Here are 100 books that Aurality fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have been doing research in the Caribbean for twenty-five years. The region is diverse and magnificent. Caribbean people have sought creative solutions for racial inequality, climate and sustainability, media literacy and information, women’s and family issues. The transnational connections with the US are complex and wide-ranging, and knowing more about this region is an urgent matter. I work to understand how sound and media work because they structure our reality in important ways. Listening as a way of approaching relationships in work and play is key to our survival. So is understanding how media works, where we get our information from, and how to tell what’s relevant, significant, and true, and what is not.
Cassette tapes of Muslim sermons played by taxi drivers in Cairoset the stage for this profound investigation of the intersection of sound, spiritualism, and technology. The tapes, Hirschkind argues, are not mechanisms for social control as much as jumping-off points for Muslims to find their way towards ethical self-improvement.
Charles Hirschkind's unique study explores how a popular Islamic media form--the cassette sermon--has profoundly transformed the political geography of the Middle East over the last three decades. An essential aspect of what is now called the Islamic Revival, the cassette sermon has become omnipresent in most Middle Eastern cities, punctuating the daily routines of many men and women. Hirschkind shows how sermon tapes have provided one of the means by which Islamic ethical traditions have been recalibrated to a modern political and technological order--to its noise and forms of pleasure and boredom, but also to its political incitements and call…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I have been doing research in the Caribbean for twenty-five years. The region is diverse and magnificent. Caribbean people have sought creative solutions for racial inequality, climate and sustainability, media literacy and information, women’s and family issues. The transnational connections with the US are complex and wide-ranging, and knowing more about this region is an urgent matter. I work to understand how sound and media work because they structure our reality in important ways. Listening as a way of approaching relationships in work and play is key to our survival. So is understanding how media works, where we get our information from, and how to tell what’s relevant, significant, and true, and what is not.
Sterne explores the cultural history of how and why Americans developed technologies that reproduced and transmitted sound. It is a surprising story that takes us through the Civil War and ideas about death, deaf children and their teachers, the discipline of medicine, and the practice of folklore. It turns out that cultural shifts encouraged the preservation of sound, and those machines we developed in turn changed the ways we listen.
The Audible Past explores the cultural origins of sound reproduction. It describes a distinctive sound culture that gave birth to the sound recording and the transmission devices so ubiquitous in modern life. With an ear for the unexpected, scholar and musician Jonathan Sterne uses the technological and cultural precursors of telephony, phonography, and radio as an entry point into a history of sound in its own right. Sterne studies the constantly shifting boundary between phenomena organized as "sound" and "not sound." In The Audible Past, this history crisscrosses the liminal regions between bodies and machines, originals and copies, nature and…
I have been doing research in the Caribbean for twenty-five years. The region is diverse and magnificent. Caribbean people have sought creative solutions for racial inequality, climate and sustainability, media literacy and information, women’s and family issues. The transnational connections with the US are complex and wide-ranging, and knowing more about this region is an urgent matter. I work to understand how sound and media work because they structure our reality in important ways. Listening as a way of approaching relationships in work and play is key to our survival. So is understanding how media works, where we get our information from, and how to tell what’s relevant, significant, and true, and what is not.
Just as important as thinking about how music sounds and what it means is thinking about where technology comes from and crucially, where it goes after we’re done with it. This book lets no one off the hook and insists that anyone who cares about music should be cognizant of its economies of waste and decomposition.
Music is seen as the most immaterial of the arts, and recorded music as a progress of dematerialization—an evolution from physical discs to invisible digits. In Decomposed, Kyle Devine offers another perspective. He shows that recorded music has always been a significant exploiter of both natural and human resources, and that its reliance on these resources is more problematic today than ever before. Devine uncovers the hidden history of recorded music—what recordings are made of and what happens to them when they are disposed of.
Devine's story focuses on three forms of materiality. Before…
Delve into this internationally best-selling series, now complete! A fast paced laugh-out-loud mix of Urban Fantasy and Mystery.
I can tell when you’re lying. Every. Single. Time. I’m Jinx, a PI hired to find a missing university student, I hope to find her propped up at a bar–yet my gut…
I have been doing research in the Caribbean for twenty-five years. The region is diverse and magnificent. Caribbean people have sought creative solutions for racial inequality, climate and sustainability, media literacy and information, women’s and family issues. The transnational connections with the US are complex and wide-ranging, and knowing more about this region is an urgent matter. I work to understand how sound and media work because they structure our reality in important ways. Listening as a way of approaching relationships in work and play is key to our survival. So is understanding how media works, where we get our information from, and how to tell what’s relevant, significant, and true, and what is not.
The author points to the ways American media designated sound as “black” or “white” even as “colorblindness” became the dominant paradigm for liberal attitudes towards race. While Americans claimed that they didn’t “see race”, they were exposed to an increasingly segregated soundscape and media environment. Stoever opens up new ways for us to listen to familiar voices, such as those of WEB du Bois, Lena Horne, Lead Belly, Richard Wright, and many more.
The unheard history of how race and racism are constructed from sound and maintained through the listening ear.
Race is a visual phenomenon, the ability to see "difference." At least that is what conventional wisdom has lead us to believe. Yet, The Sonic Color Line argues that American ideologies of white supremacy are just as dependent on what we hear-voices, musical taste, volume-as they are on skin color or hair texture. Reinforcing compelling new ideas about the relationship between race and sound with meticulous historical research, Jennifer Lynn Stoever helps us to better understand how sound and listening not only…
As a kid I used to sit around the table, hearing my French grandparents share stories about life during the Second World War and helping the French Resistance movement. I remember seeing my mum sitting down to interview my French grandad about his life and getting captured near Dunkirk as a young French soldier. That’s where my love for storytelling was born. By the age of 26 I had interviewed over 100+ government officials and business leaders across 7 countries. By 2021 my podcast The Unconventionalists won “best-interview podcast” at the podcasting for business awards. I wrote Glow in the Dark, to help entrepreneurs and business leaders impact the world with their story.
I reviewed this book a while back (when I still had a hipster beard) but it's a great book that dives into why storytelling is so important and shares examples of leaders who have used storytelling as a great tool to influence and empower. It's also a powerful reminder that, as humans, we've been using storytelling since the dawn of time to communicate and influence. If you need convincing as to why you should add storytelling to your arsenal, read this book.
How did an American immigrant without a college education go from Venice Beach T-shirt vendor to television's most successful producer? How did a timid pastor's son surmount a paralysing fear of public speaking to sell out Yankee Stadium, twice? How did the city of Tokyo create a PowerPoint stunning enough to win them the chance to host the Olympics?
They told brilliant stories.
Whether your goal is to sell, educate, fundraise or entertain, your story is your most valuable asset: 'a strategic tool with irresistible power', according to the New York Times. Stories inspire; they persuade; they galvanize movements and…
I’m a philosopher by training and professor of economics, ethics, and public policy at Georgetown University’s business school. My work often begins by noting that philosophy debates often take certain empirical claims for granted, claims which turn out to be false or mistaken. Once we realize this mistake, this clears the ground and helps us do better work. I focus on issues in immigration, resistance to state injustice, taboo markets, theories of ideal justice, and democratic theory. I’m also a native New Englander now living near DC, a husband and father, and the guitarist and vocalist in a 70s-80s hard rock cover band.
This is not only one of the best books on politics, but on people’s behavior in social media and beyond. Grandstanding, Warmke and Tosi say, is the use of moral language for the purpose of self-promotion.
For example, my neighbors put up political signs that say “No human is illegal” even though those same neighbors (unlike me) in fact advocate closed borders, suppose immigration restrictions, and want to deport illegal immigrants. (In contrast, I actually advocate open borders, though my lawn remains silent about my politics.)
The point of this behavior is like praying in public—it’s about trying to impress other people and convince them you’re a good person.
Today, people are in a kind of moral arms-race with each other, each trying to prove they’re better than others. This explains why people are dismissive of evidence, tend to have over-the-top, exaggerated emotional reactions, make exaggerated moral complaints, or invent…
We are all guilty of it. We call people terrible names in conversation or online. We vilify those with whom we disagree, and make bolder claims than we could defend. We want to be seen as taking the moral high ground not just to make a point, or move a debate forward, but to look a certain way-incensed, or compassionate, or committed to a cause. We exaggerate. In other words, we grandstand.
Nowhere is this more evident than in public discourse today, and especially as it plays out across the internet. To philosophers Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke, who have…
On the morning of December 26, 2004, an undersea earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. The resulting tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people across fourteen countries, from Indonesia to Sri Lanka to Thailand to the Maldives to India and all the way to East Africa.…
My career and life were changed by Robert Cialdini’s work on influence. There are only a dozen people in the world who have been personally trained, certified, and endorsed by Cialdini to teach his methodology on influence and persuasion. I’m fortunate to be in that very select group. I’ve authored three books and given a TED Talk on influence. My LinkedIn Learning courses around influence in sales and coaching have been viewed by more than 500,00 across the globe. I take Cialdini’s influence concepts and marry them with my 35+ years of business experience to give organizations practical ways to ethically influence people.
Robert Cialdini’s work on influence changed how I go about trying to influence people. Gallo’s revelations radically changed how I present to audiences.
Throughout the book Gallo shows why Steve Jobs was such a masterful influencer from the stage. As I read, I found myself continually taking notes on how I would change my presentations. By the time I was done, I’d taken seven pages of type-written notes!
The change in audience reaction was immediate! If you’re serious about improving your presentation style, there’s no better resource than The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.
"The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs reveals the operating system behind any great presentation and provides you with a quick-start guide to design your own passionate interfaces with your audiences." Cliff Atkinson, author of Beyond Bullet Points and The Activist Audience
Apple CEO Steve Jobs's wildly popular presentations have set a new global gold standard-and now this step-by-step guide shows you exactly how to use his crowd-pleasing techniques in your own presentations. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs is as close as you'll ever get to having the master presenter himself speak directly in your ear. Communications expert Carmine Gallo…
We are relatable women who have successful careers in a predominately male industry. We have run businesses, built teams based on trust and inclusion, become authors, speakers, and advisors, while simultaneously raising children with our also working husbands. This is not done with ease or without making trade-offs, but we will share our stories and hope to inspire other women. We believe in supporting women in all areas of our lives and we love to lift up the ones who have impacted us.
Kathy loved this book by Jane Dutton, and found herself exclaiming, “Yes!” as she read through this book that validated the energy she did receive abundantly through small moments of connection at work!
As a senior executive, Kathy could have thousands of people in her organization. Wanting to know each and every one of them was a luxury she could not afford, so she did her best to make those opportunities she did have for meaningful connections, no matter how brief, to count for her and the other person with whom she was interacting.
Jane systematically provides the science of how and why this works, along with so many useful tools for those to whom this does not come naturally!
Corrosive work relationships are like black holes that swallow up energy that people need to do their jobs. In contrast, high-quality relationships generate and sustain energy, equipping people to do work and do it well. Grounded in solid research, this book uses energy as a measurement to describe the power of positive and negative connections in people's experience at work. Author Jane Dutton provides three pathways for turning negative connections into positive ones that create and sustain employee resilience and flexibility, facilitate the speed and quality of learning, and build individual commitment and cooperation. Through compelling and illustrative stories, Energize…
I love books that shift my perspective, expand my thinking, and ultimately, change the way I work, lead, parent, and live for the better. That said, I am not usually drawn to self-help books because they can be very prescriptive in a “one size fits all” kind of way, and not necessarily backed up by a lot of research or evidence. In running a financial coaching company, I’ve seen what happens when you change a person’s perspective—almost inevitably, they end up following suit by proactively doing the work necessary to improve their lives. These books all have the power to do that for readers who are open to it.
This book gave me such a huge epiphany that it changed how I communicate. I think about it every single day and consciously try to apply it in all areas of my life.
The author reveals that people tend to have one of two communication styles: candor, where they are very opinionated and generally dominate conversations, doing more talking than listening, and curiosity, where they tend to step back, question themselves, and become easily swayed by the more dominant personalities in a meeting or on a team.
Both have their strengths and weaknesses, and the key is finding balance, both within yourself and within your teams. When you figure that part out, you can achieve things you never thought possible.
OPEN, BALANCED DIALOGUE--THE KEY TO PEAK TEAM PERFORMANCE
In a world of rapid-fire change, it's more important than ever to build teams that work well when the pressure is on-and quality communication can mean the difference between success and failure.
Conversational Capacity provides the communication tools you need to ensure that your team remains on track even when dealing with its most troublesome issues, that it responds to tough challenges with agility and skill, and performs brilliantly in circumstances that would incapacitate less disciplined teams.
Praise for Conversational Capacity:
"This book blows the lid off everything you have learned about…
Nelson West, a former Chicago homicide detective, is hired by wealthy heir Lionel Bing to discreetly help “fix” scandals and legal problems for his father’s wealthy friends.
Bing, a brilliant but troubled investigator, suffers from PTSD symptoms as a result of being kidnapped and witnessing the murder of his mother…
As a 25-year business coach, I have often assigned clients the task of wandering through a book store and acting like a heat-guided missile, letting themselves notice what topics and books they are naturally drawn to. For me, even as a liberal arts major with no entrepreneurial experience when I started my consulting business 25 years ago, I was always drawn to the business, psychology, and entrepreneur section. The world of work is my playground, and I am fascinated by how to help people build a powerful body of work while sustaining themselves financially and having a deep quality of life.
When your business begins to gain momentum and scale, you need to build both communication infrastructure and process to motivate your employees, partners, and customers. Drawing from decades of award-winning work at their firm Duarte, Nancy and Patti give creative, specific advice about how to be an inspiring and effective leader.
'Change can be fear-filled in prospect but fearsome in effect. With Illuminate, Duarte and Sanchez light our path through that crucial transition dazzlingly' ROBERT B. CIALDINI, author of Influence
To envision the future is one thing, getting others to go there with you is another. By harnessing the power of persuasive communication you can turn your idea into a movement.
In Illuminate, acclaimed author Nancy Duarte and communications expert Patti Sanchez equip you with the same communication tools that great leaders like Steve Jobs, Howard Schultz, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used to move people.
