Showing results by narrator "Robert Petkoff" in All Categories

The End of the End of the Earth is a collection of Jonathan Franzen's essays and speeches from the past five years, in which he grapples with the most important and heated ethical subjects of the day: environmentalism, capitalism, wealth inequality, race, technology, and the role of art. He challenges us to ask difficult questions: What is our civic responsibility in the face of climate change, the greatest ever threat to our planet and species? Does technology give us a sense of control or community or is it stripping these from us?

Who was Jeffrey Epstein? A Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist unearths never-before-reported details in the most comprehensive account yet of the disgraced financier’s life, death, and criminal web, including the role of Ghislaine Maxwell.

The culmination of almost forty years at the highest levels of policymaking and scholarship, Grand Delusion is Steven Simon’s tour de force, offering a comprehensive and deeply informed account of U.S. engagement in the Middle East. Simon begins with the Reagan administration, when American perception of the region shifted from a cluster of faraway and frequently skirmishing nations to a shining, urgent opportunity for America to (in Reagan’s words) “serve the cause of world peace and the future of mankind.”

Tara Beckley is a senior at idyllic Hammel College in Maine. As she drives to deliver a visiting professor to a conference, a horrific car accident kills the professor and leaves Tara in a vegetative state. At least, so her doctors think. In fact, she's a prisoner of locked-in syndrome: fully alert but unable to move a muscle. Trapped in her body, she learns that someone powerful wants her dead - but why? And what can she do, lying in a hospital bed, to stop them?

Tragedy erupts in an instant. Lives are shattered irrevocably. A young man drives off into the night, leaving a girl injured, perhaps fatally so. From that cliffhanger opening, Sarah Leipciger takes listeners back and forward in time to tell the haunting story of one family's unraveling in rural logging country where the land is still the economic backbone.

Finally back in print - David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello's exuberant exploration of rap music and culture. Living together in Cambridge in 1989, David Foster Wallace and longtime friend Mark Costello discovered that they shared "an uncomfortable, somewhat furtive, and distinctively white enthusiasm for a certain music called rap/hip-hop." The book they wrote together, set against the legendary Boston music scene, mapped the bipolarities of rap and pop, rebellion and acceptance, glitz and gangsterdom.

When Justice John Paul Stevens retired from the Supreme Court of the United States in 2010, he left a legacy of service unequaled in the history of the Court. During his 34-year tenure, Justice Stevens was a prolific writer, authoring in total more than 1,000 opinions. In The Making of a Justice, John Paul Stevens recounts the first 94 years of his extraordinary life, offering an intimate and illuminating account of his service on the nation's highest court.

"Between the pages of this book lies the secret to the best-tasting chocolate in all the world. I promise, your taste buds will tingle. Your palette will sing! Oh no, have I accidentally tempted you to read this book? I will warn you, however, the most delicious things are never good for you...and this story is particularly scrumptious!"

An anthropologist and his daughter travel to Kermunkachunk, the capitol of Chalazia, to conduct research for an ethnography on the Chalazian Mafia Faction (a splinter group of the Chalazian Children's Theater). The book takes place over the course of a night at the Bar Pulpo, Kermunkachunk's #1 spoken-word karaoke bar, where conversations are actually being read from multiple karaoke screens arrayed around the barroom. Moreover, it's Thursday, "Father/Daughter Nite", when the bar is frequented by actual fathers and daughters as well as couples cosplaying fathers and daughters.

Bagley isn't your typical trouble-making weasel - and he doesn't mind if his non-weaselly ways prompt teasing from his friends. For while other young weasels dance under the pines, Bagley thinks about Bridget, the mesmerizing fish who lives in a pond down the brook from his den. As the two unlikely friends grow closer, Bagley realizes that there is big trouble in Bridget's future.

These days, even a preschooler's bedtime can be rushed and tense after a busy day of classes, playdates, and increasing screen time. "Winding down" has become more difficult for everyone in the family. Read Me to Sleep stories are designed to soothe the child and the adult, with calming text and prompts that effortlessly encourage both reader and listener to breathe deep and dream.

In his behind-the-scenes account of the attempts to bring the president to justice - from filing the very first legal actions against him, through the Mueller report, to the turbulent impeachment and trial, to the president’s ongoing wrongdoing today - Norman Eisen, at the forefront of the battle since the day of Trump’s inauguration, pulls back the curtain on the process.

In the best-selling tradition of The Presidents Club and Presidential Courage, White House history as told through the stories of the best friends and closest confidants of American presidents.

They fight without conscience or remorse. Their only job is to kill. They are the most ruthless enemy we have ever faced. And they are one millionth our size. When Dr. Lou Welcome fills in last minute for his boss at a national conference in Atlanta he brings along his best friend, Cap Duncan. But an accident turns tragic when Cap injures his leg while running. Surgeons manage to save the leg, but the open wound is the perfect breeding ground for a deadly microbial invader committed to eating Cap alive from the inside out.

Everyone in Denmark knew that Yousef Ahmed, a refugee from Iraq, brutally murdered the right-wing politician Sanne Melgaard. So, when part-time blues musician, frustrated home renovator, and full-time private detective Gabriel Præst agrees to investigate the matter because his ex—the one who got away—asked him to, he knew it was a no-win case. But as Gabriel starts to ask questions, his face meets with the fists of Russian gangsters; the Danish prime minister asks him for a favor; and he starts to realize that something may be rotten in the state of Denmark.

Hans-Åke Lilja, founder of Lilja's Library, has compiled a brand-new anthology of horror stories to celebrate 20 years of running the number-one Stephen King news website on the web! This anthology includes both original stories like a brand-new novella by John Ajvide Lindqvist (Let the Right One In), very rare reprints like "The Blue Air Compressor" by Stephen King, and at least one classic tale that inspired Lilja's love of the macabre at a very young age!

Cass finds herself alone and disoriented, a stranger in a dream-like, medieval world. Where is she? Who is she? With the help of a long-lost relative, she begins to uncover clues and secrets--piecing together her family's history as she fights her way back to the present world. Meanwhile, back home, Cass is at the hospital in a deep coma. Max-Ernest knows she ate Time Travel Chocolate - and he's determined to find a cure. Can our expert hypochondriac diagnose Cass's condition before it's too late?

Pamela Colman Smith, newly arrived from New York to her birthplace of London, is received as an oddball in Victorian society. Her second sight helps her in her new job: illustrating tarot cards for the Golden Dawn, a newly formed occult group. But when Pamela refuses to share her creations with Aleister Crowley, a controversial magician, he issues a threat: give up the cards’ power, or he’ll harm her muses.

Adam Austin hasn't spoken to his brother in years. When they were teenagers, their sister was abducted and murdered, and their devastated family never recovered. Now Adam keeps to himself, scraping by as a bail bondsman. Kent Austin is the beloved coach of the local high school football team, a religious man and hero in the community. After years of near misses, Just before playoffs begin, the town and the team are thrown into shock when horrifically, impossibly, another teenage girl is found murdered.

Disruption by digital technologies? That's not a new story. But what is new is the "wise pivot", a replicable strategy for harnessing disruption to survive, grow, and be relevant to the future. It's a strategy for perpetual reinvention across the old, now, and new elements of any business. Rapid recent advances in technology are forcing leaders in every business to rethink long-held beliefs about how to adapt to emerging technologies and new markets. What has become abundantly clear: in the digital age, conventional wisdom about business transformation no longer works, if it ever did.