Showing results by narrator "Eric Jason" in All Categories

J.R.R. Tolkien's novels of Middle-earth—The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Silmarillian—have become some of the most famous, and most beloved, literary works of the twentieth century. Even if you've never read the novels and have only seen the films, you know that the world of Middle-earth is a complicated one. What you'll find in The Oigins of Tolkien's Middle-earth For Dummies is a basic guide to some of the possible linguistic and mythological origins of Middle-earth, plus a rudimentary analysis of its many themes and lessons for our world.

Erron plans to retire from adventuring to a little farm and live out his days raising crops in peace. Little did he know that fate had other plans for him. When he purchases cropland of his own, he finds that the things he places in the soil don't become plants. They become monsters.

John Tyler finally built the life he wanted. But his past casts a long shadow. Eight years retired from the army, Tyler manages his PTSD and begins a job as a classic car mechanic. He's a single dad to Lexi, who's about to enter college. Life is looking up. Then, everything comes crashing down. Tyler's former commanding officer is out of prison and hellbent on revenge. Their mutual hatred has been simmering for years. When it finally boils over, everyone and everything in Tyler's life is threatened.

Benjamin Franklin once said, "There never was a good war or a bad peace." But what determines whether war or peace is chosen? Award-winning sociologist Michael Mann concludes that it is a handful of political leaders—people with emotions and ideologies, and constrained by inherited culture and institutions—who undertake such decisions, usually irrationally choosing war and seldom achieving their desired results.

In the early 1800s, three young men strode onto the national stage, elected to Congress at a moment when the Founding Fathers were beginning to retire to their farms. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, a champion orator known for his eloquence, spoke for the North and its business class. Henry Clay of Kentucky, as dashing as he was ambitious, embodied the hopes of the rising West. South Carolina's John Calhoun, with piercing eyes and an even more piercing intellect, defended the South and slavery.

The son of Sicilian immigrants, Camillo Carmine Galante was raised in Manhattan's Little Italy and by all accounts born bad. By fifteen he was terrorizing the streets of New York's Lower East Side, scoring high marks for the "errands" he was running for his La Cosa Nostra elders. When he turned twenty, Galante was already one of the mob's top enforcers­-a sadistic thrill killer and clinically diagnosed psychopath with big dreams.

When Max Cromwell joined the military for a year of service, he didn't think he'd become a soldier on an alien world. But then the Zoos Collective had kidnapped him along with other humans to be their army in the Cosmic Games, a conflict between the four godlike civilizations of the Intergalactic Consortium of Civilized Beings. Trapped on the planet Alpha Ludus, Max and his people have been struggling to survive, while simultaneously learning to cultivate mana and develop supernatural abilities. But unlike his fellow humans, Max wields extraordinary powers no one else has been able to channel.

I had a plan; a good one that I thought through really well. But it only took a single cunning dwarf accompanied by two goons to force me into acting earlier than I’d planned to.

The Grove is a perilous wound on the face of the planet, home to the most fearsome creatures in all of Rock. Death himself has trod these paths, leaving in his wake freakish mutants who still bear within themselves a piece of his morbid nature.

In Longshot, investigative journalist David Heath takes listeners inside the small group of scientists whose groundbreaking work was once largely dismissed but whose feat will now eclipse the importance of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine in medical history. With never-before-reported details, Heath reveals how these scientists overcame countless obstacles to give the world an unprecedented head start when we needed a COVID-19 vaccine.

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Revenge of Geography comes a sweeping yet intimate story of the most influential humanitarian you’ve never heard of - Bob Gersony, who spent four decades in crisis zones around the world.

This collection of original essays covers the turf that made Didion a sensation - Hollywood and Patty Hearst; Malibu, Manson and the Mojave; the Summer of Love and the Central Park Five - while bringing together some of the finest voices of today's Los Angeles and beyond. Slouching Towards Los Angeles is a love letter and thank you note; personal memoir and social commentary; cultural history and literary critique.

A groundbreaking new history, telling the stories of hundreds of African-American activists and officeholders who risked their lives for equality - in the face of murderous violence - in the years after the Civil War. By 1870, just five years after Confederate surrender and 13 years after the Dred Scott decision ruled blacks ineligible for citizenship, Congressional action had ended slavery and given the vote to black men. That same year, Hiram Revels and Joseph Hayne Rainey became the first African-American U.S. senator and congressman respectively.

Hiroshima was one of the great tragedies of WWII. But out of the devastation of the first atomic bomb, some survivors emerged, 25 courageous Japanese women who became part of a remarkable humanitarian epic. Victims of the atomic blast that ushered in the Nuclear Age, these women were brought to the United States in 1955, where they underwent reconstructive surgery to repair the ravages of the bomb. Schoolgirls when the bomb destroyed their futures, they began to remake their lives and re-create themselves. This is the compassionate, often bittersweet chronicle of the Hiroshima Maidens.

Somalia was Tom Pecora's first deployment as a CIA Protective Operations Cadre (POC) officer, responsible for providing protective operations support in hostile areas of the world. He later headed up a series of the Agency's undisclosed protective operations teams. From 1989 until his retirement in 2013, he was assigned to multiple war zones across Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, doing the kind of work few are even aware exists.

So you want a brilliant cut for your rough diamond? In that case, you should get on with the cutting! That’s how I found myself looking for a suitable lapidarist. Since I was anything but your run-of-the-mill little rock, the master crafter also had to be special. The one fitting the bill happened to be truly excellent, but, alas, he did have his quirks, too. A recluse living on top of a tall, barren mountain, he did not take kindly to most uninvited intruders, sending them back rolling down the hill in the most unceremonious of manners. And he had plenty of secrets, too.

No empty child has ever reached a year of age, yet I am now 13. It has been a long and miserable 13 years, where the best I can manage to do is walk with difficulty. Sometimes, I cannot even manage that.

Tyler is back to work as a classic auto mechanic. When a young woman - and car enthusiast - brings her vintage Porsche in for some work, Tyler is glad to talk shop with her. When she never returns for her car, he wonders what's going on. His daughter, Lexi, doesn't want him to investigate. Something bothers Tyler about what happened, though, and he's determined to uncover what happened to the mysterious woman from the shop.

Thirteen months after Trump allegedly captured the allegiance of "the white working class", a strike wave - the first in over four decades - rocked the United States. Inspired by the wildcat victory in West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and across the country walked off their jobs and shut down their schools to demand better pay for educators, more funding for students, and an end to years of austerity.

Assemble Artifacts: A short story magazine that assembles a thrilling new mix of stories from genres including horror, science-fiction, comedy, and suspense. Buried at the heart of every story in the magazine is a unique artifact, an object that has inspired our storytellers to create a big idea, an irresistible question, a new immersive world, or a sense of wonder. Includes “Nothing Was Already Here” by April Wolfe, “Labyrinth Loop” by Isabel J. Kim, “Divine” by Michael Griffo, “Dismantle” by Joshua Sky, “The Twelve Gates Barber Shop” by K.T. Jayne, and “Refrain” by Gretchen McNeil.