Showing results by narrator "Tom Perkins" in All Categories

When painter Winslow Homer first sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, he was struck by its "special kind of providence." Indeed, the Gulf presented itself as America's sea - bound by geography, culture, and tradition to the national experience - and yet, there has never been a comprehensive history of the Gulf until now. And so, in this rich and original work that explores the Gulf through our human connection with the sea, environmental historian Jack E. Davis finally places this exceptional region into the American mythos in a sweeping history that extends from the Pleistocene age to the 21st century.

Renowned as a printer, scientist, and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin also published more works on religious topics than any other 18th-century American layperson. Born to Boston Puritans, by his teenage years Franklin had abandoned the exclusive Christian faith of his family and embraced deism. But Franklin, as a man of faith, was far more complex than the "thorough deist" who emerges in his autobiography.

In Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë raises a number of profound questions: What is art? Why do we value art as we do? What does art reveal about our nature? Drawing on philosophy, art history, and cognitive science, and making provocative use of examples from all three of these fields, Noë offers new answers to such questions. He also shows why recent efforts to frame questions about art in terms of neuroscience and evolutionary biology alone have been and will continue to be unsuccessful.

The Civil War was the first "modern war." Because of the rapid changes in American society, Abraham Lincoln became president of a divided United States during a period of technological and social revolution. Among the many modern marvels that gave the North an advantage was the telegraph, which Lincoln used to stay connected to the forces in the field in almost real time. No leader in history had ever possessed such a powerful tool to gain control over a fractious situation. An eager student of technology, Lincoln had to learn to use the power of electronic messages.

Welcome to Providence, Rhode Island, where corruption is entertainment and Mayor Buddy Cianci presided over the longest-running lounge act in American politics. In The Prince of Providence, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mike Stanton tells a classic story of wiseguys, feds, and politicians on a carousel of crime and redemption.

To the original text of what has become a classic of American historical literature, Bernard Bailyn adds a substantial essay, "Fulfillment", as a postscript. Here he discusses the intense nationwide debate on the ratification of the Constitution, stressing the continuities between that struggle over the foundations of the national government and the original principles of the Revolution.

The United States has always proved an inviting home for boosters, sharp dealers, and outright swindlers. Worship of entrepreneurial freedom has complicated the task of distinguishing aggressive salesmanship from unacceptable deceit, especially on the frontiers of innovation. At the same time, competitive pressures have often nudged respectable firms to embrace deception. As a result, fraud has been a key feature of American business since its beginnings.

Investors traditionally view low-risk stocks as safe but unprofitable, but this old canard is based on a flawed premise; it fails to see beyond the monthly horizon and ignores compounding returns. This book updates the thinking and brings reality to modelling to show how low-risk stocks actually outperform high-risk stocks by an order of magnitude. Accessible and easy to implement, the plan presented here will help you construct a portfolio that delivers higher returns per unit of risk and explains how to achieve excellent investment results over the long term.

More than three million American men, many of them volunteers, joined the AEF in the first twenty months of US involvement in the First World War. Of these, over 50,000 were killed on European soil. These were the Doughboys, the young men recruited from the cities and farms of the United States, who travelled across the Atlantic to aid the allies in the trenches and on the battlefields. Without their courage and determination, the outcome of the war would have been very different.

Yes, you can make money in the stock market—this guide shows you how. Investing in Stocks For Dummies gives you a straightforward introduction to stock investing. You'll learn the basics of buying and selling stocks, including how to research stocks and the factors that influence their performance. Even in an uncertain and challenging marketplace, you can profit by making smart financial decisions and investing wisely. This book explains how to calculate net worth, deal with tax laws, and do all the things that will make you a successful investor.

The ability of the US Navy to fight and win a protracted war in the Pacific was not solely the result of technology, tactics, or leadership. Naval aviation maintenance played a major role in the US victory over Japan in WWII. The naval war against Japan did not achieve sustained success until enough aircraft technicians were available to support the high tempo of aviation operations that fast carrier task force doctrine demanded.

Real wages have stagnated or declined for most workers, job insecurity has increased, and retirement income is uncertain. Why have jobs gotten so much worse? As Peter Cappelli argues, these issues and others stem from the logic of financial accounting and its fundamental flaws in dealing with human capital. Financial accounting views employee costs as fixed costs that cannot be reduced and fails to account for the costs of bad employees and poor management. The simple goal of today's executives is to drive down employment costs, even if it raises costs elsewhere.

Going beyond the well-known history, this book offers World War II buffs and history fans something altogether different. Just beneath the surface of the traditional perspectives and legendary events lurks a vast and shadowy world of virtually untraceable maneuvers, deceptive appearances, and confidences betrayed.

Mars, a mysterious dust-ridden place, is most like Earth in its climate and seasons. Of all the possible destinations in space to travel, Mars is the most likely for humans to reach. According to esteemed scientist Louis Friedman, it may be the only destination outside the moon to ever see human footprints. Far from diminishing our future in space, Human Spaceflight lays out a provocative future for human space travel. The noted aerospace engineer and scientist says that human space exploration will continue well into the future, but space travel by humans will stop at Mars.

Robert D. Banks shares the untold story of Point Frederick, where early nineteenth-century Canadians built warships that stopped invasion, brought peace, and the world's longest undefended border. Opposite Kingston, Point Frederick became the 1789 dockyard home of the navy on Lake Ontario. Armed vessels were built to transport settlers and the military. War in 1812 prompted the need for larger warships. Shipwrights were critical to winning the war. French Canadians from Quebec shipyards worked with the British to build warships with massive firepower.

Most Civil War battles took place along major roads, railroads, and waterways. And yet this perspective hasn't been fully explored when it comes to Gettysburg. Gettysburg Ranger and historian Troy Harman draws on a lifetime of researching the Civil War and more than thirty years of studying the terrain of Gettysburg and south-central Pennsylvania and northern Maryland to reframe the story of the Battle of Gettysburg.

The carbon dioxide that industrial civilization spews into the atmosphere has dramatic consequences for life on Earth that extend beyond climate change. CO2 levels directly affect plant growth, in turn affecting any kind of life that depends on plants—in other words, everything.

This book traces the lives of the Macaw and her enigmatic captain, from birth on San Francisco Bay to death at Midway. Ultimately, for Paul Burton and the Macaw the real enemy was the sea, and in a deadly denouement told here in riveting detail, the sea won. Highlighting the underreported role auxiliary vessels played in the war, A Strange Whim of the Sea should engage the military historian and layperson alike with the previously untold story it tells of struggle, sacrifice, death, and survival in the Pacific in World War II.

Bibliophobia is a book about material books, how they are cared for, and how they are damaged, throughout the 5,000-year history of writing from Sumeria to the smartphone. A global history, covering six continents and seven religions, it discusses topics such as the origins of human script; the development of textual media such as scrolls, codices, printed books, and AI; the collection and destruction of libraries; the use of books as holy relics, talismans, or shrines; and the place of literacy in the history of slavery, heresy, blasphemy, censorship, and persecution.

When Jefferson acquired the Louisiana Territory, he envisioned an "empire for liberty" populated by self-sufficient white farmers. Cleared of Native Americans and the remnants of European empires by Andrew Jackson, the Mississippi Valley was transformed instead into a booming capitalist economy commanded by wealthy planters, powered by steam engines, and dependent on the coerced labor of slaves.