Enjoy Amazing Full Trial Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, History & Culture

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/370675 to listen full audiobooks. Title: A Short History of Falling: Everything I Observed About Love Whilst Dying Author: Joe Hammond Narrator: Russell Tovey Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 5 hours 26 minutes Release date: September 5, 2019 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: A Short History of Falling – like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and When Breath Becomes Air – is a searingly beautiful, profound and unforgettable memoir that finds light and even humour in the darkest of places. We keep an old shoebox, Gill and I, nestled in a drawer in our room. It’s filled with thirty-three birthday cards for our two young sons: one for every year I’ll miss until they’re twenty-one. I wrote them because, since the end of 2017, I’ve been living with – and dying from – motor neurone disease. This book is about the process of saying goodbye. To my body, as I journey from unexpected clumsiness to a wheelchair that resembles a spacecraft, with rods and pads and dials and bleeps. To this world, as I play less of a part in it and find myself floating off into unlighted territory. To Gill, my wife. To Tom and Jimmy. A Short History of Falling is about the sadness (and the anger, and the fear), but it’s about what’s beautiful too. It’s about love and fatherhood, about the precious experience of observing my last moments with this body, surrounded by the people who matter most. It’s about what it feels like to confront the fact that my family will persist through time with only a memory of me. In many ways, it has been the most amazing time of my life.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/380535 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Hitler: Only the World Was Enough Author: Brendan Simms Narrator: Leighton Pugh Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 29 hours 21 minutes Release date: September 5, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 4 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. Adolf Hitler is one of the most studied men in history, and yet the most important things we think we know about him are wrong. As Brendan Simms's major new biography shows, Hitler's main preoccupation was not, as widely believed, the threat of Bolshevism, but that of international capitalism and Anglo-America. These two fears drove both his anti-semitism and his determination to secure the 'living space' necessary to survive in a world dominated by the British Empire and the United States. Drawing on new sources, Brendan Simms traces the way in which Hitler's ideology emerged after the First World War. The United States and the British Empire were, in his view, models for Germany's own empire, similarly founded on appropriation of land, racism and violence. Hitler's aim was to create a similarly global future for Germany - a country seemingly doomed otherwise not just to irrelevance, but, through emigration and foreign influence, to extinction. His principal concern during the resulting cataclysm was not just what he saw as the clash between German and Jews, or German and Slav, but above all that between Germans and what he called the 'Anglo-Saxons'. In the end only dominance of the world would have been enough to achieve Hitler's objectives, and it ultimately required a coalition of virtually the entire world to defeat him. Brendan Simms's new book is the first to explain Hitler's beliefs fully, demonstrating how, as ever, it is ideas that are the ultimate source of the most murderous behaviour. Adolf Hitler is one of the most studied men in history, and yet the most important things we think we know about him are wrong. As Brendan Simms's major new biography shows, Hitler's main preoccupation was not, as widely believed, the threat of Bolshevism, but that of international capitalism and Anglo-America. These two fears drove both his anti-semitism and his determination to secure the 'living space' necessary to survive in a world dominated by the British Empire and the United States. Drawing on new sources, Brendan Simms traces the way in which Hitler's ideology emerged after the First World War. The United States and the British Empire were, in his view, models for Germany's own empire, similarly founded on appropriation of land, racism and violence. Hitler's aim was to create a similarly global future for Germany - a country seemingly doomed otherwise not just to irrelevance, but, through emigration and foreign influence, to extinction. His principal concern during the resulting cataclysm was not just what he saw as the clash between German and Jews, or German and Slav, but above all that between Germans and what he called the 'Anglo-Saxons'. In the end only dominance of the world would have been enough to achieve Hitler's objectives, and it ultimately required a coalition of virtually the entire world to defeat him. Brendan Simms's new book is the first to explain Hitler's beliefs fully, demonstrating how, as ever, it is ideas that are the ultimate source of the most murderous behaviour.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/365758 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Prince Albert: The Man Who Saved the Monarchy Author: A.N. Wilson Narrator: Gareth Armstrong Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 13 hours 38 minutes Release date: September 3, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: In this companion biography to the acclaimed Victoria, A. N. Wilson offers a deeply textured and ambitious portrait of Prince Albert, published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the royal consort’s birth. For more than six decades, Queen Victoria ruled a great Empire at the height of its power. Beside her for more than twenty of those years was the love of her life, her trusted husband and father of their nine children, Prince Albert. But while Victoria is seen as the embodiment of her time, its values, and its paradoxes, it was Prince Albert, A. N. Wilson expertly argues, who was at the vanguard of Victorian Britain’s transformation as a vibrant and extraordinary center of political, technological, scientific, and intellectual advancement. Far more than just the product of his age, Albert was one of its influencers and architects. A composer, engineer, soldier, politician, linguist, and bibliophile, Prince Albert, more than any other royal, was truly a “genius.” It is impossible to understand nineteenth century England without knowing the story of this gifted visionary leader, Wilson contends. Albert lived only forty-two years. Yet in that time, he fathered the royal dynasties of Germany, Russia, Spain, and Bulgaria. Through Victoria, Albert and her German advisers pioneered the idea of the modern constitutional monarchy. In this sweeping biography, Wilson demonstrates that there was hardly any aspect of British national life which Albert did not touch. When he was made Chancellor of the University of Cambridge in his late twenties, it was considered as purely an honorific role. But within months, Albert proposed an extensive reorganization of university life in Britain that would eventually be adopted, making it possible to study science, languages, and modern history at British universities—a revolution in education that has changed the world. Drawn from the Royal archives, including Prince Albert’s voluminous correspondence, this brilliant and ambitious book offers fascinating never-before-known details about the man and his time. A superb match of biographer and subject, Prince Albert, at last, gives this important historical figure the reverence and recognition that is long overdue.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/374786 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Scan Artist: How Evelyn Wood Convinced the World That Speed-Reading Worked Author: Marcia Biederman Narrator: Marguerite Gavin Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 59 minutes Release date: September 3, 2019 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: The best-known educator of the twentieth century was a scammer in cashmere. “The most famous reading teacher in the world,” as television hosts introduced her, Evelyn Wood had little classroom experience, no degrees in reading instruction, and a background that included a collaboration with the Third Reich. Nevertheless, a nation spooked by Sputnik and panicked by paperwork eagerly embraced her promises of a speed-reading revolution. Journalists, lawmakers and two US presidents lent credibility to Wood’s claims of turbocharging reading speeds. A royal-born Wood grad said she’d polished off Moby Dick in three hours; a senator swore he finished one book per lunchtime. Fudging test results and squelching critics, Wood’s popularity endured even as science proved that her system taught only skimming, with disastrous effects on comprehension. As apps and online courses attempt to spark a speed-reading revival, this engaging look at Wood’s rise from missionary to marketer exposes the pitfalls of wishful thinking.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/364739 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Alexander the Great: His Life and His Mysterious Death Author: Anthony Everitt Narrator: John Lee Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 15 hours 0 minutes Release date: August 27, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.38 of Total 8 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: What can we learn from the stunning rise and mysterious death of the ancient world’s greatest conqueror? An acclaimed biographer reconstructs the life of Alexander the Great in this magisterial revisionist portrait. “[An] infectious sense of narrative momentum . . . Its energy is unflagging, including the verve with which it tackles that teased final mystery about the specific cause of Alexander’s death.”—The Christian Science Monitor More than two millennia have passed since Alexander the Great built an empire that stretched to every corner of the ancient world, from the backwater kingdom of Macedonia to the Hellenic world, Persia, and ultimately to India—all before his untimely death at age thirty-three. Alexander believed that his empire would stop only when he reached the Pacific Ocean. But stories of both real and legendary events from his life have kept him evergreen in our imaginations with a legacy that has meant something different to every era: in the Middle Ages he became an exemplar of knightly chivalry, he was a star of Renaissance paintings, and by the early twentieth century he’d even come to resemble an English gentleman. But who was he in his own time? In Alexander the Great, Anthony Everitt judges Alexander’s life against the criteria of his own age and considers all his contradictions. We meet the Macedonian prince who was naturally inquisitive and fascinated by science and exploration, as well as the man who enjoyed the arts and used Homer’s great epic the Iliad as a bible. As his empire grew, Alexander exhibited respect for the traditions of his new subjects and careful judgment in administering rule over his vast territory. But his career also had a dark side. An inveterate conqueror who in his short life built the largest empire up to that point in history, Alexander glorified war and was known to commit acts of remarkable cruelty. As debate continues about the meaning of his life, Alexander's death remains a  mystery. Did he die of natural causes—felled by a fever—or did his marshals, angered by his tyrannical behavior, kill him? An explanation of his death can lie only in what we know of his life, and Everitt ventures to solve that puzzle, offering an ending to Alexander’s story that has eluded so many for so long.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/380252 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe Author: Gayle Wald Narrator: Anthony Heilbut, Shawn T. Andrew, Leslie Uggams Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 2 minutes Release date: August 27, 2019 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: The untold story of 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Sister Rosetta Tharpe, America’s first rock guitar diva Long before “women in rock” became a media catchphrase, African American guitar virtuoso Rosetta Tharpe proved in spectacular fashion that women could rock. Born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, in 1915, Tharpe was gospel’s first superstar and the preeminent crossover figure of its golden age (1945–1965). Shout, Sister, Shout! is the first biography of this trailblazing performer who influenced scores of popular musicians, from Elvis Presley and Little Richard to Eric Clapton and Etta James. Tharpe was raised in the Pentecostal Church, steeped in the gospel tradition, but she produced music that crossed boundaries, defied classification, and disregarded the social and cultural norms of the age; incorporating elements of gospel, blues, jazz, popular ballads, folk, country, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll. Tharpe went electric early on, captivating both white and black audiences in the North and South, in the US and internationally, with her charisma and skill. People who saw her perform claimed she made that guitar talk. Ambitious, flamboyant, and relentlessly public, Tharpe even staged her own wedding as a gospel concert-in a stadium holding 20,000 people! Wald’s eye-opening biography, which draws on the memories of more than a hundred people who knew or worked with Tharpe, introduces us to this vibrant, essential, yet nearly forgotten musical heavyweight whose long career helped define gospel, r&b, and rock music. A performer who resisted categorization at many levels—as a gospel musician, a woman, and an African American—Tharpe demands that we rethink our most basic notions of music history and American culture. Her story forever alters our understanding of both women in rock and US popular music. Audiobook Credits Read by Leslie Uggams, Shawn T. Andrew, and Anthony Heilbut Produced and directed by Elizabeth Healy Recorded at CDM Studios in New York City by Michael Bognar, Brian Ramcharan, Cathleen Conte, and Charles D. Montebello Post production by Heather Scott and Ted Scott of 50 Nugget Wash Productions Music “Didn’t It Rain” by Marie Knight and Sister Rosetta Tharpe Regent Music Corporation (BMI) Recording: Sister Rosetta Tharpe with The Sammy Price Trio (P) 1947 UMG Recordings, Inc. Courtesy of Universal Music Enterprises Recording: Sister Rosetta Tharpe Courtesy of GHB Jazz Foundation “I Looked Down The Line (And I Wondered)” Recording: Sister Rosetta Tharpe (P) 1939 UMG Recordings, Inc. Courtesy of Universal Music Enterprises “Rock Me” by Thomas A. Dorsey Unichappell Music, Inc. (BMI) Recording: Sister Rosetta Tharpe (P) 1938 UMG Recordings, Inc. Courtesy of Geffen Records under license from Universal Music Enterprises “There Will Be Peace In The Valley For Me” by Thomas A. Dorsey Warner – Tamerlane Publishing Corporation (BMI) Recording: Sister Rosetta Tharpe (P) 1952 UMG Recordings, Inc. Courtesy of Universal Music Enterprises “Up Above My Head I Hear Music In The Air” Words and Music by Sister Rosetta Tharpe Copyright © 1947 Princess Music Publishing Corporation (ASCAP) Copyright Renewed All rights Reserved. Used by Permission Reproduced by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC Recording: Sister Rosetta Tharpe Recording courtesy of Historic Films

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/361672 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver Author: Jill Heinerth Narrator: Jill Heinerth Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 18 minutes Release date: August 20, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 7 Ratings of Narrator: 4.33 of Total 3 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: From one of the world’s most renowned cave divers, a firsthand account of exploring the earth’s final frontier: the hidden depths of our oceans and the sunken caves inside our planet More people have died exploring underwater caves than climbing Mount Everest, and we know more about deep space than we do about the depths of our oceans. From one of the top cave divers working today—and one of the very few women in her field—Into the Planet blends science, adventure, and memoir to bring readers face-to-face with the terror and beauty of earth’s remaining unknowns and the extremes of human capability. Jill Heinerth—the first person in history to dive deep into an Antarctic iceberg and leader of a team that discovered the ancient watery remains of Mayan civilizations—has descended farther into the inner depths of our planet than any other woman. She takes us into the harrowing split-second decisions that determine whether a diver makes it back to safety, the prejudices that prevent women from pursuing careers underwater, and her endeavor to recover a fallen friend’s body from the confines of a cave. But there’s beauty beyond the danger of diving, and while Heinerth swims beneath our feet in the lifeblood of our planet, she works with biologists discovering new species, physicists tracking climate change, and hydrogeologists examining our finite freshwater reserves. Written with hair-raising intensity, Into the Planet is the first book to deliver an intimate account of cave diving, transporting readers deep into inner space, where fear must be reconciled and a mission’s success balances between knowing one’s limits and pushing the envelope of human endurance.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/387603 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Alastair Humphreys: Around the World by Bike Author: Alastair Humphreys Narrator: Alastair Humphreys Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 20 hours 10 minutes Release date: August 15, 2019 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.57 of Total 7 Ratings of Narrator: 4.5 of Total 2 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: At the age of 24, Alastair Humphreys set off to try to cycle round the world. By the time he arrived back home, four years later, he had ridden 46,000 miles across five continents on a budget of just £7,000. From frozen Siberia tundra to the jungles of central Africa, Alastair recounts his extraordinary adventures in two parts - Moods of Future Joys and Thunder & Sunshine - brought together in audiobook for the first time. Moods of Future Joys is the story of the first stage of this epic journey. Struggling with the enormity of the challenge he had set himself, Alastair recounts the hardships of the expedition with great honesty. His ride through Europe, a turbulent Middle East and down Africa is buoyed by the kindness of strangers and the thrill of the freedom of the open road. In Thunder & Sunshine, Alastair continues his journey from South Africa back to Yorkshire, via the whole of the Americas, South to North, Siberia, Japan, and back through China, Central Asia and Europe. A tale of physical and mental endurance, of taking on wilderness, loneliness and danger in a time before mobile phones and GPS - this is a refreshingly original account from one of today's great adventurers.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/360928 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Last Ocean: A Journey Through Memory and Forgetting Author: Nicci Gerrard Narrator: Nicci Gerrard Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 29 minutes Release date: August 13, 2019 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: From the award-winning journalist and author, a lyrical, raw and humane investigation of dementia that explores both the journeys of the people who live with the condition and those of their loved ones After a diagnosis of dementia, Nicci Gerrard’s father, John, continued to live life on his own terms, alongside the disease. But when an isolating hospital stay precipitated a dramatic turn for the worse, Gerrard, an award-winning journalist and author, recognized that it was not just the disease, but misguided protocol and harmful practices that cause such pain at the end of life. Gerrard was inspired to seek a better course for all who suffer because of the disease.  The Last Ocean is Gerrard’s investigation into what dementia does to both the person who lives with the condition and to their caregivers. Dementia is now one of the leading causes of death in the West, and this necessary book will offer both comfort and a map to those walking through it. While she begins with her father’s long slip into forgetting, Gerrard expands to examine dementia writ large. Gerrard gives raw but literary shape both to the unimaginable loss of one’s own faculties, as well as to the pain of their loved ones. Her lens is unflinching, but Gerrard honors her subjects and finds the beauty and the humanity in their seemingly diminished states.  In so doing, she examines the philosophy of what it means to have a self, as well as how we can offer dignity and peace to those who suffer with this terrible disease. Not only will it aid those walking with dementia patients, The Last Ocean will prompt all of us to think on the nature of a life well lived.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/365411 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Barnum: An American Life Author: Robert Wilson Narrator: Arthur Morey Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 43 minutes Release date: August 6, 2019 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: “Robert Wilson’s Barnum, the first full-dress biography in twenty years, eschews clichés for a more nuanced story…It is a life for our times, and the biography Barnum deserves.” —The Wall Street Journal P.T. Barnum is the greatest showman the world has ever seen. As a creator of the Barnum & Baily Circus and a champion of wonder, joy, trickery, and “humbug,” he was the founding father of American entertainment—and as Robert Wilson argues, one of the most important figures in American history. Nearly 125 years after his death, the name P.T. Barnum still inspires wonder. Robert Wilson’s vivid new biography captures the full genius, infamy, and allure of the ebullient showman, who, from birth to death, repeatedly reinvented himself. He learned as a young man how to wow crowds, and built a fortune that placed him among the first millionaires in the United States. He also suffered tragedy, bankruptcy, and fires that destroyed his life’s work, yet willed himself to recover and succeed again. As an entertainer, Barnum courted controversy throughout his life—yet he was also a man of strong convictions, guided in his work not by a desire to deceive, but an eagerness to thrill and bring joy to his audiences. He almost certainly never uttered the infamous line, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” instead taking pride in giving crowds their money’s worth and more. Robert Wilson, editor of The American Scholar, tells a gripping story in Barnum, one that’s imbued with the same buoyant spirit as the man himself. In this “engaging, insightful, and richly researched new biography” (New York Journal of Books), Wilson adeptly makes the case for P.T. Barnum’s place among the icons of American history, as a figure who represented, and indeed created, a distinctly American sense of optimism, industriousness, humor, and relentless energy.