Mostrando resultados por narrador "Jeff Cummings" en Todas las categorías

J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the iconic figures of the 20th century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb but later confronted the moral consequences of scientific progress. When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s.

For more than 200 years, the wreck of the Whydah (and the riches that went down with it) eluded treasure seekers, until the ship was finally found in 1984 by marine archaeologists. The artifacts brought up from the ocean floor are priceless, both in value and in the picture they reveal of life in that much-mythologized era, changing much of what we know about pirates.

In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed then too controversial to publish), Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September 11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He asks were these simply the acts of “evil-doers?”

Gore Vidal - novelist, playwright, critic, screenwriter, memoirist, indefatigable political commentator, and controversialist - is America’s premier man of letters. No other writer brings more sparkling wit, vast learning, indelible personality, and provocative mirth to the job of writing an essay.

When LAPD detective Michael Gideon and his police-dog partner, Sirius, are assigned to the Special Cases Unit (SCU), Gideon knows their work lives will be anything but ordinary. SCU gets the cases no one else wants, the unusual and bizarre crimes that need special handling and special investigators. When a high-school student is found crucified in a local park, Gideon and Sirius must face up to the gruesome tableau and the motivation behind the murder. Complicating matters is a nightmare from their past, the scars of a terrible fire that nearly cost them their lives.

Addiction is a preventable, treatable disease, not a moral failing. As with other illnesses, the approaches most likely to work are based on science - not on faith, tradition, contrition, or wishful thinking. These facts are the foundation of Clean, a myth-shattering look at drug abuse by the author of Beautiful Boy. Based on the latest research in psychology, neuroscience, and medicine, Clean is a leap beyond the traditional approaches to prevention and treatment of addiction.

It's been a year of change for Gideon and Sirius. Both are new parents, but for the two of them, the joys of fatherhood have to wait. After a few months of silence, the All-In Killer has begun his murderous spree again - and his latest victim died only miles from Gideon's doorstep. The All-In Killer has made it no secret that his homicidal countdown will end only with the deaths of Gideon and Sirius. When Gideon decides he can no longer hide the encroaching threat from his wife, they prepare together for the approaching storm.

“What would Jeff do?” Since leaving Amazon to advise start-ups and corporations, John Rossman has been asked this question countless times by executives who want to know “the secret” behind Amazon’s historic success. In this step-by-step guide, he provides 50½ answers drawn from his experience as an Amazon executive - and shows today’s business leaders how to think like Amazon, strategize like Bezos, and beat the competition like nobody’s business.

Conventional wisdom holds that America has been a Christian nation since the Founding Fathers. But in One Nation Under God, historian Kevin M. Kruse argues that the idea of "Christian America" is nothing more than a myth - and a relatively recent one at that.

On May 24, 1940, Hitler's armies were on the brink of a shattering military victory. Only 10 miles away, 400,000 Allied troops were pinned against the coast of Dunkirk. But just 11 days later, 338,000 men had been successfully evacuated to England. How did it happen? Walter Lord's remarkable account of how "the miracle of Dunkirk" came about is based on hundreds of interviews.

After Hank Morgan of Hartford, Connecticut, takes a blow to the head, he inexplicably awakens in sixth-century Camelot. At first lost and confused, the time traveler soon realizes that he can use modern knowledge and his ability to foretell the future to his advantage. Consequently, he is granted a place in the king’s court as Arthur’s right-hand man. When the Catholic Church grows fearful of his power, the Connecticut Yankee aims higher and concocts a grandiose plan to bring American ideals to sixth-century England to change the future.

In the eighteen years since her father went to prison for killing her mother and brother, Della Stallings has battled a crippling phobia. Her fear only grows when her father’s released. She still believes he killed her family, but the police don’t have enough evidence to arrest him again. When new grisly murders occur - each bearing the telltale signs that seem to implicate her father - Della begins to wonder if the real murderer is still out there. Could her father have been framed?

Though perhaps most famous as a novelist, Philip K. Dick wrote more than 100 short stories over the course of his career, each as mind-bending and genre-defining as his longer works. Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams collects 10 of the best. In "Autofac," Dick shows us one of the earliest examples (and warnings) in science fiction of self-replicating machines. "Exhibit Piece" and "The Commuter" feature Dick exploring one of his favorite themes: the shifting nature of reality and whether it is even possible to perceive the world as it truly exists.

Fatal Forecast chronicles a dramatic fight for survival aboard two small fishing boats that were ambushed by a horrific surprise storm just southeast of Cape Cod. Soon after the Fair Wind and the Sea Fever reached the fishing ground at Georges Bank, they were hit with hurricane-force winds and massive 90-foot waves that battered the boats for hours. The direction of the wind made it impossible to turn back.

The rich are very different from you and me. Blessed by great wealth, they can get what they want, even what they shouldn’t have. Cursed by great wealth, they become the targets of others who will risk everything to become affluent. Nelson DeMille introduces twenty original tales by today’s most elite mystery writers who explore the life (and death) styles of the rich and infamous.

Nathan McCann thought he didn't want a family. But when he finds an abandoned newborn in the woods, he feels an inexplicable bond with the boy and starts to make plans to raise the child as his own - until the baby's grandmother steps forward to claim him. Nathan makes a request of her, though: to one day bring the boy to meet his rescuer.

At once a pop culture icon, cult figure, and film industry outsider, master filmmaker David Lynch and his work defy easy definition. Dredged from his subconscious mind, Lynch's work is primed to act on our own subconscious, combining heightened, contradictory emotions into something familiar but inscrutable. No less than his art, Lynch's life also evades simple categorization, encompassing pursuits as a musician, painter, photographer, carpenter, entrepreneur, and vocal proponent of Transcendental Meditation.

It’s the summer of 1962, and Scott and his friends spend their days playing baseball and thinking about girls. But the threat of nuclear war looms over everything they do, and they are haunted by the idea that they could all be dead tomorrow. Even though the possibility of war is all anyone talks about, Scott’s dad is the only one in the neighborhood who actually prepares for the worst, building a bomb shelter to protect his family and stocking it with enough supplies to keep them alive for two critical weeks. The neighbors scoff, but then, in the middle of the night in late October, the unthinkable happens.

In this groundbreaking book, New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler decodes the mystery of ultimate human performance. Drawing on over a decade of research and first-hand reporting with dozens of top action and adventure sports athletes like big wave legend Laird Hamilton, big mountain snowboarder Jeremy Jones, and skateboarding pioneer Danny Way, Kotler explores the frontier science of “flow”, an optimal state of consciousness in which we perform and feel our best.

We all make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. Not even some of the greatest geniuses in history, as Mario Livio tells us in this marvelous story of scientific error and breakthrough. Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein were all brilliant scientists. Each made groundbreaking contributions to his field - but each also stumbled badly. These five scientists expanded our knowledge of life on Earth, the evolution of the Earth itself, and the evolution of the universe, despite and because of their errors. As Mario Livio luminously explains, the scientific process advances through error.