Narrator

Keith Sellon-Wright

Keith Sellon-Wright
  • This offbeat slice of American history places the story of our great republic beneath an unexpected lens: that of fringe candidates for president of the United States. Mark Stein explores how their quest for our nation’s highest office helped to amplify voices otherwise quashed during their day. His careening tour through elections past includes the efforts of true pioneers in the quest for social equality in our country: the first woman to run for president, Victoria Woodhull in 1872; the first African American to run for president, George E. Taylor, in 1904; and the first openly gay cross-dressing candidate for president, Joan Jett Blakk in 1992.

    But The Presidential Fringe also takes a look at those who would jest their way into the Oval Office, from comedians such as Will Rogers and Gracie Allen to Pat Paulsen and Stephen Colbert. Along the way, Stein shows how even seemingly zany candidates, such as “Live Forever” Jones, Vegetarian Party candidate John Maxwell, Flying Saucer Party candidate Gabriel Green, or most recently, Vermin Supreme, provide extraordinary insights of clarity into who we were when they ran for president and how we became who we are today. Ultimately, Stein’s examination reveals that it was often precisely these fringe candidates who planted the seeds from which mainstream candidates later harvested genuine, positive change.

    Written in Stein’s direct and witty style, The Presidential Fringe surveys and portrays an American landscape rife with the unlikely, unassuming, unexpected, and (in a few cases) unbalanced presidential hopefuls who, in their own way, have contributed to this nation’s founding quest to form a more perfect Union.

  • World-class beaches, fragrant frangipani, swaying palms, and hula girls. Most folks think of Hawaii as a vacation destination. Mob-style executions, drug smuggling, and vicious gang warfare are seldom part of the postcard image. Yet, Hawaii was once home to not only Aloha spirit, but also a ruthless, homegrown mafia underworld. From 1960 to 1980, Hawaiian gangsters grew rich off a robust trade in drugs, gambling, and prostitution that followed in the wake of Hawaii’s tourist boom.

    Thus, by 1980—the year Charles Marsland was elected Honolulu’s top prosecutor—the honeymoon island paradise was also plagued by violence, corruption, and organized crime. The zeal that Marsland brought to his crusade against the Hawaiian underworld was relentless, self-destructive, and very personal. Five years earlier, Marsland’s son had been gunned down. His efforts to bring his son’s killers to justice—and indeed, eradicate the entire organized criminal element in Hawaii—make for an extraordinary tale that culminates with intense courtroom drama.

    Hawaii Five-O meets Wiseguy in author Jason Ryan’s vigorously reported chronicle of brazen gangsters, brutal murders, and a father’s quest for vengeance—all set against an unlikely backdrop of seductive tropical beauty.

  • In the late 1970s and early ’80s, a cadre of freewheeling, Southern pot smugglers lived at the crossroads of Miami Vice and a Jimmy Buffett song. These irrepressible adventurers unloaded nearly a billion dollars worth of marijuana and hashish through the eastern seaboard’s marshes. Then came their undoing: Operation Jackpot, one of the largest drug investigations ever and an opening volley in Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs.

    In Jackpot, author Jason Ryan takes us back to the heady days before drug smuggling was synonymous with deadly gunplay. During this golden age of marijuana trafficking, the country’s most prominent kingpins were a group of wayward and fun-loving Southern gentlemen who forsook college educations to sail drug-laden luxury sailboats across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean. Les Riley, Barry Foy, and their comrades eschewed violence as much as they loved pleasure, and it was greed, lust, and disaster at sea that ultimately caught up with them, along with the law.

    In a cat-and-mouse game played out in exotic locations across the globe, the smugglers sailed through hurricanes, broke out of jail, and survived encounters with armed militants in Colombia, Grenada, and Lebanon. Based on years of research and interviews with imprisoned and recently released smugglers and the law enforcement agents who tracked them down, Jackpot is sure to become a classic story from America’s controversial Drug Wars.

  • Today, a trip to Hawaii is a simple six-hour flight from the West Coast. But almost a century ago, the first flights to Hawaii required a nerve-wracking and uncertain twenty-six-hour journey to isolated and elusive islands located in the middle of the world’s largest ocean. Pilots prayed they would encounter land after flying a full day and night across 2,400 miles of the open Pacific.

    Race to Hawaii chronicles the thrilling first flights to Hawaii in the 1920s, during the Golden Age of Aviation. These journeys were fraught with danger. To reach the tiny islands, fearless pilots flew unreliable and fragile aircraft outfitted with primitive air navigation equipment. The first attempts were made by the US Navy in the flying boat PN-9 No.1, whose crew endured a harrowing crossing. Next were Army Air Corps aviators and a civilian pilot, who informally raced each other to Hawaii in the weeks after Charles Lindbergh landed the Spirit of St. Louis in Paris.

    Finally came the Dole Derby, an unprecedented 1927 air race in which eight planes set off at once across the Pacific, all eager to reach the islands first and claim a cash prize offered by “Pineapple King” James Dole. Military men, barnstormers, a schoolteacher, a Wall Street bond salesman, a Hollywood stunt flyer, and veteran World War aces all encountered every type of hazard during their perilous flights, from fuel shortages to failed engines, forced sea landings and severe fatigue to navigational errors. With so many pilots taking aim at the far-flung islands in so many different types of planes, everyone wondered who would reach Hawaii first, or at all.

  • Is the forty-fifth president of the United States under the control of a foreign power? Award-winning Associated Press reporter Seth Hettena untangles the story of Donald Trump’s long involvement with Russia in damning detail—including new reporting never before published.

    As Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the relationship between members of Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives continues, there is growing evidence that Trump has spent decades cultivating ties to corrupt Russians and the post-Soviet state.

    In Trump / Russia: A Definitive History, Seth Hettena chronicles the many years Trump has spent wooing Russian money and power. From the collapse of his casino empire—which left Trump desperate for cash—and his first contacts with Russian deal-makers and financiers, on up to the White House, Hettena reveals the myriad of shady people, convoluted dealings, and strange events that suggest how indebted to Russia our forty-fifth president might be.

    Using deeply researched reporting, along with newly uncovered information, court documents, and exclusive interviews with investigators and FBI agents, Hettena provides an expansive and essential primer to the Trump/Russia scandal, leaving no stone unturned.

  • Forest bathing is a gentle, meditative practice of connecting with nature. Simply being present with all of our senses, in a forest or other wild area, can produce mental, emotional, and physical health benefits. It is a simple, accessible antidote to our nature-starved lives and can inspire us to become advocates for healing our relationships with the more-than-human world. This book is both an invitation to take up the practice of forest bathing and an inspiration to connect with nature as a way to help heal both the planet and humanity.

    Forest Therapy is a research-based framework for supporting healing and wellness through immersion in forests and other natural environments. In Japan, forest bathing is known as shinrin-yoku. Studies there have demonstrated a wide variety of health benefits, especially in the cardiovascular and immune systems, and for stabilizing and improving mood and cognition.

    In Your Guide to Forest Bathing, Amos Clifford draws on four decades of wilderness experience to introduce listeners to the medicine of being in the forest. Learn about the roots of the practice, how to deepen your relationship to nature, and how to begin a practice of your own. Practical matters such as finding a suitable trail and what to bring are also included.

  • In late March 2015, ornithologist Bruce M. Beehler set off on a solo three-month trek to track songbird migration and the northward progress of spring through America. Traveling via car, canoe, bike, and on foot, Beehler followed woodland warblers and other neotropical songbird species from the southern border of Texas, where the birds first arrive after their winter sojourns in South America and the Caribbean, northward through the Mississippi drainage to its headwaters in Minnesota and onward to their nesting grounds in the north woods of Ontario.

    In North on the Wing, Beehler describes both the epic migration of songbirds across the country and the gradual dawning of springtime through the US heartland—the blossoming of wildflowers, the chorusing of frogs, the leafing out of forest canopies—and also tells the stories of the people and institutions dedicated to studying and conserving the critical habitats and processes of spring songbird migration.

    Inspired in part by Edwin Way Teale’s landmark 1951 book North with the Spring, this audiobook—part travelogue, part field journal, and part environmental and cultural history—is a fascinating firsthand account of a once-in-a-lifetime journey. It engages listeners in the wonders of spring migration and serves as a call for the need to conserve, restore, and expand bird habitats to preserve them for future generations of both birds and humans.

  • Jack Canfield is a master motivator, world-renowned teacher, and bestselling author of The Success Principles. In Success Affirmations, he helps listeners break through to new levels of passion, purpose, and prosperity with time-tested wisdom and fifty-two affirmations.

    In our 24/7 world, where we move at warp speed, sometimes we let life happen to us instead of taking control of our direction. Other times, we suffer from information overload, fail to consciously control our positive thoughts, and allow negativity to take over. For those who want to rise above, to get unstuck, or to catapult to a new level of success, Jack Canfield will show you how positive affirmations can transform your life in extraordinary ways.

    Canfield, with the help of esteemed coauthors Kelly Johnson and Ram Ganglani, explains what positive affirmations are (and what they are not), why they are so effective, and how to effortlessly integrate their practice into your life. Pulling the most effective tenets from his bestselling book The Success Principles, Canfield covers all areas of life, from financial prosperity and creative pursuits to your career and positive relationships. Success Affirmations reveals

    • how to avoid letting life just happen to you, and how to proactively go after your dreams;
    • how to use the power of deliberate thought to create the reality you want;
    • how to identify your true passions and purpose to direct your affirmations to concrete goals, not nebulous ideas or someone else’s vision;
    • how to harness positive energy to attract what you want in your life through the Law of Attraction;
    • how to unplug from technology and plug into your true source of energy; and
    • much more!
  • C. P. Ellis grew up in the poor white section of Durham, North Carolina, and as a young man joined the Ku Klux Klan.

    Ann Atwater, a single mother from the poor black part of town, quit her job as a household domestic to join the civil rights fight.

    During the 1960s, as the country struggled with the explosive issue of race, Atwater and Ellis met on opposite sides of the public school integration issue. Their encounters were charged with hatred and suspicion. In an amazing set of transformations, however, each of them came to see how the other had been exploited by the South’s rigid power structure, and they forged a friendship that flourished against a backdrop of unrelenting bigotry.

    Rich with details about the rhythms of daily life in the mid-twentieth-century South, The Best of Enemies offers a vivid portrait of a relationship that defied all odds. By placing this very personal story into broader context, Osha Gray Davidson demonstrates that race is intimately tied to issues of class and that cooperation is possible—even in the most divisive situations—when people begin to listen to one another.

  • In April 2014, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter died after a long battle with cancer. David McCallum was exonerated and freed two months later, after serving twenty-nine years in prison.

    This is the story of how Carter and his friend and coauthor Ken Klonsky worked for ten years to help free the wrongfully convicted McCallum, along with a group of committed friends and professionals. It details their struggles from founding an innocence project to take on the case, to finding lawyers willing to work pro bono, to hiring a private detective to sift through old evidence and locate original witnesses, and the most difficult part, convincing members of a deeply flawed criminal justice system to reopen a case that would expose their own mistakes when all they wanted to do was ignore the conflicting evidence. Finally it took a new district attorney, a documentary film, and an op-ed piece written by Carter on his death bed published in the New York Daily News that made a plea for McCallum’s release and turned the tide of justice. Freeing David McCallum tells a tale of frustration, agony, and undying hope, and the miracle that resulted in David’s release.

  • Having trouble in your marriage? This book is for you. Tom Gardiner, a Chicago lawyer, explains how post-nuptial agreements can address marital problems effectively. Unlike counseling that often is no more than a temporary fix, this book talks about agreements that will result in long-term change.

    If your spouse drinks too much, for instance, you both agree in a legally binding document about the changes that need to occur—and the consequences if they don’t. There is another huge advantage to post-nups. If the behavior is not changed and divorce is triggered, the terms are set when the parties both seek to save the marriage—not when they’re going through an acrimonious break-up. These terms are usually reasonable and fair—who gets the kids and when, a fair amount of alimony for a fair term, division of the property—all because the spouses are seeking a solution at the time.

    This book covers all of the human frailties that can cause problems in a marriage: financial problems, drinking, drug use, cheating, stepchildren, in-law problems, inheritance, religious issues, and so on. It is a book not just for couples but also for therapists, religious leaders, and others who seek to make marriages stronger and divorces civilized and fair.

  • A revised and updated edition (with more than 70% new material) of the classic book about innate differences between boys and girls and how best to parent and teach girls and boys successfully, with new chapters on sexual orientation and on transgender and intersex kids.

    Back in 2005, the first edition of Why Gender Matters broke ground in illuminating the differences between boys and girls—how they perceive the world differently, how they learn differently, how they process emotions and take risks differently. Dr. Sax argued that in failing to recognize these hardwired differences between boys and girls, we ended up reinforcing damaging stereotypes, medicalizing misbehavior, and failing to help kids to reach their full potential. In the intervening decade, the world has changed, with an avalanche of new research which supports, deepens, and expands Dr. Sax’s work. This revised and updated edition includes new findings about how boys and girls interact differently with social media and video games; a new discussion of research on gender non-conforming, LGB, and transgender kids, new findings about how girls and boys see differently, hear differently, and even smell differently; and new material about the medicalization of misbehavior.

  • The crime that inspired the movie Goodfellas.
    The story that couldn’t be told—until now.

    One of the biggest scores in Mafia history, the Lufthansa Airlines heist of 1978 has become the stuff of Mafia legend—and a decades-long investigation that continues to this day. Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Anthony DeStefano sheds new light on this legendary unsolved case using recent evidence from the 2015 trial of eighty-year-old Mafia don Vincent Asaro, who for the first time speaks out on his role in the fateful Lufthansa heist. This blistering you-are-there account takes you behind the headlines and inside the ranks of America’s infamous crime families—with never-before-told stories, late-breaking news, and bombshell revelations:

    • New details on the heist’s planning: who was involved, how they pulled it off, and what really happened to the almost $6 million in cash and jewels they stole from JFK Airport
    • Why suspected heist participant Vincent Asaro was found not guilty of all charges—racketeering, theft, and murder—even after being observed by the FBI for more than three decades
    • The shocking discovery of human bones in a Queens home belonging to a relative of Jimmy Burke, the homicidal Lucchese crime family associate who assembled the Lufthansa heist team—and masterminded the caper, then the biggest cash robbery in American history
    • The eye-opening testimony of gangsters-turned-informants Salvatore Vitale and Gaspar Valenti—and what it reveals about the Mafia code of silence known as Omerta
    • The greed, betrayal, murder, and other frightening insights into the Bonanno and Lucchese crime families
    • Disturbing claims about how some members of the NYPD leaked information to mobster Jimmy Burke and may have helped hide evidence of a mob murder victim’s demise

    An invaluable addition to any crime library, this is the most complete, thorough, and up-to-date account of the Lufthansa heist currently available. Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony DeStefano draws from his years of experience reporting on the mob for New York Newsday—as well as his firsthand coverage of the Asaro indictment and attendance at the trial—to expose the all-too-human heart of organized crime in America. The Big Heist is thrilling, shocking, and impossible to put down.

  • Whether you are a scientist or a poet, pro–nuclear energy or staunch opponent, conspiracy theorist or pragmatist, James Mahaffey’s books have served to open up the world of nuclear science like never before. With clear explanations of some of the most complex scientific endeavors in history, Mahaffey’s new book looks back at the atom’s wild, secretive past and then toward its potentially bright future.

    Mahaffey unearths lost reactors on far flung Pacific islands and trees that were exposed to active fission that changed gender or bloomed in the dead of winter. He explains why we have nuclear submarines but not nuclear aircraft and why cold fusion doesn’t exist. And who knew that radiation counting was once a fashionable trend? Though parts of the nuclear history might seem like a fiction mash-up where cowboys somehow got a hold of a reactor, Mahaffey’s vivid prose holds the reader in thrall of the infectious energy of scientific curiosity and ingenuity that may one day hold the key to solving our energy crisis or sending us to Mars.

  • The two decades after the Cold War saw unprecedented cooperation between the major powers as the world converged on a model of liberal international order. Now, great power competition is back, and the liberal order is in jeopardy.

    Russia and China are increasingly revisionist in their regions. The Middle East appears to be unraveling. And many Americans question why the United States ought to lead. What will great power competition look like in the decades ahead? Will the liberal world order survive? What impact will geopolitics have on globalization? And, what strategy should the United States pursue to succeed in an increasingly competitive world.

    In this book, Thomas Wright explains how major powers will compete fiercely even as they try to avoid war with each other. Wright outlines a new American strategy—responsible competition—to navigate these challenges and strengthen the liberal order.

  • Love and marriage are two of the greatest gifts life has to offer, yet too many marriages fail because couples don’t fully understand the five stages of relationships. Because most of us have had hurtful experiences in past relationships, often going back to childhood, we develop an inaccurate love map that causes us to get off track when the stresses of life increase.

    For more than forty years, Jed Diamond has been helping couples repair even the most damaged relationships and reweave the broken strands of marriage. In The Enlightened Marriage, Dr. Diamond will help you

    • get through stage three—disillusionment, without losing your love,
    • understand that when your partner says, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you anymore,” it is not the end, but the beginning of stage four—real lasting love,
    • learn why healing childhood wounds is the greatest gift of love you can give and receive from your partner,
    • recognize and address the midlife stresses of “manopause,” irritable male syndrome, and male-type depression, and
    • follow your calling in stage five to make a real difference in the world.