Showing results by narrator "Bruce Mann" in All Categories

Why Shakespeare? What explains our continued fascination with his poems and plays? In Living with Shakespeare, Susannah Carson invites 40 actors, directors, scholars, and writers to reflect on why his work is still such a vital part of our culture.

A young man leaves his backdoor Russian town and heads to Moscow, never to be poor again. With each day, he grows more and more desperate, until he meets an old geologist with an intriguing and surprisingly profitable offer: to join him on his trip to the depths of Siberia, the largest forest on the planet, and become a "black digger" - one of those who find and excavate mammoth tusks with the purpose of selling them as ivory to the highest bidder.

Evolution is one of the most important processes in life. It not only explains the detailed history of life on earth, but its scope also extends into many aspects of our own contemporary behavior - who we are and how we got to be here, our psychology, our cultures - and greatly impacts modern advancements in medicine and conservation biology. Perhaps its most important claim for science is its ability to provide an overarching framework that integrates the many life sciences into a single unified whole. Yet, evolution has been, and continues to be, regarded with suspicion by many.

We may think of "globalism" as a recent development but its origins date back to the fifteenth century and beyond, when seafarers pioneered routes across the oceans with the objectives of exploration, trade, and profit. These voyages only became possible after certain technical innovations—improvements in ship design, compasses, and mapping—enabled navigation across unprecedented distances.

Meals have always been important across societies and cultures, a time for friends and families to come together. An important part of relationships, meals are vital to our social health. Author Tim Chester sums it up: "Food connects." Chester argues that meals are also deeply theological - an important part of Christian fellowship and mission. He observes that the book of Luke is full of stories of Jesus at meals. These accounts lay out biblical principles. Chester notes, "The meals of Jesus represent something bigger."

Jesus at the Door offers a unique tool - an equipping card to use with anyone you know, anywhere - and practical, step-by-step instructions, helping listeners witness to friends, family, even strangers on the street. This tried-and-tested method is framed around nine points and takes about two minutes from introduction to salvation.

In this audiobook, Tim Chester makes a compelling case that God has given us truth we can touch for a reason: the sacraments embody the promises, grace, and presence of Christ. He looks throughout the Bible to explain how the sacraments are intended to actually shape Christians' lives by giving us physical bread, wine, and water we can point to as an expression of our union with Christ. The aim is to help listeners treasure baptism and Communion and approach them rightly so churches can receive the full benefit God intends them to physically bring us.

Based on their experiences during the First World War, the Reichswehr decided that the infantry support gun of the future should be an armored, motorized vehicle: the Sturmgeschütz III. The weapon was used in the 'fire brigade role' at hotspots along the Front, where it was much feared by enemy forces. This book tells the tale of Brigade 191, aka the 'Buffalo Brigade', who used the Sturmgeschütz III as they took part in Operation Barbarossa in the Ukraine, saw action during the fight for Greece and were deployed to the areas of heaviest fighting in the campaign against the Soviet Union.

Finance plays a key role in the prosperity of the modern world—but it also brings grave dangers. We seek to manage those threats with a vast array of sophisticated mathematical tools and techniques of financial risk management. Too often, though, we fail to address the greatest risk—the peril posed by our own behavior. Jon Danielsson argues that critical risk is generated from within, through the interactions of individuals and perpetuated by their beliefs, objectives, abilities, and prejudices.

In The Legend of the Kestrel, the first book in The Sylvan Chronicles, Thomas escapes the Shadow Lord's assassins, losing everything. Orphaned, alone and on the run, he discovers a world of magic and sorcery. With the help of a family he never knew he had he begins to master the Talent and the ways of the blade, acquiring the skills he'll need to survive.

The Economics of Poverty reviews critically past and present debates on poverty, spanning both rich and poor countries. The book provides an accessible new synthesis of current economic thinking on key questions: How is poverty measured? How much poverty is there? Why does poverty exist, and is it inevitable? What can be done to reduce poverty? Can it even be eliminated? The book does not assume that listeners know economics already.

Following the execution of the king in 1649, the new Commonwealth and then Oliver Cromwell set out to drive forward a puritan reformation of manners. They wanted to reform the church and its services, enforce the Sabbath, suppress Christmas, and spread the gospel. They sought to impose a stern moral discipline to regulate and reform sexual behaviour, drinking practices, language, dress, and leisure activities ranging from music and plays to football.

Rigorous, practical, and deeply reverent, Divine Providence speaks to the struggles of believers today as it tackles difficult questions with biblical truth. Does God govern the world-and how? Is he the author of sin? Why do good people suffer while bad people thrive? What does God's providence mean for how we should live our lives?

Cullen McJames will not have his honor sullied, certainly not by his clan's nemesis Laird Erik McQuade. So when McQuade tells the Court of Scotland that Cullen has stolen his daughter's virtue, Cullen steals the daughter instead. Since his brother wed a fetching lass, Cullen's been thinking he, too, needs a wife. A marriage could end the constant war between the clans. And looking on Bronwyn McQuade but once has put her in his dreams for a week.... But Bronwyn won't go quietly.

Centuries Will Not Suffice explores how different people responded to the Lithuanian Holocaust and the roles that they played. It considers the past history of the perpetrators and those who took great risks to save Jews, as well as describing the experiences of many who were caught up in the maelstrom.

Physiology is the science of life, and sets out to understand how living things work and what makes them distinct from the non-living. It considers how our bodies are supplied with energy, how they maintain their internal parameters, the ways in which we gather and process information, the ways we take action, and the creation of new generations.

An ordinary Russian guy, Sergei, picks a fight in his neighborhood, defending a little boy. Problem is, the guy he's just defeated vanishes into thin air, leaving Sergei to discover he now possesses the ability to turn time around. On top of that, Sergei can now travel between worlds. He acquires even more mysterious new skills and abilities. And he discovers there're many others just like him in our world. Sergei finds his own place in the secret community of the Seekers - creatures with superpowers.

Three years after the storming of the Bastille, the streets of Paris are roiling with the spirit of revolution. The citizens of France are enlivened by the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The monarchy of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette has been dismantled - with the help of the guillotine - and a new nation is rising in its place. Jean-Luc, an idealistic young lawyer, moves his wife, Marie, and their infant son from their comfortable life in Marseille to Paris in the hopes of joining the cause.

Field marshal and statesman Gustaf Mannerheim (1867-1951) was the most acclaimed and the most hated Finn of the twentieth century. After three decades of loyal and distinguished service in the Russian Tsarist army, he returned to his homeland in 1917 to defend its new independence. This iconic figure led the Finnish forces as Commander-in-Chief during both World Wars, then ended his career as President of Finland.

Humans are hard-wired for collaboration, and new technologies of communication act as a super-amplifier of our natural collaborative mindset. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines the emergence of a new kind of social collaboration enabled by networked technologies. This new collaborative society might be characterized as a series of services and startups that enable peer-to-peer exchanges and interactions though technology.