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The Invitation Zone
- Narrated by: Jeff Harding
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
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The Invitation Zone
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Publisher's summary
During the 1970s and early '80s, dozens - perhaps hundreds - of Japanese civilians were kidnapped by North Korean commandos and forced to live in 'Invitation Only Zones', high-security detention centres masked as exclusive areas on the outskirts of Pyongyang.
The objective? To brainwash the abductees with the regime's ideology and train them to spy on the state's behalf. But the project faltered; when indoctrination failed, the captives were forced to teach North Korean operatives how to pass as Japanese, to help them infiltrate hostile neighbouring nations.
For years the Japanese and North Korean authorities brushed off these disappearances, but in 2002 Kim Jong Il admitted to kidnapping 13 citizens, returning five of them - the remaining eight were declared dead.
In The Invitation Only Zone, Boynton, an investigative journalist, speaks with the abductees, nationalists and diplomats, and crab fishermen to try to untangle both the kidnappings and the intensely complicated relations between North Korea and Japan. The result is a fierce and fascinating exploration of North Korea's mysterious machinations and the vexed politics of Northeast Asia.
Robert S. Boynton is the director of NYU's magazine journalism program and is the editor of The New New Journalism. His journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and many others.
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- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,061
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 930
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 926
Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own - as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The author is an international treasure
- By ThreeGems on 10-16-17
By: Masha Gessen
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North Korea's Hidden Revolution
- How the Information Underground Is Transforming a Closed Society
- By: Jieun Baek
- Narrated by: Caroline McLaughlin
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 62
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 56
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 55
One of the least understood countries in the world, North Korea has long been known for its repressive regime. Yet it is far from being an impenetrable black box. Media flows covertly into the country, and fault lines are appearing in the government's sealed informational borders. Drawing on deeply personal interviews with North Korean defectors from all walks of life, ranging from propaganda artists to diplomats, Jieun Baek tells the story of North Korea's information underground.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Worst narration on Audible
- By Jeremy A. Hudson on 03-29-17
By: Jieun Baek
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The People's Republic of Amnesia
- Tiananmen Revisited
- By: Louisa Lim
- Narrated by: Louisa Lim
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 74
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 67
In The People's Republic of Amnesia, NPR correspondent Louisa Lim charts how the events of June 4 changed China, and how China changed the events of June 4 by rewriting its own history. Lim reveals new details about those fateful days, including how one of the country's most senior politicians lost a family member to an army bullet, as well as the inside story of the young soldiers sent to clear Tiananmen Square.
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5 out of 5 stars
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great book and recording
- By Robert Peters on 06-14-16
By: Louisa Lim
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The Terror Years
- From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State
- By: Lawrence Wright
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer, Lawrence Wright
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 388
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 337
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 338
With the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright became generally acknowledged as one of our major journalists writing on terrorism in the Middle East. This collection draws on several articles he wrote while researching that book as well as many that he's written since, following where and how al-Qaeda and its core cultlike beliefs have morphed and spread.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Contains much old material from "Looming Tower"
- By peter on 09-21-16
By: Lawrence Wright
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Stalin's Daughter
- The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva
- By: Rosemary Sullivan
- Narrated by: Karen Cass
- Length: 19 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 207
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 186
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 186
The award-winning author of Villa Air-Bel returns with a painstakingly researched, revelatory biography of Svetlana Stalin, a woman fated to live her life in the shadow of one of history's most monstrous dictators—her father, Josef Stalin. Born in the early years of the Soviet Union, Svetlana Stalin spent her youth inside the walls of the Kremlin. Communist Party privilege protected her from the mass starvation and purges that haunted Russia, but she did not escape tragedy—the loss of everyone she loved, including her mother, two brothers, aunts and uncles, and a lover twice her age, deliberately exiled to Siberia by her father.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Insightful and thoroughly researched
- By Jean on 06-16-15
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A Kim Jong-Il Production
- The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power
- By: Paul Fischer
- Narrated by: Stephen Park
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 425
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 358
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 362
Before becoming the world's most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea's Ministry for Propaganda and its film studios. Conceiving every movie made, he acted as producer and screenwriter. Despite this control, he was underwhelmed by the available talent and took drastic steps, ordering the kidnapping of Choi Eun-Hee (Madam Choi) - South Korea's most famous actress - and her ex-husband Shin Sang-Ok, the country's most famous filmmaker.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely terrifying
- By Anonymous on 02-19-15
By: Paul Fischer
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The General's Son
- Journey of an Israeli in Palestine
- By: Miko Peled
- Narrated by: Miko Peled
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 160
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 150
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Story5 out of 5 stars 149
The journey that Peled traces in this groundbreaking memoir echoed the trajectory taken 40 years earlier by his father, renowned Israeli general Matti Peled. In The General's Son, Miko Peled tells us about growing up in Jerusalem in the heart of the group that ruled the then-young country, Israel. He takes us with him through his service in the country's military and his subsequent global travels...and then, after his niece's killing, back into the heart of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Thought Provoking and Powerful
- By FatherRobC on 05-10-16
By: Miko Peled
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Prague Winter
- A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948
- By: Madeleine Albright
- Narrated by: Madeleine Albright
- Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 435
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 384
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 382
Before Madeleine Albright turned twelve, her life was shaken by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia—the country where she was born—the Battle of Britain, the near total destruction of European Jewry, the Allied victory in World War II, the rise of communism, and the onset of the Cold War. Albright's experiences, and those of her family, provide a lens through which to view the most tumultuous dozen years in modern history.
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5 out of 5 stars
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History from a Personal Perspective
- By Jeanette Finan on 02-22-13
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A Rope and a Prayer
- The Story of a Kidnapping
- By: David Rohde, Kristen Mulvihill
- Narrated by: David Rohde, Kristen Mulvihill
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 94
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 68
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 66
The compelling and insightful account of a New York Times reporter's abduction by the Taliban and his wife's struggle to free him. Invited to an interview by a Taliban commander, New York Times reporter David Rohde and two Afghan colleagues were kidnapped in November 2008 and spirited to the tribal areas of Pakistan. For the next seven months, they lived in an alternate reality, ruled by jihadists, in which paranoia, conspiracy theories, and shifting alliances abounded.
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1 out of 5 stars
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A History Lesson
- By Ed on 12-31-10
By: David Rohde, and others
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There Was a Country
- A Personal History of Biafra
- By: Chinua Achebe
- Narrated by: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 171
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 139
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 139
The defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967-1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe's people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than 40 years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa's most fateful events.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The Audible Edition Is a Disaster
- By Olu on 11-28-12
By: Chinua Achebe
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Out of Mao's Shadow
- The Struggle for the Soul of a New China
- By: Philip P. Pan
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 13 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 144
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 61
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Story4 out of 5 stars 61
Prize-winning journalist Philip P. Pan offers an unprecedented inside look at the momentous battle underway for China's future. On one side is the entrenched party elite determined to preserve its authoritarian grip on power. On the other is a collection of lawyers, journalists, entrepreneurs, activists, hustlers, and dreamers striving to build a more tolerant, open, and democratic China.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great insight into changes in China
- By Paul on 04-14-09
By: Philip P. Pan
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Lenin's Tomb
- The Last Days of the Soviet Empire
- By: David Remnick
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 29 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 383
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 327
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 330
In the tradition of John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World, this best-selling account of the collapse of the Soviet Union combines the global vision of the best historical scholarship with the immediacy of eyewitness journalism.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The moral complexity of a comic book
- By Tot on 02-22-19
By: David Remnick
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The Train to Crystal City
- FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America's Only Family Internment Camp During World War II
- By: Jan Jarboe Russell
- Narrated by: Andrea Gallo
- Length: 14 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 136
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 120
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 120
The dramatic and never-before-told story of a secret FDR-approved American internment camp in Texas during World War II, where thousands of families - many US citizens - were incarcerated.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I didn't know...
- By Graham Emslie on 02-27-17
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Lioness
- Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel
- By: Francine Klagsbrun
- Narrated by: Jo Anna Perrin
- Length: 32 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 209
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 182
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 183
Golda Meir was a world figure unlike any other. Born in tsarist Russia in 1898, she immigrated to America in 1906 and grew up in Milwaukee, where from her earliest years she displayed the political consciousness and organizational skills that would eventually catapult her into the inner circles of Israel's founding generation. Moving to mandatory Palestine in 1921 with her husband, the passionate socialist joined a kibbutz but soon left and was hired at a public works office by the man who would become the great love of her life.
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1 out of 5 stars
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The persistent mispronunciations of Hebrew and Yiddish words ruined this performance
- By YH-O on 12-30-18
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Spies in the Family
- An American Spymaster, His Russian Crown Jewel, and the Friendship That Helped End the Cold War
- By: Eva Dillon
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 291
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 258
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 258
In the summer of 1975, 17-year-old Eva Dillon's family was living in New Delhi when her father was exposed as a CIA spy. Eva had long believed that her father was a US State Department employee. She had no idea that he was handling the CIA's highest ranking double agent - Dmitri Fedorovich Polyakov, a Soviet general whose code name was TOPHAT. Dillon's father and Polyakov had a close friendship that went back years, to their first meeting in Burma in the mid-1960s.
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5 out of 5 stars
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LOVED it!
- By SaraofDI on 11-06-17
By: Eva Dillon