Showing results by narrator "Mark Ashby" in All Categories

The Somme: these words conjure the image of war rigidly fought by traditional means even when catastrophe clearly loomed. Relying on personal testimonies never before published, this study of those who survived the first day of battle (July 1, 1916) captures this epic conflagration from all angles. Follow the action as soldiers crawl across No Man’s Land in the face of German guns, struggle with the conditions in the trenches, and survey the scene from the air as the RFC tries to control the skies above the battlefield.

This audiobook examines the meteoric rise of Sweden as the pre-eminent military power in Europe during the Thirty Years War during the 1600s, and then follows its line of warrior kings into the next century until the Swedes finally meet their demise, in an overreach into the vastness of Russia. A small Scandinavian nation, with at most one and a half million people and scant internal resources of its own, there was small logic to how Sweden could become the dominant power on the Continent.

James MacGregor Burns’s stunning trilogy of American history, spanning the birth of the Constitution to the final days of the Cold War. In these three volumes, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner James MacGregor Burns chronicles with depth and narrative panache the most significant cultural, economic, and political events of American history.

Few personalities from classical antiquity are more famous - yet more poorly understood - than Cleopatra VII, queen of Egypt. In this major biography, Duane Roller reveals that Cleopatra was in fact a learned and visionary leader whose overarching goal was always the preservation of her dynasty and kingdom. Roller's authoritative account is the first to be based solely on primary materials from the Greco-Roman period: literary sources, Egyptian documents (Cleopatra's own writings), and representations in art and coinage produced while she was alive.

Mind Games follows the journey of Phil Jackson to the top of basketball’s coaching hierarchy, a rise that took him from obscurity in the Continental Basketball Association to nine championship rings in the NBA. Along the way he turned multimillionaire players on to meditation, transformed the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls from a one-man show to a five-man team of domination, and after battling with Bulls management, ended one dynasty to start another on the West Coast.

When he was three years old, Tito was diagnosed as severely autistic, but his remarkable mother, Soma, determined that he would overcome the "problem" by teaching him to read and write. The result was that between the ages of eight and eleven he wrote stories and poems of exquisite beauty, which Dr. Oliver Sacks called "amazing and shocking". Their eloquence gave lie to all our assumptions about autism....

"Outthinkers" are entrepreneurs and corporate leaders with a new playbook. They see opportunities others ignore, challenge dogma others accept as truth, rally resources others cannot influence, and unleash new strategies that disrupt their markets. Outthink the Competition proves that business competition is undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift and that during such revolutions, outthinkers beat traditionalists.

Brainfluence explains how to practically apply neuroscience and behavior technology and behavior research to better market to consumers by understanding their decision patterns. This application, called neuromarketing, studies the way the brain responds to various cognitive and sensory marketing stimuli. Analysts use this to measure a consumer's preference, what a customer reacts to, and why consumers make certain decisions.

Stretching like an armor-toothed belt across Italy's upper thigh, the Gothic Line was the most fortified position the German army had yet thrown into the Allied forces' path. On August 25, 1944, it fell to Canadian troops to spearhead a major offensive: to rip through that fiercely defended line. This gripping chronicle tells, through the eyes of the soldiers who fought there, of the 28-day clash that ultimately ended in glory for the Canadians.

In this controversial book, Vaughn Heppner explores the theme of a shattered America facing the onslaught of the new colossus in the East: Greater China. The time is 2032, and the Chinese are crossing the polar ice and steaming through the Gulf of Alaska. They have conquered oil-rich Siberia and turned Japan into a satellite state. Now a new glacial period has begun, devastating the world’s food supply. China plans to corner the world’s oil market and buy the needed food for their hungry masses.

In the third book of the Invasion America Series, bitter glacial cooling has brought the Earth to the brink of starvation, making U.S. soil the most valuable in the world.From Mexico, the Chinese-dominated Pan-Asian Alliance and the South American Federation smash across the Rio Grande. It is the greatest assault in history.

In 2040, a shattered America squares off against the world! Once, America was the most powerful nation on Earth. Then disasters rocked her: a sovereign debt depression, bitter glacial cooling and the greatest military invasion in history out of Mexico - by the Chinese and Brazilian alliances. Now the U.S. reels like a drunken giant. The military fought savage battles in the Midwest last winter, driving the aggressors from Denver, but unable to kick them out of the country.

Projects require managers, but programs warrant maestros. Tasked with overseeing multiple project teams and thousands of activities, program managers have one of the most challenging jobs in the market. Too many overburdened managers are leaving otherwise great jobs, even the field entirely, because they haven’t equipped themselves with the right tools in hand to take on this complex but fulfilling job. How to Manage Complex Programs explains the ins and outs of program management and provides concrete and effective techniques for structuring deliverables, workflow, and staffing.

As the global war on terror enters its second decade, the United States military is engaged with militant Islamic insurgents on multiple fronts. But the post-9/11 war against terrorists is not the first time the United States has battled such ferocious foes. The forgotten Moro War, lasting from 1902 to 1913 in the islands of the southern Philippines, was the first confrontation between American soldiers and their allies and a determined Muslim insurgency.

Branding guru David Aaker explains how to eliminate the competition and become the lead brand in your market. This ground-breaking book defines the concept of brand relevance using dozens of case studies - Prius, Whole Foods, Westin, iPad, and more - and explains how brand relevance drives market dynamics, which generates opportunities for your brand and threats for the competition. Aaker reveals how these companies have made other brands in their categories irrelevant.

An epic story of science and technology at the very limits of human understanding: the monumental race to build the first atomic weapons.

Rich in personality, action, confrontation, and deception, The First War of Physics is the first fully realized popular account of the race to build humankind's most destructive weapon. The book draws on declassified material, such as MI6's Farm Hall transcripts, coded Soviet messages cracked by American cryptographers in the Venona project, and interpretations by Russian scholars of documents from the Soviet archives.

The invasion of California has begun, threatening to trigger World War III.

Greater China and its South American allies control Mexico, and their armies are poised on the Rio Grande, ready for the next phase of the North American conquest. It is 2039. The Chinese are launching their secret weapon against the American border fortifications. At the same time, an amphibious fleet steams toward San Francisco. The Chinese have formed the Pan Asian Alliance and signed a war-pact with the South American Federation. Glacial cooling has brought the Earth to the brink of starvation. Now, U.S. soil is the most valuable commodity in the world....

The Glory plunges immediately into the violence and upheaval of the Six-Day War of 1967 - and continues the dramatic story of Israel’s struggle for survival. A sprawling, action-packed novel, Wouk takes listeners through the terrors of the Yom Kippur War, the famous Entebbe rescue, and the airstrikes on Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor - ending with the final hope for peace.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) was one of the few men in history to fight simultaneously on moral, religious, political, social, economic, and cultural fronts. During his time as a lawyer in South Africa he developed his strategy of non-violence: the idea of opposing unjust laws by non-violent protest. He led the Indian National Congress party in three major campaigns against British rule, each culminating in his arrest.

The America’s Cup, first awarded in 1851, is the oldest trophy in international sports, and one of the most hotly contested. In 2000, Larry Ellison, co-founder and billionaire CEO of Oracle Corporation, decided to run for the coveted prize and found an unlikely partner in Norbert Bajurin, a car radiator mechanic who had recently been named Commodore of the blue collar Golden Gate Yacht Club.