Showing results by narrator "Gary Roelofs" in All Categories

How do public employees win and lose their collective bargaining rights? And how can public sector labor unions protect those rights? These are the questions answered in From Collective Bargaining to Collective Begging. Dominic Wells takes a mixed-methods approach and uses more than five decades of state-level data to analyze the expansion and restriction of rights.

Travel opens the door to the unknown. When you pack your bags for travel and adventure, you might get more than you expected - a side trip into a phantom world where mysterious things happen. This collection of original true stories tells of travelers around the world who are suddenly faced with ghosts, paranormal phenomena, unusual synchronicities, time slips, magic, visions, past-life connections, premonitions, mystical experiences, mysterious figures, and more.

In the popular imagination the picture of slavery, frozen in time, is one of huge cotton plantations and opulent mansions. However, in over a hundred years of history detailed in this book, the hard reality of slavery in Mississippi's antebellum world is strikingly different from the one of popular myth. It shows that Mississippi's past was never frozen, but always fluid. It shows too that slavery took a number of shapes before its form in the late antebellum mold became crystalized for popular culture.

For nearly a century, Kellogg, Idaho, was home to America's richest silver mine, Sunshine Mine. Mining there, as everywhere, was not an easy life, but regardless of the risk, there was something about being underground, the lure of hitting a deep vein of silver. The promise of good money and the intense bonds of friendship brought men back year after year. Mining is about being a man and a fighter in a job where tomorrow always brings the hope of a big score.

A single secret begets a layer of lies. Anna Nesmith believes she has it all: a great marriage, a dream job, and a home of her own. But when a State Department investigator begins asking questions, Anna's ordered world implodes. Frank Caburn is man to the bone and manufactures testosterone like Frito Lay does chips. Instantly attracted to Anna, he is determined to make her his own - if only she can pick through the emotional rubble to find her bruised heart can love once again.

Most of us give little thought to the hidden systems that bring us water and take it away when we’re done. But these underappreciated marvels of engineering face an array of challenges that cannot be solved without a fundamental change to our relationship with water.

Most of our everyday life experiences are multisensory in nature. In recent years, many of these experiences have been increasingly transformed, and capitalized on through advancements that adapt the world around us, and to suit our ever-more computerized environment. Multisensory Experiences is a comprehensive introduction that takes the listener from the fundamentals of multisensory experiences and design, through the relationship between the senses and technology, to finally what the future of those experiences may look like, and our responsibility in it.

What do you get when you mix a cranky God, a bunch of emotionally fragile prophets, 613 commandments, and a whole lot of carbs? A sacred mess called Judaism—and this hilariously dysfunctional guide is here to make sense of it all. In Oy Vey Almighty, we dive headfirst into the wonders and weirdness of Jewish faith, history, rituals, and culture—from Abraham’s awkward parenting to Moses' divine burnout, from Shabbat naps to Passover plagues.

Never before has so much been known about so many. CCTV cameras, TSA scanners, NSA databases, big data marketers, predator drones, "stop and frisk" tactics, Facebook algorithms, hidden spyware, and even old-fashioned nosy neighbors - surveillance has become so ubiquitous that we take its presence for granted. While many types of surveillance are pitched as ways to make us safer, almost no one has examined the unintended consequences of living under constant scrutiny and how it changes the way we think and feel about the world.

Hang on to your shamrocks and shillelaghs, folks! Max Blake, that hard-boiled private detective and former muck-raking journalist, along with his fearless fiancée Caeli Brown are back in action and up to their Walther P99s in slick, hypnotic robberies and terrorist plots in their newly adopted Irish homeland. A favor to a new friend who works with the Irish police brings them out of retirement to solve a series of thefts at Bunratty Castle and Folk Park which cater to the tourist crowd.

Drawing on cutting edge research from the Institute of HeartMath, California, as well as Shelley Davidow's extensive experience in working with children and teens, Raising Stress-Proof Kids explores the powerful and potentially long-term effects of stress on our children. Most importantly, it offers simple but effective steps that parents can take to minimize the impact of stress at home and at school.

Street Smarts contains a series of proven principles and insights I've gathered through the years I spent living in the streets. These principles helped me go from being homeless to becoming a successful entrepreneur in the digital industry. The good news is, no matter at what point you're at in your own life, you can also make the positive changes you need to become successful.

In the fall of 1969, Gary Bray landed in South Vietnam as a recently married, freshly minted second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. His assignment was not enviable: leading the platoon whose former members had committed the My Lai massacre--the murder of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians--18 months earlier. In this compelling memoir, he shares his experiences of Vietnam in the direct wake of that terrible event.

Ever heard of a 'travel psychologist?' Michael Brein is the world's first and perhaps only travel psychologist who has created a unique travel book series on the psychology of travel as revealed through the fantastic travel stories of more than 1,600 world travelers and adventurers he has interviewed over the last three decades. Travel Tales of Michael Brein: My Best 100 contains more than 100 of Michael's own, best personal travel stories, resulting from his lifetime of travel.

Three hundred and sixteen people are shot or killed every day in the United States. At five humans attacked per day per zombie, it would take 24 days for 316 zombies to overtake a population of 7.9 billion. “Tad Spector at your service!” “Look Tad, I heard you were the best," said the president. "I need you on my team, on my side. You hear me. I need a guy that’s not a part of the system.” Seemed a bit paranoid at the time. But now he seemed even more suspicious. “They are after me, Tad. You can keep a secret, right? I mean, that's your job.”

Between the 1970s and the 1990s American journalists began telling the news by telling stories. They borrowed narrative techniques, transforming sources into characters, events into plots, and their own work from stenography to anthropology. This was more than a change in style. It was a change in substance, a paradigmatic shift in terms of what constituted news and how it was being told. Thomas Schmidt analyzes the expansion of narrative journalism and the corresponding institutional changes in the American newspaper industry in the last quarter of the 20th century.

"The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions", said the existentialist thinker Albert Camus. And no less a philosopher than Woody Allen has wondered: "How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?" The essays in Movies and the Meaning of Life look at popular and cult movies, examining their assumptions and insights on meaning-of-life questions....

A malicious alien race as old as the universe itself has invaded Earth. Standing between them and the annihilation of the human race: an aging sheriff, the hippie who stole his daughter, a prissy bureaucrat, and a booze-addled reporter.

The robotic revolution is here and there's no going back. From the way we raise our children, to our work settings, to our governments, and even our wars, the quick-fix, instant result society is roiling our world. This audiobook dwells on the miracle of the unknown. It is an intimate trek into the evolving spirituality of awe - the humility and wonder and sense of adventure toward life. Can we preserve awe - the arguable "heart" of humanity - in spite of and even in light of our technologies? There is no more critical problem for our age.

Self-centered narcissistic personality exposed! Think you might be dealing with a narcissist? You may be right! Learn the five things to avoid when dealing with a narcissist.