Stream Popular Free Audiobooks in Biography & Memoir, Memoirs

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/529773 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Weight of Air: A Story of the Lies About Addiction and the Truth About Recovery Author: David Poses Narrator: Charlie Thurston Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 7 minutes Release date: September 28, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 3 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: While his wife and two-year-old daughter watched TV in the living room, David Poses was in the kitchen, measuring the distance from his index finger to his armpit. He needed to be sure he could pull the trigger with a shotgun barrel in his mouth. Twenty-six inches. Thirty-two years old. More than a decade in a double life fueled by depression and heroin. In his groundbreaking memoir, The Weight of Air, David chronicles his struggle to overcome mental illness and addiction. By age nineteen, he'd been through medical detox, inpatient rehab, twelve-step programs, and a halfway house. He saw his drug use as a symptom of depression, but the experts insisted that addiction was the problem. Over the next thirteen years, he went from one relapse to the next, drowning in guilt, shame, and secrets, until he finally found an evidence-based treatment that not only saved his life, but helped him thrive. With grit, humor, and brutal honesty, David's story exposes the danger in traditional recovery models: they actually increase stigma and the risk of overdose, relapse, and death. As depression and addiction rates skyrocket and overdose fatalities surge, The Weight of Air is a scathing indictment of our failed response to the opioid crisis—and proof that success is possible.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/531201 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Harlem Godfather: The Rap on My Husband, Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson Author: Mayme Hatcher Johnson, Karen E. Quinones Miller Narrator: Patricia R. Floyd Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 48 minutes Release date: September 28, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.5 of Total 4 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: The first and only full biography on legendary Harlem gangster Bumpy Johnson, who was depicted in the movies Cotton Club, Hoodlum and American GangsterAl Capone may have ruled Chicago. Lucky Luciano may have run most of New York City. But from the 1930s to the late 1960s, when it came to Harlem, the undisputed king of the underworld was Ellsworth 'Bumpy' Johnson.Bumpy was a man whose contradictions are still the root of many an argument in Harlem. But there is one thing on which both his supporters and detractors agree: In his lifetime, Bumpy was the man in Harlem.Harlem Godfather: The Rap on My Husband, Ellsworth 'Bumpy' Johnson is the first complete biography of a man who for years was Harlem's best kept, and most cherished, secret.There is also a full chapter on Madame Stephanie St. Clair, the infamous Harlem numbers banker who instigated the famous fight with Jewish mobster Dutch Schultz.The book is written by Bumpy's widow, Mayme Johnson, and details not only his criminal life but also his personal life.This book also details Bumpy's relationship with Harlem dope dealer Frank Lucas, who has called himself Bumpy's right-hand man but was—according to Mrs. Johnson—little more than a flunky.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/532672 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Rigged Justice: How the College Admissions Scandal Ruined an Innocent Man’s Life Author: John Vandemoer Narrator: Graham Halstead Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 9 minutes Release date: September 28, 2021 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: The former Stanford University sailing coach sentenced in the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal tells the riveting true story of how he was drawn unwittingly into a web of deceit in this eye-opening memoir that offers a damning portrait of modern college administration and the ways in which justice and fairness do not always intersect.  For eleven years, John Vandemoer ran the prestigious Stanford University sailing program in which he coached Olympians and All-Americans. Though the hours were long and the program struggled for funding, sailing gave Vandemoer’s life shape and meaning. But early one morning, everything came crashing down when Vandemoer, still in his pajamas, opened the door to find FBI and IRS agents on his doorstep. He quickly learned that a recruiter named Rick Singer had used him as a stooge in a sophisticated scheme designed to take advantage of college coaches and play to the endless appetite for university fundraising—and wealthy parents looking for an edge for their college-bound children. Vandemoer was summarily fired, kicked out of campus housing, his children booted from campus daycare. The next year of his life was a Kafkaesque hellscape, and though he was an innocent man who never received a dime was the first person to be convicted in what became known as the Varsity Blues scandal. A true story that reads like a suspense novel, Rigged Justice lays bare how a sophisticated scheme could take advantage of college coaches and university money—and how one family became collateral damage in a large government investigation that dominated national headlines.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/545167 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Funkytown Author: Paul Kennedy Narrator: Paul Kennedy Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 7 minutes Release date: September 28, 2021 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Paul Kennedy's Funkytown is the vivid true story of a year in the life of a teenager leaping into manhood. It is 1993: a serial killer is loose on the streets of Frankston, Victoria. The community is paralysed by fear and a state's police force and national media come to find a killer. Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Paul Kennedy is searching for something else entirely. He is focused on finishing school, getting drafted into the AFL and falling in love. So much can change in a year. The rites of passage for many Australian teenage boys - blackout drinking, simmering violence and emotional suppression - take their toll, and the year that starts with so much promise ends with Kennedy expelled, arrested and undrafted. But one teacher sees Kennedy self-destructing, and becomes determined to set him on another path. Told with poignancy, humour and evoking the brilliant, dusty haze of late Australian summer, Funkytown is a love letter to adolescence, football, family, and outer suburbia. ‘A brilliant story of a young boy told by a man who, in the end, found his way.' JIMMY BARNES ‘Leaps into the joy and fear of coming of age ... I love this book.' SOFIE LAGUNA ‘A moving and enlightening account of being seventeen and struggling. This is a great read.' PAUL JENNINGS

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/526982 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Openhearted: Eighty Years of Love, Loss, Laughter and Letting Go Author: Ann Ingle Narrator: Michael Ingle, Ann Ingle Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 53 minutes Release date: September 23, 2021 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. 'Something they don't tell you about getting older is that you fall. Oh, you hear about it in passing, of course, 'She had a fall, poor thing'. Falling is not something you ever think about as a younger woman. You think about falling in love . . .' At 20 Londoner Ann Ingle fell madly in love with an Irish fellow she met on holiday in Cornwall. At the church to arrange their shotgun wedding she discovered that he hadn't even told her his real name. Sixty-odd years later Ann looks back on that first glorious fall and in a series of essays considers what she has learned from the life that followed - bringing eight children into the world, their father's years of mental illness and tragic death at 40, being a cash-strapped single mother in 1980s Dublin, coming into her own in her middle years - going to college, working and writing, and continuing to evolve and learn into her ninth decade, even as she accepts the realities of being 'old'. Candid about everything that matters - love, sex, heartbreak, money, class, religion, mental health, rearing children (and letting them go), reading and writing, ageing - Open-Hearted is a compelling story about living life in a spirit of curiosity and delight and with a willingness to look for good in others. © Ann Ingle 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/525816 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance Author: Jesse Wente Narrator: Jesse Wente Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 53 minutes Release date: September 21, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4 of Total 2 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER of the 2022 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Non-Fiction SHORTLISTED for the 2023 Speaker's Book Award A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Unreconciled is one hell of a good book. Jesse Wente’s narrative moves effortlessly from the personal to the historical to the contemporary. Very powerful, and a joy to read.' —Thomas King, author of The Inconvenient Indian and Sufferance A prominent Indigenous voice uncovers the lies and myths that affect relations between white and Indigenous peoples and the power of narrative to emphasize truth over comfort. Part memoir and part manifesto, Unreconciled is a stirring call to arms to put truth over the flawed concept of reconciliation, and to build a new, respectful relationship between the nation of Canada and Indigenous peoples. Jesse Wente remembers the exact moment he realized that he was a certain kind of Indian--a stereotypical cartoon Indian. He was playing softball as a child when the opposing team began to war-whoop when he was at bat. It was just one of many incidents that formed Wente's understanding of what it means to be a modern Indigenous person in a society still overwhelmingly colonial in its attitudes and institutions. As the child of an American father and an Anishinaabe mother, Wente grew up in Toronto with frequent visits to the reserve where his maternal relations lived. By exploring his family's history, including his grandmother's experience in residential school, and citing his own frequent incidents of racial profiling by police who'd stop him on the streets, Wente unpacks the discrepancies between his personal identity and how non-Indigenous people view him. Wente analyzes and gives voice to the differences between Hollywood portrayals of Indigenous peoples and lived culture. Through the lens of art, pop culture, and personal stories, and with disarming humour, he links his love of baseball and movies to such issues as cultural appropriation, Indigenous representation and identity, and Indigenous narrative sovereignty. Indeed, he argues that storytelling in all its forms is one of Indigenous peoples' best weapons in the fight to reclaim their rightful place. Wente explores and exposes the lies that Canada tells itself, unravels 'the two founding nations' myth, and insists that the notion of 'reconciliation' is not a realistic path forward. Peace between First Nations and the state of Canada can't be recovered through reconciliation--because no such relationship ever existed.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/534783 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Architects of Self-Destruction: The Oral History of Leftöver Crack Author: John Gentile, Brad Logan Narrator: Brad Logan Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 15 minutes Release date: September 21, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Leftöver Crack is a band of drug abusing, dumpster diving, cop-hating, queer positive, pro-choice, crust punks that successfully blend ska-punk, pop, hip-hop, and death metal genres. They've been banned from clubs, states, and counties and kicked off multiple record labels. They've received teen-idol adoration and death threats from their fans. They've played benefits for a multitude of causes while leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. But, if you dig below the crusty, black metal-patch encased surface, you'll find a contemplative, nuanced band that, quite literally, permanently changed the punk rock community. By combining catchy ska-punk with lyrics that referenced political theorist Michael Parenti, drug usage, and suicide, the band formed a unique mélange that was both provocative and challenging. In fact, the band's hooks were so sharp that after releasing their debut LP, Mediocre Generica, an entire culture of 'Crack City Rockers' grew around the band, pushing the youth towards both the positive and negative aspects of extreme punk rock. Architects of Self-Destruction: An Oral History of Leftöver Crack traces the band's entire history by speaking to the band members themselves, fellow musicians, their fans, and of course, those that still hold a grudge against the LoC . . . FYI, that's a lot of people.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/531213 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Mennonite Valley Girl: A Wayward Coming of Age Author: Carla Funk Narrator: Carla Funk Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 51 minutes Release date: September 14, 2021 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Carla Funk is a teenager with her hands on the church piano keys and her feet edging toward the flames. Coming of age in a remote valley town—a place rich in Mennonites, loggers, and dutiful wives who submit to their husbands—she knows her destiny is to marry, have babies, and join the church ladies’ sewing circle. In her world, the body is hidden in shame, the lines between the sexes are strictly drawn, and the wrong thoughts can tip you over into sin. But increasingly, she wants to push the limits: of her family, her religion, and the little town that can’t contain her desires for much longer.In poignant and hilarious stories, Funk chronicles her 1980s adolescence in all its awkward glory: from summer Bible camp to forbidden school dances, from questionable makeovers to hair-raising pranks. Through it all runs the longing to make her life into a new and different story, as she asks the questions we all must face about where we come from and who we want to be.At once an affectionate coming-of-age tale and a contemplation on meaning, morality, and destiny, Mennonite Valley Girl is about the places we all long to escape—even if they are the same places that define us.

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/537946 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Food Saved Me: My Journey of Finding Health and Hope through the Power of Food Author: Danielle Walker Narrator: Danielle Walker Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 12 minutes Release date: September 14, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.67 of Total 6 Ratings of Narrator: 4 of Total 4 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Christian Book Award - Finalist 2022 (print)!! When doctors told Danielle Walker that food didn’t cause her autoimmune disease and couldn’t help control it, she set out to prove them wrong. Diagnosed with an extreme form of ulcerative colitis at 22, Danielle was terrified she’d never be able to eat all the wonderful, great-tasting foods she loved growing up or host warm, welcoming gatherings with family and friends. So when the medicine she was prescribed became almost as debilitating as the disease itself, Danielle took matters into her own hands, turned her kitchen into a laboratory, and set to work creating gut-healthy versions of the foods she thought she’d never be able to enjoy again. Three New York Times bestselling cookbooks later, Danielle has become a beacon of hope for millions around the world suffering from autoimmune diseases, food allergies, and chronic ailments. Now for the first time, with stunning transparency about the personal toll her illness took on her physically, emotionally, and spiritually, Danielle reflects on everything she’s learned during her decade-long journey toward healing―including the connection between gut health and overall well-being, the development of her favorite recipes, and the keys for not simply surviving her autoimmune disease but thriving despite it. Through her resilience, Danielle tells a story that provides hope―hope that despite your ailments or hardships, you can live a full, happy, and healthy life without ever feeling excluded or deprived. Food saved Danielle Walker. And it can save you, too. Includes six fan-favorite recipes and the stories behind them!

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/543901 to listen full audiobooks. Title: A Year of Mystical Thinking Author: Emma Howarth Narrator: Emma Howarth Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 6 hours 16 minutes Release date: September 14, 2021 Genres: Memoirs Publisher's Summary: Discover the magic of today's most popular spiritual practices in this fresh and funny account of embracing a year full of astrology, reiki, crystals and more!Introducing Emma Howarth: lifestyle journalist turned soul-seeker. Writing with humour and curiosity, Emma shows us that we don't need to fly to Italy, India or Bali to have an adventure and find inner peace - there's plenty of magic right on our doorstep.At the end of 217, feeling burnt out and broken, Emma decided to go on a year-long quest for inner peace - from the comfort of her own home. She tried all sorts of spiritual practices in a bid to derive more meaning from life. The result was a year that changed everything. A year that turned frantic chaos into life in the slow lane. A year of magic and moonlight and pink sky sunrises. A year fragranced with incense and burning herbs (that sometimes smelled suspiciously illegal).In A Year of Mystical Thinking, Emma shares her sparkling and fun account of the year that transformed her life and demystifies the world of new age spirituality, helping you to find practices that will bring new meaning and joy to your life.Each month Emma introduces a new spiritual practice, with practical, actionable tips - from how to create the perfect vision board to living by the phases of the Moon. Follow Emma's journey as she connects with spirit guides in February, obsesses over astrology in July and learns about Reiki in November, and be inspired to embark on your own year of mystical thinking!