THE BEST STRANGERS IN THE WORLD Stories from a Life Spent Listening

NPR's Ari Shapiro has real verbal skills. Not surprisingly, he narrates his memoir with practiced professionalism. His confident tone, lyrical cadence, and timbre all hint at his background as an a cappella singer while he was at Yale. He still sings with the Pink Martini and has performed cabaret with Alan Cumming. Happily, he occasionally croons a bar or two here. His personal and journalistic stories are eloquently told, and he doesn't spare himself self-parody. (He sweats excessively, he tells us, so radio works to his advantage.) While his media rise has been striking--including a stint at the White House and as a foreign correspondent--his gift is showing how ordinary folks do extraordinary things. It is the listener's good fortune that he shares them in this audiobook. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2023]