Showing results by narrator "Ron Butler" in All Categories

With this inspiring book of meditations, every day brings a reminder of "the wholeness and beauty of our nature, of the glad spirit that dances in each one of us". Addressing the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, Glad Day speaks to the issues that touch everyone, regardless of sexual orientation: change, fear, self-disclosure, faith in a power greater than ourselves, success and failure, openness to ourselves and others.

It’s been three years since the Virgil County High School Massacre. Three years since my best friend, Sarah, was killed in a bathroom stall during the mass shooting. Everyone knows Sarah’s story - that she died proclaiming her faith. But it’s not true. I know because I was with her when she died. I didn’t say anything then, and people got hurt because of it. Now Sarah’s parents are publishing a book about her, so this might be my last chance to set the record straight. Except Sarah’s martyrdom is important to a lot of people, people who don’t take kindly to what I’m trying to do.

For decades, the specter of homosexuality haunted Washington. The mere suggestion that a person might be gay destroyed reputations, ended careers, and ruined lives. At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexuality became intertwined with the growing threat of international communism, leading to a purge of gay men and lesbians from the federal government. In the fevered atmosphere of political Washington, the secret “too loathsome to mention” held enormous, terrifying power.

Operation Treadstone made Jason Bourne, but he's not the only agent they trained. After the revival of Operation Treadstone, former operative Adam Hayes has retreated to Africa, determined to escape the black-ops CIA program for good. Hayes knows just how destructive the program can be, as it turns government agents into nearly superhuman assassins. But his quiet life in Africa changes irrevocably when Hayes is attacked by extremists while flying a charitable mission in Burkina Faso.

In Part I, this book develops the Cognitive Amplifier Loop, which allows humans to use AI to build on their cognitive and emotional strengths and manage their limitations. Kosslyn discusses ways to employ this loop to offload tasks to AI and to utilize it to train us effectively and efficiently, as well as how to use it to both learn and engage in critical thinking and creative problem-solving—and manage cognitive and emotional constraints. Part II establishes how to draw on the Cognitive Amplifier Loop to help us improve our human relationships.

The seminal rap group A Tribe Called Quest brought jazz into the genre, resurrecting timeless rhythms to create masterpieces. This narrative follows Tribe from their early days as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the Native Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their eventual breakup and long hiatus. Throughout the narrative, poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their street-level impact and draws from his own experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among fans like himself.

Can you fall in love while operators are standing by? Kevin’s a widower doctor with a precocious 12-year-old. He’s just met Mary, his daughter’s substitute teacher, who is experiencing her first Christmas without her beloved mother. As the holiday season ramps up, the twosome is unaware they’re also both in hot pursuit of a limited edition poinsettia angel being sold on their favorite television shopping channel.

Poor Duncan just wants to color. But when he opens his box of crayons, he finds only letters, all saying the same thing: His crayons have had enough! They quit! Beige Crayon is tired of playing second fiddle to Brown Crayon. Black wants to be used for more than just outlining. Blue needs a break from coloring all those bodies of water. And Orange and Yellow are no longer speaking — each believes he is the true color of the sun.

Agile Conversations brings a practical, step-by-step guide to using the human power of conversation to build effective, high-performing teams to achieve truly agile results. Consultants Douglas Squirrel and Jeffrey Fredrick show listeners how to utilize the five conversations to help teams build trust, alleviate fear, answer the “whys,” define commitments, and hold everyone accountable.

In 1965, a mysterious beam of blue light descended from space, illuminating Northern California. This extraterrestrial beam possessed strange powers, causing those it touched to either die, go mad, or gain a unique, extraordinary ability. This newfound power represented the full actualization of human potential, bestowing strengths, understandings, and communication abilities far beyond normal human capacities. Those affected by the light were soon dubbed "Blues" and were segregated from society due to their superhuman abilities.

Unbundling the Enterprise provides a blueprint for organizations to remain relevant and maximize growth in the digital economy by embracing the flexibility and optionality enabled by APIs. Drawing on real-world examples of both innovative “digital pirates” and legacy “digital settlers,” authors Stephen Fishman and Matt McLarty articulate strategies to unbundle business capabilities into reusable digital assets.

Robert Conquest has been called by Paul Johnson "our greatest living modern historian". As a new century begins, Conquest offers an illuminating examination of our past failures and a guide to where we should go next. Graced with one of the most acute gifts for political prescience since Orwell, Conquest assigns responsibility for our century’s cataclysms not to impersonal economic or social forces but to the distorted ideologies of revolutionary Marxism and National Socialism.

Art T. Burton sifts through fact and legend to discover the truth about one of the most outstanding peace officers in late 19th-century America - and perhaps the greatest lawman of the Wild West era. Fluent in Creek and other Southern native languages, physically powerful, skilled with firearms, and a master of disguise, Bass Reeves was exceptionally adept at apprehending fugitives and outlaws, and his exploits were legendary in Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Bridging Infinity puts humanity at the heart of these vast undertakings - as builder, as engineer, as adventurer - reimagining and rebuilding the world, the solar system, and even the entire universe. This continuation of the award-winning Infinity Project anthology series features bold new stories from Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Bear, Gregory Benford, Zachary Brown, Pat Cadigan, Kameron Hurley, Scott Lynch, Vonda N. McIntyre, Hannu Rajaniemi, Allan Steele, and many more.

The city streets are no longer safe. They are filled instead with the living dead, rotting predators driven only by a need to kill and eat. Some of the living still struggle to survive, but with each passing day, their odds grow worse. Some survivors have fled, frantically searching for a place to escape, even briefly, the slaughter around them.

Jordan, Drew, Liam, Maury, and their friends from Riverdale Academy Day School are heading out on a school trip to Paris. As an aspiring artist himself, Jordan can’t wait to see all the amazing art in the famous City of Lights.

Before Josh and Jordan Bell were streaking up and down the court, their father was learning his own moves. In this prequel to Newbery Medal winner The Crossover, Chuck Bell takes center stage, as listeners get a glimpse of his childhood and how he became the jazz music worshiping basketball star his sons look up to. A novel in verse with all the impact and rhythm listeners have come to expect from Kwame Alexander, Rebound will go back in time to visit the childhood of Chuck "Da Man" Bell during one pivotal summer when young Charlie is sent to stay with his grandparents, where he discovers basketball and learns more about his family's past.

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality.

The most pressing issue on Adam Hayes' mind is planning his son's upcoming fifth birthday party. After years of operating in the world's most dangerous spots for Treadstone, he's ready to call it quits, but the feeling isn't mutual. Levi Shaw, Treadstone's director, calls Hayes back for one more mission.

The award-winning producer of The Rachel Maddow Show exposes the Republican Party as a gang of impostors, meticulously documenting how they have abandoned their duty to govern and are gravely endangering America.