Paul Watson, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was on the icebreaker that led one of the discovery expeditions, tells a fast-paced historical adventure story and reveals how a combination of faith in Inuit knowledge and the latest science yielded a discovery for the ages.

    Famed for his dictatorial style, his political cunning and admired – initially – by Hitler, Mussolini led the National Fascist Party and ruled Italy as Prime Minister from 1922 until his ousting in 1943. In so doing, he paved the way towards Italy’s defeat in World War Two, and some of the 20th century’s most destructive ideologies and practices.Following expulsion from Italian Socialist Party, Mussolini denounced all efforts of class conflict, and instead later commanded a Fascist March on Rome to become the youngest Prime Minister in Italian history. Thereafter he set about dismantling the apparatus of democracy and initiated what would become known as the one-party totalitarian state. With World War II came defeat, humiliation and his bloody deposing. Explaining his ideologies, policies, actions and flaws, ‘Mussolini: History in an Hour’ is the concise life of the man whose ideas helped create some of the worst horrors of the modern history.Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour…

    Naval Reserve, joined the pre-commissioning crew of the Fletcher class destroyer USS Cotten. The new crew trained for the remainder of the summer and then sailed to Pearl Harbor in time to join the newly established Fifth Fleet. Under t he command of Admiral Raymond Spruance, the Fifth Fleet was given orders to invade Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands in November 1943. This offensive, along with naval battles in the Philippine Sea, the Leyte Gulf, and the invasion of Iwo Jima in February 1945, is chronicled from the perspective of a young deck officer and is integrated with the background of the larger conflict, including the politics of command. After Japan's surrender, the Cotten became a part of the Occupation Force anchored in Tokyo Bay. Robinson deftly narrates how he and his friends took advantage of their good luck and brought their roles in the war to a fitting conclusion.

    The 94th ended the war in France with the highest number of air victories of any American squadron. Captain Rickenbacker later belonged to an association of pilots and Great War air veterans who, in the years immediately following the Second World War, invited many of the new "young" aces from the Pacific and European theaters for informal lectures. These men never lost their keen interest in aviation.

    What they don’t know is her trailblazing career was a happy accident. In this funny and intimate memoir, Penny takes us from the stage of The Jackie Gleason Show in 1955 to Hollywood’s star-studded sets, offering up some hilarious detours along the way.My Mother Was Nuts is an intimate backstage pass to Penny’s personal life, her breakout role on The Odd Couple, her exploits with Cindy Williams and John Belushi, and her travels across Europe with Art Garfunkel on the back of a motorcycle. We see Penny get married. And divorced. And married again (the second time to Rob Reiner). We meet a young Carrie Fisher, whose close friendship with Penny has spanned decades. And we see Penny at work with Tom Hanks, Mark Wahlberg, Whoopi Goldberg, Robert De Niro, and Whitney Houston.Throughout it all, from her childhood spent tap dancing in the Bronx, to her rise as the star of Laverne & Shirley, Penny lived by simple rules: “try hard, help your friends, don’t get too crazy, and have fun.” With humor and heart, My Mother Was Nuts reveals there’s no one else quite like Penny Marshall.

    They chart her transformation from a young girl with a love of animals and fairy tales into a bestselling author and canny businesswoman, so deeply unusual for the Victorian era in which she grew up. Embellished with photographs of Potter's life and her own illustrations, this biography will delight anyone who has been touched by Beatrix Potter's work.For the fans of her children’s literature who want to know the real-life animals behind Mrs. Tiggy Winkle, Jemima Puddle duck, and of course, Peter Rabbit.

    Sauveur, Quebec, and New York City. He’s intimately familiar with the route, from its topography to its emotional touchstones—each mile nearly etched into his psyche. The starting point, nestled in the Laurentian Mountains, is an hour northeast of Montreal, and home to a large part of his fabled upbringing with its rich maternal lineage and musical legacy. It’s also loaded with some good ol’ fashioned baggage. The end point, New York, like for so many before and after him, serves as a storied stomping ground for his rise as an artist and person, independent of his family. It’s an ever-alluring, but uneasy place, as it’s dished out equal measures of validation and indifference throughout their testy relationship. In Road Trip Elegies, Rufus sets out on the trek with his usual personal effects: a treasure trove of memories; a razor-sharp-wit; and big appetite for healthy self-reflection. But on this particular trip, he’s packed two additional items to help navigate the experience: something to record himself with, and, someone to talk to. For the latter, Rufus has tapped his therapist. Yes, Mark the Analyst. (Hey, why not go for the best?) What ensues over the course of three one-hour episodes is a captivating, detailed, and candid coming of age story—an artist’s awakening—shared by a man who uniquely understands from whence he came and how it’s all played out ever since. As satisfying or soulful a premise that may be, Rufus is the consummate showman, Road Trip Elegies offers its listeners much, much more.If Elegies is anchored in Rufus’s driving excavation as an artist and son (his beloved mother, Canadian folk icon Kate McGarrigle, is an essential and enduring force in his life), the title is truly lifted and made whole by its spectacular musical counterpart. Generously woven throughout the duration of the drive, each live cut (more than twenty tracks in total) is plucked from an exquisite, recent set of performances some 3,000 miles west. Captured at McCabe's Guitar Store, a music venue in Los Angeles, the three-night run was designed specifically to accompany and punctuate moments and themes derived from his Road Trip. Backed by a tightknit, 4-piece band, including his sister, Lucy Wainwright Roche (vocals), Petra Haden (vocals/violin), and featuring top-notch stage banter throughout, Rufus seamlessly moves between a sweeping breadth of songs that span generation, genre, and timbre. Many tunes penned by his own notable family members, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, or his distinguished folk writing father, Loudon Wainwright III; others are gorgeously Rufus-ized versions of standards from the stage, the Great American Songbook or more modern classics. Cue: Dylan’s "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall," and Barry Gibb’s always welcome "Islands in the Stream." Enveloped in the warmth of devoted fans and a host of admiring special attendees (Burt Bacharach, Jessica Chastain, Mike Stoller, Shirley Maclaine, Chris Guest, Darren Criss, Anjelica Huston, Jackson Browne, and Vandyke Parks to name-drop a few) the performance, throughout, conveys a fantastic sense of both intimacy and electricity.By the time Rufus approaches the City, we’ve been richly serenaded with beautiful melodies courtesy of the West coast, and moving stories down the state thruway. Driving solo now (don’t worry, his intrepid therapist was safely dropped off in Westchester), Rufus is admittedly, fully loopy: emotionally drained but highly entertaining. The final leg has the remarkably palpable vibe of just Rufus and you, working in parallel, looking to land closure. Total catharsis is of course out of reach, but Rufus’s Road Trip Elegies is a bold and beautiful testament to the power of not compartmentalizing our various parts, or striving to disown our past, but rather, willfully embracing the full extent of us; seeking to grasp and contain even our most challenging of pieces, to arrive, more completely, at peace of mind.©2020 Rufus Wainwright (P)2020 Audible Originals LLCShow less

    For decades, Herriot roamed the remote, beautiful Yorkshire Dales, treating every patient that came his way from smallest to largest, and observing animals and humans alike with his keen, loving eye.In All Creatures Great and Small, we meet the young Herriot as he takes up his calling and discovers that the realities of veterinary practice in rural Yorkshire are very different from the sterile setting of veterinary school. Some visits are heart-wrenchingly difficult, such as one to an old man in the village whose very ill dog is his only friend and companion, some are lighthearted and fun, such as Herriot's periodic visits to the overfed and pampered Pekinese Tricki Woo who throws parties and has his own stationery, and yet others are inspirational and enlightening, such as Herriot's recollections of poor farmers who will scrape their meager earnings together to be able to get proper care for their working animals. From seeing to his patients in the depths of winter on the remotest homesteads to dealing with uncooperative owners and critically ill animals, Herriot discovers the wondrous variety and never-ending challenges of veterinary practice as his humor, compassion, and love of the animal world shine forth.James Herriot's memoirs have sold 80 million copies worldwide, and continue to delight and entertain readers of all ages

    A peasant girl who hears voices from God. A warrior leading an army to victory, in an age that believes women cannot fight. The Maid of Orleans, and the saviour of France. Burned at the stake as a heretic at the age of just nineteen. Five hundred years later, a saint. Her case was heard in court twice over. One trial, in 1431, condemned her; the other, twenty-five years after her death, cleared her name. In the transcripts, we hear first-hand testimony from Joan, her family and her friends: a rare survival from the medieval world. What could be more revealing?

    No one has insight into their true character like the people who serve their meals and make their beds every day. Full of stories and details by turns dramatic, humorous, and heartwarming, The Residence reveals daily life in the White House as it is really lived through the voices of the maids, butlers, cooks, florists, doormen, engineers, and others who tend to the needs of the President and First Family.These dedicated professionals maintain the six-floor mansion’s 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms, 28 fireplaces, three elevators, and eight staircases, and prepare everything from hors d’oeuvres for intimate gatherings to meals served at elaborate state dinners. Over the course of the day, they gather in the lower level’s basement kitchen to share stories, trade secrets, forge lifelong friendships, and sometimes even fall in love.Combining incredible first-person anecdotes from extensive interviews with scores of White House staff members—many speaking for the first time—with archival research, Kate Andersen Brower tells their story. She reveals the intimacy between the First Family and the people who serve them, as well as tension that has shaken the staff over the decades. From the housekeeper and engineer who fell in love while serving President Reagan to Jackie Kennedy’s private moment of grief with a beloved staffer after her husband’s assassination to the tumultuous days surrounding President Nixon’s resignation and President Clinton’s impeachment battle, The Residence is full of surprising and moving details that illuminate day-to-day life at the White House.

    The book is a detailed account of this very important but controversial figure in American history. The story is a “classic rags to riches” one and begins with his childhood in the British West Indies. Though his life is filled with tragedy and he is very poor, Hamilton manages to distinguish himself through his writing and his business skills. Eventually, he leaves the West Indies and immigrates to North America where he receives a first rate education. Later, he becomes a hero in the Revolutionary War and is appointed to be General George Washington’s right hand man. Because of his service to Washington, Hamilton becomes the Secretary of the Treasury when Washington is elected President. As a member of the new government, Hamilton makes significant contributions including setting up a banking system and a currency system which are still used today. He also plays a major role in the ratification of the United States Constitution. While Alexander Hamilton: Founding Father primarily focuses on Hamilton’s great contributions, it also presents his dark side. Though Hamilton married a wealthy woman and became a member of the aristocracy, he was also involved in a scandalous affair and ultimately died in a duel defending his honor.

    Drawn from a trove of rare archival footage, audio recordings and interviews (including Simone's remarkable private diaries), this nuanced examination of Nina Simone’s life highlights her musical inventiveness and unwavering quest for equality, while laying bare the personal demons that plagued her from the time of her Jim Crow childhood in North Carolina to her self-imposed exile in Liberia and Paris later in life. Harnessing the singular voice of Miss Simone herself and incorporating candid reflections from those who knew her best, including her only daughter, Light brings us face to face with a legend, examining the very public persona and very private struggles of one of our greatest artists.

    This no-holds-barred biography chronicles the life of a career criminal who started out as a thug on the streets of Chicago and became a trusted lieutenant in Tony Spilotro’s gang of organized lawbreakers in Las Vegas. Cullotta’s was a world of high-profile heists, street muscle, and information—lots of it—about many of the FBI’s most wanted. In the end, that information was his ticket out of crime, as he turned government witness and became one of a handful of mob insiders to enter the Witness Protection Program. “Frank Cullotta is the real thing,” says Nicholas Pileggi in the book’s Foreword, and in these pages, Cullotta sets the record straight on organized crime, witness protection, and life and death in mobbed-up Las Vegas.

    Distanced from her Iraqi roots through immigration and now cut off by war, the closest link she has to the nation is through her father, who left Baghdad in the 1960s when he was sixteen to pursue his studies in England. His Iraq is of mythical origins; his beginnings are in a garden at the family home that now lays vacant. Through her father's memories, Leilah recounts her familys lost story, from Iraq at the turn of the twentieth century during the British occupation, to the Iraq-Iran War and the Gulf War. Through her cousins still living in Baghdad, she experiences the thunderous explosions of the present-day conflict, and Leilahs friend, award-winning photographer Farah Nosh, brings home news of Leilahs family after her visits to Iraq, as well as stunning photos of civilians and their often tragic stories.

    She highlights the dilemmas involved and the issues that lurk beneath the surface, as to why the couple decided to step down as senior royals. She analyses the implications of the actions of a young and ambitious Duke and Duchess of Sussex, in love with each other and with the empowering lure of fame and fortune, and leads the reader through the maze of contradictions, revealing how Californian culture has influenced the couple's conduct.MEGHAN AND HARRY: THE REAL STORY exposes how the royal couple tried and failed to change the royal system by adapting it to their own needs and ambitions, and, upon failing, how they decided to create a new system altogether.