Mostrando resultados por narrador "William Hughes" en Todas las categorías

The Extra is set in a future California where members of a desperate populace sign contracts to participate in reality death films, knowing that less than 20% of them will survive. It’s a view of the future—and Hollywood—as delightfully cynical as Kurt Vonnegut with sympathetic characters, Hollywood executive sleazeballs and much more.

In November 2001, a 31-year-old Yemeni man named Salim Ahmed Hamdan was captured near the Pakistan border and turned over to U.S. forces in Afghanistan. After confessing to being Osama bin Laden's driver, Hamdan was transferred to Guantánamo Bay and designated for trial before a special military tribunal. The Pentagon assigned a young military defense lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, to represent him in a defense that no one expected to amount to much. But it did.

Jim Harrison takes us on a journey of the human heart in three new novellas. Julip follows a bright and resourceful young woman as she tries to spring her brother from a Florida jail after he shot three of her former lovers. The Seven-Ounce Man continues the picaresque adventures of Brown Dog, a Michigan scoundrel who loves to eat, drink, and chase women. The Beige Dolorosa is the haunting tale of an academic who, recovering from the repercussions of a sexual-harassment scandal, turns to the natural world for solace.

The world’s largest company, WalMart Stores, has revenues higher than the gross domestic product of all but twentyfive of the world’s countries. Its employees outnumber the populations of almost one hundred nations. The world’s largest asset manager, a New York company called BlackRock, controls assets greater than the national reserves of any country on the planet.

It has been nearly a year since psychologist Daniel Rinaldi, a trauma expert who consults with the Pittsburgh Police, helped unravel a baffling murder, and now he finds himself drawn into another case. In the midst of a blistering summer heat wave, a daring bank robbery has gone horribly wrong, resulting in the deaths of all the hostages except one, Treva Williams, and Rinaldi is called in to treat the young woman.

This slim primer distills Sharma's decades of experience into 10 rules for identifying nations that are poised to take off or crash. A wake-up call to economists who failed to foresee every recent crisis, including the cataclysm of 2008, 10 Rules is full of pioneering insights on signs of political, economic, and social change. Sharma explains, for example, why autocrats are bad for the economy; robots are a blessing, not a curse; and consumer prices don’t tell you all you need to know about inflation.

We are told that, when we vote and elect representatives, we gain a voice in government and its policies. Yet, it hasn't translated our preferences into higher living standards for the majority of us. In America, the wealthy few have built a system that works in their favor, while maintaining the illusion of democracy. American voters have little influence on policies engineered by lawmakers. Political scientists call it the "income bias", causing lawmakers to compete to satisfy preferences of donors from the top one percent instead of the middle class.

When Allen Shawn and his twin sister, Mary, were two years old, Mary began exhibiting signs of what would be diagnosed years later as autism. Understanding Mary and making her life a happy one appeared to be impossible for the Shawns. With almost no warning, her parents sent Mary to a residential treatment center when she was eight years old. She never lived at home again.

Pulitzer Prize-nominated former Wall Street Journal reporter Ronald G. Shafer tells the colorful story of the election battle between sitting president Martin Van Buren, a professional Democratic politician from New York, and Whig Party upstart William Henry Harrison, a military hero who was nicknamed "Old Tippecanoe" after a battlefield where he fought and won in 1811. Shafer shows how the pivotal campaign of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" marked a series of firsts that changed presidential politicking forever.

Is the face of American baseball throughout the world that of goodwill ambassador or ugly American? Has baseball crafted its own image or instead been at the mercy of broader forces shaping our society and the globe? The Empire Strikes Out gives us the sweeping story of how baseball and America are intertwined in the export of “the American way."

The murder of a young Tibetan nun at the hands of Chinese border guards at the rooftop of the world offers a unique parable for the tale of modern Tibet. Chinese police are instructed to take any measures necessary to protect the border of Tibet. When a group of climbers witness the murder of a young Tibetan nun who is fleeing to India, two men have a choice: turn a blind eye and preserve their climbing careers or alert the world to the grand scale of human injustice played out daily in Tibet.

The nearly three billion people living on two dollars a day are not just the world’s greatest challenge - they represent an extraordinary market opportunity. The key is what Paul Polak and Mal Warwick call Zero-Based Design: starting from scratch to create innovative products and services tailored for the very poor, armed with a thorough understanding of what they really want and need, and driven by what Polak and Warwick call "the ruthless pursuit of affordability". Polak has been doing this work for years, and Warwick has extensive experience in both business and philanthropy.

With unprecedented access to Google's top management, Randy Stross reveals for the first time the audacious scope of Google's new plan, including such potentially disruptive initiatives as free downloadable software, which could put providers like Microsoft out of business, and GoogleEarth and GoogleMaps satellite technology, which is rapidly mapping the entire surface of the Earth in high-powered detail.

A fascinating new angle on presidential history, assessing the performances of all 44 presidents in their freshman years of the toughest job in the world. Grouped by the issues the new presidents confronted in their first years in office, The President's First Year takes listeners into the history, thought processes, and results on a case-by-case basis, including how the presidents' subsequent actions prove that they learned - or didn't learn - from their mistakes.

As individuals, companies, and countries struggle to recover from the economic crisis, many are narrowly focused on forecasts for the next week, month, or quarter. Yet they should be asking what the global economy will look like in the years to come—where will the long-term risks and opportunities arise? These are the questions that Daniel Altman confronts in his provocative and indispensable book.

After a second world championship in four years, the Boston Red Sox have finally buried the Curse of the Bambino - or have they? Red Sox owner Louis Kenwood has received a note signed "Babe Ruth," claiming that the 2004 World Series was fixed and demanding $20 million to keep the information from the press and the commissioner's office. If the allegation of a fix becomes public, Kenwood fears irreparable damage to the value of his franchise and to his legacy as "Lucky Louie".

With keen inside analysis and great stories drawn from astonishing access to Washington's key players, Pennsylvania Avenue takes us behind the scenes to show what really happens on the first street in America and how that affects the country.

The 2012 presidential campaign will, above all else, be a referendum on the Obama administration’s handling of the financial crisis, recalling the period when Obama’s “audacity of hope” met the austerity of reality. Central to this is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 - the largest economic recovery plan in American history. Senator Mitch McConnell gave a taste of the enormity of the money committed: if you had spent $1 million a day since Jesus was born, it still would not add up to the price tag of the stimulus package.

The Civil War conjures images of blood-soaked battlefields in the United States. Few are aware of the equally important diplomatic and intelligence contest that raged between the North and South in Europe. While the Confederacy sought Great Britain as a strategic ally, the Union utilized diplomacy and espionage to avert both the construction of a Confederate navy and the threat of war with England.

From its earliest beginnings, America has been seen as an icon of liberty with a mission to redeem the world. Often, the ideal fits. But sometimes even our most noble aspirations can be as damaging as they are uplifting. With wit, brilliance, and deep affection, the inimitable Ted Widmer traces America's wondrous history.