Showing results by narrator "Johnny Heller" in All Categories

Three award-winning advertising executives prove that in business, Sacred Cows deserve to die. Don't get us wrong. While the authors have nothing against cows in general (they love steak) they do have a problem with Sacred Cows: Blindly doing things because...well...that's the way they've always been done. Formulas may be comforting, but they rarely work in the real world.

Starting for the first-place Cubs and hitting a career high of .274, for the first time in his life, Mickey Rawlings is feeling comfortable enough to buy furniture. But it is a time of mixed blessings; ominous battles are brewing at home and abroad. On the homefront, Major League baseball may be suspended for the duration of the war, anti-German sentiment is running high, and Mickey's best friend - a rookie named Willie Kaiser - has just been shot right on the diamond.

After facing a flamethrowing Little League hurler, 13-year-old “Stosh” Stoshack time-travels back to 1942 to join Satchel on an unforgettable road trip to the Negro League World Series. With nobody out and the series on the line, Stosh watches as Old Satch intentionally walks three straight batters, waves all but his catcher off the field, and then challenges the best hitter in baseball.

Joe Stoshack may be an awkward kid, but he knows baseball - and baseball cards. Since he was seven, he has been collecting them. So when his mother tells him he can earn five dollars by cleaning out an old lady's attic, Joe dreams of the cards he can buy.

Fans are cheering Troy Soos for his absorbing mysteries packed with old-time baseball lore. In The Cincinnati Red Stalkings, he whisks you back to the summer of 1921 when life was simpler and the world was a safer place - or was it?

Jim & Me finds Stosh and his nemesis Bobby Fuller joining forces to help one of their heroes. Native American baseball legend Jim Thorpe was an Olympic champion - but then lost his medals due to scandal. Now only Stosh and Bobby have the power to change history and give Jim the legacy he deserved.

Thirteen-year-old Mic Parsons is surrounded by weird people. He has a deaf and blind sister who clunks noisily around the house. And Vern Chortle has moved onto his street. A truly strange kid who wears outrageous socks and a beeper watch, Vern has decided Mic should be his best friend. Mic has a bigger problem, though. He’s got to pass math, or his parents won’t let him try out for the baseball team.

When Jake follows his grandfather Taw to the Hopi reservation where Taw was born, he finds trouble. The Hopi are upset about a Mexican wolf. Since there are no wolves in Arizona, some believe it's a ghost. Others want to kill it because it's hunting their livestock. Jake is sure of one thing: he must help his grandfather save the lobo. It could be the last of its kind.

Sixteen-year-old Travis is looking for a good time. A vacation in Mexico with his mother and two siblings might cramp his style, but he’s willing to take that risk for a chance to cruise the beaches. Some things keep gnawing at him, though, like leaving Dad crying at the airport, and watching Mom disappear with a mysterious ‘headache’ every afternoon that they’re in Mexico.

High-school senior Patrick Sheridan has the job of his dreams. He’s left his small Texas town for Los Angeles, where he’s a television reporter on Classroom Direct. As his face is beamed into schools across the country, Patrick becomes a celebrity. The pay is great, his wardrobe is lavish, and soon Patrick’s mailbox overflows with fan mail.

Ever since his mother died and his father went to Brazil for a scientific expedition, 14-year-old Jacob Lansa has been staying with his grandfather in Poughkeepsie. He longs to join his father and help him set up a jaguar preserve in the rain forest, but he can't miss school. When his father invites him down over spring break, he jumps at the chance.

Jacob Lansa is an ordinary New York kid - riding his bike, fixing himself snacks after school, and anxiously awaiting letters from his father in Kenya. Then, suddenly, his mother is killed in a terrible accident. Pushed aside by his stepfather, Jacob makes an impulsive decision to set out on his own to find his father. In Africa, with minimal supplies and only his trusty mountain bike for transportation, Jacob faces wild lions, terrible grassland fires, and vicious elephant poachers.

A resurgence of the Social Gospel is energizing many evangelicals, but what does the Bible say about the role of humanitarian works in the Christian life? As new covenant believers, Christians are called to a specific central task: to be ministers of God's message of salvation for sinners. At the same time, the New Testament justifies nearly every concern of the revitalized Social Gospel.

If we are completely honest, all of us have places, situations, and people whom we would rather avoid. Yet in a world that was governed strictly by geographical, religious, and social barriers, Jesus was audacious enough to cross the borders that kept people in safe categories. He demonstrated that the God-following life is one committed to entering the lives and stories of all people-a life committed to the lost spiritual discipline of border-crossing.

When ex-con and novelist JA Kingsley loses everything he's ever cared about, including his wife and teenage daughter, he abandons his home in order to start anew, write a new book, and, most of all, restart his fractured life. Traveling to the Adirondack Mountains, he checks himself into The Loon Lake Inn, a peaceful lake-side resort. For a brief moment, he feels at peace with himself and a world that has seemingly turned its back on him. But what he doesn’t expect is the lurid attraction that ignites between him and the wife of the owner of the Loon Lake Inn.

In New York's Catskill Mountains before the American Revolution, a Dutch American villager named Rip Van Winkle falls asleep and wakes up 20 years later without realizing how much time has passed. Unaware that the Revolutionary War has taken place, he must come to terms with the changes he encounters.

Will Rogers - pithy, political, and plainspoken - was one of the finest entertainers of his generation. As a great American humorist, it was considered an honor to be made fun of by him. By the time of his death in 1935, he had traveled the globe three times, written some four thousand articles, and was one of America's highest-paid film stars. He began his act in Vaudeville by saying, "All I know is what I read in the papers," while idly swinging a lasso he used for rope tricks.

In Roadside Americans, Jack Reid traces the rise and fall of hitchhiking, offering vivid accounts of life on the road and how the act of soliciting rides from strangers, and the attitude toward hitchhikers in American society, evolved over time in sync with broader economic, political, and cultural shifts. In doing so, Reid offers insight into significant changes in the United States amid the decline of liberalism and the rise of the Reagan Era.

With examples from the more than 130,000 campaigns developed by mobile marketing leader Hipcricket, Mobilized Marketing breaks down how brands of all sizes have performed in their mobile efforts, why some have failed, and how others bravely turned to mobile.

The zombie apocalypse is over. The humans have won. Life is back to normal. And Rip is bored as hell. It's not much of a life sitting in a call center in the poor town of Spanish Shanty, Florida, answering emails like a drone and listening to customer complaints. Rip was ruler of a tiny kingdom in the Lazy River waterpark, killing zombies by day and making passionate love at night. He misses the danger, the camaraderie, and the blistering love he once knew. He longs to feel Santana - his trusty machete - in his hand and Davia - the fiercest woman alive - in his arms once again.