Showing results by narrator "Robert Blumenfeld" in All Categories

In A.D. 381, Theodosius, emperor of the eastern Roman empire, issued a decree in which all his subjects were required to subscribe to a belief in the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This edict defined Christian orthodoxy and brought to an end a lively and wide-ranging debate about the nature of God; all other interpretations were now declared heretical.

On October 14, 1943, 600 Jews imprisoned in Sobibor, a secret Nazi death camp in eastern Poland, revolted. They killed a dozen SS officers and guards, trampled the barbed wire fences, and raced across an open field filled with anti-tank mines. Against all odds, more than three hundred made it safely into the woods. Fifty of those men and women managed to survive the rest of the war. In this edition of Escape from Sobibor, fully updated in 2012, Richard Rashke tells their stories

Forged during the tumultuous but triumphant postwar years when America came of age as a world power, The Irony of American History is more relevant now than ever before. Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr's masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue.

Werner Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle" challenged centuries of scientific understanding, placed him in direct opposition to Albert Einstein, and put Niels Bohr in the middle of one of the most heated debates in scientific history. Heisenberg's theorem stated that there were physical limits to what we could know about sub-atomic particles; this "uncertainty" would have shocking implications.

Robur the Conqueror is a science fiction novel by Jules Verne. The story begins with strange lights and sounds, including blaring trumpet music, reported in the skies all over the world. The events are capped by the mysterious appearance of black flags with gold suns atop tall historic landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty in New York, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

New York 2140: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! As the sea levels rose, every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island. For the residents of one apartment building in Madison Square, however, New York in the year 2140 is far from a drowned city. There is the market trader, who finds opportunities where others find trouble. There is the detective, whose work will never disappear - along with the lawyers, of course. There is the internet star, beloved by millions for her airship adventures....

One of our most renowned and brilliant historians takes a fresh look at the revolutionary intellectual movement that laid the foundation for the modern world. Liberty and equality. Human rights. Freedom of thought and expression. Belief in reason and progress. The value of scientific inquiry. These are just some of the ideas that were conceived and developed during the Enlightenment, and which changed forever the intellectual landscape of the Western world.

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests in his essay that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling children as food. By doing this he mocks the authority of the British officials.

With lips slightly parted and eyes fixed on a point in the distance, a breathtaking marble portrait of Costanza Piccolomini appears alive. Carved by Gianlorenzo Bernini in 1636 - 37 for his own pleasure, the portrait of Costanza is one of his most captivating works, but until now little has been known about its subject. For centuries Costanza was identified only as Bernini's mistress, who later incited his rage by betraying him for his brother. Author Sarah McPhee corrects and expands this story in her remarkable biography of a sculpture and its subject.

New York Times best-selling author Kim Stanley Robinson returns with a bold and brilliant vision of New York City in the next century. As the sea levels rose, every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island. For the residents of one apartment building in Madison Square, however, New York in the year 2140 is far from a drowned city. There is the market trader, who finds opportunities where others find trouble. There is the detective, whose work will never disappear—along with the lawyers, of course.

Arab stereotype portrays the Jew as a brutal, violent coward. The Jewish stereotype portrays the Arab as a primitive creature of animal vengeance and cruel desires. In this monumental Pulitzer Prize-winning work, revised in 2002, David Shipler delves into the origins of these prejudices that have been intensified by war, terrorism, and nationalism. Shipler examines the process of indoctrination, the far-ranging effects of socioeconomic differences, and the historical conflicts between Islam and Judaism.

Through Euclid's Window Leonard Mlodinow brilliantly and delightfully leads us on a journey through five revolutions in geometry, from the Greek concept of parallel lines to the latest notions of hyperspace. Here is an altogether new, refreshing, alternative history of math revealing how simple questions anyone might ask about space -- in the living room or in some other galaxy -- have been the hidden engine of the highest achievements in science and technology.

This invaluable collection of Avram Davidson's resonant, witty short stories describes some incidents in the career of many-times-Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy, loyal subject of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia- Pannonia-Transbalkania, located in a 19th-century Europe whose political landscape will be, after a little reflection, familiar to most fantasy listeners. Enquire with Doctor Eszterhazy into curious matters: the lurley, the old woman who lived with a bear, gingerbread men, dancing goats, and more.

Renowned through four award-winning stories for his gritty and revelatory visions of the Caribbean, Bob Shacochis returns to occupied Haiti in The Woman Who Lost Her Soul before sweeping across time and continents to unravel tangled knots of romance, espionage, and vengeance. In riveting prose, Shacochis builds a complex and disturbing story about the coming of age of America in a pre-9/11 world.

Keynes's preeminent biographer, Robert Skidelsky, brilliantly synthesizes from Keynes' career and life the aspects of his thinking that apply most directly to the world we currently live in. In so doing, Skidelsky shows that Keynes's mixture of pragmatism and realism, which distinguished his thinking from the neo-classical or Chicago school of economics that has been the dominant influence since the Thatcher-Reagan era and which made possible the raw market capitalism that created the current global financial crisis, is more pertinent and applicable than ever.

Tracing Yiddish civilization from its roots in the Diaspora to the present, Paul Kriwaczek combines intimate family anecdote, travelogue, historical research, and interviews with scholars to give us a rich portrait of a nearly extinguished culture as it survived across the centuries. He begins his chronicle in Jerusalem, with the destruction of the Jewish temple at the hands of the Romans in the year 70. We see the burgeoning exile population disperse, moving outward and northward throughout the following centuries, making their mark in more far flung cities under Roman rule.

The Holocaust is the defining event of the twentieth century and perhaps all of modern history. Yet for too long, we have ignored the vital question of how and why such a monstrous event could have happened at all. Now, in How Could This Happen, historian Dan McMillan distills the existing Holocaust research into a cogent explanation of the genocide’s causes, revealing how a once progressive society like Germany could commit murder on such a massive scale.

This Very Short Introduction provides both the believer and non-believer with a balanced survey of the central questions of theology. David Ford's approach draws us in to considering the principles underlying religious belief, including the centrality of salvation to most major religions; the concept of God in ancient, modern, and postmodern contexts; the challenge posed to theology by prayer and worship; and the issue of sin and evil. He also probes the nature of experience, knowledge, and wisdom in theology, and discusses what is involved in interpreting theological texts.

In this "ingenious" novel ( New York Times) by "one of Europe's most original and remarkable writers" ( Los Angeles Times), a proofreader's deliberate slip opens the door to romance-and confounds the facts of Portugal's past.

Could the killing of Germanicus Julius Caesar - the grandson of Mark Antony, adopted son of the emperor Tiberius, father of Caligula, and grandfather of Nero - while the Roman Empire was still in its infancy have been the root cause of the empire's collapse more than four centuries later? This brilliant investigation of Germanicus Caesar’s death and its aftermath is both a compelling history and first-class murder mystery with a plot twist Agatha Christie would envy.