Showing results by narrator "Barry Press" in All Categories

The Math Myth expands Hacker's scrutiny of many widely held assumptions, like the notions that mathematics broadens our minds and that the entire Common Core syllabus should be required of every student. He worries that a frenzied emphasis on STEM is diverting attention from other pursuits and subverting the spirit of the country. In fact, Hacker honors mathematics as a calling (he has been a professor of mathematics) and extols its glories and its goals.

With the Confederate Army firing on Fort Sumter, the Civil War has begun - and an invasion of Washington, DC, from Secessionist Virginia seems imminent. As the population evacuates, the president is in desperate need of men to defend the capital. Lincoln's trusted aide, Adam Speed Quinn, and Senator Jim Lane hastily assemble a motley crew and garrison them in the East Room at the White House. As dawn breaks with no Rebel strike, a single act of violence intrudes within the White House. One of the Frontier Guard lies dead in the oval library, throat slit ear to ear. There is a murderer among them.

When Charles S. Stratton was born in 1838, he seemed perfect in every way. But then he stopped growing. At age four, though a happy and mischievous child, he was just over two feet tall and weighed 15 pounds - the exact size he had been as a seven-month-old baby. It was then that P. T. Barnum persuaded Charley’s family to allow him to exhibit their son in his museum and tour him around the world as a curiosity. Tom Thumb, as Barnum dubbed him, was a natural performer.

A veteran of the Washington Post and Miami Herald, Tom Shroder has made a career of investigative journalism and human-interest stories. His most fascinating reporting, however, comes from within his own family: Shroder's grandfather, MacKinlay Kantor, was the world-famous author of Andersonville, the seminal novel of the Civil War. As a child, Shroder was in awe of the larger-than-life character.

On March 4, 1861, the air at the inaugural ball is charged with hope and apprehension. The last thing anyone wants is any sort of hitch in the proceedings, so Lincoln's trusted entourage is on their guard: Allan Pinkerton, head of the president's security team, is wary of potential assassins, and Lincoln's oldest friend, Joshua Speed, is by his side, along with Speed's nephew, Adam Quinn, who's been called to serve as Lincoln's assistant. But despite the tight security, trouble comes anyway: a man is found stabbed to death in a nearby room.

In A Just and Generous Nation, the eminent historian Harold Holzer and the noted economist Norton Garfinkle present a groundbreaking new account of the beliefs that inspired our 16th president to go to war when the Southern states seceded from the Union. Rather than a commitment to eradicating slavery or a defense of the Union, they argue that Lincoln's guiding principle was the defense of equal economic opportunity.

This audiobook contains two of legendary Western author Max Brand's short novels for your listening pleasure. The Valley of Jewels: Doc Willis, despite the nickname, is just an unemployed cowboy in Daggett Valley, a place that holds many secrets from the past - including a now-deserted mining camp. When Buck Logan lures Willis to the camp with the promise of great riches, Doc doesn't even suspect he is about to play a part in a most subtle feat of deception.

Usually it takes Stringer a little while to rile folks in a new town. But no sooner does he step off the train in Tulsa, than some sidewinder is doing his best to turn Stringer into yesterday's news. The hot story in Tulsa is the oil boom. It seems you can't dig a grave without hitting black gold. And Stringer's there to write the story. But MacKail's never seen such a sorry assortment of low-down, hornswoggling bushwhackers. Because, as Stringer well knows, where there's money, there's outlaws and lawyers....

When miners dig up the Yana Indians' sacred burial ground, the tribe goes on the warpath. And after a couple of deputy sheriffs are found with so many arrows sticking out of them they look like porcupines, the miners grab their guns and axes. Even a little Indian war is big news in the fading days of the Wild West, so Stringer rides out to investigate. But something just ain't right. For one thing, the arrows that killed the deputies are not Yana arrows. And the varmints who dug up the Indian graves aren't miners.

Murder is unthinkable to the People - a Paleolithic tribe migrating across Alaska and becoming some of the first undocumented immigrants to enter the Americas. For them, murder isn't merely tragic, it's forbidden. Murder poisons the entire tribe and puts it at odds with nature, the Spirits, and the mighty Earth Mother. A murderer must be found and removed in order to put the world back in balance.

A tranquil resort in the sunbaked sands of southern Utah; a pioneer archaeologist haunted by a bizarre ESP experience, whose footsteps would deliver him to the brink of everlasting evil; a strange old woman who lives in a local hotel, spinning tales of dread and retribution; a tower of blood-red rock called Satan's Seat, looming over the town like a monolithic gravestone.

Dead men don't tell tales. Neither do dead women or children. And when their corpses have been dryin' out in the desert sun for fifty years, there's nary a whisper left of what happened. So when the six Mojave mummies are found near Esperanza, it's up to Stringer to get the story. But someone in Esperanza wants him to just plain git.... First there's that invite to butt out, signed with a skull. Then the town welcome wagon wants to give him a buckshot bouquet.

History professor Robert Whittle believes the world is about to end, though his devoted wife Amanda and young daughter Lucinda don't share his opinion. Consumed by his depressing prophecy, Mr. Whittle is suddenly distracted by the alarmingly beautiful Penelope Andrews. Penelope enjoys the affections of her boyfriend, fellow student Marvin Greene, but it's apparent that Marvin is growing restless and contemplating other conquests. One evening the Whittles decide to entertain their good friends the Blaneys....

When freight trains conquered the West, the big, dusty drives of beef on the hoof became just a colorful piece of cowboy nostalgia. So when a cattle baron called C. J. Tarington aims to punch a thousand-plus head through the unforgiving heat and sage of the Great Basin, some say he's a mite simple, or crazy, or both. Stringer thinks it's something else. And sure enough, a pack of bloodthirsty varmints is robbing trains all along the cattle trail.

In a parallel near future, a ship named for a jellyfish sinks into the Caribbean with its captain chained to the mast. Left behind is a logbook missing ten pages, presidential DNA hidden in a brick of smuggled cocaine, and a nearly completed novel. Tipsy, the dead sailor's sister, and Red Means, his erstwhile employer, travel from San Francisco to the Caribbean and back as they attempt to unravel a mystery that rapidly widens from death at sea to international conspiracy.

When a legendary old gunslinger finally meets his Maker in some godforsaken West Texas town, Stringer heads to the scene for what he thinks is a routine story. But when he gets to Comanche Woe, it turns out he's landed in the middle of a dust storm of trouble. It's open season on wanted men. A wily varmint called Buckskin Jack Blair has crowned himself Marshal. And murderous vigilantes and bounty hunters are crawling out of the woodwork. When the bullets start flying, Stringer can't tell the outlaws from the lawmen…

This hard-boiled tale from A. W. Gray takes its title from its hero, con artist and poker player Sizemore Brandon, a gentle if criminal giant and sidekick to Pecos Jimmy, a Dallas racketeer majoring in gambling. When Size is called to testify against his boss, Jimmy decides the time has come to dispense with his services permanently. The stakes are high, and Size will have to play his cards right if he is to come out on top in the seamy underbelly of Texas.

Only Pancho Villa, king of bandits, is gutsy enough to make war on Terrazas the tyrant. And only Villa would sell tickets to one of his massacres. A curious mob settles along the Rio Grande, waiting for a bloodbath. They don't know that they've wasted their two bits on a phony war. Only one man is wise to Villa's crafty fake - Stringer MacKail. The adventurer-turned-newsman saddles a fast horse and tracks the real war to Mexico's sun-parched badlands. The desert erupts in a hellish inferno of torture and death as Villa's fearless gang shoots it out with Terraza's battle-scarred army.

This crime fiction novel from the author of the Bino Phillips series follows former Dallas police officer Frank White as he matches wits with an attractive ex-convict, who tries to entrap him in a kidnapping plot through which she hopes to beat the system. Facing a counterfeiting scheme, double crosses, and murder, White must summon all his skills as a detective to hunt down the conspirators and bring them to justice.

Even a newspaperman with Stringer MacKail's brand of courage knows you can't cover a stalemated miners' strike without getting on somebody's fightin' side. But that won't stop Stringer from trying to get some ink on the gold miners' sit-down out in Cripple Creek. Unfortunately, the only word he's heard so far is vamoose. Seems the Mine Owners' Association doesn't take kindly to pesky reporters, and would like to put Stringer out of commission-for keeps. That is, if Big Bill Heywood and his Federation of Miners don't do it first....