Showing results by narrator "Sean Runnette" in All Categories

Understanding wealth in the United States - who has it, how they acquired it, and how they preserve it - is crucial to addressing the economic and political challenges facing the nation. But until now we have had little reliable information. Edward Wolff, one of the world's great experts on the economics of wealth, offers an authoritative account of patterns in the accumulation and distribution of wealth since 1900. A Century of Wealth in America demonstrates that the most remarkable change has been the growth of per capita household wealth.

For the last half century, as administrations have come and gone, the fundamental assumptions about America's military policy have remained unchanged: American security requires the United States (and us alone) to maintain a permanent armed presence around the globe, to prepare our forces for military operations in far-flung regions, and to be ready to intervene anywhere at any time. In the Obama era, just as in the Bush years, these beliefs remain unquestioned gospel.

When Arkady Petrovich comes home from college, his father finds his eager, naïve son changed almost beyond recognition, for the impressionable Arkady has fallen under the powerful influence of the friend he has brought with him. A self-proclaimed nihilist, the ardent young Bazarov shocks Arkady's father by criticizing the landowning way of life and by his outspoken determination to sweep away traditional values of contemporary Russian society.

Making good on a promise to a dead man, Rebo must deliver an AI known as Logos to a mysterious backwater planet. Once there, Logos will be capable of restoring the system of star gates that once knitted the settled worlds together. But as the Techno Society wars with murderous antitechnics, Rebo gets caught in the middle - and all he can do is run.

Rinpoche's Remarkable Ten-Week Weight Loss Clinic brings back two main characters from Roland Merullo's beloved Breakfast with Buddha series. This time, though, instead of cruising the American road together, Otto Ringling and Volya Rinpoche are part of the famous meditation master's offbeat weight loss clinic, held over the course of ten Saturdays in a New York City yoga studio.

Settled into a relationship with an Italian yoga instructor and working in Europe, Dr. Orville Rose's peace is shaken by his mother's death. On his return to Columbia, a Hudson River town of quirky people and “plagued by breakage,” he learns that his mother has willed him a large sum of money, her 1981 Chrysler, and her Victorian house in the center of town.

Preparing for the next war at an unknown date against an undetermined opponent is a difficult undertaking with extremely high stakes. Thus, outside of their own combat, militaries have studied foreign wars as a valuable source of battlefield information. Through a series of in-depth case studies of the US Army, Navy, and Air Force, Brent L. Sterling creates a better understanding of the dynamics of learning from "other people's wars", determining what types of knowledge can be gained from foreign wars, identifying common pitfalls, and proposing solutions.

Weeks after the contamination, Carter is losing hope of ever seeing his sons again. Doomed to live out the rest of his life in his mountain bunker, he teeters between acceptance and despair. And then he sees something down the steep side of his mountain that will change everything. Have his prayers been answered?

Set in a declining textile town in North Carolina, Hide is the love story of Wendell Wilson, a taxidermist, and Frank Clifton, a veteran of World War II. They meet after the war, in a time when such love holds real danger. But, severing nearly all ties with the rest of the world, they carve out a home for themselves on the outskirts of town and for decades the routine of self-reliant domesticity - Wendell's cooking, Frank's care for a yard no one sees, and the vicarious drama of courtroom TV - seems to protect them.

In Signposts to God, particle physicist Peter Bussey introduces listeners to the mysteries of modern physics and astronomy. Authored in clear, accessible prose, Bussey provides a primer on topics such as the laws of nature, quantum physics, fine-tuning, and current cosmological models. Bussey argues that, far from ruling out a divine creator, modern physics and astronomy present us with compelling signposts to God. The more we know about the cosmos and our presence in it, the more plausible belief in God becomes.

In Trajectory of Power, leading political scientists William Howell and Terry Moe provide a sweeping account of the historical rise of presidential power, arguing that it has now grown to the point where, in the wrong hands, it threatens to subvert American democracy and replace it with a de facto system of strongman rule, whether led by Donald Trump or someone else.

The Lost Cause and the Great War tells the stories of central Tennessee Progressive-era reformers to illustrate the fascinating broader issue of how Southerners steeped in Lost Cause Civil War mythologies simultaneously developed patriotic American fervor. Focusing on Luke Lea, a prominent politician and American army officer who attempted to capture Kaiser Wilhelm II during World War I, the book reveals the intricate interplay between three competing ideas: attachment to the memory of the Confederacy, intense American nationalism, and advocacy for progressive reforms.

Psychologist Kenneth Barish explains the sources and consistency of our political beliefs and why we continue to disagree about fundamental issues in American life. He offers antidotes to the angry, repetitive, and unproductive arguments that now dominate our political culture. Barish teaches us how to listen, think, and speak about our political opinions in a way that allows us to understand each other's concerns, resist false dichotomies and ideological certainty, see new perspectives and possibilities, and find common ground.

In Can Deliberation Cure the Ills of Democracy?, James S. Fishkin argues that deliberative democracy can have surprisingly positive effects on all of these problems and charts a unique path to fixing them with his method of Deliberative Polling. After decades of applying and perfecting the methods of deliberative democracy in countries all over the world, this book synthesizes the results of 150 applications and shows how the method can be applied to resolve many of democracy's seemingly intractable challenges. It can clarify the public will and depolarize our divisions.

Donald A. Ritchie, a congressional historian for forty years, takes listeners on a fascinating, behind-the-scenes tour of Capitol Hill, pointing out the key players, explaining their behavior, and translating parliamentary language into plain English. He also explores the essential necessity of compromise to accomplish anything significant in the legislative arena.

They told you the suburbs were a great place to live. They said nothing bad could ever happen here. But they were wrong. This collection of terrifying true stories exposes the dark side of life in the 'burbs—from corpses buried in backyards and ghosts lurking in fast food restaurants to UFOs, vanishing persons, bizarre apparitions, and worse.

Modern thought tends to divide life into categories, but in the process of living, all the currents mix and mingle, and worthwhile answers only come from finding a harmonious relation to the whole. Seeking holistic understanding, this book ranges through psychology, art, science, religion, relationships, culture, mythology, philosophy, and the world’s wisdom traditions. Although no one can be expert in all these areas, the living of life does not offer the choice of avoiding any of them.

The legal home to over a million companies, Delaware has more registered businesses than residents. Why do virtually all of the biggest corporations in the United States register there? This book reveals how a systematic enterprise lies behind the business-friendly corporate veneer, one that has kept the state afloat financially by diverting public funds away from some of the poorest people in the United States and supporting dictators and criminals across the world.

Lewis' day begins with a bitter quarrel with his wife and ends on a crumbling, overgrown jungle airstrip somewhere deep in war-torn Congo. With the cockpit on fire, the pilots of his plane make an emergency landing and within hours the plane is seized by rebel troops. When his wife makes a daring decision to search for him in Africa, The Curve of the World becomes a gripping, heartrending tale about regaining love and conviction.

Major 48-8 finds a wild, infant 2-leg and, with the help of the family, raises Nedran to become the Waterside Woodland Community's most famous and beloved member. A 2-Leg Called Nedran is a story of lifelong friendship and offers layers of meaning to enjoy.