Showing results by narrator "David De Vries" in All Categories

When former computer-crimes prosecutor Chris Bruen and retired hacktivist Zoey Doucet open their San Francisco law firm, it's the best day of their professional lives. That is, until their first client walks through the door. Ian Ayres is an "ethical hacker" who was hired by a company to test the security of its online systems. On the job, he uncovered some highly classified information: the existence of a top-secret government surveillance agency and its Skeleton Key, a program that can break any form of encryption.

In the newly revised second edition of Bridging the Soft Skills Gap: How to Teach the Missing Basics to the New Hybrid Workforce, veteran business advisor, speaker, and consultant Bruce Tulgan delivers a practical and incisive roadmap to developing crucial professionalism, critical thinking, and teamwork skills. An essential leadership handbook for executives, managers, and other business leaders, Bridging the Soft Skills Gap is a must-have resource for human resources professionals, team leaders, and front-line employees who deal with promising, but unpolished, talent.

Little is what it seems to be in a leafy Savannah neighborhood as members of an afternoon cocktail and dog walking club mourn a neighbor’s death. Jealousies surface when friends vie for the widower running for mayor. An old woman with an infamous uncle plots to avenge a wrong. Memories haunt a once successful children’s writer. And a model has won the trip of a lifetime. But a killer lurks and secrets unfold, as does a web of deceit. Is anyone really who he or she seems to be?

In Special Duty, Richard J. Samuels dissects the fascinating history of the intelligence community in Japan. Looking at the impact of shifts in the strategic environment, technological change, and past failures, he probes the reasons why Japan has endured such a roller-coaster ride when it comes to intelligence gathering and analysis, and concludes that the ups and downs of the past century - combined with growing uncertainties in the regional security environment - have convinced Japanese leaders of the critical importance of striking balance between power and insight.

In 1980, Jerry A. formed Poison Idea, a Portland-based punk band that gave voice to disaffected and disenfranchised youth for over thirty years. As happened to so many punk bands, Jerry A. and Poison Idea also went all in on drugs and drinking as they toured the country, spiraling out of control and blowing both the band and their lives apart. A memoir of a time and a place and a movement, as well as a deep conversation about the memories and moments we leave behind, Black Heart Fades Blue is a deep exploration of an unconventional life.

In The Free Speech Century, two of America's leading First Amendment scholars, Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone, have gathered a group of the nation's leading constitutional scholars to evaluate the evolution of free speech doctrine since Schenk and to assess where it might be headed in the future. The Free Speech Century will serve as an essential resource for anyone interested in how our understanding of the First Amendment transformed over time and why it is so critical both for the United States and for the world today.

The year was 1922: World War I had just come to a close, the Ottoman Empire was in decline, and Asa Jennings, a YMCA worker from upstate New York, had just arrived in the quiet coastal city of Smyrna to teach sports to boys. Several hundred miles to the east in Turkey's interior, tensions between Greeks and Turks had boiled over into deadly violence. Mustapha Kemal, now known as Ataturk, and his Muslim army soon advanced into Smyrna, a Christian city, where a half a million terrified Greek and Armenian refugees had fled in a desperate attempt to escape his troops.

Somewhere in Arizona’s Chocolate Mountains lie the Big Maria Mine and a wealth of gold lost for 100 years. There’s only one problem: Those mountains are now the home of the US Army Proving Ground, the world’s largest active artillery range. But for Harry, Ricky, and Frank, three down-at-the-heels guys with few dollars but plenty of dreams, the gold offers each of them a chance for a new life. Are scuba diving through an underwater ghost town; facing down a hungry mountain lion; doing the hesitation waltz across a minefield; matching wits with potheads, pit bulls, and bikers; and braving the might of Uncle Sam’s full arsenal worth it?

In full and intricate detail, featuring an amazing cast of characters from the worlds of politics, athletics, entertainment and more, this is the story of how President Theodore Roosevelt helped shepherd in a sports and fitness revolution that forever changed the complexion of the United States.

Immediately after the armistice was signed in November, 1918, an American journalist asked Paul von Hindenburg who won the war against Germany. He was the chief of the German General Staff, co-architect with Erich Ludendorff of Germany's Eastern Front victories and its nearly war-winning Western Front offensives, and he did not hesitate in his answer. "The American infantry," he said. He made it even more specific, telling the reporter that the final death blow for Germany was delivered by "the American infantry in the Argonne."

When New York Times foreign correspondent J. B. Collins hears rumors that an al-Qaeda splinter cell has captured a cache of chemical weapons inside Syria, he knows this is a story he must pursue at all costs. Does the commander of the jihadist faction really have the weapons? If so, who is the intended target? The U.S.? Israel? Or could it be Jordan?

The top Billboard Hot 100 single of 1966 wasn't The Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black" or the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" - it was "The Ballad of the Green Berets", a hyper-patriotic tribute to the men of the Special Forces by Vietnam veteran, US Army Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler. But Sadler's clean-cut, all-American image hid a darker side, a Hunter Thompson-esque life of booze, girls, and guns. Unable to score another hit song, he settled in Central America, ran guns, and allegedly trained guerrillas.

In 1980, Jerry A. formed Poison Idea, a Portland-based punk band that gave voice to disaffected and disenfranchised youth for over thirty years. As happened to so many punk bands, Jerry A. and Poison Idea also went all in on drugs and drinking as they toured the country, spiraling out of control and blowing both the band and their lives apart.

George Macartney's disastrous 1793 mission to China plays a central role in the prevailing narrative of modern Sino-European relations. Summarily dismissed by the Qing court, Macartney failed in nearly all of his objectives, perhaps setting the stage for the Opium Wars of the 19th century and the mistrust that still marks the relationship today. The Last Embassy tells the story of the Dutch mission of 1795, bringing to light a dramatic but little-known episode that transforms our understanding of the history of China and the West.

Ludwig Bemelmans's charming intergenerational friendship with the late-in-life "First Lady of Interior Decoration" provides an enormously enjoyable nostalgia trip to the sun-soaked glamour of Los Angeles, where de Wolfe surrounded herself with classic movie stars and a luminous parade of life's oddities.

A Lincoln Navigator carries three well-dressed people through the barren New Jersey salt flats. The trip is uncomfortable but necessary. Their target has no phone, certainly no email, and never answers his mail. But August Jorgenson is no country bumpkin. Before retiring, he was one of the most famous judges in the country, and only opinions like his fierce opposition to the death penalty kept him from a seat on the Supreme Court.

For 25 years, Dr. Pietro Bartolo has run the lone medical clinic on the Italian island of Lampedusa. In that time he has rescued, welcomed, and cared for many of the hundreds of thousands of desperate migrants from the Middle East and Africa who have washed up on the island's shores. In this inspiring account of his life and work, Bartolo shares his quiet dignity, unshakable moral center, and inspirational message - "We can't and we won't be governed by our fears."

In 1919 the Treaty of Versailles stripped Germany of its overseas colonies. This sudden transition to a post-colonial nation left the men and women invested in German imperialism to rebuild their status on the international stage. Remnants of an earlier era, these Kolonialdeutsche (Colonial Germans) exploited any opportunities they could to recover, renovate, and market their understandings of German and European colonial aims in order to reestablish themselves as "experts" and "fellow civilizers" in discourses on nationalism and imperialism.

David Portland works security for America’s British Embassy in London. His life is upended when his son Trevor dies mysteriously in Nigeria, while employed by a suspicious security/mercenary company known as SureSafe. One night, Portland sees a man in a bar wearing a bracelet - a family heirloom, which he had given his son - and attacks the man.

Grampa Bender couldn’t run the Bed and Biscuit animal boardinghouse without the help of Ernest the mini-pig, Gabby the Vietnamese mynah bird, and his young cat, Milly. These three animals think of themselves as Grampa’s family, and they have always assumed he felt the same way.