Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Social Sciences

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.

Of all the ghostly lore that bedevils Sleepy Hollow, none terrifies more than the galloping spectre of the Headless Horseman. Few in the haunted glen are as susceptible to the tale as the superstitious schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane. But just as bewitching - and bewildering - to Ichabod is the elusive coquette Katrina Van Tassel. On an autumn eve, Ichabod attends a harvest party, hoping to finally woo the woman of his dreams. Instead, he sees his worst nightmares come true.

In Those Who Wander, Vivian Ho delves deep into a rising subculture that’s changing the very fabric of her city and all of urban America. Moving beyond the disheartening statistics, she gives voices to these young people - victims of abuse, failed foster care, mental illness, and drug addiction. She also doesn’t ignore the threat they pose to themselves and to others as a dangerous dark side emerges. With alarming urgency, she asks what can be done to save the next generation of America’s vagabond youth.

Traversing temporalities and global boundaries, Racial Fictions reveals the inter-connectedness of America’s domestic racial struggles and international colonial ambitions. Carby challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths about the persistence of white supremacy, the violence embedded in historical memory, and the silencing of marginalized voices. The result is a profound exploration of the intricate and enduring legacies of race, imperialism, and violence in the formation of modern identities and nation-states.

With the rise of digital media and advertising, a constant barrage of information makes it nearly impossible to be seen and heard. In The Iconist, branding and design strategist Jamie Mustard shows you how individuals, organizations, and brands can break through the noise. The secret to standing out lies in creating content that the desired audience will “lock” onto and remember with little effort - simple, bold ideas that can be immediately understood.

Pidgeon Pagonis always felt like their life was a constant attempt to fit in with other girls—a feeling that was only exacerbated when puberty failed to hit. They never understood why…until they uncovered the secret that had haunted their childhood. Bouncing between their Chicago home and the city’s children’s hospital, Pidgeon weathered a series of traumatic surgeries, fabrications, and misdirections. It wasn’t until college that Pidgeon pieced together the puzzle of their identity.

Move over, Zeus. The most powerful goddesses, mortals, and sorceresses of the ancient world have something to say. Bad Bitches of Antiquity is the modern compendium of badass mythological women who used their powers, prowess, mischief, and cleverness to make moves, exact revenge, bestow miracles, and cleverly control the comings and goings of mortals and gods alike.

In It’s Rising Time! Kim Kiyosaki makes a “call to women” - women who want to take control of their financial futures, women who don’t want to depend upon someone else for their security and well-being, women who want to be better partners in making great financial decisions for their families. Kim encourages women to believe that it’s time to rise above obstacles that so many women face, rise beyond where they thought they could go, and rise up to their financial genius.

Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed.

"Creepy crawling" was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering someone's home and, without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cultural life for close to fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds.

At a time when most of the public discourse was dominated by men, Anna Julia Cooper’s writings offered a blistering rebuke to that status quo. The essays and speeches collected here anticipated the debates about racism, sexism, and intersectionality that we are still having today. Cooper argues in particular for the importance of Black women’s participation in identifying and combating the structures of oppression that surrounded them - and that made life so much more difficult for many other groups as well.

As he struggles to be a good officer, Ted Conover angers inmates, dodges blows, works to balance decency with toughness, and participates in prison rituals - strip frisks, cell searches, cell "extractions" - that exact a toll on inmates and officers alike. The tale begins with the corrections academy and ends with the flames and smoke of New Year's Eve on Conover's floor of the notorious B-Block. Along the way, Conover also recounts the history of Sing Sing.

Cops, politicians, and ordinary people are afraid of black men. The result is the Chokehold: laws and practices that treat every African American man like a thug. In this explosive new book, an African American former federal prosecutor shows that the system is working exactly the way it's supposed to. Black men are always under watch, and police violence is widespread - all with the support of judges and politicians.

Why is it that so many efforts by liberals to lift the Black underclass not only fail, but often harm the intended beneficiaries? In Please Stop Helping Us, Jason L. Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding Black Americans back. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of Blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education is intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer Black college graduates than would otherwise exist.

In her powerful memoir His Bright Light, number-one New York Times best-selling author Danielle Steel opened her heart to share the devastating story of the loss of her beloved son. In A Gift of Hope, she shows us how she transformed that pain into a campaign of service that enriched her life beyond what she could imagine. For 11 years, Danielle Steel took to the streets with a small team to help the homeless of San Francisco. She worked anonymously, visiting the "cribs" of the city's most vulnerable citizens under cover of darkness, distributing food, clothing, bedding, tools, and toiletries.

In 1944, the big top of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford caught fire during the middle of an afternoon performance. Nine thousand people were inside. In seconds, the big top was burning out of control. The toll of the fire, and its circumstances, haunt Hartford to the present day. But it is the intense, detailed narrative - before, after, and especially during the panic under the burning tent - that will remain with listeners long after they finish this book.

In the summer of 1937, a California crime stunned an already grim nation. Three little girls were lured away from a neighborhood park to unthinkable deaths. After a frantic week-long manhunt for the killer, a suspect emerged. Justice was swift, and the condemned man was buried away with the horrifying story. But decades later, Pamela Everett, a lawyer and former journalist, starts digging, following up a cryptic comment her father once made about losing two of his sisters. Everett unearths a truly historic legal case that included the genesis of modern sex offender laws and the last man sentenced to hang in California.

Since men and women in battle not only face the prospect of their own deaths but also must fashion a moral rationale for killing, the battlefield is often a place of tremendous religious transformation. Do men and women at war revert to the faith of their youth or do they gravitate to the spirituality around them? Do they lose all faith in the face of horror, or do they piece together an informal faith that simply gets them through the fight?

Few consumers are aware of the economic forces behind the production of meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. Yet omnivore and herbivore alike, the forces of meatonomics affect us in many ways. Most importantly, we've lost the ability to decide for ourselves what - and how much - to eat. Those decisions are made for us by animal food producers who control our buying choices with artificially-low prices, misleading messaging, and heavy control over legislation and regulation.

Army Wives goes beyond the sound bites and photo ops of military life to bring listeners into the hearts and homes of today's military wives. Biank tells the story of four typical Army wives who, in a flash, find themselves in extraordinary circumstances that ultimately force them to redefine who they are as women and wives.