Access Must-Have Full Audiobooks in Non-Fiction, Current Affairs, Law, & Politics

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/509086 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Freedomville: The Story of a 21st-Century Slave Revolt

Author: Laura T. Murphy

Narrator: Reena Dutt

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 3 hours 7 minutes

Release date: September 7, 2021

Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics

Publisher's Summary:

How do Enslaved People Today Win (and Sometimes Lose) their Freedom? A community of rock quarry miners in a village in Uttar Pradesh, India gave their tiny cluster of thatched roofed houses the name Azad Nagar. Freedomville. But it hasn't always been identified by that auspicious moniker. The miners renamed their village in 2000, after they staged a revolt that overthrew the profit-driven landowners who held their families in debt bondage for generations. Non-profits celebrated their tenacity; a film promoted their non-violent grassroots efforts; their success inspired other villages to fight for their own freedom. But the complex story of Freedomville, the murder that these revolutionaries nearly got away with, and the short-lived freedom its inhabitants created for themselves has never before been told until now. Laura T. Murphy, a leading scholar of contemporary global slavery, spent years following the story of a small group of transgenerationally-enslaved men and women who fought to liberate themselves from their overseers, wrest control of the rock quarry in which they worked, and become masters of their own fates. Their journey reveals the precarity of that hard-won freedom, as those rock quarry miners fight to sustain their freedom after liberation without the literal and figurative tools necessary to run their own businesses, develop their village, and improve the opportunities available to their children. Their struggle suggests that the effort to sustain freedom after liberation is as much about successful revolution as it is about the stories we tell about societal change. In the process of capturing the constantly changing narrative that emerged, Murphy reveals how it is that slavery continues to exist in the twenty-first century, how the slow and possibly interminable dissolution of the caste system has led to a veritable class war in India, and how the global construction boom has contributed to the continued alienation of impoverished people around the world.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/503651 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation

Author: David Cutler, Edward Glaeser

Narrator: Teri Schnaubelt, Edward Glaeser, David Cutler

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 12 hours 7 minutes

Release date: September 7, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1

Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics

Publisher's Summary:

“Expansive and entertaining. . . . [A] fast-paced and highly readable journey . . . the book serves as a useful tool in the effort to redefine the role of the city in an age of increasingly polarized politics, and reminds us that urban health is—as Fiorello La Guardia once remarked about cleaning the streets—not a Democratic or Republican issue.” —New York Times Book Review One of our great urbanists and one of our great public health experts join forces to reckon with how cities are changing in the face of existential threats the pandemic has only accelerated Cities can make us sick. That’s always been true—diseases spread more easily when more people are close to one another. And cities have been demonized as breeding grounds for vice and crime from Sodom and Gomorrah on. But cities have flourished nonetheless because they are humanity’s greatest invention, indispensable engines for creativity, innovation, wealth, and civilization itself.   But cities now stand at a crossroads. During the global COVID crisis, cities grew silent; the normal forms of socializing ground to a halt. How permanent are these changes? Advances in technology mean that many people can opt out of city life as never before. Will they? Are we on the brink of a post-urban world?   City life will survive, but individual cities face terrible risks, argue Edward Glaeser and David Cutler, and a wave of urban failure would be absolutely disastrous. In terms of intimacy and inspiration, nothing can replace what cities offer. But great cities have always demanded great management, and our current crisis has exposed fearful gaps in our capacity for good governance. In America, Glaeser and Cutler argue, deep inequities in health care and education are a particular blight on the future of our cities; solving them will be the difference between our collective good health and a downward spiral to a much darker place.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/501964 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Countdown bin Laden: The Untold Story of the 247-Day Hunt to Bring the Mastermind of 9/11 to Justice

Author: Chris Wallace

Narrator: Chris Wallace

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 10 hours 2 minutes

Release date: September 7, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.25 of Total 32

Ratings of Narrator: 3.5 of Total 4

Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics

Publisher's Summary:

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER * INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Following Chris Wallace’s “riveting” (The New York Times) and “propulsive” (Time) first book Countdown 1945 comes a deeply reported, revelatory, and thrillingly told account of the final months of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. On August 27, 2010, three CIA officers ask for a private meeting with CIA Director Leon Panetta. During that secret session, they tell Panetta that agents have tracked a courier with deep Al Qaeda ties to a three-story house at the end of a dead-end street in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But they say it’s more than a house—it’s a heavily protected fortress. No one in the meeting says the name bin Laden. They don’t have to. Everyone understands that finally, after nearly a decade, maybe, just maybe, they’ve found the world’s most wanted man. In Countdown bin Laden, celebrated journalist and CNN anchor and Max host Chris Wallace delivers a vivid account of the final eight months of intelligence gathering, national security strategizing, and meticulous military planning that leads to the climactic mission when SEAL Team Six closes in on its target. The book delivers new information collected from Wallace’s in-depth interviews with more than a dozen central figures, including Admiral William H. McRaven—leader of the operation in Pakistan—as well as CIA Director Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and the SEAL Team Six special operator who kills Osama bin Laden. Wallace also brings to life the human elements of this story, talking to families who lost loved ones on 9/11, sharing what relatives of SEAL Team Six went through, and bringing us inside the tense Situation Room during the raid. Countdown bin Laden is a historical thriller filled with intrigue, cinematic action, and fresh reporting about the race to apprehend and bring to justice the mastermind of the most consequential terrorist attack in American history.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/502991 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War

Author: Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post

Narrator: Dan Bittner

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 35 minutes

Release date: August 31, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.21 of Total 38

Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2

Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics

Publisher's Summary:

A Washington Post Best Book of 2021 The #1 New York Times bestselling investigative story of how three successive presidents and their military commanders deceived the public year after year about America’s longest war, foreshadowing the Taliban’s recapture of Afghanistan, by Washington Post reporter and three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Craig Whitlock. Unlike the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had near-unanimous public support. At first, the goals were straightforward and clear: defeat al-Qaeda and prevent a repeat of 9/11. Yet soon after the United States and its allies removed the Taliban from power, the mission veered off course and US officials lost sight of their original objectives. Distracted by the war in Iraq, the US military become mired in an unwinnable guerrilla conflict in a country it did not understand. But no president wanted to admit failure, especially in a war that began as a just cause. Instead, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations sent more and more troops to Afghanistan and repeatedly said they were making progress, even though they knew there was no realistic prospect for an outright victory. Just as the Pentagon Papers changed the public’s understanding of Vietnam, The Afghanistan Papers contains “fast-paced and vivid” (The New York Times Book Review) revelation after revelation from people who played a direct role in the war from leaders in the White House and the Pentagon to soldiers and aid workers on the front lines. In unvarnished language, they admit that the US government’s strategies were a mess, that the nation-building project was a colossal failure, and that drugs and corruption gained a stranglehold over their allies in the Afghan government. All told, the account is based on interviews with more than 1,000 people who knew that the US government was presenting a distorted, and sometimes entirely fabricated, version of the facts on the ground. Documents unearthed by The Washington Post reveal that President Bush didn’t know the name of his Afghanistan war commander—and didn’t want to meet with him. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he had “no visibility into who the bad guys are.” His successor, Robert Gates, said: “We didn’t know jack shit about al-Qaeda.” The Afghanistan Papers is a “searing indictment of the deceit, blunders, and hubris of senior military and civilian officials” (Tom Bowman, NRP Pentagon Correspondent) that will supercharge a long-overdue reckoning over what went wrong and forever change the way the conflict is remembered.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/509091 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Alpha: Eddie Gallagher and the War for the Soul of the Navy SEALs

Author: David Philipps

Narrator: Andrew Eiden

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 15 hours 25 minutes

Release date: August 24, 2021

Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 14

Ratings of Narrator: 4.17 of Total 6

Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics

Publisher's Summary:

An “infuriating, fast-paced” (The Washington Post) account of the Navy SEALs of Alpha platoon, the startling accusations against their chief, Eddie Gallagher, and the courtroom battle that exposed the dark underbelly of America’s special forces—from a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter   WINNER OF THE COLORADO BOOK AWARD • “Nearly impossible to put down.”—Jon Krakauer, New York Times bestselling author of Where Men Win Glory and Into the Wild   In this “brilliantly written” (The New York Times Book Review) and startling account, Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times correspondent David Philipps reveals a powerful moral crucible, one that would define the American military during the years of combat that became known as “the forever war.”   When the Navy SEALs of Alpha platoon returned from their 2017 deployment to Iraq, a group of them reported their chief, Eddie Gallagher, for war crimes, alleging that he’d stabbed a prisoner in cold blood and taken lethal sniper shots at unarmed civilians. The story of Alpha’s war, both in Iraq and in the shocking trial that followed the men’s accusations, would complicate the SEALs’ post-9/11 hero narrative, turning brothers-in-arms against one another and bringing into stark relief the choice that elite soldiers face between loyalty to their unit and to their country.   One of the great stories written about American special forces, Alpha is by turns a battlefield drama, a courtroom thriller, and a compelling examination of how soldiers define themselves and live with the decisions in the heat of combat.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/507117 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson

Author: Robert S. Levine

Narrator: Ryan Vincent Anderson

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 9 hours 55 minutes

Release date: August 24, 2021

Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics

Publisher's Summary:

Robert S. Levine foregrounds the viewpoints of Black Americans on Reconstruction in his absorbing account of the struggle between the great orator Frederick Douglass and President Andrew Johnson. When Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the country was on the precipice of radical change. Johnson, seemingly more progressive than Lincoln, looked like the ideal person to lead the country. He had already cast himself as a “Moses” for the Black community, and African Americans were optimistic that he would pursue aggressive federal policies for Black equality. Despite this early promise, Frederick Douglass, the country’s most influential Black leader, soon grew disillusioned with Johnson’s policies and increasingly doubted the president was sincere in supporting Black citizenship. In a dramatic and pivotal meeting between Johnson and a Black delegation at the White House, the president and Douglass came to verbal blows over the course of Reconstruction. As he lectured across the country, Douglass continued to attack Johnson’s policies, while raising questions about the Radical Republicans’ hesitancy to grant African Americans the vote. Johnson meanwhile kept his eye on Douglass, eventually making a surprising effort to appoint him to a key position in his administration. Levine grippingly portrays the conflicts that brought Douglass and the wider Black community to reject Johnson and call for a guilty verdict in his impeachment trial. He brings fresh insight by turning to letters between Douglass and his sons, speeches by Douglass and other major Black figures like Frances E. W. Harper, and articles and letters in the Christian Recorder, the most important African American newspaper of the time. In counterpointing the lives and careers of Douglass and Johnson, Levine offers a distinctive vision of the lost promise and dire failure of Reconstruction, the effects of which still reverberate today.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/514040 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy

Author: Terry M. Moe, William G. Howell

Narrator: James Romick

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 47 minutes

Release date: August 17, 2021

Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics

Publisher's Summary:

Has American democracy's long, ambitious run come to an end? Possibly yes. As William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe argue in this trenchant new analysis of modern politics, the United States faces a historic crisis that threatens our system of self-government—and if democracy is to be saved, the causes of the crisis must be understood and defused. The most visible cause is Donald Trump, who has used his presidency to attack the nation's institutions and violate its democratic norms. Yet Trump is but a symptom of causes that run much deeper: social forces like globalization, automation, and immigration that for decades have generated economic harms and cultural anxieties that our government has been wholly ineffective at addressing. The solution lies in having a government that can deal with them—which calls for aggressive new policies, but also for institutional reforms that enhance its capacity for effective action. The path to progress is filled with political obstacles, including an increasingly populist, anti-government Republican Party. But if the challenge is to be met, we need reforms of the presidency itself—reforms that harness the promise of presidential power for effective government, but firmly protect against the fear that it may be put to anti-democratic ends.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/508364 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency

Author: Randall Kennedy

Narrator: Cary Hite

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 8 hours 49 minutes

Release date: August 17, 2021

Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics

Publisher's Summary:

Timely—as the 2012 presidential election nears—and controversial, here is the first book by a major African-American public intellectual on racial politics and the Obama presidency.   Renowned for his cool reason vis-à-vis the pitfalls and clichés of racial discourse, Randall Kennedy—Harvard professor of law and author of the New York Times best seller Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word—gives us a keen and shrewd analysis of the complex relationship between the first black president and his African-American constituency.   Kennedy tackles such hot-button issues as the nature of racial opposition to Obama, whether Obama has a singular responsibility to African Americans, electoral politics and cultural chauvinism, black patriotism, the differences in Obama’s presentation of himself to blacks and to whites, the challenges posed by the dream of a postracial society, and the far-from-simple symbolism of Obama as a leader of the Joshua generation in a country that has elected only three black senators and two black governors in its entire history.   Eschewing the critical excesses of both the left and the right, Kennedy offers a gimlet-eyed view of Obama’s triumphs and travails, his strengths and weaknesses, as they pertain to the troubled history of race in America.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/503205 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: The Power of Nothing to Lose: The Hail Mary Effect in Politics, War, and Business

Author: William L. Silber

Narrator: Fred Sanders

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 5 hours 30 minutes

Release date: August 17, 2021

Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics

Publisher's Summary:

Following books by Malcolm Gladwell and Dan Ariely, noted economics professor William L. Silber explores the Hail Mary effect, from its origins in sports to its applications to history, nature, politics, and business. A quarterback like Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers gambles with a Hail Mary pass at the end of a football game when he has nothing to lose -- the risky throw might turn defeat into victory, or end in a meaningless interception. Rodgers may not realize it, but he has much in common with figures such as George Washington, Rosa Parks, Woodrow Wilson, and Adolph Hitler, all of whom changed the modern world with their risk-loving decisions. In The Power of Nothing to Lose, award-winning economist William Silber explores the phenomenon in politics, war, and business, where situations with a big upside and limited downside trigger gambling behavior like with a Hail Mary. Silber describes in colorful detail how the American Revolution turned on such a gamble. The famous scene of Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas night to attack the enemy may not look like a Hail Mary, but it was. Washington said days before his risky decision, “If this fails I think the game will be pretty well up.” Rosa Parks remained seated in the white section of an Alabama bus, defying local segregation laws, an act that sparked the modern civil rights movement in America. It was a life-threatening decision for her, but she said, “I was not frightened. I just made up my mind that as long as we accepted that kind of treatment it would continue, so I had nothing to lose.”  The risky exploits of George Washington and Rosa Parks made the world a better place, but demagogues have inflicted great damage with Hail Marys. Towards the end of World War II, Adolph Hitler ordered a desperate counterattack, the Battle of the Bulge, to stem the Allied advance into Germany. He said, “The outcome of the battle would spell either life or death for the German nation.” Hitler failed to change the war’s outcome, but his desperate gamble inflicted great collateral damage, including the worst wartime atrocity on American troops in Europe. Silber shares these illuminating insights on these figures and more, from Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump, asylum seekers to terrorists and rogue traders. Collectively they illustrate that downside protection fosters risky undertakings, that it changes the world in ways we least expect.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/513851 to listen full audiobooks.

Title: Dragged Off: Refusing to Give Up My Seat on the Way to the American Dream

Author: Dr. David Dao

Narrator: David Shih

Format: Unabridged Audiobook

Length: 4 hours 47 minutes

Release date: August 3, 2021

Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics

Publisher's Summary:

Dr. David Dao was dragged off United Express Flight 3411 on April 9, 2017 after refusing to give up his seat. In the tradition of contemporary immigrant stories comes a personal narrative of the many small but significant acts of racial discrimination faced on the way to the American Dream. The unseen effects of discrimination. The United Airlines scandal of 2017 garnered over a million views on YouTube. A result of an overbooking overlook, security officials forcibly removed Dr. Dao after refusing to give up his seat. He awoke in the hospital to a concussion, a broken nose, several broken teeth, and worldwide attention. Things aren't always fair for an immigrant, but according to Dr. Dao, you can prevail if you firmly advocate for yourself. A response to a lifetime of oppressive acts. Why was Dr. Dao so adamant on his right to a seat? His entire life had led to that moment. A Vietnamese refugee, he fled his home country during the fall of Saigon. He was stranded in the Indian Ocean, immigrated to the United States, enrolled in medical school for a second time, built a practice, and started a family—all the while battling the effects of discrimination and what he had to embrace as a result. This is his story.