Showing results by publisher "Audible studios" in 20th Century

Helicopters thwopped low over the city, filming blocks of burning cars and buildings, mobs breaking into storefronts, and the vicious beating of truck driver Reginald Denny. For a week in April 1992, Los Angeles transformed into a cityscape of rage, purportedly due to the exoneration of four policemen who had beaten Rodney King. It should be no surprise that such intense anger erupted from something deeper than a single incident. In The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins, Brenda Stevenson tells the dramatic story of an earlier trial, a turning point on the road to the 1992 riot.

It was a time when music fans copied and traded recordings without permission. An outraged music industry pushed Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation. Yes, that time is now; it was also the era of Napster in the 1990s, of cassette tapes in the 1970s, of reel-to-reel tapes in the 1950s, even the phonograph epoch of the 1930s. Piracy, it turns out, is as old as recorded music itself. In Democracy of Sound, Alex Sayf Cummings uncovers the little-known history of music piracy and its sweeping effects on the definition of copyright in the United States.

The Reagan Administration pushed hard for NASA to launch shuttle mission 51L, before it was ready. 73 seconds into the launch, the shuttle exploded, killing seven people and leaving a nation traumatized. Richard Cook, the lead resource analyst at NASA for the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs), was the first to warn of possible catastrophic failure.

What happens when a father asks his son to lie for the greater good? Growing up, Scott C. Johnson always suspected that his father was different. Only as a teenager did he discover the truth: his father was a spy, one of the CIA’s most trusted officers. At first the secret was thrilling. But over time, Scott began to have doubts. How could a man so rigorously trained to deceive and manipulate simply turn off those skills at home? His father had been living a double life for so long that his lies were hard to separate from the truth.

After the Iraq War, when the reputation of Britain's spooks hit an all-time low, John le Carré's intellectual hero George Smiley came to be seen as the perfect spy, a man who would never allow intelligence to be misused for political purposes. Le Carré had revealed shortly before that the model for Smiley was the author and MI5 officer John Bingham, the 7th Baron Clanmorris. Michael Jago's brilliant account of Bingham's life is the story of an intelligence officer who had a deep influence on le Carré, then a junior colleague in MI5.

In The Company Town, Hardy Green, who has covered American business for over a decade, offers a compelling analysis of the emergence of these communities and their role in shaping the American economy, beginning in the country's earliest years....

At the height of World War II, with the Third Reich's final solution in full operation, a small group of Jews who had barely escaped the Nazis did the unthinkable: They went back. Spies now, these men took on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. They Dared Return is their story - a tale of adventure, espionage, love, and revenge.

From the Model T to the SUV, Autophobia reveals that our vexed relationship with the automobile is nothing new. In fact, debates over whether cars are forces of good or evil in our world have raged for over a century now, ever since the automobile was invented. According to Brian Ladd, this love and hate relationship we share with our cars is the defining quality of the automotive age.

To continue doing business in Germany, Hollywood studios agreed not to make films attacking Nazis or condemning persecution of Jews. Ben Urwand reveals this collaboration and the cast of characters it drew in, ranging from Goebbels to Louis B. Mayer. At the center was Hitler himself - obsessed with movies and their power to shape public opinion.

A fly-on-the-wall narrative of the Oval Office in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, using JFK’s secret White House tapes. On October 28, 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove nuclear missiles from Cuba. Popular history has marked that day as the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a seminal moment in American history. As President Kennedy’s secretly recorded White House tapes now reveal, the reality was not so simple.

From 1919 to 1986, Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel provided a summer retreat from the city heat for New York's Jews, and entertained the great, the near-great, and the not so great, Jews and Gentiles alike. A melting pot of the Borscht Belt, sports, and show-biz worlds, loyal visitors included Red Buttons, Rocky Marciano, Eddie Fisher, and Jackie Robinson. Tania Grossinger grew up there.

The race to make the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris attracted some of the most famous and seasoned aviators of the day, yet it was the young and lesser known Charles Lindbergh who won the $25,000 Orteig Prize in 1927 for his history-making solo flight in the Spirit of St. Louis. Drawing on many previously overlooked sources, Bak offers a fresh look at the personalities that made up this epic air race - a deadly competition that culminated in one of the 20th century's most thrilling personal achievements.

Trochenbrod was the only freestanding, fully realized Jewish town in history. It began with a few Jewish settlers searching for freedom from the Russian Czars’ oppressive policies, which included the forced conscriptions of one son from each Jewish family household throughout Russia. This scene of ethnic harmony was soon shattered, as Trochenbrod vanished in 1941 - her residents slaughtered, her homes, buildings, and factories razed to the ground.

Rare eyewitness account of early, chaotic days of WWII - Nazi invasion of Poland, Siege of Warsaw, and first months of Occupation - written by a young working mother. Rulka Langer's eye for detail and lively storytelling bring to life, from her unique vantage point, the opening chapter of the struggle between good and evil which ultimately engulfed the entire globe.

From the end of the Second World War to the present day, the world has changed immeasurably. The art of spying has changed too, as spies have reacted to changing threats. Here you will find the fascinating stories of real-life spies, both famous and obscure, from either side of the Iron Curtain, along with previously secret details of War on Terror operations.Detailed stories of individual spies are set in the context of the development of the major espionage agencies, interspersed with anecdotes of gadgets, trickery, honeytraps and assassinations worthy of any fictional spy.

How did a bar like P. J. Clarke’s saloon become the beloved watering hole for Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy, Rocky Marciano, and Buddy Holly (not to mention the fictional Don Draper)? And what was it about their bacon cheeseburger that caused Nat King Cole to pronounce it "the Cadillac of burgers"? Established in 1884 and bought in l904 by Patrick "Paddy" Joseph Clarke, this Irish saloon in a beautiful Victorian building on the corner of Third Avenue and 55th Street has captivated generations of New Yorkers.

As a boy, Simon Garfield started collecting "errors" - rare stamps flawed by printing faults and absent colours. As an adult his childhood obsession became a full-blown mid-life crisis. This amusing but painfully revealing account of a passion he was once only able to admit to people he could really trust traces his fascination for these tiny print slip-ups from the simple pleasures of boyhood to an attempt to create order out of chaos and finally the gradual decline and break-up of his marriage.

Fifty years after it was bombed to rubble, Berlin is once again a city in which Jews gather for the Passover Seder. Paris and Antwerp have recently emerged as important new centers of Jewish culture. Small but proud Jewish communities are revitalizing the ancient centers of Budapest, Prague, and Amsterdam. These brave, determined Jewish men and women have chosen to settle - or remain - in Europe after the devastation of the Holocaust, but they have paid a price.

In 1851 Queen Victoria opened the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. It was the high water mark of English achievement - the nation at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution, at the heart of a burgeoning Empire, with a queen who would reign for another 50 years. In the following 150 years, the fate of the nation has faced turmoil and transformation. But it is too simple to talk of decline? Has Great Britain sacrificed its identity in order to stay part of the present world order?

Nel 1936, nel pieno della Grande depressione, il San Francisco News commissiona a John Steinbeck una serie di articoli sulla condizione dei braccianti agricoli immigrati in California. Sono americani del Midwest, colpiti dalla crisi e costretti a fuggire dalle tempeste di sabbia della Dust Bowl. Reduce dal grande successo di "Pian della Tortilla", Steinbeck sale su un furgone da panettiere e inizia il suo viaggio fra le vallate della California.