Showing results by narrator "Rick Adamson" in All Categories

Vanilla is one of the most expensive of flavorings—so valuable that it was smuggled or stolen by pirates in the early days—and yet it is everywhere. It is a key ingredient in dishes ranging from crème brûlée to Japanese purin. It is the quintessential ice cream flavor in the United States. Eric T. Jennings explains how the world's only edible orchid, originally endemic to Central America, became embedded in the international culinary and cultural landscape.

Stories about demons are rising in pop culture, but accounts of their manifestations have been bubbling up throughout history. Paranormal investigator Richard Estep explores this societal fascination as he strives to identify exactly what demons are and where to find them. Consulting with experts ranging from an ordained Catholic exorcist to a medical doctor, Richard scrutinizes the history of demonology and infamous instances of possession, including the case that inspired The Exorcist. With all the facts at your fingertips, you can decide the truth for yourself.

When they were boys, Ray Dawley, Eddie Sayers, and Matthew Kauffman were the best of friends. Then new kid Bobby “Bones” Bonetti fell through the ice at Blackamore Pond. The other boys saved Bobby from drowning, but something else came out of the water that day, something dangerous that would tear their friendship apart and set one of them on a dark path.

Railroad detective Jimmy Lee "Choctaw" Parker returns in this Gilded Age thriller when in August of 1886 he is hired by oil baron and entrepreneur Henry Morrison Flagler who is buying up railroads and building his grand new Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine, Florida. But Flagler's vision of opening the Sunshine State to settlement and tourism is not shared by everyone, so "Choctaw" Parker must investigate both the sabotage against the Jacksonville, St. Augustine, and Halifax railroad construction, and the threats on Flagler's life.

Providing dozens of activities that can be adapted to meet the needs of every family, The Learning Household is an essential guide to bringing curiosity back to the classroom and fostering an appreciation for the intrinsic value of learning.

Grant at 200: Reconsidering the Life and Legacy of Ulysses S. Grant celebrates the bicentennial of the birth of a man whose towering impact on American history has often been overshadowed and, in many cases, ignored. This collection of essays by some of today's leading Grant scholars offers fresh perspectives on Grant's military career and presidency, as well as underexplored personal topics such as his faith and family life.

On January 13, 1940, FBI agents burst into the homes and offices of seventeen members of the Christian Front, seizing guns, ammunition, and homemade bombs. J. Edgar Hoover's charges were incendiary: the group, he alleged, was planning to incite a revolution and install a "temporary dictatorship" in order to stamp out Jewish and Communist influence in the United States. In Nazis of Copley Square, Charles Gallagher provides a crucial missing chapter in the history of the American far right.

Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World tells the complete story of how a city once famed for protests so peaceful that toddlers joined grandparents became a place where police have fired tear gas, rubber bullets and even live ammunition at their neighbors, while pro-government hooligans attack demonstrators.

In the middle years of the Great Depression, the antifascist movement became a global political force, powerfully uniting people from across divisions of ideology, geography, race, language, and nationality. Joseph Fronczak shows how socialists, liberals, communists, anarchists, and others achieved a semblance of unity in the fight against fascism.

The climb that went wrong: fighting blinding snowstorms and horrific avalanches; days spent tentbound running low on food, water and oxygen; surviving broken bones and shattered spirits. With writing from Greg Child, David Roberts, Stephen Venables, Alfred Lansing and others, Epic is a collection of the most memorable accounts of legend-making expeditions to the world’s most famous peaks, often in the worst possible conditions!

The nineteenth century saw European empires build vast transport networks to maximize their profits from trade, and it saw Christian missionaries spread printing across Asia to bring Bibles to the colonized. The unintended consequence was an Asian communications revolution: the maritime public sphere expanded from Istanbul to Yokohama. From all corners of the continent, curious individuals confronted the challenges of studying each other's cultures by using the infrastructure of empire for their own exploratory ends.

The story has so often been told: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Habsburg Empire, was shot dead on June 28, 1914, in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Thirty days later, the Archduke's uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph, declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia, producing the chain reaction of European powers entering the First World War. Contrasting the vast disproportionality between a single deadly act and an act of war that would leave ten million dead, Misfire contends that the real causes for the world war lie in "civilized" Europe rather than the assassination.

A spiritual journey with extraordinary encounters. Yon Rou's memoir is a kaleidoscopic ride through the upper echelons of New York Society and the nature-worshipping, sword-wielding world of East Asian religious and martial arts. Monk of Park Avenue divulges a privileged childhood in Manhattan, followed by the bitter rigors of kung fu in China and meditations in Daoist temples. Join Yon Rou's adventure as he encounters kings, Nobel laureates, and the Mob.

The Creole Rebellion tells the suspenseful story of a successful mutiny on board the slave ship Creole. En route for a New Orleans slave-auction block in November 1841, nineteen captives mutinied, killing one man and injuring several others. After taking control of the vessel, mutineer Madison Washington forced the crewmen to sail to the Bahamas. Despite much local hysteria upon their arrival, all of the 135 slaves aboard the ship won their freedom there.

China GDP has grown from $300 per capita to more than $10,000 in the past thirty years and lifted more people into the middle class than in any other country at any other point in human history. It is important for investors, US companies and anyone interested in the global economy to understand China. Author Jonathan A. Krane provides an inside look at China's transformation into a global superpower and explains why the relationship between the US and China is the most critical economic relationship in the world today.

A clear-eyed analysis of the role the United States should play in the world as it exists today.

Today's militaries are increasingly reliant on highly networked autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, and advanced weapons that were previously the domain of sci-fi writers. In such a world, what can we do to decrease the chances of war? In Future Peace, Robert H. Latiff questions our overreliance on technology and examines the pressure-cooker scenario created by the growing animosity between the US and its adversaries, our thinly stretched global military, the capacity for technology to catalyze violence, and the American public's lack of familiarity with these topics.

We all know that numbers go on forever, that you could spend your life counting and never reach the end of the line, so there can’t be such a thing as a "biggest number". Or can there? To find out, David Darling and Agnijo Banerjee embark on an epic quest, revealing the answers to questions like: are there more grains of sand on Earth or stars in the universe? Is there enough paper on Earth to write out the digits of a googolplex? And what is a googolplex? Then things get serious.

In Real Americans, Jared A. Goldstein boldly challenges the conventional wisdom that a shared devotion to the Constitution is the essence of what it means to be American.

Frustrated with an increasingly polarized social landscape, award-winning photographer John Noltner set out on a 40,000-mile road trip across the United States to rediscover the common humanity that connects us. He did so by asking people one simple question: "What does peace mean to you?" Through difficult conversations, gentle humor, and a keen eye for beauty, Noltner's Portraits of Peace captures a rich collage of who we are as a nation.