Showing results by narrator "Stephen Graybill" in All Categories

Here is a travel audiobook with a difference: 10 chronological chapters from a year of wandering, from the Pacific Northwest to Tuscany and back again to the trout-laden streams of California. Join Bill Barich as he travels the globe, from the trout streams of Northern California to the auction ring at Saratoga, where millions of dollars may be gaveled away for a yearling thoroughbred; from seedy London pubs to a run-down Florentine palazzo during a glorious Italian spring.

From iconic books like Neuromancer to blockbuster films like The Matrix, virtual reality has long been hailed as the ultimate technology. But outside of a few research labs and military training facilities, this tantalizing vision of the future was nothing but science fiction. Until 2012, when Oculus founder Palmer Luckey - then just a rebellious teenage dreamer living alone in a camper trailer - invents a device that has the potential to change everything.

From the emergence of agriculture to the war in Ukraine, Andrew Leigh weaves a fascinating narrative punctuated by expert insights into major moments in human history–why the invention of the plough led to gender inequality, how certain diseases determined the patterns of colonialism, and even how New York’s robber barons inspired the board game Monopoly.

Humanity has often found itself on the precipice. We've survived and thrived because we've never stopped moving. In this eye-opening book, Johannes Krause, chair of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Humanity, offers a new way of understanding our past, present and future. Marshalling unique insights from archaeogenetics, an emerging new discipline that allows us to read our ancestors' DNA like journals chronicling personal stories of migration, Krause charts two millennia of adaption, movement and survival.

Sam Kleiner’s The Flying Tigers uncovers the hidden story of the group of young American men and women who crossed the Pacific before Pearl Harbor to risk their lives defending China. Led by legendary army pilot Claire Chennault, these men left behind an America still at peace in the summer of 1941 using false identities to travel across the Pacific to a run-down airbase in the jungles of Burma.

In this compelling dialogue, two of the world’s most influential thinkers reflect on the value of equality and debate what citizens and governments should do to narrow the gaps that separate us. Ranging across economics, philosophy, history, and current affairs, Thomas Piketty and Michael Sandel consider how far we have come in achieving greater equality. At the same time, they confront head-on the extreme divides that remain in wealth, income, power, and status nationally and globally.

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.

Steve Reich is a living legend in the world of contemporary classical music. As a leader of the minimalist movement in the 1960s, his works have become central to the musical landscape worldwide, influencing generations of younger musicians, choreographers and visual artists. He has explored non-Western music and American vernacular music from jazz to rock, as well as groundbreaking music and video pieces. He toured the world with his own ensemble and his compositions are performed internationally by major orchestras and ensembles.

A combat veteran leads a ragtag group of survivors in an all-out war against invading aliens! The world's cities have been destroyed by a ghastly holocaust from space. The few remaining souls eke out an existence in the ruins, ransacking skyscrapers for food and living in the city's sewers like vermin.

LBJ and McNamara: The Vietnam Partnership Destined to Fail details how President Lyndon B. Johnson and his secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, made choices central to US strategy in Vietnam, ending in defeat. The portrait emerges of men who knew that conventional victory was impossible but who could not or would not reverse the policies that they and the military pursued.

The world is shaped by complexity. In this enlightening book, Nobel Prize winner Giorgio Parisi guides us through his unorthodox yet exhilarating work to show us how. It all starts with investigating the principles of physics by observing the sophisticated flight patterns of starlings. Studying the movements of these birds, he has realized, proves an illuminating way into understanding complex systems of all kinds - collections of everything from atoms to planets to other animals like ourselves.

The use of native plants and contact with the Earth for healing purposes was commonplace for centuries from ancient Asia to the early Americas. In Europe, ancient Roman troops were reported to have walked upon hallowed ground after battle to receive healing energy from the Earth. Get Grounded, Get Well offers listeners the secret to better health through grounding. Grounding, the simple act of connecting to the always-abundant, nourishing energy of the Earth’s surface, has been scientifically and medically proven through numerous studies to have significant positive effects on our physiology.

An unflinching confrontation of humanity’s dark side, Brian De Palma’s crime drama film Scarface gave rise to a cultural revolution upon its release in 1983. Its impact was unprecedented, making globe-spanning waves as a defining portrait of the gritty Miami street life. From Al Pacino’s masterful characterization of Tony Montana to the iconic “Say hello to my little friend,” Scarface maintains its reputation as an unwavering game changer in cult classic cinema.

Toxic workplaces take all kinds of forms—whether it's a narcissist boss who belittles and bullies, colleagues who backstab and gaslight, "work friends" who drain you with endless complaining, or a culture of overwork and burnout. It can feel impossible to know whether to speak up and when to keep your head down. Do you try to address it head-on, go to HR, or play office politics? The HBR Guide to Navigating the Toxic Workplace will help you set boundaries and change what you can while helping you maintain your mental health and your self-respect in some of the toughest situations at work.

Founded in 1970, NPR is America’s most powerful broadcast news network. Despite being overshadowed by the larger and more glamorous PBS, public radio has long been home to shows such as All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and This American Life that captivate millions of listeners in homes, cars, and workplaces across the nation. NPR and its hosts are a cultural force and a trusted voice, and they have created a mode of journalism and storytelling that helps Americans understand the world in which we live.

A platoon of Marines and CIA operatives clash in a fight to the death with the drug lords and the Taliban, while in Washington, the president seeks a way out. This authentic war story vividly displays how a warrior must replenish his own moral courage and not allow ambition to coarsen his sense of decency.

Human exploration of Mars is the most ambitious and exciting scientific goal of the 21st century, and few people on earth know as much about this fascinating planet as Dr Larry Crumpler. As one of the long-term planning leads for the Mars Exploration Rover Project, he helped control the daily communications between NASA and the rovers roaming the planet to gather scientific data. In this magnificent compendium, Dr. Crumpler recounts the history of the red planet, from the earliest days when ancient astronomers turned their eyes to the heavens to the breakthrough discoveries.

For most of its history, the US avoided making political and military commitments that would entangle it in European-style power politics. Then, suddenly, it conceived a new role for itself as the world’s armed superpower and never looked back. In Tomorrow, the World, Wertheim traces America’s transformation to the crucible of World War II, especially in the months prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. As the Nazis conquered France, the architects of the nation’s new foreign policy came to believe that the US ought to achieve primacy in international affairs forevermore.

In the summer of 1961, a wall of barbed wire goes up quickly in the dead of night, officially dividing Berlin. Luisa Voigt lives in West Berlin, but her grandmother lives across the border and is now trapped inside the newly isolated communist country of East Germany. Desperate to rescue her grandmother and aware of the many others whose families have been divided, Luisa joins a secret spy network, risking her life to help bring others through a makeshift underground tunnel to West Germany. Their work is dangerous, and not everyone will successfully escape or live to see freedom.

Troias Drakos awakens to find that the world he knew is gone. Most of Earth's life was killed in a single instant, and those that survived have been granted powers and abilities that seem almost magical. Unfortunately, this world is filled with terrors and monsters that are equally powerful or far more so. Only by uniting and learning to use their new abilities will humanity survive. Troias has been given a unique set of powers. He must learn to master these and become a true Spirit Warrior. Will even his great abilities be enough to survive the Quantum Shift?