Showing results by narrator "Jonathan Yen" in All Categories

Phillip Springer has been grading diamonds since he was eight years old. His eyes are as sharp as any magnifying glass, and he has used them to turn the family diamond business into a global concern. Besides their love of diamonds, the Springers have another interest: the occult, ESP, and the mystical power of gems. Phillip has never fully believed in such superstition, but a sudden death in his family forces him to contemplate things he thought impossible.

The train slips across the horizon, its serial numbers painted over, its cars empty save for the soldiers who guard the cargo. Its mission is classified, but there are four men waiting in the night, keeping a close eye on the mysterious train. They know it carries something far more dangerous than a nuclear bomb, and they will do anything to get their hands on it. Unlocking the train's secrets requires a daring crime, and victory seems within their reach. But they did not count on Hazard.

People do bad things. They misspeak, mislead, and misbehave. They lie, cheat, steal, and kill. Often, afterward, they apologize. But what makes a successful apology? Why does Joe Biden's 2007 apology for referring to Barack Obama as "articulate and bright" succeed, whereas Mel Gibson's 2006 apology for his anti-Semitic tirade fails? Naturally, the effectiveness of an apology depends on the language used, as well as the conditions under which we offer our regrets.

A follow-up to his 1970 science fiction collection, The General Zapped an Angel, Fast’s book of 13 new science fiction stories is brisk and engrossing. In "The Hoop", a scientist builds a portal to an unknown destination, which the mayor of New York City hijacks to use as a garbage dump until the location’s surprising, and hilarious, revelation. And in "The Egg", set 3,000 years in the future, a research team discovers an egg, something they have never seen before, cryogenically frozen in a nuclear bunker. These 13 stories are bizarre, hilarious, poignant, and sure to entertain.

Insulting the president is an American tradition. From Washington to Trump, presidents have been called "lazy," "feeble," "pusillanimous," and more. Our leaders have been derided as "ignoramuses," "idiots," "morons," and "fatheads," and have been compared to all manner of animals - worms and whales and hyenas, sad jellyfish, strutting crows, lap dogs, reptiles, and monkeys. Political insults tell us what we value in our leaders by showing how we devalue them. In Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels, linguist Edwin Battistella collects over 500 insults aimed at American presidents.

Another US presidential election is underway, and Americans are engaged in the time-honored tradition of judging candidates by their personalities. It may sound unwise to pick the future leader of the free world based on personality traits rather than platforms, policies, and ideology, but that is exactly what Americans do. In fact, personality explains the results of the last 22 US elections - and can predict who will win in 2020. Personality expert Merrick Rosenberg and coauthor Richard Ellis have developed a system that reveals the pattern of who takes the White House and why.

Mark Doty has always felt haunted by Walt Whitman's bold, perennially new American voice, and by his equally radical claims about body and soul and what it means to be a self. In What Is the Grass, Doty - a poet, a New Yorker, and an American - keeps company with Whitman and his Leaves of Grass, tracing the resonances between his own experience and the legendary poet's life and work.

In this gripping narrative history, Seth G. Jones reveals the CIA's involvement in a landmark victory for democracy during the Cold War. In 1983, while Soviet- backed Polish prime minister Wojciech Jaruzelski worked to crush a budding opposition movement through martial law, the CIA launched a sophisticated intelligence campaign supporting dissident groups. With President Ronald Reagan's support, American funds bankrolled clandestine newspapers, broadcasting, and information warfare. This initiative, code-named QRHELPFUL, proved vital in establishing a free and democratic Poland.

On July 17, 2018, starting an unjust war became a prosecutable international crime alongside genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The Crime of Aggression is Noah Weisbord's riveting insider's account of the high-stakes legal fight to enact this historic legislation and hold politicians accountable for the wars they start. Weisbord, a key drafter of the law for the International Criminal Court, takes listeners behind the scenes of one of the most consequential legal dramas in modern international diplomacy.

In his 1976 book, The Long Run Solution, Joe Henderson suggested that becoming truly accomplished at running (or at anything) doesn't typically require us to perform superhuman feats. In fact, success is frequently realized by those who simply do the things anyone can do that most of us never will. In What Anyone Can Do, with the help of Leo Bottary's Year of the Peer podcast guests, you'll discover that if you surround yourself with the right people, you'll do the things anyone can do far more often.

The Apathy of Empire reveals just how significant Cambodia was to U.S. policy in Indochina during the Vietnam War, broadening the lens to include more than the often-cited incursion in 1970 or the illegal bombing after the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. This theoretically informed and thoroughly documented case study argues that U.S. military intervention in Cambodia revealed America's efforts to construct a hegemonic spatial world order.

An airplane lands at a desolate airport in a remote Colorado ski town. Onboard, Dr. Lyle Martin, a world-class infectious disease specialist, is brusquely awakened to shocking news: Everyone not on the plane appears to be dead. A lethal new kind of virus may have surfaced, threatening our survival, and now Martin - one of the most sought after virologists on the planet until his career took a precipitous slide - is at the center of the investigation.

1944. The USS Intrepid set sail on its first combat voyage, only to be struck by a Japanese torpedo plane, jamming its rudder at a forty-five-degree angle. It could only sail in circles amid treacherous waters. The task force abandoned ship as it tried to make the 3,300-mile voyage to Pearl Harbor. For a day, the captain was able to slalom, alternating use of the ship’s engines, but the seas became too perilous. Until one resilient crewman came up with the ingenious idea of rigging a twenty-eight-inch-high sail on the second deck to steer the ship home safe.

Rosenberger brings together ideas from philosophy and cognitive science to leverage a postphenomenological perspective that reveals how our smartphones make us such bad drivers. Reviewing decades of empirical studies in cognitive science, he shows that we have developed habits of perception regarding our compulsive technology use—habits that may wrest our attention away from the road.

Learn how to be a professional brewmaster. Everything you need to recreate iconic beer recipes is available in this impactful beer-making book, including facts to enhance your new skills. Dive into the brewing culture that has shaped the drink that we know and love today through informative beer history facts to take inspiration from. From the first hop garden to modern advances, you'll not only find a new appreciation for international beer, but also enjoy a glass of delicious history.

Through the lens of Sammy Davis Jr.'s six-decade career in show business—from vaudeville to Vegas to Broadway, Hollywood, and network TV—Dancing Down the Barricades examines the workings of race in American culture. The title phrase holds two contradictory meanings regarding Davis's cultural politics: Did he dance the barricades down, as he liked to think, or did he simply dance down them, as his more radical critics would have it?

Bursting with humorous stories about local characters and vivid description of French landscapes and customs gleaned from thirty-five years in the country, Raising Olives in Provence tells the story of how the author improbably came to renovate a run-down house and raise olive trees in the hills above Saint-Tropez.

How the World Listens explores our everyday and professional interactions with sound. The book aims to uncover the human relationship with sound across the world and to reveal practical ways in which a better understanding of listening can help us in our daily lives.

The University of California, Berkeley—widely known as "Cal"—is admired worldwide as a bastion of innovation and a hub for progressive thought. Far less known are the university's roots in plunder, warfare, and the promotion of white supremacy. As Tony Platt shows in The Scandal of Cal, these original sins sit at the center of UC Berkeley's history.

Gunflint Burning is a comprehensive account of the dramatic events around the Ham Lake fire of 2007, one of the largest wildfires in Minnesota history. In sharp detail, Cary J. Griffith describes the key events of the fire as they unfold, transporting listeners to the front lines of an epic struggle that was at times heroic, tragic, and sublime.