Showing results by narrator "Peter Ganim" in All Categories

From the first pitch of April until the final out in October, the 1962 Dodgers and Giants staged a furious pennant fight that was every bit the equal of the fractious feuds waged during the rivalry's New York heyday of bench-clearing brawls.

On October 3, 1985, Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled Jewish New Yorker, and his wife boarded the Achille Lauro to celebrate their 36th wedding anniversary with a Mediterranean cruise. Four days later, four Palestinian fedayeen hijacked the Italian luxury liner and took the passengers and crew hostage. Leon Klinghoffer was shot in the head, his body and wheelchair thrown overboard. His murder became a flashpoint in the intractable struggle between Israelis and Arabs and gave Americans a horrifying preview of what it means when terrorism hits home.

Lloyd has a particular set of skills. He writes the small print for prescription drugs, marital aids, and incontinence products. The clients present him with a list of possible side effects. His job is "to recite and minimize" sometimes by just saying them really fast and other times by finding the language that can render them acceptable. The results are ingenious. The methods diabolical. Lloyd has a habit, too. He cops smack during coffee breaks at his new job writing copy for Christian Swingles, an online dating service for the faithful.

Renowned Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson leads us through space as much as time: From the river's mystical sources (the Blue Nile which rises in Ethiopia, and the White Nile coursing from majestic Lake Victoria); to Thebes, with its Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, and Luxor Temple; the fertile Delta; Giza, home of the Great Pyramid, the sole surviving Wonder of the Ancient World; and finally, to the pulsating capital city of Cairo, where the Arab Spring erupted on the bridges over the Nile.

As arts editor for one of Vienna's principal newspapers, Moriz Scheyer knew many of the city's foremost artists, and was an important literary journalist. With the advent of the Nazis he was forced from both job and home. In 1943, in hiding in France, Scheyer began drafting what was to become this book. Tracing events from the Anschluss in Vienna, through life in Paris and unoccupied France, including a period in a French concentration camp, contact with the Resistance, and more.

In 1861, Americans thought that the war looming on their horizon would be brief. None foresaw that they were embarking on our nation's worst calamity, a four-year bloodbath that cost the lives of more than half a million people. But as eminent Civil War historian Emory Thomas points out in this stimulating and provocative book, once the dogs of war are unleashed, it is almost impossible to rein them in.

Though Quirt’s name is little-known, his skills as a gladiator are quickly obvious and hard to match. In Aureity, noblemen battle in the arena circuit, using their powers of teleportation and telekinesis to prove their breeding and strength. The prizes at play are not only silver and bronze but also the chance to rise amongst the nobility and mate with the ruling class of women. Older than most players, Quirt still manages to draw attention and awe through his mastery of the games.

It's Halloween, and John Justin Mallory's partner, Winnifred Carruthers, has been so busy preparing for the biggest holiday of the year (in his Manhattan, anyway) that she seems short of energy and pale. Mallory is worried that she's been working too hard. Then he notices the two puncture marks on her neck....

The author of the acclaimed biography of President James Polk, A Country of Vast Designs, offers a fresh, playful, and challenging way of playing “Rating the Presidents,” by pitching historians’ views and subsequent experts’ polls against the judgment and votes of the presidents’ own contemporaries.

Detective Elise Sutton is drawn to cold cases. Each crime is a puzzle to solve, pulled from the past. Elise looks for cracks in the surface and has become an expert on how murderers slip up and give themselves away. She has dedicated her life to creating a sense of order, at work with her ex-marine partner; at home with her husband and two young daughters; and within, battling her own demons.

For 40 years John Hadden and his father of the same name fought at the dinner table over politics, art, and various issues concerning America. One was haunted by what he had witnessed during his long CIA career, from Berlin to Tel Aviv; the other retreated to the Vermont woods to direct Shakespeare until finally he confronted his father at the table one last time with a tape recorder.

Ben Stein's experience from Washington to Hollywood - and everywhere in between - makes him the ideal individual to offer advice to others. His expertise in countless fields makes his valuable, keen observations - that cover the range of topics and challenges that most people face every day - the perfect topic for his book, What Would Ben Stein Do? It's a question we'd all be wise to ask ourselves when contemplating an array of issues in both business and life.

Beginning in the first summer of the post-Obama world, Zachary Lazar's bewitching and masterful new novel tells the story of Christopher Bell, a blocked painter on the East End of Long Island, and Ana Ramirez, a journalist who fled the crisis in Venezuela and is looking for work in New York. Bell has always felt marked by his foreignness, having emigrated to the US as a child, and has come to believe that "words like 'identity' and 'American' are somehow very meaningful and very meaningless at the same time.”

How to Do Things is a fascinating window into life in early 20th-century America and was the first work to collect centuries of practical information, neighborly wisdom, and generational knowledge and compile it into one comprehensive volume.

A powerful book that is both fun to listen to and transformative, Living Serendipitously: Keeping the Wonder Alive motivates people to become "active dreamers" who live their dreams. A lively and joyful listen, it captures the joyful essence of "the art of living", explaining just how simple, easy and natural living serendipitously really is.

Terry Orr is a man haunted by the murder of his wife and son - and by the tragedy that darkened the streets in lower Manhattan. Now more than ever, his life has purpose. He has to raise his 14-year-old daughter alone - and he has to find the killer who shattered his world.

Following the success of Paris Noir, the Akashic Noir Series has expanded to include the famously diverse and sometimes controversial suburbs of this legendary city.

"Stop the wedding!" No bride wants to hear those words, least of all Susannah "Legs" Carter, one of the Bod Squad's best agents. But when her colleague Jackson bursts in with news that her presumed-dead father may still be alive - and possibly a double agent - the vows are on hold, and the Bod Squad hits the road.

A member of the tiny but ancient Samaritan community has been murdered. The dead man controlled hundreds of millions of dollars of government money. If the World Bank cannot locate it within the next several days, all aid money to the Palestinians will be cut off. Visiting Nablus, Omar Yussef must solve the murder and find the money, or all Palestinians will suffer.

What if, in a world where mathematics could be magic, the thing you desired most was also trying to kill you? Dom is a numerate, someone able to see and control numbers and use them as a form of magic. While seeking a mathematical item of immense power that has only been whispered about, it all goes south for Dom, and he finds himself on the run across three countries on two continents, with two unlikely companions in tow and a numerate of unfathomable strength hot on his tail.