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Ingenious
- A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America
- Narrated by: Adam Verner
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
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Publisher's summary
In 2007, the X Prize Foundation announced that it would give $10 million to anyone who could build a safe, mass-producible car that could travel one hundred miles on the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. The challenge attracted more than one hundred teams from all over the world, including dozens of amateurs. Many designed their cars entirely from scratch, rejecting decades of thinking about what a car should look like.
Jason Fagone follows four of those teams from the build stage to the final race and beyond - into a world in which destiny hangs on a low drag coefficient and a lug nut can be a beautiful talisman. The result is a gripping story of crazy collaboration, absurd risks, colossal hopes, and poignant losses. In an old pole barn in central Illinois, childhood sweethearts hack together an electric-powered dreamboat, using scavenged parts, forging their own steel, and burning through their life savings. In Virginia, an impassioned entrepreneur and his hand-picked squad of speed freaks pool their imaginations and build a car so light that you can push it across the floor with your thumb. In West Philly, a group of disaffected high school students come into their own as they create a hybrid car with the engine of a Harley motorcycle. And in Southern California, the early favorite - a start-up backed by millions in venture capital-designs a car that looks like an alien egg.
Ingenious is a joyride. Fagone takes us into the garages and the minds of the inventors, capturing the fractious yet beautiful process of engineering a bespoke machine. Suspenseful and bighearted, this is the story of ordinary people risking failure, economic ruin, and ridicule to create something vital that Detroit had never pulled off. As the Illinois team wrote in chalk on the wall of their barn, "SOMEBODY HAS TO DO SOMETHING. THAT SOMEBODY IS US."
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For most of us, traveling means visiting the most beautiful places on Earth - Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon. It’s rare to book a plane ticket to visit the lifeless moonscape of Canada’s oil sand strip mines, or to seek out the Chinese city of Linfen, legendary as the most polluted in the world. But in Visit Sunny Chernobyl, Andrew Blackwell embraces a different kind of travel, taking a jaunt through the most gruesomely polluted places on Earth.
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Better than I predicted
- By Paul Luthi on 08-23-13
By: Andrew Blackwell
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Fins
- Harley Earl, the Rise of General Motors, and the Glory Days of Detroit
- By: William Knoedelseder
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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This audiobook chronicles the birth and rise to greatness of the American auto industry through the life of Harley Earl, an eccentric six-foot-five, stuttering visionary who dropped out of college and went on to invent the profession of automobile styling, thereby revolutionized the way cars were made, marketed, and even imagined. Harleys Earl’s story qualifies as a bona fide American family saga. It began in the Michigan pine forest in the years after the Civil War, traveled across the Great Plains on the wheels of a covered wagon, and eventually settled in Hollywood, California.
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Great report of amazing history but could do without the WOKE lean..
- By joshua Shaw on 07-02-22
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Land Rover
- The Story of the Car That Conquered the World
- By: Ben Fogle
- Narrated by: Rupert Farley
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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As quintessentially British as a plate of fish and chips or a British bulldog, the boxy, utilitarian Land Rover Defender has become an iconic part of what it is to be British. It is said that for more than half the world's population, the first car they ever saw was a Land Rover Defender. It mirrors many of our national traits, stiff upper-lipped and slightly eccentric.
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Amazing! Great sub-stories
- By Daniel Caballero on 04-30-24
By: Ben Fogle
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A Race to Freedom
- The Mira Slovak Story
- By: David Williams
- Narrated by: Brian Callanan
- Length: 16 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Mira Slovak was born in Czechoslovakia and endured both the Nazi occupation and the brutal Russian liberation. He joined the Czech Air Force, rising to captain by the age of 21. When he could no longer tolerate life under the Communists, he hijacked an airliner and flew across the Iron Curtain to freedom. He outlasted communism, and when it collapsed in 1990, he returned to his home, only to realize his true home was and always would be the US.
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Free to live as an American.
- By cosmitron on 06-08-18
By: David Williams
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The Last Man On the Moon
- By: Eugene Cernan
- Narrated by: Eugene Cernan
- Length: 5 hrs and 10 mins
- Abridged
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This is the story of a unique American hero who came of age as an astronaut during the few dramatic years when man reached the moon. Cernan's career spanned the entire Apollo program, from the tragic fire that killed three of his comrades on Apollo 1, through the moment when he left man's last footprint on the moon as commander of Apollo 17.
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Yet Another Perspective
- By Shellbin on 12-28-12
By: Eugene Cernan
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Uncommon Carriers
- By: John McPhee
- Narrated by: John McPhee
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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From Pulitzer Prize-winner John McPhee, author of The Founding Fish, comes the fascinating story of an often overlooked, yet vitally important part of America. This first-hand account of the transportation sector features evocative portraits of the men and women who deliver our consumer and industrial goods.
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A Geologist's Curiosity/Patience and a Poet's Pen
- By Darwin8u on 09-01-14
By: John McPhee
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Train
- Riding the Rails That Created the Modern World - from the Trans-Siberian to the Southwest Chief
- By: Tom Zoellner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Tom Zoellner loves trains with a ferocious passion. In his new audiobook he chronicles the innovation and sociological impact of the railway technology that changed the world, and could very well change it again. From the frigid Trans-Siberian Railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the futuristic maglev trains, Zoellner offers a stirring story of man's relationship with trains. Zoellner examines both the mechanics of the rails and their engines and how they helped societies evolve. Not only do trains transport people and goods in an efficient manner, but they also reduce pollution and dependency upon oil.
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The world history of trains up to the present
- By matthew on 03-06-14
By: Tom Zoellner
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Country Driving
- A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In the summer of 2001, Peter Hessler, the longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, acquired his Chinese driver's license. For the next seven years, he traveled the country, tracking how the automobile and improved roads were transforming China.
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Pass the white rice please
- By Nick on 02-18-10
By: Peter Hessler
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Strange Stones
- By: Peter Hessler
- Narrated by: George Backman
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of adventure, Strange Stones is a far-ranging, thought-provoking collection of Peter Hessler’s best reportage - a dazzling display of the powerful storytelling, shrewd cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that are the trademarks of his work. Over the last decade, as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of three books, Peter Hessler has lived in Asia and the United States, writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider in these two very different regions.
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funny, entertaining
- By Katherine on 08-02-13
By: Peter Hessler
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Into the Storm
- Violent Tornadoes, Killer Hurricanes, and Death-defying Adventures in Extreme Weather
- By: Reed Timmer, Andrew Tilin
- Narrated by: Joshua Swanson
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Reed Timmer is one of the most successful and most extreme storm chasers in the world. His is a job that requires science and bravado, knowledge and instinct just to survive, never mind excel. It's a job some people would kill for. But most prefer to let Timmer take the risks while they watch from the safety of their homes. Reed Timmer is a star of Storm Chasers, one of the Discovery Channel's top-rated shows. Into the Storm is Timmer's dramatic account of his extraordinary profession.
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Never Stop Chasing!!
- By Pamela Plimpton on 10-28-24
By: Reed Timmer, and others
What listeners say about Ingenious
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ann
- 11-14-13
Terrific story of car builders
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
This is a terrific book about a bunch of underdogs doing what Detroit and Tokyo could not or would not do: build a car that gets 100 miles per gallon. It is a work of non-fiction with characters that could have stepped out of a novel, quick pacing, and dramatic tension. Fagone tells the story of the Automotive X PRIZE by highlighting four teams of inventors, entrepreneurs, and dreamers who embark on an international competition designed to set the automotive industry on a path to increased fuel efficiency. While the goal of the X PRIZE doesn't seem to have been reached, the scope of work done by the various teams is truly inspirational.
Who was your favorite character and why?
I loved all the characters, but the best drawn were Kevin Smith and Oliver Kuttner. I came away from the book with a great affection and understanding of what drove their competitive spirits and desire to build.
What about Adam Verner’s performance did you like?
The narrator was wonderfully fitted to the tale of a bunch of gritty inventors.
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- Shamu from New York
- 12-07-13
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels.
Yes, that headline's a quote from an Apple advertisement, but yet somehow fit so well to describe the cast of characters gathered in pursuit of creating a 100 mpge car. The book is extensively researched, the characters so finely presented, the passion so tangibly presented, you feel as if you are listening to a movie. I almost wonder how the author was so fortunate to have ring side seats for so many teams all the way from concepts to victory, and he does a great job following up post-competition as well.
To put my opinion into perspective, I've been getting into design/engineering books lately, and I listened to the Steve Jobs bio, the Jony Ive bio, the story of the AK-47 and Glock, and books on Nikola Tesla.
If you've enjoyed any of those books, you must listen to this one - this is the best non-fiction book on engineering and design that I have read, in part because the story remains about design, and not business success, for the simple reason that most of the teams spend vast sums of money and time and perhaps have little financial gain.
The author's criticisms are fairly leveled at the X Prize Car competition itself, a competition which set out a difficult mission that ended up so demanding that at the end, only the crazy ones, the misfits and the rebels are the ones who remained. The prize asked for a 100 mpge car, and that's what they got, however it never was able to create an industry the way the first Space X Prize was able to generate corporate enthusiasm for space tourism. it does not seem there is much to show from the efforts of these people just yet. You'll feel that pain too, and yet still appreciate and respect their accomplishments.
(While Tesla seems to be doing well right now, they were early withdrawals from the competition, and their initial approach of luxury vehicles is not the approach the X Prize competition was designed to cultivate.)
This really is about dreamers. visionaries, because not all dreamers and visionaries will necessarily become financially successful or their full dream realized- and yet they'll still be out there, building their machines with passion that borders on religion.
You can't help but be inspired in some way, perhaps to become motivated to do things you've dreamt of doing but for some reason never had. And what is a better reason to get a book than that.
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall
- JSL
- 01-31-20
Good Read
It was very well written and the characters seem to come alive as you listen. It is 2020 now. I just wish I had learned about this book and the Xprize when they first came out.
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- BJ
- 03-15-15
Amazing!
Beautiful tale of the magic of industry and the types of people who made America the great nation that it was. As a "maverick" automobile engineer myself I take great comfort in knowing I'm not alone.
Well written and excellent narration
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- GremlinGrrl
- 11-07-13
A true story that reads like a finely crafted nove
What did you love best about Ingenious?
You don't need to be an automotive gear head or an engineer to enjoy this story. Jason Fagone has a talent for taking technical concepts and making them easy for the reader to grasp.
What did you like best about this story?
Much of the book reads like a novel. It has great "characters" and a real forward momentum. You feel like you are there experiencing the struggles, triumphs and failures of the competing teams.
What about Adam Verner’s performance did you like?
Verner's performance captured the sound of the dialogue so well. It was wonderful to hear him read the scenes.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I did literally laugh out loud, snort, tear up, and at one point pump my fist in the air and say "yes!"
Any additional comments?
This is one of the best written non-fiction books I have read in a long time. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves cheering for the underdogs or has an interest in inventing the future they want to live in.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Scott
- 04-27-14
Lost in irrelevant detail
An interesting idea for a book, with some fascinating details about folks making wonderful cars.
But then—how much do I care about the personal habits, love life, superstitions, childhood trauma, etc. that made them what they are?
As I'm listening, I'm also thinking, "What do I care if what'shisname was engaged to what'shername in the 1070's, but it didn't work out because of jealousy over someoneelse, and not graduating high school due to motherinlaw's bla, bla,bla..."
If this were a book on building cars, which it sometimes is, it would be great. As it is, it's clogged with uninteresting detail about who lived with who, and the desires of somebody to have a child with... Oh, my! I couldn't care less!!!
Apparently, there just wasn't enough stuff about building high-efficiency cars that the author could understand to fill a book.
Good narration, though.
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3 people found this helpful