Best-Selling Full Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, Memoirs

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/555854 to listen full audiobooks. Title: We March at Midnight: A War Memoir Author: Ray Mcpadden Narrator: Will Damron Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 9 hours 3 minutes Release date: August 3, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.67 of Total 3 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: What would the war do without me? We March at Midnight is award-winning author Ray McPadden’s chronicle of his experience as a highly decorated Ranger Officer leading some of the most dangerous missions during the height of the Iraq and Afghan wars. In 2005, Ray joined the army in search of what he calls “the moment”—a chance to prove to himself and his brothers in arms that he is a true leader. His job is to establish the first outpost in the Korengal, Afghanistan’s deadliest valley, and his decisions and mistakes will have a permanent impact on the men he commands. During the fifteen-month tour, his unit receives numerous decorations for valor while suffering nearly 50 percent casualties, ultimately accomplishing their mission in a land considered unwinnable. Prowess with a rifle platoon soon earns Ray a position in the world’s premiere raiding force, the 75th Ranger Regiment, an accomplishment earned by less than 1 percent of the officers in the US Army, and during the most combat-heavy period of the twenty-first century. Ray spearheads the first joint-strike force of Army Rangers and Navy SEALs, in a shadow war against the agents of a foreign government, where lightning raids by helicopter, armored vehicle, and foot are his nightly routine. In 2009, when Ray returns to the same corner of Afghanistan where his military career began, he suddenly finds himself tasked with leading Rangers against a target he knows all too well: the home of friends from his first tour. As he leads one last raid, Ray is at war with himself. Conquering this unexpected enemy proves the greatest challenge of all. We March at Midnight is a blood-spattered tour de force of growing up, leadership, the nature of war, and its aftermath.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/551639 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Open Skies: My Life as Afghanistan’s First Female Pilot Author: Niloofar Rahmani Narrator: Suehyla El-Attar Young Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 51 minutes Release date: July 13, 2021 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: The true story of Niloofar Rahmani and her determination to become Afghanistan’s first female air force pilot. In 2010, for the first time since the Soviets, Afghanistan allowed women to join the armed forces, and Niloofar entered Afghanistan’s military academy. Niloofar had to break through social barriers to demonstrate confidence, leadership, and decisiveness—essential qualities for a combat pilot. Niloofar performed the first solo flight of her class—ahead of all her male classmates—and in 2013 became Afghanistan’s first female fixed-wing air force pilot. The US State Department honored Niloofar with the International Women of Courage Award and brought her to the United States to meet Michelle Obama and fly with the US Navy’s Blue Angels. But when she returned to Kabul, the danger to her and her family had increased significantly. Rahmani and her family are portraits of the resiliency of refugees and the accomplishments they can reach when afforded with opportunities.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/551643 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Citizen-Surgeon: A Memoir Author: Paul Bryan Roach Narrator: Emmett Schrader Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 4 minutes Release date: July 13, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Citizen-Surgeon takes listeners into the otherwise inaccessible, remote, and intense world of life and surgery within a combat zone. In the backdrop of the US-led war in Afghanistan, amidst a defining US Marine Corps’ offensive to conquer the Marjah region of Helmand Province, [then] US Navy Commander Paul Roach and his company-mates assemble and congeal as a medical unit in Southern California, transport from the United States to their tents in Dasht-e-Margo (the “Desert of Death”) in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, and professionally execute their role as one of the few medical and surgical companies supporting this major offensive. In the course of the audiobook’s events the author undergoes a transformation from being a physician in a military uniform into a military officer that happens to be a physician. The crucible effecting this change is the military offensive and his role within it. Shocking and intense, an array of critical injuries and their treatments are described in rich language that anyone, medical or nonmedical alike, can absorb. Death also pervades the atmosphere; intrusive, unyielding, and painful, its battlefield familiarity and personal impact is resisted, suffered, and ultimately accepted. Citizen-Surgeon is an intimate portrayal, a chronicle, and a celebration of friendship, love, success and failure, contemporary war, and military medicine. It is an account of a slice of reality that few people are privileged to know. It reflects deeply upon the nature of personal choice and how that choice puts us where we are in life, even if we did not fully see in advance how the choice would change us. Citizen-Surgeon also explores a variant of post-traumatic stress particular to medical assets, and it reveal’s one man’s chess match against it. It is a must-listen for those with a specific interest in contemporary military medicine and for those with broader, essentially human interests in individual growth, adventure, and self-actualization. Author’s Note: The Military Expeditionary Brigade-Afghanistan earned the Presidential Unit Citation for their efforts. This is one of only two such awards that the United States Marine Corps has received since the Persian Gulf, and it is the only Presidential Unit Citation given to any unit during the entire Afghan war. It is the highest unit commendation award that can be given.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/550590 to listen full audiobooks. Title: My Guru Wears Heels Author: Joanna Rajendran Narrator: Joanna Rajendran Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 34 minutes Release date: July 6, 2021 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Did you ever wonder if Jesus had a bestie? How did average girl Joanna Rajendran have such a backstage pass to magical Guru Tao Porchon-Lynch? This intergenerational spiritual journey shows how the philosophies of the World’s Oldest Yoga Teacher shaped two women generations apart. From trauma to triumphs and everything in between, these friends experience their respective worlds guided by the inspiring lessons first learned and then passed on by Tao. In addition to teaching for over seventy years, Tao was an activist, an actress, a model, a producer, and a writer. Later in life, she was on the Panel for Peace with His Holiness The Dalai Lama, collaborated with Tony Robbins, and was considered by Deepak Chopra to be his yoga teacher. Joanna watched in awe as Tao inspired transformation in everyone she encountered and at the end realized that her own may have been the biggest.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/550583 to listen full audiobooks. Title: It Never Ends: A Memoir with Nice Memories! Author: Tom Scharpling Narrator: Tom Scharpling Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 53 minutes Release date: July 6, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.67 of Total 3 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: From the comedian, television writer, and host of The Best Show with Tom Scharpling, a revealing and powerful memoir exploring a life of struggle and reinvention. Tom Scharpling is good at being funny, which is a miracle, considering what he’s survived. Like hitting a deer and narrowly escaping with his life on the night of the 2016 election. But that’s nothing compared to the struggles he had earlier in his life. It Never Ends is his memoir of a life writing comedy amidst a lifelong struggle with mental illness, a story he has never told before. It’s the heartbreaking account of his intense coming-of-age, and the lengths he’s undertaken to pull away from the brink of self-destruction. Scharpling brought himself back to life first with punk zines and NBA coverage, then through the world of comedy, writing, and executive producing Monk, and creating one of the most beloved, longest running comedy radio broadcasts/podcasts, The Best Show with Tom Scharpling. Of course, there are also the tangents into auditioning for the New Monkees, why Billy Joel sucks, the siren call of the Sex and the City slot machines, and how he made a fool of himself in an elevator with Patti Smith. Tom is the quintessential underdog, and he wears that status on his sleeve as a badge of honor. With this memoir, he lifts the curtain to let the light in on the turmoil that still follows him, even as he racks up accolades and achievements. But most importantly, he reminds us that while many of us carry trauma and shame, we are not alone. It Never Ends is about rising above whatever circumstance you find yourself in and getting the most out of your life, while steamrolling the chumps along the way.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/550578 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Mirror of the Sea: Memories & Impressions Author: Joseph Conrad Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 33 minutes Release date: July 6, 2021 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: First published in 1906, The Mirror of the Sea was the first of Joseph Conrad’s two autobiographical memoirs. Discussing it, he called the book “a very intimate revelation…I have attempted here to lay bare with the unreserve of a last hour’s confession the terms of my relation with the sea, which beginning mysteriously, like any great passion the inscrutable Gods send to mortals, went on unreasoning and invincible, surviving the test of disillusion, defying the disenchantment that lurks in every day of a strenuous life; went on full of love’s delight and love’s anguish, facing them in open-eyed exultation without bitterness and without repining, from the first hour to the last.” The Mirror of the Sea is a personal meditation on the sea and its meanings by one of the twentieth century’s most important novelists. When Joseph Conrad was discharged from the clipper Torrens in London during the summer of 1893, his seafaring career was over. He had travelled the world by then, risen in rank from apprentice to captain, survived shipwreck and turbulent seas. But, after nineteen years afloat he longed for the land, and wrote to his cousin of the “uniform grey of my existence.” Once ashore, however, vivid memories of his past life began to surface. While steam and internal combustion were changing maritime travel forever, Conrad started to reflect on the voyages he had made in the Golden Age of Sail, the people and ships he had known, and the extraordinary communities whose lives, language, and very nature were shaped by the swells and silences of the open ocean.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/549676 to listen full audiobooks. Title: India: A Wounded Civilization Author: V. S. Naipaul Narrator: Sam Dastor Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 41 minutes Release date: June 29, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s “Emergency,” V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left one hundred years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured in a mythic vision of its past. Drawing on novels, news reports, political memoirs, and his own encounters with ordinary Indians—from a supercilious prince to an engineer constructing housing for Bombay’s homeless—Naipaul captures a vast, mysterious, and agonized continent inaccessible to foreigners and barely visible to its own people. He sees both the burgeoning space program and the five thousand volunteers chanting mantras to purify a defiled temple; the feudal village autocrat and the Naxalite revolutionaries who combined Maoist rhetoric with ritual murder. Relentless in its vision, thrilling in the keenness of its prose, India: A Wounded Civilization is a work of astonishing insight and candor.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/551733 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Whistled: A Memoir of Achievement, Betrayal, and the Search for Self-Worth Author: Dawn Duhamel Narrator: Dawn Duhamel Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 24 minutes Release date: June 25, 2021 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: A variety of traumatic personal events, including a physical assault, a home burglary, a school shooting, the layoffs of the Great Recession, and #metoo impacted Dawn Duhamel’s life. In Whistled, she shares her story, chronicling the events that shaped her. Living under the belief that working hard always pays off, and experiencing success that proved her theory, Duhamel was unprepared when, at the age of fifty, an anonymous, contrived whistleblower complaint was filed against her, ultimately resulting in her controversial termination. Blindsided by being fired for the first time, the ensuing self-doubt suffocated her spirit until, after twenty-four months of questioning and processing, she discovered what truly mattered, and the reasons to love herself again. Whistled narrates a story of how Duhamel found meaning in loss, hope in resiliency, and courage in vulnerability. For anyone who has been betrayed, fired, or felt discarded, this memoir is about finding your way back to your true and best self.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/548568 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Tokyo Junkie: 60 Years of Bright Lights and Back Alleys ... and Baseball Author: Robert Whiting Narrator: Stefan Rudnicki Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 50 minutes Release date: June 22, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Tokyo Junkie is a memoir that plays out over the dramatic sixty-year growth of the megacity Tokyo, once a dark, fetid backwater and now the most populous, sophisticated, and safe urban capital in the world. Follow author Robert Whiting (The Chrysanthemum and the Bat, You Gotta Have Wa, Tokyo Underworld) as he watches Tokyo transform during the 1964 Olympics, rubs shoulders with the Yakuza and comes face to face with the city’s dark underbelly, interviews Japan’s baseball elite after publishing his first bestselling book on the subject, and learns how politics and sports collide to produce a cultural landscape unlike any other, even as a new Olympics is postponed and the COVID virus ravages the nation. A colorful social history of what Anthony Bourdain dubbed, “the greatest city in the world,” Tokyo Junkie is a revealing account by an accomplished journalist who witnessed it all firsthand and, in the process, had his own dramatic personal transformation.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/547633 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Return of the Old Katfish: One Pathfinder's Way of Living with Arthritis Author: John P. Lynch Narrator: John P. Lynch Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 52 minutes Release date: June 15, 2021 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: John Lynch was a promising athlete, but at age eleven was struck by a crippling illness. He was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis (JA), a disease that affects 300,000 children, making them unable to live full-functioning, pain-free lives. Children with JA are called “Katfish,” a name derived from Kids and Teens’ Families Investing Support and Hope. John continued to seek new treatments, but not until age fifty-three was he given the “miracle drug” that enabled him to sustain a thirty-year legal practice. During that time he dedicated his life to helping others who suffered from JA and became a much-honored advocate for easing their distress. In addition to chronicling John’s journey from victim to advocate, Return of the Old Katfish includes the stories of children fighting through pain to carve out successful lives. These tales will give hope and inspiration to those afflicted with chronic illness and to anyone who must overcome a seemingly insurmountable obstacle in order to lead a happy and meaningful life.