Showing results by narrator "Peter Ganim" in All Categories

For over a quarter century, Iran has been one of America's chief nemeses. Ever since Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah in 1979, the relationship between the two nations has been antagonistic: revolutionary guards chanting against the Great Satan, Bush fulminating against the Axis of Evil, Iranian support for Hezbollah, and President Ahmadinejad blaming the U.S. for the world's ills.

Terry Orr is a man haunted by the murder of his wife and son - and by the tragedy that darkened the streets in lower Manhattan. Now more than ever, his life has purpose. He has to raise his 14-year-old daughter alone - and he has to find the killer who shattered his world.

Ash Rashid is a former homicide detective who can't stand the thought of handling another death investigation. In another year, he'll be out of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department completely. That's the plan, at least, until his niece's body is found in the guest home of one of his city's most wealthy citizens. The coroner calls it an overdose, but the case doesn't add up. Against orders, Ash launches an investigation to find his niece's murderer.

In a stately West Village townhouse, a wealthy socialite and her secretary are murdered. In the 24 hours that follow, a flurry of activity circles around their shocking deaths: The head of one of the city's last tabloids stops the presses. A cop investigates the killing. A reporter chases the story. A disgraced hedge-fund manager flees the country. An Iraq War vet seeks revenge. And an angry young extremist plots a major catastrophe.

It's Halloween, and John Justin Mallory's partner, Winnifred Carruthers, has been so busy preparing for the biggest holiday of the year (in his Manhattan, anyway) that she seems short of energy and pale. Mallory is worried that she's been working too hard. Then he notices the two puncture marks on her neck....

In We Can All Do Better, for the first time since the financial meltdown and since the worst of the intensifying political gridlock, Bill Bradley offers his own concise, powerful, and highly personal review of the state of the nation. He argues that government is not the problem. He criticizes the role of money and politics, explains how continuing on our existing foreign policy, electoral, and economic paths will mean a diminished future, and lays out exactly what needs to be done to reverse course.

What if, in a world where mathematics could be magic, the thing you desired most was also trying to kill you? Dom is a numerate, someone able to see and control numbers and use them as a form of magic. While seeking a mathematical item of immense power that has only been whispered about, it all goes south for Dom, and he finds himself on the run across three countries on two continents, with two unlikely companions in tow and a numerate of unfathomable strength hot on his tail.

As arts editor for one of Vienna's principal newspapers, Moriz Scheyer knew many of the city's foremost artists, and was an important literary journalist. With the advent of the Nazis he was forced from both job and home. In 1943, in hiding in France, Scheyer began drafting what was to become this book. Tracing events from the Anschluss in Vienna, through life in Paris and unoccupied France, including a period in a French concentration camp, contact with the Resistance, and more.

Edited by filmmaker Sean Conant and with contributions from some of the country's leading scholars including Sean Wilentz, Craig L. Symonds, and Harold Holzer, this volume explores how in the century and a half since it was delivered, the Gettysburg Address has proven a seemingly inexhaustible source of somber reflection and soaring hope, and why its language continues to resonate with so many people seeking meaning for their own struggles and sacrifices.

In the decade since 9/11, the United States has grown weaker: It has been bogged down by costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has spent billions of dollars on security to protect air travel and other transport, as well as the homeland more generally. Much of this money has been channeled into efforts that are inefficient by design and highly bureaucratic, a lack of coordination between and among the government, and an array of contractors making it difficult to evaluate the return on the enormous investment that we have made in national security.

In spring 2008, inspired by the Vietnam-era Winter Soldier hearings, Iraq Veterans Against the War gathered veterans to expose war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here are the powerful words, images, and documents of this historic gathering, which show the reality of life in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A member of the tiny but ancient Samaritan community has been murdered. The dead man controlled hundreds of millions of dollars of government money. If the World Bank cannot locate it within the next several days, all aid money to the Palestinians will be cut off. Visiting Nablus, Omar Yussef must solve the murder and find the money, or all Palestinians will suffer.

Rusty Sabin was a child when Cheyenne Indians raided the Sabin homestead and killed his mother. Just before she died, she put a rawhide cord with a green scabbard around his neck. Raised by Spotted Antelope and Bitter Root, Rusty, now known as Red Hawk, refuses the compulsory and brutal initiation into the tribe when he is 15. Abandoned as dead by his Cheyenne family, Red Hawk takes the advice of a white trader and rides to Witherell, the nearest settlement of whites.

When detective Terry Orr learns about the death of the mother of the madman he believes killed his wife and son, he discovers a stunning truth about the woman he adored -and the true nature of his obsessions.

If you have a supernatural problem that won't go away, you need Buck Carlsbad: private eye, exorcist, and last resort. Buck's got a way with spirits that no one else can match. He was normal, once. Until Something Horrible killed his parents and left him for dead. Buck has spent years using his gift to trace his family. It's his only hope of finding out what happened to them-and what made him the way he is. Now the voices say that something big is coming. Buck already knows what it is - a super high-tech bullet train....

A powerful book that is both fun to listen to and transformative, Living Serendipitously: Keeping the Wonder Alive motivates people to become "active dreamers" who live their dreams. A lively and joyful listen, it captures the joyful essence of "the art of living", explaining just how simple, easy and natural living serendipitously really is.

The murder of a leader of the Palestinian Martyrs Brigade leads to the arrest of George Saba, a Palestinian Christian accused of collaborating with the Israelis. Omar Yussef, a modest history teacher at a United Nations school in the West Bank, is impelled to investigate the murder to exonerate his former pupil, who he knows is innocent. As he struggles to save George, Omar Yussef is drawn into a complex plot where it is impossible to tell friend from enemy.

In A Grave in Gaza, Omar Yussef and his boss, Magnus Wallender, travel to the Gaza Strip for a routine inspection of the UN schools in the Gaza refugee camps. Upon their arrival they meet James Cree, the UN security officer for Gaza, who informs them that a teacher at one of their schools has been accused of spying and imprisoned.

The Blood Flag was last seen on October 18, 1944, when Heinrich Himmler displayed it proudly as he commissioned the Volkssturm, the Nazi Party's new militia created to avert the certain defeat that awaited Germany. Hitler believed the Blood Flag, Blutfahne, carried sacred powers. It held the blood of the first Nazi martyrs, those killed in the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923, when Hitler first tried to take over Germany. Several Nazis were shot and fell onto the flag, pouring their blood into the already red fabric.

It's hot and getting hotter this summer in Afghanipakiraqistan - the preferred name for the ambiguous stretch of the world where the US Special Forces operate with little outside attention. Team leader Dutch Shaw is missing his late grandmother. She was the last link he had to civilian life, to any kind of world of innocence.