change. Here Charan reveals the upside of uncertainty for those leaders who are nimbly positioned to anticipate the catalysts of disruption and embrace change. He addresses the current turbulent business environment, cutting through the veil of complexity to concentrate on new customer needs and expectations and providing the tools for corporate leaders to take their companies to a higher level.
Connors, Phillip. All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found. HighBridge. ISBN 9781622315949. Read by Adam Verner.
Connors’s Fire Season was an account of the decade he spent working in a fire-lookout tower in the remotest part of New Mexico. Now the author returns with the story of what drove him up the tower in the first place: the wilderness years he spent reeling in the wake of a family tragedy. This unforgettable account of grappling with a shattered sense of purpose moves from his family’s failing pig farm in Minnesota to a crack-addled Brooklyn neighborhood and the mountains of New Mexico, where he puts the pieces of his life back together.
Diamandis, Peter H. & Steven Kotler. Bold: How To Go Big, Make Bank, and Better the World. S. & S. Audio. ISBN 9781442380714. Read by Steven Kotler.
Diamandis and Kotler’s (Abundance) resource on the use of emerging technologies, thinking at scale, and the power of crowd-powered tools unfolds in three parts. Part One focuses on the exponential technologies: 3D printing, artificial intelligence, robotics, networks and sensors, and synthetic biology. Part Two draws on insights from entrepreneurs such as Larry Page, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos. The last section is a look at the best practices that will allow anyone to leverage today’s hyper-connected crowd.
Dowling, Tim. How To Be a Husband. Recorded Bks. ISBN 9781490650722. Read by the author.
Guardian columnist Dowling asks what it takes to make a husband, and looks to his own married life to provide the answer. A husband of some 20 years, Dowling considers his marriage resounding proof that even the most impossible partnership can work out for the best. Neither a how-to guide nor a compendium of petty remarks and brinkmanship (although it contains plenty of both), How To Be a Husband is a cautionary tale about throwing caution to the wind. It’s a new manifesto for marriage and an answer to why, even when we suck at it, we stick at it.
Goodman, Marc. Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It. Books on Tape. ISBN 9780804193054. Read by Robertson Dean.
Drawing on his experience in law enforcement and counterterrorism, Goodman explores how bad actors are primed to hijack the technologies of tomorrow, including robotics, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. In this glimpse into the dark side of technological innovation and the unintended consequences of our connected world, Goodman offers listeners a way out with clear steps to survive the progress unfolding before us. Provocative, thrilling, and ultimately empowering, Future Crimes will serve as an urgent call to action that shows how we can take back control over our own devices and harness technology’s tremendous power for the betterment of humanity—before it’s too late.
Doyle, Don H. The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War. Recorded Bks. ISBN 9781490642420. Read by Adam Grupper.
Doyle explains that the Civil War was more than an internal American conflict; it was a struggle that spanned the Atlantic. This book follows the agents of the North and South who went abroad to tell the world what they were fighting for, and the foreign politicians, journalists, and intellectuals who told America and the world what they thought this war was really about—or ought to be about. Foreigners looked upon the American contest as an epic battle in a grand historic struggle that would decide the fate of democracy as well as slavery for generations to come. An account of the international dimensions of Americas defining conflict, this work frames the Civil War as a crucial turning point in the global struggle over the future of democracy.
Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Tantor Audio. ISBN 9781494556907. Read by Derek Perkins.
At least six different species of humans inhabited Earth 100,000 years ago. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Harari examines the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem and the rise of empires, integrating history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.
Jacquet, Jennifer. Is Shame Necessary?: New Uses for an Old Tool. Brilliance. ISBN 9781501201073. Read by the author.
Jacquet here explores the social nature of shame, and the ways it might be used to promote political change and social reform, arguing that the solution to the limitations of guilt can be found in shame, retrofitted for the age of democracy and social media. She demonstrates how shaming can function as a nonviolent form of resistance that, in turn, challenges institutions, organizations, and even governments to actuate large-scale change. She argues that when applied in the right way, the right quantity, and at the right time, shame has the capacity to keep us from failing other species and, ultimately, ourselves.
Loyd, Alexander. Beyond Willpower: The Secret Principle To Achieving Success in Life, Love, and Happiness. Books on Tape. ISBN 9781101913116. Read by Erik Singer.
Loyd’s 40-day program, based on more than 25 years of clinical experience, will help listeners identify and clarify what fundamentally defines success for them. He teaches listeners to use three simple tools to internally shift from fear to love, physically (using the energy medicine tool), mentally (using the reprogramming statements tool), and spiritually (using the heart screen tool).
Brian McGinty. Lincoln’s Greatest Case: The River, The Bridge, and The Making of America. Recorded Bks. ISBN 9781490658605. Reader to be announced.
On May 6, 1856, the steamboat Effie Afton barreled into a pillar of the Rock Island Bridge—the first railroad bridge ever to span the Mississippi River. The vessel erupted into flames and sank, taking much of the bridge with it. No one was killed, but the question of who was at fault cried out for an answer. Recreating the Effie Afton case from its unlikely inception to its controversial finale, McGinty animates the most consequential trial in Lincoln’s nearly quarter century as a lawyer, as well as the future president’s consummate legal skills and instincts, the history of steamboat traffic on the Mississippi, the progress of railroads west of the Appalachians, and the epochal clashes of railroads and steamboats at the river’s edge.
Stewart, David O. Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships that Built America. HighBridge. ISBN 9781622316144. Read by Grover Gardner.
Stewart makes the argument that Madison is the most significant framer of our nation, through his successive partnerships with mentor George Washington; co-author Alexander Hamilton; political ally Thomas Jefferson; successor James Monroe; and wife, Dolley. Stewart makes a compelling case for Madison’s centrality and tells an absorbing story of his friendships with most influential men of his times.
Stringer, Lee. Grand Central Winter. Blackstone. ISBN 9781482956382. Read by Kevin Kenerly.
Originally published in 1998, this memoir chronicles the unraveling of Stringer’s seemingly secure existence as a marketing executive and his odyssey of survival on the streets of New York. Homeless and drug-addicted for 11 years, Stringer began a writing habit that eventually won out over drugs. He conveys the vitality and complexity of a down-and-out life as he portrays “God’s corner,” as he calls 42nd Street; his friend Suzi, a prostitute whose infant he sometimes babysits; and recounts taking shelter underneath Grand Central by night and collecting cans by day.
Thomas, Dana. Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. Recorded Bks. ISBN 9781490631165. Reader to be announced.
In February 2011, John Galliano, the head of Christian Dior, imploded with a drunken, anti-Semitic public tirade. Exactly a year earlier, celebrated designer Alexander McQueen took his own life three weeks before his women’s wear show. Both, Thomas argues, were casualties of the war between art and commerce that rages within fashion. The designers had shaken the establishment out of its bourgeois, minimalist stupor with daring, sexy designs and theatrical fashion shows, but executives pushed the designers to meet increasingly rapid deadlines and the pace was unsustainable.
Trimble, Lee. Beyond the Call: The True Story of One World War II Pilot’s Covert Mission to Rescue POWs on the Eastern Front. Recorded Bks. ISBN 9781490656564. Reader to be announced.
Near the end of World War II, thousands of Allied ex-POWs were abandoned on the Eastern Front with no food, shelter, or supplies. A plan was conceived for an undercover rescue mission. In total secrecy, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) chose an obscure American air force detachment stationed at a Ukrainian airfield; it would provide the base and the cover for the operation. The man they picked to undertake it was veteran bomber pilot Captain Robert Trimble. With little covert training, already scarred by the trials of combat, Trimble took the mission. Alone he faced up to the terrifying Soviet secret police, saving hundreds of lives. At the same time he battled to come to terms with the trauma of war and find his own way home to his wife and child.