Audio Books

English | ISBN: 9789353377472 | 2019 | 26 hours and 41 minutes |kbps | 732 MB
In 1498, when Vasco da Gama set foot in Kerala looking for Christians and spices, he unleashed a wave of political fury that would topple local powers like a house of cards. The cosmopolitan fabric of a vibrant trading society - with its Jewish and Arab merchants, Chinese pirate heroes and masterful Hindu Zamorins - was ripped apart, heralding an age of violence and bloodshed. One prince, however, emerged triumphant from this descent into chaos. Shrewdly marrying Western arms to Eastern strategy, Martanda Varma consecrated the dominion of Travancore, destined to become one of the most dutiful pillars of the British Raj, The Ivory Throne conjures up a dramatic world of political intrigues and factions, black magic and conspiracies, crafty ceremonies and splendorous temple treasures, all harnessed in a tragic contest for power and authority in the age of empire.

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English | ASIN: B09469KQ1Q | 2021 | 7 hours and 50 minutes |kbps | 216 MB
Sicily has always acted as a gateway between Europe and the rest of the world. Fought over by the Phoenicians and Greeks, the Romans, Goths and Byzantines, Arabs and Normans, Germans, and the Spanish and the French for thousands of years, Sicily became a unique melting pot where diverse traditions merged, producing a unique heritage and singular culture. In this fascinating account of the island from the earliest times to the present day, author and journalist Jamie Mackay leads us through this most elusive of places.
From its pivotal position in the development of Greek and Roman mythology, and the beautiful remnants of both the Arab and Norman invasions, through to the rise of the bandits and the Cosa Nostra, The Invention of Sicily is the perfect companion to the culture and history of Sicily. Mackay weaves the political and social development of the island in with its fascinating cultural heritage - in doing so discussing how great works including Lampedusa's masterpiece The Leopard and its film adaptation by Visconti, and the novels of Leonardo Sciascia, among many others, have both been shaped by Sicily's past, and continue to shape it into the present.

English | July 08, 2021 | ASIN: B095TQNBYN |kbps | 6h 50m | 376 MB
Authors: Andy Richter, Joel Cohen | Narrators: Andy Richter, Nick Offerman
Andy Richter: TV icon and comedy legend, probably was born somewhere, grew up someplace, and maybe even did a bunch of stuff. All that boring garbage could be jammed into a classic celebrity biography, but to write that would take work and effort. Two things this Audible Original wasn't about to stoop to.

English | ASIN: B092XBCMWS | 2021 |kpbs | ~11:45:00 | 333 MB
Sam Kean, Ben Sullivan (Narrator), "The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science"
From New York Times best-selling author Sam Kean comes the gripping, untold history of science's darkest secrets, "a fascinating book [that] deserves a wide audience" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

English | ASIN: B097WV5M67 | 2021 | 12 hours and 56 minutes |kbps | 356 MB
Successful word coinage - those that stay in currency for a good long time - tend to conceal their beginnings. We take them at face value and rarely when and where they were first minted. Engaging, illuminating, and authoritative, Ralph Keyes' The Hidden History of Coined Words explores the etymological underworld of terms and expressions and uncovers plenty of hidden gems. He also finds some fascinating patterns, such as that successful neologisms are as likely to be created by chance as by design. A remarkable number of new words were coined whimsically, originally intended to troll or taunt. The Hidden History of Coined Words will appeal not just to word mavens but history buffs, trivia contesters, and anyone who loves the immersive power of language.

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English | 1999 |Kbps | ASIN: B00005468S | Duration: 6:28 h | 139 MB
Greg Bear (et al.) / Narrated by David Ackroyd, Wil Wheaton
From Ellison to Clarke to Merrill, hear a dozen unabridged science-fiction short stories, considered the best of the best from the 20th century. They are: "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Diner" by Lawrence Watt Evans, "Jeffty Is Five" by Harlan Ellison, "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke, "The Crystal Spheres" by David Brin, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by Ursula K. LeGuin, "Huddling Place" by Clifford D. Simak, "That Only a Mother" by Judith Merrill, "Fermi and Frost" by Frederick Pohl, "Tangents" by Greg Bear, "Bears Discover Fire" by Terry Bisson, "Allamagoosa" by Eric Frank Russell, and "Twilight" by John W. Campbell.

English | March 25, 2021 | ASIN: B08TMPMT64 |kbps | 17h 28m | 953 MB
BBC radio productions of Dostoevsky's masterpieces, plus selected shorter fiction and bonus programmes exploring his life and work.
One of the most important and influential Russian writers of the 19th century, Fyodor Dostoevsky is admired worldwide for his great realist novels, exploring questions of morality, philosophy and the nature of existence. This compilation contains the BBC radio productions of his four most famous novels - as well as three lesser-known works and two bonus documentaries - collected together for the first time.

English | ASIN: B097QBC9HD | 2021 | 12 hours and 4 minutes |kbps | 332 MB
The Buddhist saint Nāgārjuna, who lived in South India in approximately the second century CE, is undoubtedly the most important, influential, and widely studied Mahāyāna Buddhist philosopher. His greatest philosophical work, the Mūlamadhyamikakārikā - read and studied by philosophers in all major Buddhist schools of Tibet, China, Japan, and Korea - is one of the most influential works in the history of Indian philosophy. Now, in The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Jay L. Garfield provides a clear translation of Nāgārjuna's seminal work, offering those with little or no prior knowledge of Buddhist philosophy a view into the profound logic of the Mūlamadhyamikakārikā.
Garfield presents a superb translation of the Tibetan text of Mūlamadhyamikakārikā in its entirety and a commentary reflecting the Tibetan tradition through which Nāgārjuna's philosophical influence has largely been transmitted. Illuminating the systematic character of Nāgārjuna's reasoning, Garfield shows how Nāgārjuna develops his doctrine that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence, that is, than nothing exists substantially or independently. He offers a verse-by-verse commentary that explains Nāgārjuna's positions and arguments in the language of Western metaphysics and epistemology and connects Nāgārjuna's concerns to those of Western philosophers.

English | ASIN: B097YYFH55 | 2021 | 7 hours and 52 minutes |kbps | 216 MB
As machines are trained to "think", many tasks that previously required human intelligence are becoming automated through artificial intelligence. However, it is more difficult to automate emotional intelligence, and this is where the human worker's competitive advantage over machines currently lies. This book explores the impact of AI on everyday life, looking into workers' adaptation to these changes, the ways in which managers can change the nature of jobs in light of AI developments, and the potential for humans and AI to continue working together.
The book argues that AI is rapidly assuming a larger share of thinking tasks, leaving human intelligence to focus on feeling. The result is the "Feeling Economy", in which both employees and consumers emphasize feeling to an unprecedented extent, with thinking tasks largely delegated to AI. The book shows both theoretical and empirical evidence that this shift is well underway. Further, it explores the effect of the Feeling Economy on our everyday lives in the areas such as shopping, politics, and education.

English | ASIN: B082TTV8Z2 | 2021 | 33 hours and 47 minutes |kbps | 964 MB
The riveting story of the conflict over same-sex marriage in the United States - the most important civil rights breakthrough of the new millennium. On June 26, 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled that state bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional, making same-sex unions legal across the United States. But the road to that momentous decision was much longer than many know. In this definitive account, Sasha Issenberg vividly guides us through same-sex marriage's unexpected path from the unimaginable to the inevitable. It is a story that begins in Hawaii in 1990, when a rivalry among local activists triggered a sequence of events that forced the state to justify excluding gay couples from marriage. In the White House, one president signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which elevated the matter to a national issue, and his successor tried to write it into the Constitution.
Over 25 years, the debate played out across the country, from the first legal same-sex weddings in Massachusetts to the epic face-off over California's Proposition 8, and, finally, to the landmark Supreme Court decisions of United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges. From churches to hedge funds, no corner of American life went untouched. This richly detailed narrative follows the coast-to-coast conflict through courtrooms and war rooms, bedrooms and boardrooms, to shed light on every aspect of a political and legal controversy that divided Americans like no other. Following a cast of characters that includes those who sought their own right to wed, those who fought to protect the traditional definition of marriage, and those who changed their minds about it, The Engagement is certain to become a seminal book on the modern culture wars.