Showing results by narrator "Sean Runnette" in All Categories

David Headley, the American Pakistani also known as Daood Gilani, lived a double life. One day he would stroll through Central Park in his tailored Armani suit as a true New Yorker, and the next he would browse in the bazaar in Lahore wearing traditional Pakistani clothes. One day he would drink champagne at the most extravagant clubs; on another he would prostrate himself in prayer in remote Pakistan and pledge fidelity to Allah.

Grimshaw leads the North Star crew on their most daring mission. When an ancient disease threatens to wipe out one of their few allies, Captain Grimshaw and Lieutenant Evans travel deep into enemy territory in search of a cure. The Kragak still lay dormant. Who knows what'll happen if the slumbering giants are disturbed? Meanwhile, Taza remains in the Shroud as he investigates a string of murders that could be linked to the deadly virus. Explorer-class vessels have already begun to report sightings of Aphnai war ships on the Fringe.

In The Age of Intoxication, Benjamin Breen offers a window into a time when drugs were not yet separated into categories - illicit and licit, recreational and medicinal, modern and traditional - and there was no barrier between the drug dealer and the pharmacist.

In this essential trilogy of novellas by the winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, French author Patrick Modiano reaches back in time, opening the corridors of memory and exploring the mysteries to be encountered there.

Two opposing narratives vie to explain the strategic future of Europe, one geopolitical and one economic, and both center on the same resource: natural gas. In The Bridge, Thane Gustafson, an expert on Russian oil and gas, argues that the political rivalries that capture the lion's share of media attention must be viewed alongside multiple business interests and differences in economic ideologies. With a dense network of pipelines linking Europe and Russia, natural gas serves as a bridge that unites the region through common interests.

Achieving and sustaining success is difficult. Why do some people struggle to get started or stay the course? Why do others seem to sabotage their hard-earned victories? What makes some people stumble and fall when they seem to possess the requisite skills to soar? Most importantly, what can be done to change these patterns and their outcomes? Based on years of research, Mastering Fear answers these questions and many more with its surprising perspectives on stress, fear, and the single most important skill necessary to achieve maximum results.

Get the North Star to the Galactic Sentinel, sign off with the Galactic Council, and return to Fleet Academy Four. It should have been easy, but compared to the Galactic Council, Earth’s politicians are girl scouts selling Peanut Butter Patties to their grandmothers. Widespread riots and whispers of Chimera terrorists only make matters worse, especially when the terrorists are better armed than most of Sentinel Security.

What if every Christian discovered that his or her favorite teacher in church history had blind spots and held to some false - and even shocking - views? Best-selling author Frank Viola argues that this simple awareness will soften Christians when they interact with each other in the face of theological disagreements.

Solitude is the inspirational core for many writers, artists, and thinkers. Alone with our thoughts, we can make discoveries that matter not only to us but to others. To be solitary is not only to draw sustenance from being alone, but to know that our ultimate responsibility is not only to our partner or our own offspring, but to a larger community. Fenton Johnson's lyrical prose and searching sensibility explores what it means to choose to be solitary and celebrates the notion that solitude is a legitimate and dignified calling.

When college basketball teams make it to the NCAA tournament, they say they're "going to the dance". John Feinstein's riveting new book is the story of the last dance: the Final Four. There is no event in sports quite like it. The Final Four draws millions to their televisions and thousands to a chosen city; attendance is topped only by the Super Bowl. It is the epicenter of sports madness, a circus of media, coaches, and fans swirling around the four teams talented enough to have made it to the end.

Katrina. Haiti. BP. Fukushima. The Great Recession. Those are just a few of the catastrophic disruptions the world has endured in recent years. As we try to respond to such crises, key questions arise: What causes one system to break under great stress and another to rebound? How much change can a complex system absorb while still retaining its purpose and function? What characteristics make it adaptive to change? Provocative and eye-opening, Resilience sheds light on the nature of change.

Donald A. Ritchie, a congressional historian for forty years, takes listeners on a fascinating, behind-the-scenes tour of Capitol Hill, pointing out the key players, explaining their behavior, and translating parliamentary language into plain English. He also explores the essential necessity of compromise to accomplish anything significant in the legislative arena.

The legal home to over a million companies, Delaware has more registered businesses than residents. Why do virtually all of the biggest corporations in the United States register there? This book reveals how a systematic enterprise lies behind the business-friendly corporate veneer, one that has kept the state afloat financially by diverting public funds away from some of the poorest people in the United States and supporting dictators and criminals across the world.

In Broadcast Hysteria, A. Brad Schwartz examines the history behind the infamous radio play. Did it really spawn a wave of mass hysteria? Schwartz is the first to examine the hundreds of letters sent directly to Orson Welles after the broadcast. He draws upon them, and hundreds more sent to the FCC, to recapture the roiling emotions of a bygone era, and his findings challenge conventional wisdom. Relatively few listeners believed an actual attack was underway.

In Straight Talk on Trade, Dani Rodrik, an early and outspoken critic of economic globalization taken too far, goes beyond the populist backlash and offers a more reasoned explanation for why our elites' and technocrats' obsession with hyper-globalization made it more difficult for nations to achieve legitimate economic and social objectives at home: economic prosperity, financial stability, and equity.

How does the physics we know today - a highly professionalized enterprise, inextricably linked to government and industry - link back to its origins as a liberal art in Ancient Greece? What is the path that leads from the old philosophy of nature and its concern with humankind's place in the universe to modern massive international projects that hunt down fundamental particles and industrial laboratories that manufacture marvels? This audiobook introduces us to Islamic astronomers and mathematicians calculating the size of the Earth while their caliphs conquered much of it and more.

President Franklin Pierce took steps to build new commercial relation­ships abroad, revamp the military, and restructure the federal courts. After an unprecedented landslide in the 1852 presidential election gave him supermajorities in the House and Senate, Pierce seemed poised for a productive presidency.

Benjamin Harrison, the “Centennial President,” failed to achieve many of his goals (for instance, he was unable to secure passage of federal leg­islation to ensure public school education and voting rights for African Americans in the South). Yet he successfully pressed Congress to pass the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to deal with the growing threat posed by cor­porate trusts and monopolies.

Millard Fillmore, who fell into the presidency when Zachary Taylor died unexpectedly, is often regarded as a weak leader and a failed chief executive. Eager to show that he could heal the rift between North and South, Fillmore reversed some of Taylor’s cautious policies. He zealously supported the controversial Compromise of 1850, which some historians believe worsened the sectional divide.

Zachary Taylor, a professional soldier and sugar planter with no previous political experience, held the office of president for barely sixteen months before dying of acute gastroenteritis. A war hero before moving into the White House, he immediately confronted a rogue effort to seize Cuba and had to address issues involving slavery in the new territories acquired from Mexico.