Many readers asked when Language Intelligence would be available as an audiobook. Turns out Podium Publishing liked it so much, they did the job with a terrific reader Drew Birdseye, who narrates lots of audiobooks.

You can download all 4 hours and 19 minutes of it on Amazon or iTunes.

Given that the whole point of the book is to explain the secrets of history’s greatest spoken-word communicators — and that it contains excerpts from the greatest speeches of all time – you may well get more out of listening to the audiobook than you do from reading the print edition or ebook.

In fact, I never would have published this book if it weren’t for the power of one terrific oral communicator in particular, Van Jones. I had always been a fan of his speechmaking and wondered how he became was so good at it. After he came to the Center for American Progress, I saw his New Yorker profile by Elizabeth Kolbert, which explained:

When Jones gives a talk, something he does at least two or three times a week, he likes to begin by checking out the crowd; if he can, he will sit in the audience beforehand, absorbing the mood. He spends a lot of time listening to speeches—the way most people download Coltrane or Mozart, he’s got Churchill and Martin Luther King on his iPod.

That was my ‘aha’ moment. Now I understood how he had become such a great speaker. I had been working on my book for two decades, and I thought Van would appreciate it.

After reading it, Van said to me “your book changed my life.” Turns out it was a life-changing moment for both of us, since that motivated me take one more crack at improving it.

It is on pace to be my best-selling book — and almost everyone who reads it gets a lot out of it. Below I’m going to reprint Van’s HuffPost review, ”The New ‘Must Read’: Joe Romm’s Language Intelligence“:

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by Andy Darrell, via the Environmental Defense Fund

Extreme weather and aging infrastructure came together with a vengeance in Sandy, showing the fragility of the basic systems that sustain this vibrant city and region. Like so many others, my family lost power, heat and water during Superstorm Sandy, and I watched out my window as a giant flash marked the moment that waters crested a 12-foot retaining wall at the 14^th Street ConEd plant.

New Yorkers are all too familiar with the devastation that followed, and the disruption that spread far beyond the water’s reach. As the immediate crises are resolved, our attention is now on the complex challenge of long-term resilience.

One big step: The NYS 2100 Commission, a panel of experts assembled by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo back in November, just two weeks after the storm. EDF CEO Fred Krupp served on the commission, and our energy team prepared extensive recommendations on how to make our energy system more robust, resilient and adaptable. In yesterday’s State of the State address, he talked about the results.

As it turns out, some important solutions were right under our noses.

For example, amid the darkness and devastation, there were dozens of homes, businesses, even whole communities that kept their lights on and the water because they were designed to isolate breakdowns, heal quicker, and work with natural systems rather than against them.

Success stories were located across our region:

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Opine away! Or pine away!