Books 2021: Best audiobooks of August

‘Lieutenant Dangerous: A Vietnam War Memoir’

Jeff Danziger is an award-winning political cartoonist and master of the expressively off-kilter perspective on political lunacy. In 1967, he was plucked from Vermont at age 24 and drafted into the Army. Hoping the war would soon be over (as promised), he dedicated himself to avoiding deployment to Vietnam. After basic training, he spent a year in language school, then in officer training. Still the war ground on, and he was sent to Vietnam as an ordnance officer, his language training now irrelevant. During his year “in-country,” he witnessed truly surreal incompetence, obtuseness, irrationality, waste and lethal vainglory. The details are almost incredible, at times mordantly funny, at others sparking with anger. Danziger reads this important book, his voice and manner that of a gifted teacher — indeed, he taught school for 10 years after returning. And the lesson of Vietnam? “What Americans learned by the inglorious conclusion of the war,” he tells us, “was not that there are provable limits to military solutions. They learned that failure could be ignored.”(Steerforth, Unabridged, 5¾ hours)

The top audiobooks of the last year, according to our readers

‘Runner’

This is the fourth installment in Tracy Clark’s series starring Cass Raines, a former homicide cop turned private investigator, but it stands just as well on its own. It is a bitterly cold night in Chicago when Cass meets recovering addict Leesa Evans and accepts the job of finding her 15-year-old daughter, Ramona, who has run away from a foster home. The police are on the case, but Leesa and Cass, both Black, know that poor, runaway girls like Ramona are a low priority in investigations of missing persons. The complex plot and wide-ranging cast expand to include the owner of the foster home, an antsy operator of a child-placement agency, a sketchy ex-cop, a couple of iron-willed nuns, a charismatic protector of street kids, a mentally challenged restaurant employee, a sweet-shop owner, an ex-convict or two, and members of the Chicago Police Department. It soon emerges that treachery is afoot — but whose? And to what end? The novel’s basic ingredients are familiar, but Clark’s pacing and story line are superb, while narrator Shari Peele enhances the story with her fine, low voice and agility in speech rhythm. (HighBridge, Unabridged, 9⅔ hours)

‘Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty’

Patrick Radden Keefe’s investigation of the Sackler family is a model of meticulous, in-depth reporting; it’s also a blood boiler. Grown wealthy through Purdue Pharma and celebrated for its generous support of the arts, the Sackler family has become notorious for helping foster the opioid epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Keefe lays out the family’s genius for combining medicine and marketing. Arthur Sackler promoted Roche’s Valium and Librium as nonaddictive. Later, his nephew Richard used similar tactics to persuade doctors that OxyContin is a less-addictive painkiller than other opioid products. As fast-paced as a thriller, the book covers immense territory including the failures of Food and Drug Administration officials, the blind eye cast by Purdue’s executives toward pill mills, and the family’s dexterity in keeping its name out of its business while simultaneously spreading its fame as a munificent patron of cultural institutions. Keefe narrates the book in a strong, clear baritone, a prosecutorial voice remarkably suited to detailing this shameful docket of greed, mendacity, arrogance, callousness, corruption and hypocrisy. (Random House, Unabridged, 18 hours)

Katherine A. Powers reviews audiobooks every month for The Washington Post.

The 3 best new audiobooks to listen to in August

Audiobooks