Showing results by narrator "George Newbern" in All Categories

Over the years, color has dazzled, enhanced, and clarified the world we see. The experimental palettes of painting, the advent of the color photograph, Technicolor pictures, color printing, and so on have created a vivid and vibrant continuum. These ways of representing reality in “living color” echo our evolutionary reliance on and indeed privileging of color as a complex and vital form of consumption, classification, and creation. It’s everywhere we look, yet do we really know much of anything about it?

The 2018 season was a coronation for the Boston Red Sox. The best team in Major League Baseball - indeed, one of the best teams ever - the Sox won 108 regular season games and then romped through the postseason, going 11-3 against the three next-strongest teams baseball had to offer. As Alex Speier reveals, the Sox’ success wasn’t a fluke - nor was it guaranteed. It was the result of careful, patient planning and shrewd decision-making that allowed Boston to develop a golden generation of prospects - and then build upon that talented core to assemble a juggernaut.

Since its release in fall 2017, the Dirty John podcast - about a con man who terrorises a Southern California family - has been downloaded more than 20 million times and will soon premiere as a scripted drama on Bravo starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana. The story, which also ran as a print series in the Los Angeles Times, wasn’t unfamiliar terrain to its writer, Christopher Goffard. Over two decades at newspapers from Florida to California, Goffard has reported probingly on the shadowy, unseen corners of society. This audiobook gathers together for the first time 'Dirty John' and the rest of his very best work.

After China announced a space mission to place its own flag next to the one US astronauts planted during the Apollo 11 mission, few people bat an eyelid. Shortly after this statement, Charlie Stephens, an 81-year-old former filmmaker, is murdered. The incident is made to look like an accident, but why?

An American myth and a contemporary portrait of the scars of the past that run through a family and of our desperate need to escape our history, to subsume it with pleasure - or to rise above it with glory. Hellsmouth, a wilful thoroughbred filly, has the legacy of a family riding on her. The Forges: one of the oldest and proudest families in Kentucky; descended from the first settlers to brave the Wilderness Road; as mythic as the history of the South itself; and now, first-time horse breeders.

James Webb, author of Fields of Fire, the classic novel of the Vietnam War - and a former U.S. Senator; Secretary of the Navy; recipient of the Navy Cross, Silver Star and Purple Heart as a combat Marine; and a self-described "military brat" - has written an extraordinary memoir of his early years, "a love story - love of family, love of country, love of service" in his words.

Rick Atkinson recounts the first 21 months of America’s violent war for independence. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, American militiamen and then the ragged Continental Army take on the world’s most formidable fighting force. Full of riveting details and untold stories, The British Are Coming is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. Rick Atkinson has given stirring new life to the first act of our country’s creation drama.

With The Firm, financial journalist Duff McDonald pulled back the curtain on consulting giant McKinsey & Company. In The Golden Passport, he reveals the inner workings of a singular nexus of power, ambition, and influence: Harvard Business School. Harvard University occupies a unique place in the public's imagination, but HBS has arguably eclipsed its parent in terms of its influence on modern society.

Jake Stiles has no idea what he's signing up for when he dashes into the rain to help a stranger and her dog who have been in a car accident, but fate has stepped in. Jenna Dunning was on her way to return her sister's high-energy border collie to a shelter after another failed attempt at a forever home for him when a distracted driver ran into them. Jenna is being taken to the hospital and must rely on a caring stranger to take charge of the terrified canine.

At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers - some of them only high school students - in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was not only years but light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers.

What did President Ronald Reagan think of Rocky IV? How did the Matthew Broderick film WarGames inform America's missile defense system? What Michael J. Fox movie made such an impression on President Reagan that he felt compelled to mention it in a speech to the Joint Session of Congress? Over the course of eight years, Mark Weinberg travelled to Camp David each weekend with Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

We're currently in the golden age of superhero blockbusters. Movies like Black Panther, Wonder Woman, Joker, and Avengers: Endgame routinely break box office records and compete for Oscars. Yet, Zack Snyder's 2017 behemoth Justice League - a veritable sure bet at the Hollywood casino - tanked miserably, and the behind-the-scenes reasons for the movie's demise are fascinating.

Grimm's Fairy Tales was first published in 1812 by the Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm. Though earlier editions included material deemed unpalatable to modern audiences, subsequent editions softened some of the violence and raciness of the original. Containing 62 stories, including "Briar Rose" ("Sleeping Beauty"), "Hansel and Grete", "Snow White", and "Rose Red", and "Ashputtel" ("Cinderella"), this collection was praised by W.H. Auden as among the founding works of Western culture.

A breakneck, edge-of-your-seat thriller that moves from a resurgent Russian threat in the Aleutian Islands to North Korean spy ships to secret Sudanese prisons as former marines Logan West and John Quick, now members of an FBI special task force, uncover a global conspiracy that threatens America's position in the current international balance of power.

Chance Meridian, finally able to take a long-delayed honeymoon after getting his murder squad up and running, has more interest in the beach than a new case. But the Governor has other plans. Thrust into an investigation far from home, Chance soon learns that the dead man had more enemies than is good for one’s health—most of them living under the victim’s own roof. Faced with a desperate murderer willing to kill again, Chance must untangle a web of deceit before one final act of violence changes his life forever.

Jason was a little short on creds, so he decided to get his mind scanned. It seemed like a good idea at the time: Get paid to license a copy of your mind for use in one of the numerous machines that run society. What could go wrong? Turns out, a lot. Jason wakes up in the middle of the radioactive wasteland that was created 50 years ago when aliens destroyed half the Earth. He has no idea why he's here, or what the hell he's supposed to do. Worst of all, he's no longer human.

The world is on the brink of apocalypse. Zero Day has come. The only thing more terrifying than millions of spiders is the realisation that those spiders work as one. But among the government, there is dissent: do we try to kill all of the spiders, or do we gamble on Professor Guyer's theory that we need to kill only the queens?

In Ben Sanders' American Blood, a former undercover cop now in witness protection finds himself pulled into the search for a missing woman. With film rights sold to Warner Bros wand Bradley Cooper attached to star and produce, American Blood is sure to be a blockbuster success.

Deep in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains sits a mansion, its image reflected perfectly on the still water of Flat Lake. Inside that estate are the savagely murdered bodies of a wealthy elderly couple. All evidence points to Jonathan - their mentally handicapped twenty-eight-year-old grandson - but Matt Fielder, his appointed defense lawyer, isn't convinced.

Discover the definitive inside account of how the Warriors, under the leadership of venture capitalist Joe Lacob and Hollywood producer Peter Guber, quickly became one of the most remarkable success stories ever, both in sports and business. In just five years, they turned a declining franchise with no immediate hope into one of the greatest teams in basketball, a period that included the rise of All-Star point guard Stephen Curry and two NBA championships in the past three years.