Showing results by narrator "Robert Fass" in All Categories

The Arrest isn't post-apocalypse. It isn't a dystopia. It isn't a utopia. It's just what happens when much of what we take for granted - cars, guns, computers, and airplanes, for starters - stops working... Before the Arrest, Sandy Duplessis had a reasonably good life as a screenwriter in L.A. An old college friend and writing partner, the charismatic and malicious Peter Todbaum, had become one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. That didn't hurt. Now, post-Arrest, nothing is what it was. Sandy, who calls himself Journeyman, has landed in rural Maine.

Presence, the Play offers a penetrating perspective on the vital role personal presence plays in the essence of life. This timely, captivating novel speaks to a growing hunger for a way of life that’s real and tangible, the opposite of an artificial existence lived in a realm of mediated connectivity.

The greatest challenge facing leaders is activating and actioning purpose based brands to the people who matter inside the company and out. Recent statistics prove that more than 87 percent of consumers would purchase a product, because a company advocated for an issue they cared about, and more than two-thirds would refuse to do so if the company supported an issue contrary to their beliefs.

The final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant, the victorious general in the Civil War and the 18th president of the United States, is a colossal neoclassical tomb located in the most dynamic city in the country. It is larger than the final resting place of any other president or any other person in America. Since its creation, the popularity and condition of this monument have reflected not only Grant's legacy in the public mind but also the state of New York City and of the Union. In this deeply researched book, presidential historian Louis L. Picone recounts the full story.

In Cross of Snow, the result of more than 12 years of research, including access to never-before-examined letters, diaries, journals, and notes, Nicholas Basbanes reveals the life, the times, the work - the soul - of the man who shaped the literature of a new nation with his countless poems, sonnets, stories, essays, and translations, and whose renown was so wide-reaching that his deep friendships included Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Julia Ward Howe, and Oscar Wilde.

Endpapers excavates the extraordinary histories of the author's grandfather and father: the renowned publisher Kurt Wolff, dubbed "perhaps the 20th century's most discriminating publisher" by the New York Times Book Review, and his son Niko, who fought in the Wehrmacht during World War II before coming to America.

Our narrator, Francisco Goldberg, has been living and working in Mexico City as a journalist for over a decade, but has recently returned to New York City in hopes of "going home again". It's been five years since the end of his last relationship and he is falling in love again. Soon he is beckoned back to Boston by the high school girlfriend who was witness to his greatest youthful humiliations, and his mother, Yolanda, around whom his story orbits like a dark star.

Hamilton is crushed by a secret so shameful that it is beyond bearing. His heir is dead; his daughter has gone insane with grief. His dear wife, Eliza, now shudders at his touch. He never intended to send his son to his death. That wasn't in his plans. And his wife may never forgive him. As Hamilton struggles to save his marriage and his family, his political opponent, Aaron Burr, threatens to topple the nation. The nation which Hamilton had risked everything to forge. Burr, impoverished and embittered by a humiliating loss, blames Hamilton, and now threatens to destroy the union.

While the title novella of Dubus' Finding a Girl in America returns to the somewhat off-the-rails literary life of Hank Allison, the collection's opening story strikes a much darker tone.

After the sudden death of his wife, Maida, Gene is haunted by the fear that their marriage was not all it appeared to be. Alongside Ed and Gayle Donnelly, friends since college, he tries to resurrect happy memories of the times the two couples shared. Meanwhile, his daughter, Dary, challenges not only his happy version of the past but also his view of Maida. As a long-standing rift between them deepens, Gene starts to understand how unknown his daughter is to him - and how enigmatic his wife was. And a lingering suspicion seizes his mind that could upend everything he thought he knew.

What is it like to encounter cancer? How does it feel to face the unknown, to enter a world of hope, loss, and dread? From the diagnosis of his childhood friend’s mother to his poignant memories in the lab, David Scadden’s seen the unknown world of cancer from the lens of a young boy, a classmate, a researcher, a friend, a doctor, and a neighbor. Scadden chronicles his personal memories of cancer - his visits to his sick neighbor and his classmate who left school and never came back.

In February 1910, a monstrous blizzard centered on Washington State hit the Northwest, breaking records. The world stopped - but nowhere was the danger more terrifying than near a tiny town called Wellington, perched high in the Cascade Mountains, where a desperate situation evolved minute by minute: two trainloads of cold, hungry passengers and their crews found themselves marooned without escape, their railcars gradually being buried in the rising drifts.

It coulda been worse. That's the "working epitaph" of 15-year-old Moon Landing. Not that Moon's death is imminent--far from it--but his thoughts have turned to gallows humor, as his world disintegrates along with his parents' marriage. His older brother skateboards through life with ease, but Moon is deeply troubled. Just as he is solving for romantic unknowns with a gorgeous older girl, Moon must contend with his dad's sudden absence, his mom-gone-wild's sexcapades, and his best friends' curious penchant for self-destruction. Not to mention his newfound role in agitating to end an African guerrilla's bloody rampage. To make sense of it all, Moon embarks on a quest to unravel the riddle of God's injustice to man.

Set in 1985, Junk tells the story of Robert Merkin, resident genius of the upstart investment firm Sacker Lowell. Hailed as "America's Alchemist", his proclamation that "debt is an asset" has propelled him to a dizzying level of success. By orchestrating the takeover of a massive steel manufacturer, Merkin intends to do the "deal of the decade", the one that will rewrite all the rules.

In the past two decades, GMOs have come to dominate the American diet. Advocates hail them as the future of food, an enhanced method of crop breeding that can help feed an ever-increasing global population and adapt to a rapidly changing environment. Critics, meanwhile, call for their banishment, insisting GMOs were designed by overeager scientists and greedy corporations to bolster an industrial food system that forces us to rely on cheap, unhealthy, processed food so they can turn an easy profit.

Javier Mallarino is a living legend. He is his country's most influential political cartoonist, the consciousness of a nation. A man capable of repealing laws, overturning judges' decisions, destroying politicians' careers with his art. His weapons are pen and ink. Those in power fear him and pay him homage. At 65, after four decades of a brilliant career, he's at the height of his powers. But this all changes when he's paid an unexpected visit from a young woman.

Lions is set on the High Plains of Colorado, a nearly deserted place steeped in local legends and sparse in population. Built to be a glorious Western "city upon a hill", it was never fit for farming, mining, trading, or any of the illusory sources of wealth its pioneers imagined. The Walkers have been settled on its barren terrain for generations - a simple family in a town otherwise still taken in by stories of bigger, better, brighter.

A fascinating and insightful examination of the life and times of the victorious Civil War general who became a controversial American president. In U. S. Grant and the American Military Tradition, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bruce Catton explores the life and legacy of one of the nation's greatest and most misunderstood heroes before, during, and after the terrible War Between the States that violently split the country in two.

Some men retire on a hundred grand...or buy their wives mink coats with days of the week sewn in the lining...or fly to Rio for a good cup of coffee - but not Jim Morgan. Jim had a hundred thousand all right - neatly packed in stacks of 50s - only someone had made an expensive mistake. A mistake that put him on the run for his money - as well as his life.

The banners waved, the crowd cheered, the reporters rushed toward the candidate as he made his way to the speaker's platform. And then a shot rang out. The candidate clutched at his chest, screamed, and fell dead. It was a pretty kettle of fish for Tim Corrigan, the crime solver with the eye patch and the stainless-steel nervous system. The suspects included the candidate's voluptuous widow, his handsome bodyguard, and a breathtaking young thing with every reason to want the candidate dead.