Academic Life

Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes listeners inside Google headquarters - the Googleplex - to explain how Google works.

A landmark work from one of the preeminent historians of our time: the first published biography of Andrew W. Mellon, the American colossus who bestrode the worlds of industry, government, and philanthropy, leaving his transformative stamp on each. Following a boyhood in 19th-century Pittsburgh, during which he learned from his Scotch-Irish immigrant father the lessons of self-sufficiency and wealth accumulation, Andrew Mellon overcame painful shyness to become one of America's greatest financiers.

As a seasoned paramedic and union leader, Anthony Almojera thought he could handle anything his job threw at him. Like many medical first responders, he came from a troubled background and carried the traumas of the city as well as its triumphs. He had grown up in the rough-and-tumble Park Slope of the 1980s, been homeless for a time, and had watched murder, addiction, and hopelessness consume those closest to him. But he had dedicated his life to helping people in need, and while every day was filled with tragedy—stabbings, shootings, accidents, suicides—it also brought moments of uplift.

A gritty, charming, and flavorful love letter to Los Angeles, L.A. Son is the story of Choi’s love of food and his evolution as a chef. Choi returns to his childhood afternoons at his parents’ Korean restaurant, his nights in L.A.’s gambling halls, and his pizza-fueled studying at the Culinary Institute of America before making his way into some of the best restaurants in America.

Did Mrs. Olinsky choose the four members of the sixth grade Academic Bowl Team, or did they choose her--and one another? Four stories-within-in-a-story, interspersed with the ongoing narrative of the team's triumphant march to the state championship, introduce each member of the team in his own her own voice, and bring the dynamics of the group into focus.

It's What Makes Me... Me is an extraordinarily candid journey through what it means to be human. Amazon's bestselling and award-winning author Mark Shaiken unlocks his most personal thoughts, observations, and introspections through the highs and lows, youth and aging, and beauty and messiness of life. Laugh, reflect, and take in all the ins and outs that have uniquely combined to make Mark... Mark, and maybe, find a little of what makes you . . . you.

In the 1990s Jordan Belfort, former kingpin of the notorious investment firm Stratton Oakmont, became one of the most infamous names in American finance: a brilliant, conniving stock-chopper who led his merry mob on a wild ride out of the canyons of Wall Street and into a massive office on Long Island. Now, in this astounding and hilarious tell-all autobiography, Belfort narrates a story of greed, power, and excess no one could invent.

"I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla," writes Robert Sapolsky in this witty and riveting chronicle of a scientist's coming-of-age in remote Africa. An exhilarating account of Sapolsky's twenty-one-year study of a troop of rambunctious baboons in Kenya, A Primate's Memoir interweaves serious scientific observations with wry commentary about the challenges and pleasures of living in the wilds of the Serengeti-for man and beast alike.

In this large, comprehensive, revelatory biography, Jane de Hart explores the central experiences that crucially shaped Ginsburg’s passion for justice, her advocacy for gender equality, her meticulous jurisprudence: her desire to make We the People more united and our union more perfect. At the heart of her story and abiding beliefs - her Jewish background. Tikkun olam, the Hebrew injunction to “repair the world”, with its profound meaning for a young girl who grew up during the Holocaust and World War II.

Author Kevin Grange—former paramedic and park ranger at Yellowstone and Grand Teton—comes face-to-face with North America’s most fearsome predator, Ursus Arctos. His quest takes him from his home in the Tetons to an eerie, mist-shrouded island of gigantic bruins; from the Bear Center at Washington State University—where scientists believe the secrets of hibernation might help treat diabetes, heart disease, and obesity in humans—to the dark underbelly of for-profit wildlife parks, illegal animal trade and black markets hawking bear bile.

Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North’s greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate charge down a rocky slope that routed the Confederate attackers.

The Los Angeles Times headline screamed: Rocket Scientist Killed in Pasadena Explosion. The man known as Jack Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who helped transform a derided sci-fi plotline into actuality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a devotee of the city’s occult scene.

When Jane Bertch was seventeen, her mother took her on a graduation trip to Paris. Thrilled to use her high school French, Jane found her halting attempts greeted with withering condescension by every waiter and shopkeeper she encountered. At the end of the trip, she vowed she would never return.

From prosecuting murderers in Chicago, to arguing before the Supreme Court, to authoring more than a dozen books, Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett has played an integral role in the rise of originalism—the movement to identify, restore, and defend the original meaning of the Constitution. Thanks in part to his efforts, by 2018 a majority of sitting Supreme Court justices self-identified as "originalists."

Asked to name a great physicist, most people would mention Newton or Einstein, Feynman or Hawking. But ask a physicist and there’s no doubt that James Clerk Maxwell will be near the top of the list. Maxwell, an unassuming Victorian Scotsman, explained how we perceive color. He uncovered the way gases behave. And, most significantly, he transformed the way physics was undertaken in his explanation of the interaction of electricity and magnetism, revealing the nature of light and laying the groundwork for everything from Einstein’s special relativity to modern electronics.

Before being named President Trump's Secretary of Commerce in 2017, Wilbur Ross had already earned a reputation as the "King of Bankruptcy" over his fifty-five-year career on Wall Street. Often working on high-profile bankruptcies such as Pan Am and Texaco, Ross helped restructure more than $400 billion in assets, and was named among Bloomberg's fifty most influential people in global finance. After coming to Washington, Ross faced equally tough challenges, yet survived in his post for all four years.

Actor Jim Beaver (Supernatural, Deadwood, Justified) and his wife Cecily Adams (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Moogie) were at the peaks of their careers and happily raising a beautiful two-year old daughter, Madeline. Then tragedy struck, not once, but twice. What followed was laid down by Jim in a moving, poignant, and uplifting journal of the following year, a year filled with heartbreak as well as enormous gifts and invaluable lessons, not just for Jim and his family but for listeners who traveled along with him on his journey.

At the dawn of World War I, a young academic named John Maynard Keynes hastily folded his long legs into the sidecar of his brother-in-law’s motorcycle for an odd, frantic journey that would change the course of history. Swept away from his placid home at Cambridge University by the currents of the conflict, Keynes found himself thrust into the halls of European treasuries to arrange emergency loans and packed off to America to negotiate the terms of economic combat.

A symbol of liberated womanhood, Simone de Beauvoir’s unconventional relationships inspired and scandalised her generation. A philosopher, writer, and feminist icon, she won prestigious literary prizes and transformed the way we think about gender with The Second Sex. But despite her successes, she wondered if she had sold herself short. This ground-breaking biography draws on never-before-published diaries and letters to tell the fascinating story of how Simone de Beauvoir became herself.

This audiobook takes a look at Buffett’s life, from humble beginnings in Omaha up to present day, where the 86-year-old is still going strong. We take a look at his first taste of business at the ripe old age of six, following on with his major successes and failures along the way. The aim of this audiobook is to be educational and inspirational with actionable principles you can incorporate into your own life straight from the great man himself.