Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Professionals & Academics

Born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, John showed an early interest newspapers when, aged 11, he wrote the Grimthorpe Street Gazette: a one-page paper detailing the latest goings-on in his street. It was a short-lived enterprise, not least as he only had one copy of it (which he charged neighbours a penny to borrow and read). It was whilst working at the Yorkshire Post that he heard of a new opening at the BBC - a move that was to change his life forever....

Abby Maslin shares an inspiring story of resilience and commitment in a deeply affecting new memoir. After her husband suffered a traumatic brain injury, the couple worked together as he recovered - and they learned to love again.

Life on the NHS front line, working within a system at breaking point, is more extreme than you could ever imagine. From the bloody to the beautiful, from moments of utter vulnerability to remarkable displays of strength, from camaraderie to raw desperation, from heart-wrenching grief to the pure, perfect joy of a newborn baby, midwife Leah Hazard has seen it all.

As a teenager Molly case is admitted to hospital for an operation that will save her life. Nearly a decade later, she finds herself in the operating theatre again, this time as a trainee nurse. In How To Treat People, Molly brings together these extraordinary moments, when the professional and the personal become inseparable. She introduces us to patients with whom we share the pain, the fear but also the life-affirming moments of illness.

Grief. Anger. Joy. Fear. Distraction. Disgust. Hope. All emotions we expect to encounter over our lifetime. But what if this was every day? And what if your ability to manage them was the difference between life and death? For a doctor in intensive care, this is part of the job. Fear in the eyes of a terminally ill patient who pleads with you to not let them die. Grief when you make a potentially fatal mistake. Disgust at caring for a convicted rapist.

It is the early 1950s. Kristen Iversen is enjoying a carefree childhood surrounded by desert and mountains. But just a few miles down the road, the US government decides to build a secret nuclear weapons facility at Rocky Flats. Kirsten and her siblings jump streams, ride horses, live a happy outdoors life. But beneath this veneer her family is quietly falling apart. Her father drinks, her mother copes.

The inspiring story of a pioneering program that is redefining urban young adults as economic assets, not deficits. During Gerald Chertavian’s many years as a Big Brother, the former technology entrepreneur realized that our nation’s "Opportunity Divide" strands millions of young, disadvantaged, yet motivated workers at the bottom of the job ladder. In 2000 Chertavian dedicated his life to closing that divide, and Year Up was born.

An inspirational and heartrending memoir about Ben Breedlove, whose videos about his near-death experiences and visions of heaven went viral in 2012, written by his sister Ally Breedlove. On Christmas Day 2011, Ben Breedlove's soul went to heaven. But it wasn't his first time there. Ben suffered from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a heart condition that posed a constant risk of sudden death. His condition, a thickening of the heart muscle, worsened over time, leaving him weak and fatigued.

Strange Frequencies takes listeners on an extraordinary narrative and historical journey to discover how people have used technology in an effort to search for our own immortality. Bebergal builds his own ghostly gadgets to reach the other side and follows the path of famous inventors, engineers, seekers, and seers who attempted to answer life's ultimate mysteries. He finds that not only are technological innovations potent metaphors keeping our spiritual explorations alive, but literal tools through which to experiment the boundaries of the physical world and our own psyches.

Lee Lipsenthal had a charmed life: married to the love of his life, the proud father of two remarkable children, working as medical director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute. In his personal relationships and with his patients, Lee was committed to living his life fully and gratefully each day. The power of those beliefs was tested in July 2009, when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, leaving him with a 90 percent chance of dying within five years.

As far back as stories go, pioneers have reached for the skies. In the last two hundred years, they have mastered the air and made the modern world possible. Today they are bringing outer space within our reach. They're inventors and toymakers, amateurs and adventurers, visionaries, dreamers and, yes, crackpots....

On the surface, Ken Baker seemed a model man. He was a nationally ranked hockey goalie; a Hollywood correspondent for People; a guest-lister at celebrity parties; and girls came on to him. Inside, though, he didn't feel like the man he was supposed to be. Although attracted to women, Ken had little sex drive and thus even less of a sex life. To his anguish, he repeatedly found himself unable to perform sexually. And, regardless of strenuous workouts, his body struggled to build muscle, earning him the nickname "Pear" from his macho teammates.

Christie Watson was a nurse for 20 years. Taking us from birth to death and from A&E to the mortuary, The Language of Kindness is an astonishing account of a profession defined by acts of care, compassion and kindness. We watch Christie as she nurses a premature baby who has miraculously made it through the night, we stand by her side during her patient's agonising heart-lung transplant and we hold our breath as she washes the hair of a child fatally injured in a fire, attempting to remove the toxic smell of smoke before the grieving family arrive.

Richard Cohen struggles with failing limbs and is legally blind. He has survived two bouts of colon cancer and a life-threatening blood clot in his lungs. After enduring decades of harsh treatments and invasive therapies, Cohen decided to trade in his life as a patient. In 2012, Cohen and his wife, Meredith Vieira, were invited to host and chair an adult stem cell conference at the Vatican. Scientists would be gathering in Rome to discuss stem cell therapy for autoimmune diseases, including MS. A believer in the power of denial and determination over faith and hope, Cohen was caught off guard by what he learned.

What is it really like to be a firefighter? How does it feel to respond to an emergency call, to know that someone's life hangs in the balance and every second is critical? What is it like to fight a fire, to battle through the heat and the smoke, to put your own life in danger to save others? How does it feel to rescue survivors, and what is it like to recover the bodies of those who you didn’t reach in time?

Ray & Joan is a quintessentially American tale of corporate intrigue and private passion: a struggling Mad Men-era salesman with a vision for a fast-food franchise that would become one of the world's most enduring brands and a beautiful woman willing to risk her marriage and her reputation to promote controversial causes that touched her deeply.

Thad Roberts, a fellow in a prestigious NASA program had an idea - a romantic, albeit crazy, idea. He wanted to give his girlfriend the moon. Literally. Thad convinced his girlfriend and another female accomplice, both NASA interns, to break into an impregnable laboratory at NASA's headquarters—past security checkpoints, an electronically-locked door with cipher security codes and camera-lined hallways—and help him steal the most precious objects in the world: the moon rocks.

As Chief of the General Staff, Sir Richard Dannatt was in overall command of the British army for the three years from 2006. This period saw some of the fiercest fighting yet in Afghanistan, and new and increased pressures and expectation placed on the army. From his very first day in the job General Dannatt proved himself a courageous leader and a forceful advocate for the army, never shying from controversy to tell it as he found it.

In Tell Me the Planets, Ben Platts-Mills tells stories about his work with survivors of brain injury, offering a rare glimpse into the world as seen through their eyes: charismatic Danny, whose criminal past has left him paralysed down one side, but who now helps others worse off than himself; Sid, whose memory for the present lasts only moments; and Liah, who is caught in a battle with the care system threatening to make her homeless.

Penguin Audio presents Damaged Goods, by Oliver Shah. In March 2015, British businessman and the chairman of Arcadia Group Sir Philip Green sold BHS for £1 to Retail Acquisitions, owned by Dominic Chappell, a serial bankrupt who filed BHS for administration shortly after. By April 2016, BHS had debts of £1.3bn, including a pensions deficit of £571m. Damaged Goods follows Green's journey to the big time, the sale of BHS and the subsequent investigation that concluded with Green paying £363m to the Pensions Regulator.