Showing results by narrator "Keith Wright" in All Categories

Pandemic, climate change, or war: Our era is ripe with the odor of doomsday. In movies, books, and more, our imaginations run wild with visions of dreadful, abandoned cities and returning to the land in a desperate attempt at survival. In The Next Apocalypse, archaeologist Chris Begley argues that we completely misunderstand how disaster works. Examining past collapses of civilizations, such as the Maya and Rome, he argues that these breakdowns are actually less about cataclysmic destruction than they are about long processes of change.

Welcome to the world of Adam Cain, AKA: The Human, the closest thing to a superman in the galaxy. As the most famous employee of Starfire Security, The Human is in popular demand. But he has to be careful that his past doesn't catch up to him. You can't go around kicking alien butt without ruffling a few feathers . . . or scales . . . or whatever the alien du jour happens to have for skin. And when Adam later teams up with another famous bounty hunter, things really begin to go south.

The Fastest Tortoise is about not just weathering the unknown but embracing it and thriving. Structuring his story around “Ken-isms” that define his personal and professional philosophies—such as “yellow lights don’t turn green,” “be uncomfortable,” and “feed the ducks while they’re quacking”—Ken demonstrates how to approach a volatile world.

Most Americans were shocked by the violence they witnessed at the nation's Capital on January 6th, 2021. And many were bewildered by the images displayed by the insurrectionists: a wooden cross and wooden gallows; "Jesus saves" and "Don't Tread on Me;" Christian flags and Confederate Flags; even a prayer in Jesus's name after storming the Senate chamber. Where some saw a confusing jumble, Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry saw a familiar ideology: white Christian nationalism.

After his last two jobs left him broke and in debt, The Human for Hire is looking for a way to make some quick cash. And that's when three Human friends from his past show up, offering him a piece of the action in an upcoming bank robbery. At first, he says no. But then the details come out. It's behind enemy lines . . . and it's a Klin bank they'd be robbing. As Adam Cain says, "This could be the perfect crime." Get ready for Kelly's Heroes in Space, as Adam Cain and friends embark on a hair brain scheme to rob half-a-billion energy credits from a Klin bank.

Arieel Bol is the religious leader of the planet Formil, Speaker of the Gods, and Carrier of the Sacred Bloodline. She also happens to be The Human's ex-lover and the mother of his daughter, Lila. So when Arieel is kidnapped by a radical religious sect known as the Armies of the Sun, Adam Cain is set loose on a mad mission to save Arieel, and before her scheduled public execution. The Armies of the Sun have already assassinated a dozen galactic religious leaders in the past few months and no one has been able to stop them . . . until now.

When The Human takes on a minor mercenary job of protecting a group of settlers against alien marauders, it seems simple enough . . . until the bad guys don't take no for an answer, leaving Adam with only one option.

Russia and China are increasingly revisionist in their regions. The Middle East appears to be unraveling. And many Americans question why the United States ought to lead. What will great power competition look like in the decades ahead? What impact will geopolitics have on globalization? And what strategy should the United States pursue to succeed in an increasingly competitive world? In this book, Thomas Wright explains how major powers will compete fiercely even as they try to avoid war with each other.

In A Decent Life, May leads listeners through the traditional philosophical bases of a number of arguments about what ethics asks of us, then he develops a more reasonable and achievable way of thinking about them, one that shows us how we can use philosophical insights to participate in the complicated world around us. He explores how we should approach the many relationships in our lives - with friends, family, animals, people in need - through the use of a more forgiving, if no less fundamentally serious, moral compass.

Americans spend more money on health than people anywhere else in the world. And what do they get for it? Statistically, not much. Americans today live shorter, less healthy lives than citizens of other rich countries. The problem, Sandro Galea argues, is that Americans focus on the wrong things. Well is a radical examination of the subtle and not-so-subtle factors that determine who gets to be healthy in America.

The alien with an attitude is BACK! And he's not the only one. Kracion, the Mad Aris, is also back, and working with the allies to stop the Klin from destroying the universe. As the Klin build and deploy thousands of trans-dimensional starships, they refuse to accept the danger the space engines represent. Kracion has spent years repairing the damage to the space/time continuum caused by these drives, and now the Klin are literally tearing the fabric of space apart even worse than before.

In this book, author Chris Penasa shows you how to attain consistency, profitability, and scalability in your construction or trade business. As the cofounder of the industry-leading coaching practice Small Business Growth Partners, Chris has helped develop a proven system for unlocking organizational growth. Whether you’ve been struggling with personnel issues, marketing, sales, processes, or anything in between, this book will help you transform your pain points into strengths.

The alien with an attitude is back! But for how long? After the tragic events at the end of Secondary Protocol, the truth is finally revealed to Adam and his friends. Now, he's living on borrowed time as his resurrected body is rapidly deteriorating. To save Adam, the mutants—Panur and Lila—must take him to the Sol-Kor universe. But in doing so, they awaken the wrath of Queen J'nae, who will use all her resources to destroy Panur—along with any hope of Adam surviving. And to add insult to injury, the New Klin from Kracion's universe have invaded the Milky Way.

The story of the Klin comes full circle. After failing to conquer the Expansion—again—the aliens set their sights once again on Earth and the human race. This time, they're bringing their deadly subcutaneous microchips to get the race to do their bidding. But when things go horribly wrong, the Klin have to look at alternatives. When Adam Cain and Copernicus Smith inadvertently discover the Klin's sinister plot on Earth, they're shocked to find that the truth is hard to believe. And now our reluctant heroes must find the Klin surrogates and prevent the takeover.

For better or worse - be it militarily, politically, economically, technologically, or culturally - Americans have had a profound role in shaping the wider world beyond them. The United States has been a savior to some, a curse to others, but either way such views are often based on a caricature of American actions and intentions. American foreign relations, then, is a subject of immense global importance that provokes strong emotions and much debate, but often based on deep misunderstanding.

Known for his New York Times best-selling alternate history novels, Flint is equally a master of shorter forms, and this second large volume gathers more of Flint's shorter works. Including several stories and a short novel set in Flint's celebrated Ring of Fire alternate history series. A commemorative novelette set in Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos universe. A story with Dave Freer, set in his and Flint's popular Rats, Bats, and Vats series. Several humorous short stories addressing Biblical literalism. A long novella in a Martian steampunk setting.

It's a case reminiscent of the explosive story of Susan Smith, convicted in the drownings of her two young sons in South Carolina. But in The Unforgiven, three young children are in the back seat of a car driven by Amanda Hamm's boyfriend as it slips into an Illinois lake. Amanda and her boyfriend survive. Her three children do not.

According to The 108 Skills of Natural Born Leaders, no one is born a leader. But everyone has the natural born capacity to lead. We label people "natural born leaders" because they consistently and frequently model qualities that inspire others to commit to their direction. This book identifies the skill set that causes others to see people as natural born leaders, helps listeners assess their current level of these skills, and coaches listeners to master their weak areas.

In 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was—and is—a world-class lab, and its reactor was the cornerstone of US materials science. But its discovery triggered a media and political firestorm that resulted in the reactor's shutdown, and even attempts to close the entire laboratory. A quarter century later, the episode reveals the dynamics of today's controversies in which fears and the dismissal of science disrupt serious discussion and research of vital issues.

"Why do conservatives hate comedy? Why is there no right-wing Jon Stewart?" These sorts of questions launch a million tweets, a thousand op-eds, and more than a few scholarly analyses. That's Not Funny argues that it is both an intellectual and politically strategic mistake to assume that comedy has a liberal bias. Matt Sienkiewicz and Nick Marx take listeners—particularly self-described liberals—on a tour of contemporary conservative comedy and the "right-wing comedy complex."