Showing results by narrator "Sean Runnette" in All Categories

Radical connectivity - our ability to connect instantly, constantly, and globally - is altering the exercise of power with dramatic speed and reshaping our biggest institutions. Governments, corporations, centers of knowledge, and expertise are eroding before the power of the individual. In some cases this is a positive development, but as Mele reveals, the promise of the Internet comes with a troubling downside. He asks: How do we trust information when journalists are replaced by bloggers, phone videos, and tweets?

While examining the history of our planet and actively exploring our present environment, science journalist Michael Tennesen describes what life on Earth could look like after the next mass extinction.

The author takes us behind the scenes and introduces us to key players - in both science and business - who are experimenting with the most promising cutting-edge research to retard the aging process. This is an informative and provocative book that shows how a small group of optimistic and determined scientists are closing in on drugs that will change the way we live forever.

To some, food allergies seem like fabricated cries for attention. For others, they pose a dangerous health threat. Food allergies are bound up with so many personal and ideological concerns that it is difficult to determine what is medical and what is myth. This book parses the political, economic, cultural, and genuine health factors of a phenomenon that now dominates our interactions with others and our understanding of ourselves.

In Does Santa Exist?, Kaplan shows how philosophy giants Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein strove to smooth over this uncomfortable meeting of the real and unreal - and failed. From there he turns to mysticism's attempts to resolve such paradoxes. Finally, he alights on comedy as the ultimate resolution of the fundamental paradoxes of life. Kaplan delves deeper into what this means, from how our physical brains work to his own personal confrontations with life's biggest questions.

The locker rooms of winning teams are crowded with coaches, family, and fans. Reporters flock to the athletes, brimming with victory and celebration, to ask, "How does it feel?" In contrast, the locker rooms of the losing teams are quiet and awkward, and reporters tend to leave quickly, reluctant to linger too long around loss. But, as sports journalists Mary Pilon and Louisa Thomas argue, losing is not a phenomenon to be overlooked, and in Losers, they have called upon novelists, reporters, and athletes to consider what it means to lose.

Personal relationships are key to success: In a time when workplaces are becoming more digital and more automated every day, our mindsets and our personal relationships will determine whether we succeed in tomorrow’s markets. In the coming years, the human success factor will determine who is among the winners and who is among the losers. All business adventures start with a focus on the self. When you know who you are and develop a deep sense of confidence in yourself, you’ll have the flexibility to roll with the punches.

In 1995, Darell Hammond read an article in the Washington Post about an unthinkable tragedy: Two young children suffocated in a car on a hot summer day in southeast Washington, D.C. The story indicated that the children had nowhere to play; in the absence of a playground, they had climbed into an abandoned car. Reading the article fueled Hammond's sense of injustice, and his life's mission came into focus

We all have the sense that the American economy - and its government - tilts toward big business, but as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains in his powerful new book, People, Power, and Profits, a few corporations dominate entire sectors of the economy, contributing to skyrocketing inequality and slow growth. This is how the financial industry has managed to write its own regulations, tech companies have accumulated reams of personal data with little oversight, and the government has negotiated trade deals that fail to represent the interests of workers.

Chaplains of the Militia is the extraordinary story of those priests accused of complicity in genocide. Chris McGreal takes us from Rwanda in 1994, where he stood among the bodies at one of the many massacres in churches, to modern day France in pursuit of a priest notorious during the genocide for wearing a gun and selecting victims for the machete-waving militia.

With 50 Foods, noted authority Edward Behr has created the definitive guide to the foods every food lover must know. A culinary Baedeker, 50 Foods will delight and inform the connoisseur as well as the novice.

Like Behr's celebrated magazine, the Art of Eating, 50 Foods presents simple, practical information about buying, using, preparing, and enjoying. Behr focuses on aroma, appearance, flavor, and texture to determine what "the best" means for each food.

In this excerpt from So Many Roads, Rolling Stone contributing editor David Browne chronicles one of the most conflicted years in the Dead's history—1977, when the band’s popularity soars thanks to a massive free concert, but Jerry Garcia begins to dabble in the hard drugs that would ultimately kill him.

Supposedly a true story framed in the format of a novel, The Jonah Watch is based on Jack Cady's experiences while serving on a Coast Guard cutter off the coast of Maine. Trapped on an icebound cutter, the crew of the Adrian are haunted by apparitions, and the resulting terror and paranoia make for a claustrophobic tale of initiation and survival.

We all have that one older funny family member. You know the one, he tells stories from his experiences and usually has people rolling their eyes. William Stokes is that person! He presents a delightful collection of memories that are truly life lessons even today! Stokes, through his memories and wit, provides opportunities to learn through laughter, sharing of memories and love.

James K. Polk, who believed it was the nation’s “Manifest Destiny” to expand its boundaries and rebuild western lands in its own image, swiftly led America into war with Mexico. Polk claimed that Mexican forces had killed American soldiers on American soil, yet this claim was viewed with skepticism by members of Congress, including Representative Abraham Lincoln.

President Reagan was a popular and transformative chief executive who chipped away at what he considered a runaway federal bureaucracy to bring a more conservative vision to all three branches of American gov­ernment. While the Iran-Contra affair during Reagan’s second term gal­vanized critics, he still managed to win major victories to curb what he perceived to be overreaching by Congress.

On May 17th, 1968, a group of Catholic antiwar activists burst into a draft board in suburban Baltimore, stole hundreds of Selective Service records (which they called "death certificates"), and burned the documents in a fire fueled by homemade napalm. The bold actions of the ''Catonsville Nine'' quickly became international news and captured headlines throughout the summer and fall of 1968 when the activists, defended by radical attorney William Kunstler, were tried in federal court.

William Howard Taft adopted a conservative view of presidential power in stark contrast to the feisty and (in Taft’s view) dangerous activism of his predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt. A stickler for strict adherence to the Constitution, Taft helped steer through the Sixteenth Amendment to permit a variety of federal income taxes.

It's 1976. Dr. Colin Sanford, a brilliant, ambitious obstetrician in the Pacific Northwest city of Emerald, has a plan to create the first in vitro baby. He recruits Dr. Giselle Hearn, an experienced laboratory geneticist/embryologist at the university who’s frustrated by the ultraconservative policies of her department chairman. Drs. Sanford and Hearn, working secretly, set out to put their names in the history books. Unfortunately, a secret that big is hard to keep....

Chester A. Arthur, who had profited from a plum patronage position dur­ing the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, found himself thrust into a dif­ficult role when his predecessor, James Garfield, died of a gunshot wound. With Garfield’s death, the controversy over political patronage bubbled to a head.