Showing results by narrator "Mike Chamberlain" in All Categories

Bribery… coercion… intimidation. Sounds like a movie review of The Godfather, but unfortunately we’re talking about your federal government. So says best-selling author David Freddoso. In his new book, Gangster Government: Barack Obama and the New Washington Thugocracy, Freddoso exposes how the Obama administration bears a closer resemblance to the mob than to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

The first European settlers saw America as a paradise regained. The continent seemed to offer a God-given opportunity to start again and build the perfect community. Those messianic days are gone. But as Alex Krieger argues in City on a Hill, any attempt at deep understanding of how the country has developed must recognize the persistent and dramatic consequences of utopian dreaming. Even as ideals have changed, idealism itself has for better and worse shaped our world of bricks and mortar, macadam, parks, and farmland.

Leap of Power, written by psychologist and author Robert Schwebel, offers a fully articulated and proven programmatic alternative to the millions of adults who have a substance use disorder, and to their friends and families, and to the professionals who provide counseling to them. It casts a wide net with a welcoming and nonjudgmental tone, and is filled practical advice about how people can and do take control of their lives, including their use of alcohol and other drugs.

What is Vladimir Putin up to? This book examines how the mentality of Putin and his team - the code of Putinism - has shaped Russian politics over the past two decades. It explains not only the thoughts and ideas that motivate Putin's decisions, but also the set of emotions and habits that influence how Putin and his close allies view the world. While some observers portray Putin as either a cold-blooded pragmatist or a strident Russian nationalist, Taylor provides a more nuanced and compelling interpretation of Putin's motives and actions.

Charlotte, a mid-30s Long Island woman, has felt so alone since her promising career in neuroscience imploded. But she has an online support group; she has Rachel, a friend who has seen her through the worst of it; and now she also has Peter, a mysterious new boyfriend who has asked that their budding romance remain a total secret. That is why she is too scared to report his disappearance to the authorities when he van­ishes without a word.

Clarinda, Iowa, population 5,000, sits two hours from anything. There, between the cornfields and hog yards, is a ball field with a bronze bust of a man named Merl Eberly, a baseball whisperer who specialized in second chances and lost causes. The statue was a gift from one of Merl's original long-shot projects, a skinny kid from the ghetto in Los Angeles who would one day become a beloved Hall of Fame shortstop: Ozzie Smith.

In Partners in Crime, two-time number-one New York Times best-selling author Jerome R. Corsi, PhD, presents detailed research and expert testimony proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Clinton Foundation is a vast criminal conspiracy.

A unique joint memoir by a US marine and a conflict photographer whose unlikely friendship helped both heal their war-wounded bodies and souls.

Spaceflight is one of the greatest human achievements of the 20th century. The Soviets launched Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1957; less than 12 years later, the American Apollo astronauts landed on the moon.

The Left has seized on our economic troubles as an excuse to “blame the rich guy” and paint a picture of capitalism and the free market as selfish, greedy, and cruel. Exactly the opposite is true, says Father Robert Sirico in his thought-provoking book Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy. Father Sirico argues that a free economy actually promotes charity, selflessness, and kindness. In Defending the Free Market, he shows why free-market capitalism is not only the best way to ensure individual success and national prosperity but also the surest route to a moral and socially just society.

Movies do more than tell a good story. They are expressions of raw emotion, naked vulnerability, and unbridled rage. They often function in the same way as prayers, communicating our deepest longings and joys to a God who hears each and every one. In this captivating book, Filmspotting co-host Josh Larsen brings a critic's unique perspective to how movies function as expressions to God of lament, praise, joy, confession, and more.

David Kwong has astounded corporate CEOs, TED talk audiences, and thousands of other hyper-rational people, making them see, believe, and even remember what he wants them to. Illusion is an ancient art that centers on control: commanding a room, building anticipation, and appearing to work wonders. Illusion works because the human brain is wired to fill the gap between seeing and believing.

There's a bewildering array of management tools out there. And they all promise to help you excel at the toughest parts of your job: defining your organization's strategic direction, managing customers and costs, and boosting workforce performance. But just 30 percent of these tools deliver as intended. Why? As Jeremy Hope and Steve Player reveal in Beyond Performance Management, while many tools are sound in theory, they're misused by most organizations. For example, executives buy and implement a tool without first asking, "What problem are we trying to solve?"

When the Freeman family decided to restore a damaged creek in Washington's Olympic Peninsula - to transform it from a drainage ditch into a stream that could again nurture salmon - they knew the task would be formidable and the rewards plentiful. In Saving Tarboo Creek, Scott Freeman artfully blends his family's story with powerful universal lessons about how we can all live more constructive, fulfilling, and natural lives by engaging with the land rather than exploiting it.

Are we driving off a digital cliff and heading for disaster, unable to focus, maintain concentration, or form the human bonds that make life worth living? Are media and business doomed and about to be replaced by amateur hour? Both visionary and practical, I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works captures the zeitgeist of an emerging age, providing the understanding of how a radically changed media world is influencing human behavior.

Is privilege real or imagined? It's clear that issues of race and equality have come to the forefront in our nation's consciousness. Every week yet another incident involving racial tension splashes across headlines and dominates our news feeds. But it's not easy to unpack the origins of these tensions, and perhaps we wonder whether any of these issues really has anything to do with us. Ken Wytsma, founder of The Justice Conference, understands these questions.

Me 2.0 shows job seekers and established professionals alike how to leverage the power of online media for personal empowerment and career success. There is no job security anymore, which means that the way we manage our careers has forever changed. Now everyone in the world is your competition, and the single greatest differentiator you have is your personal brand. With social media tools, blogs, and mobile applications, there are endless opportunities to become known and connect with other people.

In the wake of one of the most tumultuous conventions in Republican history, the party of Lincoln nominated in 1940 a prominent businessman and Wall Street attorney for president. Though Wendell Willkie would lose to FDR, David Levering Lewis reveals in this news-making reclamation that the story of this Hoosier-born corporate chairman's life is the story of an America that could have been. Popular for his down-home Midwestern charm and unaffected candor, Willkie possessed a supple intellect and a concealed disdain for political opportunism that, had he not died prematurely, would have revolutionized American politics with its advocacy of bipartisanship and social responsibility.

Author Subrata Dasgupta named the two decades from 1970 to 1990 as the second age of computer science to distinguish it from the preceding genesis of the science and the age of the Internet/World Wide Web that followed. This book describes the evolution of computer science in this second age in the form of seven overlapping, intermingling, parallel histories that unfold concurrently in the course of the two decades.

The challenges and threats we as a nation face today are eerily similar to the conditions in the world before the beginning of the Reagan era. In his famous 1976 speech at the Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan helped define a way forward and strengthened the Republican Party. As we stand at a crossroads once again, we are fortunate to have a blueprint for restoring America’s greatness. Reagan has given us the principles to succeed.