Showing results by publisher "Beacon Audiobooks" in Biographies & Memoirs

In 1985, Stanley Kubrick encouraged Matthew Modine to keep a journal and take photographs while playing the lead role of Pvt. Joker - a combat correspondent - on the set of his Vietnam War film, Full Metal Jacket. In 2005, Modine published a limited edition book of his diary and photos which later became an interactive experience for the iPad. Now, with the Full Metal Jacket Diary audiobook, fans can listen to Modine as he performs his diary with sound effects and original music.

Throughout the history of Hollywood, perhaps no actor has a reputation as unique as Johnny Depp. Depp began his career in a very traditional manner by being a teen heartthrob on shows like 21 Jump Street, but as he once admitted, "As a teenager I was so insecure. I was the type of guy that never fitted in because he never dared to choose. I was convinced I had absolutely no talent at all. For nothing. And that thought took away all my ambition too."

In many ways, Judy Garland's rise to fame seems almost predestined. Not only was she a national sensation at a young age, but her parents and sisters were all vaudeville entertainers. On top of that, Garland's parents owned and operated a movie theater, making it all the easier to draw the conclusion that singing and acting were simply professions which she was born into by virtue of her pedigree.

This is the story of how Olivia turned the physical challenges and emotional hardships she had faced since she was a little girl into an engaged life of advocacy for others. So many young people are faced with life-changing hardships—from illness and disease to loss and calamity. What Olivia Goodreau discovers through her journey with chronic Lyme, and what she has been sharing with the world, is that inside of every predicament is also a possibility.

Nearly everything the American public has seen, read, and heard in the media for nearly 80 years about the so-called Amelia Earhart mystery is intentionally false or inadvertently misleading. The widely accepted myth that the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan during their ill-fated world-flight attempt in July 1937 is among the greatest aviation mysteries of the 20th century is an abject lie, the result of decades of government propaganda that continues unabated to this day.

In First Crossing, we follow the two Royal Air Force officers from their separate upbringings in Manchester, England through terrifying Great War aerial combat. Both would be shot down and become prisoners of war. While incarcerated, both independently dreamed and schemed of a way to win Lord Northcliffe’s £10,000 prize for the first non-stop Trans-Atlantic crossing.

Armed-encounters expert and police trainer Brian McKenna shares his expertise in a series of gripping stories involving real-life police shootouts. Step into the shoes of police officers who have run toward the sound of gunfire, who have faced attacks by deadly assailants, and who have lived to share the tale. But this book is more than just stories about courageous cops. Each story is followed by McKenna’s expert analysis of its important learning points, especially concerning how and why the officers use force and the legal aspects of self-defense and the defense of others. 

Jake Daubert could have followed the path of two of his brothers and died as a young coal miner. Instead he died as an active baseball player. Baseball provided an escape from the dangerous coal mines of Pennsylvania, but it couldn’t save him from an undiagnosed genetic condition that cut short his life as one of the best players of the Deadball Era.

"Iron" Mike Tyson was one of the most feared opponents to ever step into a boxing ring. With unbelievable power that floored or stopped all but two of his first 28 professional opponents, Tyson began an unprecedented ascent to the top of the boxing world, becoming the youngest champion in history with a second-round TKO over Trevor Berbick, the last man to box and defeat Muhammad Ali.

Undetected by the FBI for three decades until the turn of the twenty-first century, a handful of elusive, transient long-haul trucker serial killers had been murdering hundreds of sex workers and hitchhikers along major US highways. This was not the first time innocent victims were attacked along major US interstate thoroughfares. Nearly lost to history was a similar pattern of carnage that occurred in the late nineteenth century.

Jim Bruton knows life. His past is marked by relentless curiosity and remarkable achievement. He was an African wilderness guide, Emmy Award-winning wildlife film director, aviator, adventurer, inventor of the satellite videophone, NBC News Middle East war correspondent, a husband, and a father. His passion - building and flying WWI-era aircraft - led him where he never imagined he’d go: a horrific crash that left him for dead. 

Everyone knows the story of Jerry Sandusky, the serial pedophile, the Monster. But what if that story is wrong? What if the former Penn State football coach and founder of the Second Mile is an innocent man convicted in the midst of a moral panic fed by the sensationalistic media, police trawling, and memory-warping psychotherapy? The Most Hated Man in America unfolds like a true-crime psychological thriller and is required listening for everyone, from criminologists to sports fans. 

Have you ever wondered, "When will I be good enough?" Like millions of other women, educator/author Barbara Jaffe was faced with that question, but for her, as a "replacement child," the barriers to acceptability were higher than for most of us. Barbara, like many others, was born to fill the vacancy left by her little brother, who died at the age of two.

"Fifty Years in a Foxhole" is an episodic account of the author's seven months in combat in Vietnam. He and his platoon were in several major engagements including the Battle of the Hills and Operation Utah. The main focus of these operations are the lives of the marines and attrition through action and "friendly fire" as they endure these pointless dangers.

Jason Molina: Riding with the Ghost details Molina’s personal trials and triumphs and reveals for the first time the true story of Molina’s last months and works, including an unpublished album unknown to many of his fans. Offering unfettered access to the mind and artistry of Molina through exclusive interviews with family, friends, and collaborators, the audiobook also explores the Midwest music underground and the development of Indiana-based label Secretly Canadian.

There is a need for a new generation of politicians to change the world, and Emmanuel Macron could very well be a prototype. Macron Unveiled examines Macron's first four years as France's president, scrutinizing Macron's personality, his way of solving problems, his sources of inspiration, his mistakes, his difficulties, as well as the impact he may already have had in his country, Europe, and the world.

Despite his Marxist views, young Lee Harvey Oswald associated with fascists and shared their right-wing ideology. There is physical evidence that Marine Oswald’s defection to the Soviet Union in 1959 was a CIA operation to make it seem he died in Russia. A Soviet “sleeper agent” returned to the US, who could blame for any crime.

The 15th century Romanian Prince Vlad III Dracula, also known as Vlad the Impaler, is one of the most fascinating personalities of medieval history. Already during his own lifetime, his true story became obscured by a veil of myths. As a result, he has been portrayed both as a bloody tyrant - who degenerated down throughout the centuries into the fictional vampire of the same name created by Bram Stoker at the end of the 19th century - and as a national and Christian hero who bravely fought to defend his native land and all of Europe against the invading Turkish infidels.

When detectives respond to a crime scene in Orlando, Florida, during the "summer of hurricanes" in 2004, they find Charlie Brandt hanging from the rafters in the garage of his niece Michelle Jones' home. Inside the house, they find a scene of horror that reminds them of other murders.

Buckminster Fuller reminds us, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.” This book provides just that model, as well as concrete practices for living it. The model is derived from ancient wisdom traditions, modeled on the pulses, cycles, and seasons of our beloved Earth Mother. It deeply grounds the listener in a “this world” spirituality that blends indigenous cosmologies, earth-honoring ritual, and time-tested models for living with modern sensibilities.