Showing results by narrator "Rob Shapiro" in All Categories

Wanting the perfect man doesn't make me crazy. I just know what I like. A powerful billionaire in a suit wasn't even my first choice. McAllister Stonewall was never on my radar; I didn't even know he existed. I do now. His hands are all over me at work. The heat of his chest pressing against my bare back as he bends me over the desk is the only thing on my mind. He is my most forbidden desires unleashed. He is my new secret obsession. He is my Mr. Perfect. Until the moment I realize there's no such thing as perfect.

We human beings share 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees. Yet humans are the dominant species on the planet - having founded civilizations and religions, developed intricate and diverse forms of communication, learned science, built cities, and created breathtaking works of art - while chimps remain animals concerned primarily with the basic necessities of survival. What is it about that two percent difference in DNA that has created such a divergence between evolutionary cousins?

Ambrose Young was beautiful. He was tall and muscular, with hair that touched his shoulders and eyes that burned right through you. The kind of beautiful that graced the covers of romance novels, and Fern Taylor would know. She'd been reading them since she was 13. But maybe because he was so beautiful he was never someone Fern thought she could have...until he wasn't beautiful anymore.

In this pause-resisting, eye-opening audiobook, journalist and military analyst Ronen Bergman - praised by David Remnick as 'arguably [Israel's] best investigative reporter' - offers a riveting inside account of the targeted killing programs: their successes, their failures, and the moral and political price exacted on the men and women who approved and carried out the missions.

One night during his divorce, after one too many vodkas and a phone-in-therapist's advice to 'journal his feelings', Matthew Fray started a blog. On it, he tried to piece together how his ex-wife went from the college freshman who adored him to the angry woman who thought he was an asshole. It turns out that even though he was a decent guy, he was kind of a shitty husband. As he shared raw, uncomfortable and darkly humorous stories about the lessons he'd learned from his failed marriage, Matthew started to gain a following.

At 5:58 a.m. on 3rd October 2009, Combat Outpost Keating, located in frighteningly vulnerable terrain in Afghanistan just 14 miles from the Pakistani border, was viciously attacked. Though the 53 soldiers stationed there prevailed against nearly 400 Taliban fighters, their casualties made it the deadliest fight of the war that year. Four months after the battle, a review revealed that there was no reason for the troops at Keating to have been there in the first place.

From the author of the definitive New York Times best-selling history of the Beatles comes the authoritative account of the group many call the greatest rock band of all time, arguably the most successful, and certainly one of the most notorious.

Robert Crumb is often credited with single-handedly transforming the comics medium into a place for adult expression, in the process pioneering the underground comic book industry, and transforming the vernacular language of 20th-century America into an instantly recognizable and popular aesthetic, as iconic as Walt Disney or Charles Schulz. Now, for the first time, Dan Nadel, a curator and writer specializing in comics and art, shares how this complicated artist survived childhood abuse, fame in his twenties, more fame, and came out the other side intact.

The Second World War is over. Three top Nazis have embezzled $780 million from Nazi funds - and then committed suicide. Their Covenant, to be inherited by their three eldest children, is to redistribute this vast wealth amongst the survivors of the Holocaust. Reparation must be made. Conventional Noel Holcroft is one of the inheritors and his mission is to find the other two 'children' and prove himself worthy of his task.

When infamous outlaw Butch Cassidy decides to go straight, he discovers that too many of the powerful men he crossed won’t let bygones be bygones. To have a chance at a new life, he’ll have to become someone else entirely. A brief, fateful encounter with the celebrated singer Jane Touissant on the eve of his escape offers a glimpse of what might have been, but Butch disappears, leaving her behind, until their paths unexpectedly converge again in Paris.

For the last decade, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Dave Asprey has worked with world-renowned doctors and scientists to uncover the latest, most innovative methods for making humans perform better - a process known as "biohacking". In his first book, The Bulletproof Diet, he shared his biohacking tips for taking control of your own biology. Now, in Head Strong, Asprey shows listeners how to biohack their way to sharper, smarter, faster, more resilient brains.

At 5:58 a.m. on 3rd October 2009, Combat Outpost Keating, located in frighteningly vulnerable terrain in Afghanistan just 14 miles from the Pakistani border, was viciously attacked. Though the 53 soldiers stationed there prevailed against nearly 400 Taliban fighters, their casualties made it the deadliest fight of the war that year. Four months after the battle, a review revealed that there was no reason for the troops at Keating to have been there in the first place.

New York, 1960: For Benny Lament, music is his entire life. With his father’s deep ties to the mob, the Bronx piano man has learned that love and family can get you in trouble. So he keeps to himself, writing songs for other musicians, avoiding the spotlight…until the night his father brings him to see Esther Mine sing. Esther is a petite powerhouse with a gorgeous voice. And when Benny writes a hit song and performs it with her, their collaboration thrusts the duo onto the national stage…and stirs up old issues and new scrutiny that the mob--and Benny--would rather avoid.

Penguin Audio presents Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark, read by Rob Shapiro. We stand at the beginning of a new era. What was once science fiction is fast becoming reality, as AI transforms war, crime, justice, jobs and society - and even our very sense of what it means to be human. More than any other technology, AI has the potential to revolutionise our collective future - and there's nobody better situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor and cofounder of the Future of Life Institute, whose work has helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.

Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant new reality. Think of how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to an enormously successful product launch in eleven months. But such successes are the exception. Consider how London’s Crossrail project delivered five years late and billions over budget. More modest endeavours, whether launching a small business, organizing a conference, or just finishing a work project on time, also commonly fail. Why?

Aiden St. Delphi will do anything to save Alex. Even if it means doing the one thing he will never forgive himself for. Even if it means making war against the gods.

From launchpad explosions to a pernicious cricket infestation to the demanding management style of Musk himself, the rise of SpaceX was beset with challenges and far from inevitable. Find out how the startup beat the odds and flew high enough to outpace their rivals... and where they're going next.

In Liftoff, Eric Berger takes listeners inside the wild early days that made SpaceX. Focusing on the company’s first four launches of the Falcon 1 rocket, he charts the bumpy journey from scrappy underdog to aerospace pioneer, drawing upon exclusive interviews with dozens of former and current engineers, designers, mechanics and executives, including Elon Musk. The enigmatic Musk, who founded the company with the dream of one day settling Mars, is the fuel that propels the book, with his daring vision for the future of space.

Max Tegmark leads us on an astonishing journey through past, present and future, and through the physics, astronomy, and mathematics that are the foundation of his work, most particularly his hypothesis that our physical reality is a mathematical structure and his theory of the ultimate multiverse. In a dazzling combination of both popular and groundbreaking science, he not only helps us grasp his often mind-boggling theories, but he also shares with us some of the often surprising triumphs and disappointments that have shaped his life as a scientist.

It begins in Geneva. There American lawyer Joel Converse meets a man he hasn't seen in 20 years, a covert operative who dies violently at his feet, whispering words that hand Converse a staggering legacy of death: "The generals ... they're back ... Aquitaine!" Suddenly Converse is running for his life, alone with the world's most shattering secret. Pursued by anonymous executioners to the darkest corners of Europe, he is forced to play a game of survival by blood-rules he thought he'd left behind.