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Title: Orchestra of Exiles

Subtitle: The Story of Bronislaw Huberman, the Israel Philharmonic, and the One Thousand Jews He Saved from Nazi Horrors

Author: Josh Aronson, Denise George

Narrator: Tom Zingarelli

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-29-16

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

At 14, Bronislaw Huberman played the Brahms "Violin Concerto" in Vienna, winning high praise from the composer himself. Instantly famous, Huberman began touring all over the world and received invitations to play for royalty across Europe. But after witnessing the tragedy of World War I, he committed his phenomenal talent and celebrity to aid humanity.

After studying at the Sorbonne in Paris, Huberman joined the ranks of Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein in calling for peace through the Pan European Movement. But when hope for their noble vision was destroyed by the rise of Nazism, Huberman began a crusade that would become his greatest legacy - the creation, in 1936, of the Palestine Symphony, which 12 years later became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. In creating this world-level orchestra, Huberman miraculously arranged for the very best Jewish musicians and their families to emigrate from Nazi-threatened territories. His tireless campaigning for the project ultimately saved nearly a thousand Jews from the approaching Holocaust.

Critic Reviews:

"A polished, quick-moving work of historical biography." (Kirkus)

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Title: Movie Freak

Subtitle: My Life Watching Movies

Author: Owen Gleiberman

Narrator: Owen Gleiberman

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 54 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-23-16

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 33 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

From a personal obsession with film to an unorthodox mentorship with the legendary Pauline Kael to establishing himself with the upstart Entertainment Weekly, Movie Freak is the memoir by veteran film critic Owen Gleiberman that will speak to anyone whose life has been changed by a great film.

What molds a critic? Perhaps it takes parents willing to buy nine-year-old Gleiberman drive-in tickets for Rosemary's Baby. Like millions of us, Gleiberman loves movies, and in this frank and funny memoir he not only reveals the details of how he became a critic but attempts to show why we find cinema so defining as a society. As one of the premiere tastemakers for more than three decades, Gleiberman, a self-confessed movie freak, explains why he and so many others equate film with life. Listeners will revel in the juicy details of the behind-the-scenes life of a critic and cheer as he lifts the curtain on life along the red carpet.

Critic Reviews:

"Film critic Owen Gleiberman narrates his memoir with a candidness that reinforces the frankness of his writing.... Thought-provoking listening for fans of film and pop culture." (AudioFile)

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Title: The Beatles - All These Years

Subtitle: Volume One: Tune In

Author: Mark Lewisohn

Narrator: Clive Mantle

Format: Unabridged

Length: 43 hrs and 39 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-11-15

Publisher: Hachette Audio UK

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 3 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

The complete, unabridged audiobook of The Beatles - All These Years.

The Beatles have been at the top for 50 years, their music remains exciting, their influence is still huge, their acclaim and achievements cannot be surpassed. But who really were the Beatles, and how did they and everything else in the 1960s fuse so explosively?

Mark Lewisohn's three-part biography is the first true and accurate account of the Beatles, a contextual history built upon impeccable research and written with energy, style, objectivity and insight. This first volume covers the crucial and less-known early period - the Liverpool and Hamburg years of a hungry rock and roll band, when all the sharp characters and situations take shape.

This is the Beatles like you've never heard them before. It isn't just 'another book'; it's the book from the world-acknowledged authority. Forget what you know and discover the complete story.

Critic Reviews:

"This is the story told in Proustian detail.... The first edited-down volume, is largely a delight, and the story is told so definitively that, after this, that really should be it. Secondary sources are comprehensively mined; letters, public records and business documents have been found in places no one else ever thought to look.... Lewisohn is a Beatles oracle." (John Harris, Guardian)

"Never previously have the Beatles' formative years been recounted in such detail. It is unlikely to be surpassed." (Michael Watts, Daily Telegraph)

"Lewisohn has done an astonishing job. I can't wait for volume two." (Independent)

"A major event in music publishing this month as Tune In by Mark Lewisohn lands...the definitive account of The Beatles." (GQ)

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Title: Over the Top and Back

Subtitle: The Autobiography

Author: Tom Jones

Narrator: Jonathan Pryce

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-03-15

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 8 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

In a career that has spanned six decades, Sir Tom Jones has performed with almost every major recording artist, from Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis and Sinatra to Robbie Williams, Van Morrison and Jessie J, across every imaginable genre, from rock and pop to country, blues and soul. The one constant throughout has been his unique musical gift and unmistakable voice.

In this, his first ever autobiography, Tom will revisit his past, both personal and professional, exploring the twists of fate that took a boy from a poor Welsh coal-mining family to global celebrity status.

He will chart the stories behind the hits as well as the ups and downs of his professional life - from the heyday in Las Vegas and subsequent fallow years in the 1980s to his renaissance and comeback thanks to the direction and management of his son, Mark - as well as shedding a light on the life he has led behind the cameras and the stage.

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Title: The Lost Detective

Subtitle: Becoming Dashiell Hammett

Author: Nathan Ward

Narrator: Brian Holsopple

Format: Unabridged

Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-06-15

Publisher: Audible Studios for Bloomsbury

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 10 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

Before he became a household name in America as perhaps our greatest hard-boiled crime writer, before his attachment to Lillian Hellman and blacklisting during the McCarthy era, and his subsequent downward spiral, Dashiell Hammett led a life of action. Born in 1894 into a poor Maryland family, Hammett left school at 13 and held several jobs before joining the Pinkerton National Detective Agency as an operative in 1915. With time off in 1918 to serve at the end of World War I, he remained with the agency until 1922, participating in the banal and dramatic actions alike of an operative. The tuberculosis he contracted during the war forced him to leave the Pinkertons - but it may well have prompted one of America's most acclaimed writing careers.

While Hammett's life on center stage has been well-documented, the question of how he got there has not. That largely overlooked phase is the subject of Nathan Ward's enthralling The Lost Detective. Hammett's childhood, his life in San Francisco, and especially his experience as a detective deeply informed his writing and his characters, from the nameless Continental Op to Sam Spade and Nick Charles. The success of his many stories in the pulp magazine Black Mask led him to novels; he would write five between 1929 and 1934, two of them (The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man) now American classics. Though he inspired generations of writers, after The Thin Man he never finished another book - a painful silence for his devoted fans - and his popular image has long been shaped by the remembrance of Hellman, who knew him after his literary reputation had been made.

Based on original research across the country, The Lost Detective is the first book to illuminate Hammett's transformation from real detective to great American detective writer, throwing brilliant new light on one of America's most celebrated and remembered novelists and his world.

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Title: Children of the Stone

Subtitle: The Power of Music in a Hard Land

Author: Sandy Tolan

Narrator: Fajer Al-Kaisi

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-16-15

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 18 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

It is an unlikely story. Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan, a child from a Palestinian refugee camp, confronts an occupying army, gets an education, masters an instrument, dreams of something much bigger than himself, and then, through his charisma and persistence, inspires others to work with him to make that dream real. The dream: a school to transform the lives of thousands of children - as Ramzi's life was transformed - through music. Musicians from all over the world came to help. A violist left the London Symphony Orchestra, in part to work with Ramzi at his new school. Daniel Barenboim, the eminent Israeli conductor, invited Ramzi to join his West Eastern Divan Orchestra, which he founded with the late Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said. Since then the two have played together frequently.

Children of the Stone chronicles Ramzi's journey - from stone thrower to music student to school founder - and shows how through his love of music he created something lasting and beautiful in a land torn by violence and war. This is a story about the power of music, but also about freedom and conflict, determination and vision. It's a vivid portrait of life amid checkpoints and military occupation, a growing movement of nonviolent resistance, the prospects of musical collaboration across the Israeli-Palestinian divide, and the potential of music to help children everywhere see new possibilities for their lives.

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Title: Legends of the Renaissance: The Life and Legacy of Niccolo Machiavelli

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Kelly Rhodes

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 19 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-10-15

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

"The assumptions of the entire Western political tradition from Plato onward were called into question by a generation of radical thinkers, of whom the greatest and most radical was Niccolò Machiavelli." (James Hankins)

"No epitaph can match so great a name," reads the inscription on Niccolò Machiavelli's tomb in the church of Santa Croce in Florence. Such praise of the notorious author of The Prince, the "teacher of evil" according to Leo Strauss, may seem misplaced to those with only a passing knowledge of one of history's most famous political philosophers and theorists.

Ever since Machiavelli penned his 1513 treatise on princely rule and the politics of reality, a work that infamously advises rulers to abandon virtue and morality when necessary, his name has been synonymous with deceit, duplicity, and amoral pragmatism. In 1559 the text was unsurprisingly registered in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Catholic Church's list of banned books, on the grounds of immorality. Shakespeare dubbed him the "murderous Machiavel" in the 1590s, a mere six decades after his death in 1527.

Since then a sinister reputation has posthumously plagued the controversial Florentine, and the accusation of being "Machiavellian", an overused and typically misapplied adjective, is a charge of behaving in a cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous way. But is this depiction of Machiavelli as wicked and immoral accurate?

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Title: American Legends: The Life of Etta James

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Alex L. Vincent

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr and 22 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-14-15

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

Etta James, the legendary jazz, gospel, rhythm & blues, and soul singer, was perfectly positioned to reign as the supreme artist in the emerging soul genre of the '40s and '50s in America. No one ever doubted her talent, the highly distinctive and versatile nature of her voice, or her drive to succeed, and yet, she has been "woefully overlooked" in the history of indigenous rock and blues music in the United States. She is famous and recognized for several iconic hits with which she is eternally associated, such as "I'd Rather Go Blind" and "At Last", but her place in the pantheon of great soul artists is unsteady and not always instantly recognizable by those outside of a knowledgeable group of devotees. For the rest of soul music's listeners, mention of her name will result in a hasty inclusion into the inner circle of leading artists, as though James had been momentarily forgotten. Once the object of focus, however, she is revered as one of the titans of the genre, and those who had allowed her to slip from their minds are immediately reawakened to her powerful vocal and interpretive gifts.

Such a vague position within the history of the form is partly due to a difficulty James experienced in crossing over to the white audience when others of the same genre were succeeding brilliantly at garnering a new, mixed race fan base. Further, her own abilities may have contributed to the phenomenon; Etta James excelled at almost everything she touched, from gospel and blues, to soul and pop. She could wound the listener with a ballad yet in the same evening "rock a house". In her various vocal incarnations, she triumphed as "a rhythm and blues belter, a blues crooner, and a rock-and-roll screamer" who could tailor her voice and her stage persona to seduce or abuse the listener.

James' larger than life and highly forceful personality may have had a downside as well, as she searched for cross-over acceptance by doing everything that her colleagues were doing to make it happen but would not step far enough into the common ground where the entire spectrum of listeners could experience a sufficient level of comfort.

American Legends: The Life of Etta James looks at the life and career of one of America's most famous singers.

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Title: Mr. Mojo

Subtitle: A Biography of Jim Morrison

Author: Dylan Jones

Narrator: Peter Marinker

Format: Unabridged

Length: 4 hrs and 38 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-09-15

Publisher: Audible Studios for Bloomsbury

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 7 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

In Paris' Pre-Lachaise cemetery, Jim Morrison's graffiti-scrawled tombstone is a place of pilgrimage for local devotees, adolescent hedonists, and wayward backpackers alike. Found dead in his bathtub aged only 27, having achieved worldwide stardom as lead singer of The Doors, Morrison was quickly immortalized among the rock and roll deities such as Hendrix and Joplin. In death, however, this debauched "rock poet" remained more stubbornly enigmatic than ever.

Who was the real Jim Morrison? Nihilist, egoist, shaman: He was a master of self-creation. A mosaic mythology of new-age hippy rhetoric, French poetry and Nietszchean symbolism obscured a man trapped by the mythology that he had so carefully constructed around himself.

In this colorful and intimate biography, Dylan Jones strips bare the skin-tight leather suit of Jim Morrison's Lizard King persona and offers a frank and honest appraisal of a much beloved and often-romanticized countercultural icon. Mr. Mojo is littered with little-known anecdotes from fellow stars, spurned lovers, and industry moguls. It is a refreshingly honest portrait of a self-indulgent artist with a penchant for pageantry and public self-destruction.

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Title: Confucius: The Life and Legacy of China's Greatest Philosopher

Author: Charles River Editors

Narrator: Violet Meadow

Format: Unabridged

Length: 1 hr

Language: English

Release date: 04-08-15

Publisher: Charles River Editors

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Bios & Memoirs, Artists, Writers, & Musicians

Publisher's Summary:

"At 15 my heart was set on learning; at 30 I stood firm; at 40 I had no more doubts; at 50 I knew the will of heaven; at 60 my ear was obedient; at 70 I could follow my heart's desire without overstepping the boundaries of what was right." (Confucius)

"Confucius has no interest in falsehood; he did not pretend to be prophet; he claimed no inspiration; he taught no new religion; he used no delusions; flattered not the emperor under whom he lived..." (Voltaire)

Many people argue that Confucius is the most influential person of all time, and if having a significant effect on the greatest number of people is the criterion, he may very well be. China is one of the largest and oldest civilizations on earth, and Confucius has been influential there from almost the beginning: the first Chinese dynasty was founded around 1600 BCE, and Confucius lived from 551-479 BCE.

Although he is still one of history's most famous philosophers, Confucius was in many respects an unremarkable man, and even his physical features were said to be unattractive. There is little evidence that he thought of himself as a harbinger of any kind, but shortly after his death, writings, sayings, and theories based on his life and ideas spread throughout China and even took hold of the imperial court of one of the most powerful and important dynasties, the Han (206 BCE-CE 220). It was during the Han Dynasty that Confucianism became closely tied to state affairs, and it would remain so until the fall of the last dynasty in 1912.

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