Showing results by narrator "Christopher Ragland" in All Categories

With all eyes on Ukraine and the Middle East, Taiwan is emerging as the next geopolitical tinderbox. Despite sitting at the heart of the tense relationship between China and the US, Taiwan’s history and its people have long been overlooked and misunderstood. In Ghost Nation, Taiwan-based journalist Chris Horton tells their stories and explores why this diplomatically isolated country has become such an important player on the world stage. As China’s military preparations continue apace, the stakes have never been higher.

Is there a sports team more synonymous with winning than the New York Yankees? The team of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Berra, Ford, Mantle, Jackson, Mattingly? Of Torre, Jeter, and Rivera? Of forty American League pennants, twenty-seven World Championships, and nearly forty Hall of Famers? Like so many great American institutions, the Yankees began humbly, on the muddy, uneven grass of Hilltop Park. Eighteen years later the little second-class franchise won its first pennant. Today, the Yankees are worth more than a billion dollars.

Even in the fast and loose world of the Trump White House, the idea that a couple thousand disorganized protestors storming the U.S. Capitol might actually prevent a presidential succession was farfetched. Yet perfectly legal ways of overturning election results actually do exist, and they would allow a political party to install its own candidate in place of the true winner.

Are you an executive leader who wants to create efficient and effective change - and be well rewarded for your success? This audiobook provides a step-by-step approach to help you drive fast, consistent internal innovation and allow your business to react positively to any changes in the market. It explains clearly how to create an agile, innovative organisation that can learn from its own mistakes and become a company that people will fight to work for.

In the heat-wave summer of 1971, four kids find a body by a lake and set out to solve a murder. But they dig too deep and ask too many questions. Larson is a town reeling in the wake of the Vietnam draft, where the unrelenting heat ruins the harvest and the people teeter on the edge of ruin. As tension and paranoia run rife, rumours become fact, violence becomes reflex. The unrest allows the dark elements of the close-knit farming community to rise and take control. And John, Jenny, Gloria and Rudy are about to discover that sometimes secrets are best left uncovered....

The world of business books is a curious place where one can find everyone from great businesspeople like Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk to the most spectacular business failures such as Enron and the subprime business market. There are geniuses, hard workers, academics and entrepreneurs as well a few charlatans and hucksters. There's even room for Donald Trump. The 70 titles covered were chosen with various parameters in mind to cover a range of areas of business.

You're woken early by the doorbell. It's a young girl, the daughter of the love of your life. She's scared, covered in blood, she says her mother is hurt. You let her in, try to calm her down, tell her you're going to get help. You reach for your phone, but it lights up with a notification before you touch it. It's an Amber Alert - a child has been abducted by a dangerous suspect. The child is the girl standing in front of you. The suspect? You.

Who is Claire Gravesend? So wonders PI Lee Crowe when he finds her dead, in a fine cocktail dress, on top of a Rolls-Royce in the most dangerous neighbourhood in San Francisco. Claire's mother doesn't believe the coroner: her daughter did not kill herself. But the questions about the Gravesend family pile up fast. Until Crowe finds their secret home in San Francisco. Sleeping in an upstairs bedroom, he finds Claire, and as far as he can tell, she's alive....

By 1993, Guns N' Roses had hit practically every benchmark possible for a rock n' roll band. Their eight-year journey included an explosive and game-changing debut record, a self-indulgent but even more successful double album release, a handful of raucous global tours, and various front page controversies over their lyrics, drug addictions, and lead singer Axl Rose's rattlesnake temper. The most captivating part of the Guns N' Roses story was just beginning, however.

Read the true story of Universal Music Russia’s first CEO and his quest to bring Western popular music to post-Soviet Russia in an account that Publishers Weekly calls "an exciting and colorful look at a dynamic period in Russia’s cultural history" and Library Journal calls an "absorbing illustration of the mutuality of music and politics." When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia opened its borders, and Russian audiences were hungry for Western popular music and the values it espoused. David Junk was one of the first idealistic, young Americans to seize this opportunity.

Based on decades of work as a professor of literature and as a musician, Jesse Kavadlo analyzes the ways in which 1980s heavy metal aligns with and develops many of the themes prevalent in the canon of literature. In doing so, the book examines some of the contexts of 1980s heavy metal, including Cold War, the rise of MTV, and the formation of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) and subsequent congressional hearings.

Former Earthman Ulysses Paxton served Barsoom's greatest scientist, until his master's ghoulish trade in living bodies drove him to rebellion. Then, to save the body of the woman he loved, he had to attack mighty Phundahl, and its evil, beautiful ruler.

The Carter brothers were once inseparable – five boys, a band, and a bond that seemed unbreakable. But it’s been ten years since the band broke up and even longer since they left the family ranch and the wide-open skies of Autumn Falls. Fame, secrets and time have left cracks that no one wants to face.

"The school of life is preparation for eternity with God." No God, no passing grades! And the best students in this particular school are the ones who know that the bell signaling the end of the last class may ring when least expected. With creative word pictures like this, and the spiritual depth and insight that comes from a lifetime of worshipping the Lord, popular author, pastor, and teacher Dr. Warren W. Wiersbe guides you through the mountains and valleys of Psalms 90-150.

Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 19th January 1809. Poe is also one of a number of authors credited with inventing the detective genre with his Parisian sleuth C. Auguste Dupin. He's featured in three stories, including the legendary ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’, and by sheer deduction, logic and a touch of Gallic arrogance revealed what was hidden to the rest of us.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on 4th July 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, a town synonymous with the earlier Salem Witch Trials. It was instrumental in Hawthorne’s later use of American Gothic and dark romanticism in his writing. ‘Rapaccinni’s Daughter’ is a classic piece of literature from his pen. Set in Italy, it is an unsettling story of romance destroyed by science.

Wallace James Stevens was born on October 2nd, 1879, in Reading, Pennsylvania. His father, a lawyer, sent Wallace to Harvard as a non-degree special student, after which he moved to New York City and worked briefly as a journalist. In 1923 ‘Harmonium’ was published. At last, at age 38, he was an overnight success. His career was not prodigious in quantity but its quality was exceptional and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his Collected Poems in 1955.

Art and life. Each the mirror of the other. This then is the classic definition of what ‘Realism’ as a writing form really is. Some might call it a fancy term for the mundane day to day pursuits but in the hands of an author it comes alive. We are drawn into characters and landscapes that we can empathize with, we can, metaphorically speaking, help shoulder their burden, be on the long trail with them whatever the landscapes, the hurdles, incidents and other people may place in their literary way.

Dealing with the tragic death of his father, 14-year-old Reggie finds the isolation of the woods near his house comforting. Until one day, a man – stumbling, bleeding, clearly distressed – emerges from the shadows. Reggie hides the man in his treehouse, and helps the stranger recover. Each with stories to share, soon the pair form a strange friendship. But then Reggie learns that his new friend is a ruthless contract killer.

Benét was born on 22nd July in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Prodigiously his first book was published at 17 and for he obtained his M.A. in English when he submitted a poetry volume as his thesis. Whilst travelling in France, in the early '20s, he met and quickly married a fellow writer and poet, Rosemary Carr. She would also collaborate with him on several works. In Paris he wrote the book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War ‘John Brown's Body’, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.