The Engagement: America's Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage by Sasha Issenberg

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel, Cecilia Kang

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/400790 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/400790] to listen full audiobooks. Title: An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination Author: Sheera Frenkel, Cecilia Kang Narrator: Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Holter Graham Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 10 hours 31 minutes Release date: July 13, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.57 of Total 7 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 2 Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics Publisher's Summary: “The ultimate takedown.” – New York Times Book Review Award-winning New York Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang unveil the tech story of our times in a riveting, behind-the-scenes exposé that offers the definitive account of Facebook’s fall from grace.  Once one of Silicon Valley’s greatest success stories, Facebook has been under constant fire for the past five years, roiled by controversies and crises. It turns out that while the tech giant was connecting the world, they were also mishandling users’ data, spreading fake news, and amplifying dangerous, polarizing hate speech. The company, many said, had simply lost its way. But the truth is far more complex. Leadership decisions enabled, and then attempted to deflect attention from, the crises. Time after time, Facebook’s engineers were instructed to create tools that encouraged people to spend as much time on the platform as possible, even as those same tools boosted inflammatory rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and partisan filter bubbles. And while consumers and lawmakers focused their outrage on privacy breaches and misinformation, Facebook solidified its role as the world’s most voracious data-mining machine, posting record profits, and shoring up its dominance via aggressive lobbying efforts. Drawing on their unrivaled sources, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang take readers inside the complex court politics, alliances and rivalries within the company to shine a light on the fatal cracks in the architecture of the tech behemoth. Their explosive, exclusive reporting led them to a shocking conclusion: The missteps of the last five years were not an anomaly but an inevitability—this is how Facebook was built to perform. In a period of great upheaval, growth has remained the one constant under the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Both have been held up as archetypes of uniquely 21st century executives—he the tech “boy genius” turned billionaire, she the ultimate woman in business, an inspiration to millions through her books and speeches. But sealed off in tight circles of advisers and hobbled by their own ambition and hubris, each has stood by as their technology is coopted by hate-mongers, criminals and corrupt political regimes across the globe, with devastating consequences. In An Ugly Truth, they are at last held accountable.  Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

The Engagement: America's Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage by Sasha Issenberg

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/396856 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/396856] to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Engagement: America's Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage Author: Sasha Issenberg Narrator: Graham Halstead Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 33 hours 47 minutes Release date: June 1, 2021 Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics Publisher's Summary: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • The riveting story of the conflict over same-sex marriage in the United States—the most significant civil rights breakthrough of the new millennium 'Full of intimate details, battling personalities, heated court cases, public persuasion.”  —John Williams, The New York Times On June 26, 2015, the U.S. 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 twenty-five 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.

The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources by Jack Farchy, Javier Blas

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/400577 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/400577] to listen full audiobooks. Title: The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources Author: Jack Farchy, Javier Blas Narrator: John Sackville Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 12 hours 4 minutes Release date: February 25, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 4.58 of Total 19 Ratings of Narrator: 4.71 of Total 7 Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. Meet the traders who supply the world with oil, metal and food - no matter how corrupt, war-torn or famine-stricken the source. 'This jaw-dropping study shows how much money and global influence is concentrated in the hands of a tiny group . . . As the authors roam from oilfield to wheatfield, they reveal information so staggering you almost gasp.' SUNDAY TIMES 'Fascinating and revealing . . . A gripping book.' ECONOMIST 'The definitive, eye-opening story of the most powerful and secretive traders in the world.' BRADLEY HOPE, co-author of Billion Dollar Whale The modern world is built on commodities - from the oil that fuels our cars to the metals that power our smartphones. We rarely stop to consider where they come from. But we should. In The World for Sale, two leading journalists lift the lid on one of the least scrutinised corners of the economy: the workings of the billionaire commodity traders who buy, hoard and sell the earth's resources. It is the story of how a handful of swashbuckling businessmen became indispensable cogs in global markets: enabling an enormous expansion in international trade, and connecting resource-rich countries - no matter how corrupt or war-torn - with the world's financial centres. And it is the story of how some traders acquired untold political power, right under the noses of Western regulators and politicians - helping Saddam Hussein to sell his oil, fuelling the Libyan rebel army during the Arab Spring, and funnelling cash to Vladimir Putin's Kremlin in spite of strict sanctions. The result is an eye-opening tour through the wildest frontiers of the global economy, as well as a revelatory guide to how capitalism really works. A Financial Times Best Read of 2021. 'Blas and Farchy shine light on what's long been the financial markets' darkest corner - the crucial, yet underappreciated, role commodity traders play in global finance and geopolitics . . . The World For Sale is a fascinating, eye-opening read.' GREGORY ZUCKERMAN, author of The Man Who Solved the Market 'The World for Sale draws back the covers on a sector where civil wars, dubious regimes and the collapse of states have often been just another business opportunity . . . Intriguing and, at times, alarming.' HELEN THOMAS, Business Editor, BBC Newsnight 'Javier Blas and Jack Farchy should be awaiting the call from Hollywood. The World for Sale contains at least half a dozen narrative threads that would form the basis of a good thriller. But the authors' main achievement is to subject the biggest commodity players, and their impact on the real world, to proper critical scrutiny.' REUTERS 'A remarkable book . . . The colour is fantastic . . . Tracking down some of the biggest names in the business to their German castles and stud farms and persuading them to talk is a rare scoop.' SUNDAY TIMES 'Javier Blas and Jack Farchy deftly peel back the curtain on the amoral swashbucklers of capitalism who trade in commodities . . . The World for Sale is a gripping account of how they achieved their stranglehold over the world economy, and their troubling influence on global politics.' BRAD STONE, author of The Everything Store © Javier Blas, Jack Farchy 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Border Wars: The conflicts of tomorrow by Klaus Dodds

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/403793 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/403793] to listen full audiobooks. Title: Border Wars: The conflicts of tomorrow Author: Klaus Dodds Narrator: Leemore Marrett Jr Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 29 minutes Release date: February 25, 2021 Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. Can Donald Trump really build that wall? What does Brexit mean for Ireland's border? And what would happen if Elon Musk declared himself president of the Moon? In Border Wars, Professor Klaus Dodds takes us on a journey into the geopolitical conflict of tomorrow in an eye-opening tour of the world's best-known, most dangerous and most unexpected border conflicts from the Gaza Strip to the space race. Along the way, we'll discover just what border truly mean in the modern world: how are they built; what do they mean for citizens and governments; how do they help understand our political past and, most importantly, our diplomatic future? © Klaus Dodds 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/400796 [https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/400796] to listen full audiobooks. Title: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need Author: Bill Gates Narrator: Wil Wheaton, Bill Gates Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 11 minutes Release date: February 16, 2021 Ratings: Ratings of Book: 3.93 of Total 58 Ratings of Narrator: 5 of Total 5 Genres: Current Affairs, Law, & Politics Publisher's Summary: Brought to you by Penguin. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide toward certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions-suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach. © Bill Gates 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020