Showing results by narrator "David De Vries" in All Categories

In the eighteenth century, two men—exact contemporaries and polar opposites—dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Each began his task believing it to be difficult but not impossible: How could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species—or as many could fit on Noah’s Ark?

America was once a country that did big things—we built the world’s greatest rail network, a vast electrical grid, interstate highways, abundant housing, the Social Security system, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and more. But today, even while facing a host of pressing challenges—a housing shortage, a climate crisis, a dilapidated infrastructure—we feel stuck, unable to move the needle. Why?

Ten years ago, fifteen-year-old Scarlett Crosby was held captive in a terrifying ordeal with a girl named Della. Scarlett escaped, their predator was killed, and Della simply vanished. Detective Kevin Dawson always wondered if Della even existed. A decade later, Scarlett is a successful artist. As hard as she tries to move on, the mysterious Della remains her inescapable obsession. Then a girl’s body is discovered—a link to Scarlett’s horrific past—and all her old traumas resurface. So does Della.

In StrengthsFinder 2.0, Gallup unveils the new and improved version of its popular assessment, language of 34 themes, and much more. While you can listen to this book in one sitting, you'll use it as a reference for decades.

In 1945, the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong, 5,000 nuclear-tipped missiles, and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward, the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the 20th century.

In Markets & Momentum, James F. Dalton dramatically expands on his first revolutionary book, Markets in Profile. Summarizing six decades of experience—from formative memberships on the CBOE and CBOT to his role as UBS Director of Hedge Fund Research—Dalton challenges traders to recognize that self-understanding must be balanced with market-understanding.

The Middle East has long been a region of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and ambitions. All of these conflicts are rooted in the region's political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed by the Allies after the First World War. Author David Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies drew lines on an empty map that remade the geography and politics of the Middle East. Focusing on the formative years of 1914 to 1922, when all seemed possible, he delivers in this sweeping and magisterial book the definitive account of this defining time.

In The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, Thomas Childers shows how the young Hitler became passionately political and anti-Semitic as he lived on the margins of society. Fueled by outrage at the punitive terms imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty, he found his voice and drew a loyal following.

In telling this story, Sheehy takes listeners into the cockpit and into the lives of his fellow pilots—past and present—as they struggle with the seemingly never-ending threat of wildfires.

In this dark and gritty collection - featuring short stories from Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, Kevin J. Anderson, and Rob Thurman - nothing is as simple as black and white, light and dark, good and evil.... Unfortunately, that's exactly what makes it so easy to cross the line.

May 10, 1940. The Netherlands was swarming with Third Reich troops. In seven days it's entirely occupied by Nazi Germany. Joining a small resistance cell in the Dutch city of Haarlem were three teenage girls: Hannie Schaft, and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, who would soon band together to form a singular female underground squad.

Ann Silver is a cop’s cop. As the Midwest Homicide Investigator, she is called in to help local law enforcement on the worst of cases, looking for answers to murder. Hers is one of the region’s most trusted investigative positions. Paul Falcon is the FBI’s top murder cop in the Midwest. If the victim carried a federal badge or had a security clearance, odds are good Paul and his team see the case file or work the murder. Their lives intersect when Ann arrives to pass a case off her desk and onto his.

An explosion rocks Yellowstone. A strange disease begins to spread. A supervolcano threatens to erupt. And none of it was an accident. A reclusive Yellowstone park ranger is forced into action, teaming up with a beautiful woman from the CDC. Harvey Bennett isn't a trained killer, but he'll fight for what's right. And he'll do anything to take down the terrorists behind the attack. From Yellowstone across the American landscape, Harvey and Juliette must do what it takes to survive, before it's too late.

Of the many myths that emerged following the end of the Korean War, the prevailing one in the West was that of the absolute supremacy of US Air Force pilots and aircraft over their Soviet-supplied opponents. The claims of the 10:1 victory-loss ratio achieved by the US Air Force fighter pilots flying the North American F-86 Sabre against their communist adversaries, amongst other such fabrications, went unchallenged until the end of the Cold War, when Soviet records of the conflict were finally opened. From that point onwards, a very different story began to emerge.

Hall-of-Fame-nominated marketer, bestselling author, and Wall Street Journal cartoonist Stu Heinecke shares his fascination with weeds and how anyone can grow their business into something resilient and unstoppable. How to Grow Your Business Like a Weed applies a model to business growth, examining the successful strategies that ordinary weeds use to spread, and prosper in almost any situation.

When CIA officer Craig Norton glimpses an unexplainable object in the sky over Mongolia, he can’t quite believe it. Frankly, he isn’t sure Langley will either. Despite his misgivings, Craig reports the sighting in a cable to headquarters detailing the incident. Fast-forward fifteen years. Craig is still reeling from the report that tanked his career and his personal life. That fleeting moment on the Mongolian steppe made him a pariah at the Agency, and he still hasn’t recovered. At this point, he doubts he ever will.

In sobering detail, The Korean War chronicles a US home front agitated by Joseph McCarthy, where absolutist conformity discouraged open inquiry and citizen dissent. Cumings incisively ties our current foreign policy back to Korea: an America with hundreds of permanent military bases abroad, a large standing army, and a permanent national security state at home, the ultimate result of a judicious and limited policy of containment evolving into an ongoing and seemingly endless global crusade.

Given the length of time the United States spent in Iraq, there is a perception that there was no consideration before the war of what should be done after coalition forces arrived in Baghdad and removed Saddam Hussein. However as this unofficial history reveals, there was a great deal of planning to address how to achieve the policy objectives for Iraq set by the Bush administration.

"Wine is, above all, about pleasure. Those who make it ponderous make it dull.... If you keep an open mind and take each wine on its own terms, there is a world of magic to discover." So wrote the renowned wine expert Kermit Lynch in the introduction to Adventures on the Wine Route, his ultimate tour of France, especially its wine cellars. The "magic" of wine is Lynch's subject as he takes the listener on a singular journey through the Loire, Bordeaux, the Languedoc, Provence, northern and southern Rhone, and Burgundy.

In How to Read Literature like a Professor: For Kids, New York Times best-selling author and Professor Thomas C. Foster gives tweens the tools they need to become thoughtful readers. With funny insights and a conversational style, he explains the way writers use symbol, metaphor, characterization, setting, plot, and other key techniques to make a story come to life.