This audiobook narrated by Christopher Ragland reveals how life itself shapes Earth using the elemental constituents we all shareIt is rare for life to change Earth, yet three organisms have profoundly transformed our planet over the long course of its history. Elemental reveals how microbes, plants, and people used the fundamental building blocks of life to alter the climate, and with it, the trajectory of life on Earth in the past, present, and future.

Algernon Blackwood was born on 14th March 1869 in Shooter’s Hill, South East London, to a religious middle-class family. His mother was a widowed Duchess and his father was a Post Office administrator.Blackwood was interested in the paranormal and the supernatural at an early age, and had a thirst for anything on Buddhism, other Oriental philosophies, mysticism and occultism. In his writings the weaving of the supernatural into his various works, from ghost stories and children’s s...

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born on 24th June 1842 at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio. His parents were poor but they introduced him to literature at an early age, instilling in him a deep appreciation of books, the written word and the elegance of language.Growing up in Koscuisko County, Indiana poverty and religion were defining features of his childhood, and he would later describe his parents as “unwashed savages” and fanatically religious, showing him little affection b...

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on 4th July 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, a town synonymous with the earlier Salem Witch Trials. It was instrumental in Hawthorne’s later use of American Gothic and dark romanticism in his writing.He was a mere four years old when his father died and his mother took him and his two sisters to live with her family and then on to their own home in Raymond, Maine. The young Hawthorne had a passion for fiction and poetry and voraciously read the works of An...

The bookshelves of American literature are incredible collections that have gathered together centuries of very talented authors. From this continent their fame spread and whilst among their number many are now forgotten or neglected their talents endure. Among them is Cleveland Moffett.

**'Indispensable and timely' - Melissa Chan, Emmy-nominated international affairs correspondent'Few books qualify as essential reading but Ghost Nation is one of them' - Clive Hamilton, bestselling co-author of The Hidden HandThe gripping story of Taiwan's past and precarious present from one of Taiwan's top foreign correspondents.**With all eyes on Ukraine and the Middle East, Taiwan is emerging as the next geopolitical tinderbox. Despite sitting ...

This audiobook narrated by Christopher Ragland delivers a manifesto for the dawning age of active materialsThings in life tend to fall apart. Cars break down. Buildings fall into disrepair. Personal items deteriorate. Yet today's researchers are exploiting newly understood properties of matter to program materials that physically sense, adapt, and fall together instead of apart. These materials open new directions for industrial innovation and challenge us to rethin...

Francis Bret Harte was born on 25th August 1836 in Albany New York.As a young boy Harte developed an early love of books and reading. He first published at the tender age of 11, his satirical poem ‘Autumn Musings’. Expecting praise he received anything but and later wrote "Such a shock was their ridicule to me that I wonder that I ever wrote another line of verse."By age 13 his formal education was at an end and four years later the family moved to California. Here the youn...

Alfred Damon Runyan was born on 4th October 1880, in Manhattan, Kansas.When Runyon was two his father was forced to sell his newspaper and the family moved eventually settling in Pueblo, Colorado where Runyon spent his youth.By most accounts, he attended school only through the fourth grade and then worked for his father in the newspaper trade.In 1898 Runyon enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight in the Spanish–American War. After his service he returned to Colorado and...

Bloomsbury presents Rock of Pages by Jesse Kavadlo, read by Christopher Ragland.Rock of Pages provides contexts and close readings of 1980s heavy metal with forty years of hindsight, drawing upon analytical frameworks usually associated with literature and literary studies.Based on decades of work as a professor of literature and as a musician, Jesse Kavadlo analyzes the ways in which 1980s heavy metal aligns with and develops many of the ...

Francis Bret Harte was born on 25th August 1836 in Albany New York.As a young boy Harte developed an early love of books and reading. He first published at the tender age of 11, his satirical poem ‘Autumn Musings’. Expecting praise he received anything but and later wrote "Such a shock was their ridicule to me that I wonder that I ever wrote another line of verse."By age 13 his formal education was at an end and four years later the family moved to California. Here the youn...

Sherwood Anderson was born on 13th September 1876 in Camden, Ohio.When his father’s business failed the family was forced to move on a regular basis before finally settling in Clyde, Ohio.Anderson, one of 7 children, left school at 14 to take a number of jobs to help with the family finances. These were difficult years.He moved to Chicago in search of opportunities before joining the Army for the US-Spanish War of 1898. He then entered Wittenberg Academy in Springfi...