Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Politics & Social Sciences

Ideas about globalization have become so completely accepted that they are now embraced as the conventional. This book presents a very different position, based on a serious look at the history of globalization and a reader-friendly presentation of the economic data that dramatically refute the accepted truths advanced by so many commentators.

Gail Sheehy traveled to Middletown shortly after the disaster and began in-depth interviews with many of the bereaved.

Middletown, America was written as the year progressed, following parallel and intertwining stories of selected individuals and their families. A mother who was doubly bereft when she lost her only son as he tried to fill the shoes of her absentee husband; the sole survivor in an office of 67 people who escaped the 88th floor of Tower 2 seconds before the floor was decimated.

In the last decade, incompetent leadership has done more to change the face of our world than perhaps in any other time in history. Recent events like Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq have proven that blind faith in our rulers is more than foolish - it can be downright dangerous. The world has grown more complicated and more volatile, and making intelligent decisions about the people in charge has never been more crucial.

What is the value of a college degree? The four-year college experience is as American as apple pie. So is the belief that higher education offers a ticket to a better life. But with student-loan debt surpassing the $1 trillion mark and unemployment of college graduates at historic highs, people are beginning to question that value. In College (Un)Bound, Jeffrey J. Selingo, editor at large of the Chronicle of Higher Education, argues that America’s higher education system is broken.

Oliver North offers an inspiring, first-hand account of the extraordinary young American volunteers defending us against radical Islamic terror.

Since 9-11-01, North and his War Stories documentary team have made a dozen extended trips to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines, covering U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen, and Marines. American Heroes offers a close-up of this generation's "citizen-soldiers" who have chosen the path of the patriot and gone into harm's way for their countrymen.

Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack was just a small part of its long-term plan. Osama Bin Laden knew the assault would provoke the U.S. to invade Afghanistan and re-stoke his jihad. Bin Laden has built a large following by perverting the teachings of Islam to justify the mass murder of innocent people. By fighting him with bullets and bombs we have bolstered Bin Laden’s recruiting efforts abroad, undermined civil liberties and economic security at home and tarnished America’s reputation internationally.

When Jerry Parr was eight years old, he knew he wanted to be a Secret Service agent when he grew up. Little did this eight-year-old dreamer know that he would become the agent responsible for saving the life of President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981.

When Andrew Shanley realized that his sons, aged 10 and 13, were lacking the integrity and honesty he expected of them, he was shocked. He had believed they shared his values; now he struggled to find a way to teach them ethics before it was too late. Being a golfer with an enduring love of the game, Shanley decided that by teaching his sons golf, he could effectively instruct them in what really matters - how to be men.

We are all fascinated by them - that enigmatic class of people often referred to as the rich. With all the emphasis on the rich and famous in America, it seems we would know everything about them. In reality, very few of us truly understand those who make up the very wealthiest Americans - those with liquid assets of $5 million or more. What is this new class of people, and how did they get that way?

A Culturematic is a little machine for making culture. It’s an ingenuity engine. The Culturematic acts as a probe into the often-alien world of contemporary culture, to test the atmosphere, to see what life it can sustain, to see who responds and how. Culturematics start small but can scale up ferociously, bootstrapping themselves as they go. Because they are so inexpensive, we can afford to fire off a multitude of them simultaneously. This is evolutionary strategy, iterative innovation, and rapid prototyping all at once.

These words, pounded out on a laptop at Cliven Bundy’s besieged Nevada ranch on April 6, 2014, ignited a new American revolution. Across the country, a certain type of citizen snapped to attention: This was the flashpoint the they’d been waiting for, a chance to help a fellow American stand up to a tyrannical and corrupt federal government. Up in Arms chronicles how an isolated clan of desert-dwelling Mormons became the guiding light - and then the outright leaders - of America’s Patriot movement.

When Bess Myerson, the Bronx-born daughter of Jewish immigrants, was crowned Miss America in 1945, she was determined to break down gender barriers and be more than a beauty queen. Then, after more than two decades as a glamorous television personality, Myerson took on corporate America, applying her celebrity as a consumer advocate to become an influential New York City political figure credited with helping elect Mayor Edward I. Koch. Then, in her early sixties, she found love with a much younger married man. The romance put her at the center of a political corruption scandal.

It wasn’t surprising when the first abandoned bicycles were found along the dirt roads and farmland just across the border from Tijuana, but before long they were arriving in droves. The bikes went from curiosity, to nuisance, to phenomenon. But until they caught the eye of journalist Kimball Taylor, only a small cadre of human smugglers - coyotes - and migrants could say how or why they’d gotten there. This is the story of 7,000 bikes that made an incredible journey and one young man from Oaxaca who arrived at the border with nothing, built a small empire, and then vanished.

Brian Belovitch has the rare distinction of coming out three times: first as a queer teenager; second as a glamorous transgender woman named Tish, and later, Natalia Gervais; and finally as an HIV-positive gay man surviving the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. From growing up in a barely-working-class first-generation immigrant family in Fall River, Massachusetts, to spinning across the disco dance floor of Studio 54 in New York City, Brian escaped many near-death experiences. Trans Figured chronicles a life lived on the edge with an unforgettable cast of characters.

From Georgia to Colombia to Ghana and Italy - crime exists in every democratic nation on earth, but in some places, it runs rampant, shaping all aspects of civic life. A Savage Order investigates why and how some places, riddled by inept government and states, are able to recover. Drawing on fifteen years of both academic and firsthand field research, Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld documents the unambiguous measures that societies have taken to empower the strong civic movements, governments, and institutions that protect countries and mitigate atrocities that damage people's lives.

Tell is the riveting story of Major Margaret Witt’s dedicated and decorated military career as a frontline flight nurse, and of her love and devotion to her partner - now wife - Laurie Johnson. Tell captures the tension and drama of the politically charged legal battle that led to the congressional repeal of the controversial law and helped pave the way for a suite of landmark political and legal victories for gay rights.

Jen Lancaster is here to take a hard look at our elevating anxieties, and with self-deprecating wit and levelheaded wisdom, she charts a path out of the quagmire that keeps us frightened of the future and ashamed of our imperfectly perfect human lives. Take a deep breath, and her advice, and you just might get through a holiday dinner without wanting to disown your uncle.

Each year thousands of young adults deemed out of control - suffering from depression, addiction, anxiety, and rage - are carted off against their will to remote wilderness programs and treatment facilities across the country. Desperate parents of these “troubled teens” fear it’s their only option. The private, largely unregulated behavioral boot camps break their children down, a damnation the children suffer forever.

For better or for worse, Google and social media - “Big Tech”, collectively - have become the new public square. Unfortunately, this public square has a watchful referee standing behind them, ready and waiting to blow the whistle if they veer too far from the preferred narrative. Americans have given these companies enormous power to select the information they read, share and discuss with their neighbors and friends.

For a century, the American Civil Liberties Union has fought to keep Americans in touch with the founding values of the Constitution. As its centennial approached, the organization invited Ellis Cose to become its first ever writer-in residence, serving as an "embedded journalist" with complete editorial independence. The result is Cose's groundbreaking Democracy, If We Can Keep It: The ACLU and Its 100-Year Battle for Our Rights, the most authoritative account ever of America's premier defender of civil liberties.