Showing results by narrator "Jonathan Todd Ross" in All Categories

Meet the Nordic god of thunder! Thor is a happy god—unless you make him angry. Then he might shake the earth and topple mountains. So stay on his good side as he takes you on a journey across the rainbow bridge to Middle Earth and beyond, to mysterious Nordic realms filled with frost giants, dark elves, and plundering Vikings. In this engaging and humorous work of nonfiction, Thor offers a wildly entertaining introduction to Norse mythology.

For the past five decades Ms. has been the nation’s most influential source of feminist ideas, and it remains at the forefront of feminism today, affecting thought and culture with a younger-than-ever readership (ages 16-20!). Here are essays, profiles, conversations with and features by: Alice Walker, Cynthia Enloe, Pauli Murray, Nancy Pelosi, bell hooks, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Brittney Cooper, and Joy Harjo, as well as fiction and poetry by Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Adrienne Rich, Rita Dove, and Sharon Olds, and many others.

On any given day, at any given hour, across the various platforms constituting what we call social media, someone is angry. Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. Reddit. 4Chan. In The Rhetoric of Outrage: Why Social Media Is Making Us Angry, Jeff Rice addresses the critical question of why anger has become the dominant digital response on social media. He examines the theoretical and rhetorical explanations for the intense rage that prevails across platforms and sheds new light on how our anger is not merely a reaction against singular events but generated out of aggregated beliefs and ideas.

Henry at Work invites listeners to rethink how we work today by exploring an aspect of Henry David Thoreau that has often been overlooked: Thoreau the worker. John Kaag and Jonathan van Belle overturn the popular misconception of Thoreau as a navel-gazing recluse who was scornful of work and other mundanities. In fact, Thoreau worked hard—surveying land, running his family's pencil-making business, writing, lecturing, and building his cabin at Walden Pond—and thought intensely about work in its many dimensions.

It's time. Alexander Moreau, supervisor of Bismarck and head of the Human Corporation, and the mysterious Neuromorph ask for the final game—a game Pascal Takahashi is only too happy to play. But this game no longer follows any rules, and the stakes are higher than ever. In the midst of a dying colony, Jeremy and his crew must join Pascal in finding a way to set the course for humanity's future themselves before others do. For beneath the darkness of the barrier, secrets are stirring, about to rise to the surface.

Few leads. No witnesses. Detective Logan Ryder is running out of time to stop a serial killer from claiming a fourth woman on Hawaii’s Big Island. Grief counselor Elena Kekona puts her life on the line to help when she discovers she resembles the victims. But Logan’s reserve—and Elena’s secrets—could turn their instant attraction into a devastating endgame that both might not survive …

When Willard M. Kiplinger launched the groundbreaking Kiplinger Washington Letter in 1923, he left the sidelines of traditional journalism to strike out on his own. With a specialized knowledge of finance and close connections to top Washington officials, Kiplinger was uniquely positioned to tell deeper truths about the intersections between government and business. With careful reporting and insider access, he delivered perceptive analysis and forecasts of business, economic, and political news to busy business executives.

When a new case carries echoes of his sister’s cold case murder, Detective Sergeant Lance Warner is visited by another ghost from the past. Caroline Yashima isn’t only the CJD specialist assigned to work alongside him, she’s also the ex he regrets walking away from. He’s not sure if he can expect a second chance—or just a chance for closure. But when Caroline becomes a target, he knows that he doesn’t want to live without her.

The United States, through its local, state, and national contests, holds more elections, more often, than any democracy in the world. But in recent years, there have been troubling signs that our system of campaigns and elections has become much more fragile and vulnerable. This new edition of Campaigns, Elections, and the Threat to Democracy: What Everyone Needs to Know® offers the most up-to-date examination of campaigns, elections, and future threats to voting and democracy.

In the wake of Trump's presidency, Republican-led states have joined in an alarming assault on our democratic system. But the drift toward authoritarianism in red states has far deeper roots. In States of Neglect, journalist William Kleinknecht surveys the landscape of neglect in states including Texas, Florida, and Arizona through the experiences of a rich cast of characters.

A legendary diplomat, scholar, and civil rights leader, Ralph Bunche was one of the most prominent Black Americans of the twentieth century. The first African American to obtain a political science Ph.D. from Harvard and a celebrated diplomat at the United Nations, he was once so famous he handed out the Best Picture award at the Oscars. Yet today Ralph Bunche is largely forgotten. In The Absolutely Indispensable Man, Kal Raustiala restores Bunche to his rightful place in history.

Major Megan McClung is the first female United States Naval Academy graduate to be killed in action since the school’s 1845 founding and the highest-ranking female U.S. Marine Corps officer to die during the Iraq war. Be Bold is Megan’s inspirational story of defying steep odds, making the ultimate sacrifice and paving the way for a new era of women at war.

Traffic is piling up, and strange things are headed your way in this new story collection by World Fantasy Award-winning author Tobias S. Buckell. In these twenty-four stories you’ll find inhabitants of a small town who won’t vaccinate against a zombie plague, a lone sentry keeping motorists from stumbling into something ancient and evil, a man who puts stranded ghosts to rest, an ex-soldier traveling the seas who trades his new life of hardship for a return to swords and blood, and many more tales of speculative fiction.

In Fooling with the Amish, Dirk Eitzen examines the fakery in Amish Mafia and how actual viewers of the show responded to it to discover answers to two questions that have long puzzled media scholars: What is it about the so-called reality of reality shows that appeals to and gratifies viewers? How and why are people taken in by falsehoods in the media? Eitzen's ultimate answer to these questions is that, in taking liberties with facts, Amish Mafia works very much like gossip.

Brothers Cole and Tinn are determined to solve a mystery almost as old as they are: What happened to their long-missing father? Joseph Burton vanished without a trace, leaving the babies’ mother to raise them—one human, one a goblin changeling—alone. Some say Joseph abandoned his family, others that he met foul play looking for a way to get rid of the changeling imposter. Cole is determined to learn his father’s true fate, so he and Tinn set out on a dangerous quest to the deepest, most deadly limits of the Oddmire.

From Silicon Valley boardrooms to rural communes to academic philosophy departments, a seemingly inconceivable idea is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity’s reign on earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it. Anthropocene antihumanism has been inspired by revulsion at humanity’s destruction of the natural environment, and transhumanism, by contrast, glorifies some of the very things that antihumanism decries—scientific and technological progress, the supremacy of reason.

Aleksandar and Isobel are siblings and former classical music prodigies, once destined for greatness. As the only Eastern European family growing up on their block on the far southside of Chicago, the pair were inseparable until each was forced to confront the absurdity of tragedy at an early age and abandon their musical ambitions. Now in their twenties, they find themselves encountering ridiculous jobs, unfulfilling romantic relationships, and the outrageousness of ordinary life.

Left behind by their sisters, they’ve become the hunted. In this gripping sequel to Daughters of a Coral Dawn, Katherine V. Forrest tells the story of an Earth beyond nightmare, ruled by dictator Theo Zedera—known simply as Zed—whose weaponry is invincible. With ruthless determination he seeks the vanished women remaining on Earth. Among these women is the leader of the Unity, the extraordinary Africa Contrera, Zed’s childhood friend as well as his colleague and intellectual equal.

Historian Thomas J. Misa's sweeping history of the relationship between technology and society over the past 500 years reveals how technological innovations have shaped—and have been shaped by—the cultures in which they arose. In this edition, Misa brings his acclaimed text up to date by drawing on current scholarship while retaining sharply drawn portraits of individual people, artifacts, and systems. A masterful analysis of technology and culture, Leonardo to the Internet frames a history that illuminates modern-day problems and prospects of a technology-dependent world.

James Abram Garfield, the 20th President of the United States, was assassinated when he was shot by Charles Guiteau in July 1881, less than four months after he was elected president. But Garfield didn't actually die until 80 days later. In this thriller, award-winning author Gail Jarrow delves into the fascinating story of the relationship between Garfield and Guiteau, and relates the gruesome details of Garfield's slow and agonizing death.