Showing results by narrator "Sean Runnette" in All Categories

President Teddy Roosevelt was a colorful leader who had been a boxer as a young man and took a free-swinging, pugilistic approach to the presi­dency. A dedicated Progressive, he pushed through important initiatives like the Panama Canal plan by dint of sheer willpower and devoted much of his career seeking to whittle down the Supreme Court (and his own appointee Oliver Wendell Holmes).

Thomas Jackstraw, heir to a long family tradition of proud military men, was drummed out of West Point 20 years ago when he wouldn’t denounce fellow cadets for cheating. In the two decades since, he has traveled the world as a highly paid mercenary, training Third World armies and guerrilla factions and sometimes leading them into battle. After his young bride dies in a suspicious car crash, he grows disillusioned and retreats from the world of emotion.

A witty and touching novella about life on the periphery of academia and Hollywood. Robert is an adjunct, a university lecturer commuting between two-far flung Los Angeles colleges. He doesn't have health insurance - a serious problem when he develops a violent allergy to student writing. Meanwhile he's trying to keep his car, and his relationship with a successful but skittish TV writer, from falling apart.

The "universe" refers to all "observable things", ranging in size from the entire cosmos to elementary particles. A guide for an enjoyable visit to the universe, this small tome on fundamental physics, cosmology, Higgs bosons, time travel, and all that is unlike any other analogous book. Its scientific statements are correct or, at least, they coincide with the opinions held by the vast majority of experts. It establishes clear distinctions between things we know for sure and things that we know that we do not know, or we do not understand.

They told you the suburbs were a great place to live. They said nothing bad could ever happen here. But they were wrong. This collection of terrifying true stories exposes the dark side of life in the 'burbs—from corpses buried in backyards and ghosts lurking in fast food restaurants to UFOs, vanishing persons, bizarre apparitions, and worse.

President Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer from Georgia, won over an American electorate distrustful of government because of the Vietnam War and Watergate. He prevailed in 1976 with a pledge of honesty and open­ness. Carter, who viewed himself as an enlightened trustee of the Ameri­can people, championed the cause of affirmative action for minorities when much of the country still resisted this concept.

Lewis' day begins with a bitter quarrel with his wife and ends on a crumbling, overgrown jungle airstrip somewhere deep in war-torn Congo. With the cockpit on fire, the pilots of his plane make an emergency landing and within hours the plane is seized by rebel troops. When his wife makes a daring decision to search for him in Africa, The Curve of the World becomes a gripping, heartrending tale about regaining love and conviction.

A joyful collection of the most popular, provocative and unforgettable essays from the New York Times 'Modern Love' column. A young woman goes through the five stages of ghosting grief. A man's promising fourth date ends in the emergency room. A female lawyer with bipolar disorder experiences the highs and lows of dating. A widower hesitates about introducing his children to his new girlfriend. A divorcée in her 70s looks back at the beauty and rubble of past relationships.

The atom. The big bang. DNA. Natural selection. All ideas that have revolutionised science - and that were dismissed out of hand when they first appeared. The surprises haven't stopped: here, Michael Brooks, best-selling author of 13 Things That Don't Make Sense, investigates the new wave of unexpected insights that are shaping the future of scientific discovery. Through 11 radical new insights, Brooks takes us to the extreme frontiers of what we understand about the world.

John Tyler, despite his adroitness in establishing that he had inherited com­plete presidential power when his predecessor died in office, became a weak and maladroit chief executive during his own time in the White House. Yet, Tyler was not afraid to exercise his authority.

Danny Shapiro is an isolated teenager living with a dying mother, a hostile father, and no friends. To cope with these circumstances, Danny forges a reality of his own, which includes the sinister “Three Men in Black,” mysterious lake creatures with insect-like carapaces, a beautiful young seductress and thief, with whom Danny falls in love, and an alien-human love child who—if only Danny can keep her alive—will redeem the planet.

Heirs to the renowned German-American Bergdoll Beer fortune at a young age, the Bergdoll boys used their millions to become champion race car drivers and pioneer aviation heroes in the early 1900s. Grover, the most notorious, is celebrated for his daring record-setting flights in a Wright Brothers airplane. Erwin drives a powerful Benz to win a prestigious motor car race, the equivalent of the Daytona 500. Then they're snared by vengeful local military draft officials.

Dwight D. Eisenhower earned public acclaim during World War II as supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe. The first Republican since Herbert Hoover to occupy the White House, “Ike” planned to hold the line against further expansion of federal powers.

Thomas Jefferson displayed a rich, complex, and sometimes contradictory view of the Constitution. Among early presidents, Jefferson was the lead­ing advocate of limited federal power, instead favoring strong authority for the states.

Abraham Lincoln, who began his career as an unsophisticated frontier lawyer, became the first successful presidential candidate of the fledg­ling Republican Party. As the nation splintered into a civil war, Lin­coln wielded his constitutional authority with an inspired wisdom and effectiveness.

Hamilton Stark is a New Hampshire pipe fitter and the sole inhabitant of the house from which he evicted his own mother. He is the villain of five marriages and the father of a daughter so obsessed that she has been writing a book about him for years. Hamilton Stark is a boor, a misanthrope, a handsome man: funny, passionately honest, and a good dancer. The narrator, a middle-aged writer, decides to write about Stark as a hero whose anger and solitude represent passion and wisdom

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....

Ulysses S. Grant, a war hero who sought peace after the horrors of Civil War, struggled with a Congress that was divided on the issue of civil rights. He watched his own Supreme Court appointments undermine the new Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution as the Court inter­preted them in a narrow, even harsh, fashion. Grant never lost his sta­tus as an American hero.

President John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic elected as the nation’s chief executive, tried to dodge politically sensitive issues, maintaining a cau­tious, moderate approach. After riots by segregationists and the murder of innocent blacks in the Deep South, President Ken­nedy abandoned his cautious posture and advocated sweeping civil rights reform.

Harry S. Truman, a farmer and soldier from Missouri and a latecomer to politics, was thrust unexpectedly into the presidency when President Roo­sevelt died in office with World War II raging in Europe. Truman was a plain-speaking, decisive, and sometimes impulsive leader who dropped the atomic bomb to end the war.