The West: A New History of an Old Idea by Naoíse Mac Sweeney

The Money: A Story of Humanity by David Mcwilliams

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/563824 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/563824] to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Money: A Story of Humanity Author: David Mcwilliams Narrator: David McWilliams Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 55 minutes Release date: September 12, 2024 Genres: World Publisher's Summary: *AS HEARD ON RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK* THE INTERNATIONAL #1 BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2024 NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR A WATERSTONES NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR 20-24 AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 A FINANCIAL TIMES ECONOMICS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 A PROSPECT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 ‘A breathtaking, expansive and imaginative ride through the history and future of money from an author who truly understands it’ PROFESSOR BRIAN COX ‘Exceptional’ FINANCIAL TIMES  ‘A cracking book that is as enjoyable as it is readable’ PETER FRANKOPAN ‘Equally entertaining and insightful’ YANIS VAROUFAKIS MONEY. The object of our desires. The engine of our genius. Humanity’s greatest invention. Money is everything. It brings freedom and it takes it away. It inspires and corrupts us. But what is money? Is it the main thing holding us back from utopia or is it the one constant that’s driven us to success? In his illuminating, entertaining and often surprising book, economist David McWilliams charts the relationship between humans and money – from clay tablets in Mesopotamia to coins in Ancient Greece, from mathematics in the medieval Arab world to the French Revolution, and from the emergence of the US dollar right up to today’s cryptocurrency. Along the way, we meet a host of characters who have innovated with money, disrupting society and transforming the way we live. Like humanity, money is ever changing, adapting to its time and circumstances. The question is, over the last 5000 years, have we changed money or has money changed us? Money tells an astonishing new story of our species. Taking the reader on an epic journey through the history of money, McWilliams reveals its fundamental role in our society. ‘An impressive journey that fizzes with facts’ ECONOMIST ‘An eye-opening history of what makes the world go round’ EVENING STANDARD ‘David McWilliams is the best explainer of economics I know’ SIMON KUPER ‘Compelling, funny and original’ KATJA HOYER ‘If, as David McWilliams complains, economists take the fun out of money, then he is the exception that proves the rule: a man who could not write a boring sentence if he tried’ TOM HOLLAND

The Lost Paths: A History of How We Walk From Here To There by Jack Cornish

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/551869 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/551869] to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Lost Paths: A History of How We Walk From Here To There Author: Jack Cornish Narrator: Jack Cornish Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 28 minutes Release date: April 11, 2024 Genres: World Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. Discover the rich history of Britain's millennia-old network of pathways, and it will be impossible to take an unremarkable walk again... Hundreds of thousands of miles of paths reach into, and connect, communities across England and Wales. By 2026, 10,000 miles of undiscovered footpaths around Britain stand to be lost. Jack Cornish has dedicated the last five years of his life to walking these forgotten routes, and this book, The Lost Paths, is the result. It is Jack Cornish's hope that The Lost Paths will show just how special these forgotten rights of way are, and how embedded each path is in the history of Britain. Footpaths, tracks, country lanes and urban streets illuminate how our ancestors interacted with and shaped their landscapes in the pursuit of commerce, salvation, escape, war, and leisure. Paths are an often-overlooked part of our everyday life and our country's history, crucial to understanding the cultural and environmental history of us in the landscape. After dedicating his time and energy to fighting for their survival, The Lost Paths is Jack's personal journey and exploration of the deep history of English and Welsh footways. This narrative history takes us through ancient forests, exposed mountainsides, urban back streets and coastal vistas to reveal how this millennia-old network was created and has been transformed. This is a celebration of an ancient network and a rallying cry to reclaim what has been lost and preserve it for future generations. © Jack Cornish 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience and Family Secrets by Burkhard Bilger

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/546795 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/546795] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience and Family Secrets Author: Burkhard Bilger Narrator: Burkhard Bilger Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 8 hours 59 minutes Release date: May 2, 2023 Genres: World Publisher's Summary: A New Yorker staff writer, investigates his grandfather, a Nazi Party Chief, in this 'unflinching, gorgeously written, and deeply moving exploration of morality, family, and war” (Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain) ‘The book we need right now’ Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal What do we owe the past? How to make peace with a dark family history? Burkhard Bilger hardly knew his grandfather growing up. His parents immigrated to Oklahoma from Germany after World War II, and though his mother was an historian, she rarely talked about her father or what he did during the war. Then one day a packet of letters arrived from Germany, yellowing with age, and a secret history began to unfold. Karl Gönner was a schoolteacher and Nazi party member from the Black Forest. In 1940, he was sent to a village in occupied France and tasked with turning its children into proper Germans. A fervent Nazi when the war began, he grew close to the villagers over the next four years, till he came to think of himself as their protector, shielding them from his own party’s brutality. Yet he was arrested in 1946 and accused of war crimes. Was he guilty or innocent? A vicious collaborator or just an ordinary man, struggling to atone for his country’s crimes? Bilger goes to Germany to find out. What follows is a literary suspense story: a tale of chance encounters and serendipitous discoveries in villages and dusty archives across Germany and France. Intimate and far-reaching, Fatherland is an extraordinary odyssey through the great upheavals of the past century, tracing one family’s path through history’s wreckage. For readers of Bart van Es’s The Cut Out Girl or Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with the Amber Eyes, this is a story of middle lands, torn allegiances and loaded family inheritance.

The West: A New History of an Old Idea by Naoíse Mac Sweeney

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/556431 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/556431] to listen full audiobooks. Title: The West: A New History of an Old Idea Author: Naoíse Mac Sweeney Narrator: Shaheen Khan Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 14 hours 8 minutes Release date: April 27, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3 of Total 1 Ratings of Narrator: 3 of Total 1 Genres: World Publisher's Summary: *A Radio 4 Book of the Week* Brought to you by Penguin. We tend to imagine Western Civilisation as a golden thread, leading through the centuries from classical antiquity to the countries of the modern West - a cultural genealogy that connects Plato to NATO. It is an idea often invoked in the speeches of politicians and the rhetoric of journalists, and which remains deeply embedded in popular culture. But what if it is wrong? In an epic sweep through the ages, prize-winning archaeologist and historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney charts the history of this idea - an idea of enormous political significance, but which is nonetheless factually incorrect and obscures the wondrous, rich diversity of our past. She reveals how this particular version of Western history was invented, how it has been used to justify imperialism and racism, and why it is no longer ideologically fit for purpose today. Told through the lives of fourteen fascinating historical figures - including a formidable Roman matriarch, an unconventional Islamic scholar, an enslaved African American poetess and a British prime minister with Homeric aspirations - The West is a groundbreaking retelling of Western history and a powerful corrective to one of the greatest myths of all: Western Civilisation. ©2023 Naoíse Mac Sweeney (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Attack Warning Red!: How Britain Prepared for Nuclear War by Julie Mcdowall

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/562575 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/562575] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Attack Warning Red!: How Britain Prepared for Nuclear War Author: Julie Mcdowall Narrator: Julie Mcdowall Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 10 minutes Release date: April 6, 2023 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 5 of Total 1 Genres: World Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. There have been many histories of the Cold War but Attack Warning Red is the first book to tell the domestic story of day-to-day life on the nuclear home front. The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 changed the nature of war forever. The awesome power of the atomic blast and its deadly fallout meant that nowhere was safe: every town, village, street and home in Britain fell under the nuclear shadow, and the threat of annihilation coloured every aspect of ordinary life for the next forty years. As the media reported on the inevitability of approaching conflict with the Soviet Union, the British people were told to prepare for the coming apocalypse. Families were taught how to construct makeshift shelters in their homes and stockpile food and medicines; vicars and pub landlords were instructed to sound hand-wound sirens to deliver the Four Minute Warning. Schools and hospitals prepared for the worst, and thousands volunteered for civil defence organisations to be trained in nuclear first aid. And while the British people were expected to look after themselves, bunkers were prepared for government officials and experts needed to ensure that life continued after the catastrophe. Looming nuclear war and the planning for it affected people's everyday lives: it informed their childhoods, structured their work, and inhabited their dreams and nightmares. Today, more than thirty years after the end of the Cold War, we read this story - with its Dad's Army comedy, endearing amateurism and futile measures for a war that was not survivable - with a sense of relief that the worst did not happen; but it is also a timely - and frightening - reminder that the nuclear threat will always be with us. ©2023 Julie McDowall (P)2023 Penguin Audio