Showing results by narrator "Peter Lerman" in All Categories

Based in the idea that social phenomena are best studied through the lens of different disciplinary perspectives, Empty Churches studies the growing number of individuals who no longer affiliate with a religious tradition. Coeditors Jan Stets, a social psychologist, and James Heft, a historian of theology, bring together leading scholars in the fields of sociology, developmental psychology, gerontology, political science, history, philosophy, and pastoral theology.

In The Fourth Branch: Reconstructing the Administrative State for the Commercial Republic Brian J. Cook confronts head-on the accumulating derangements in the American constitutional system and how the administrative state has contributed to the problems, how it has been a key force in addressing the troubles, and how it can be reformed to serve the system better. Cook calls for a decisive, pattern-breaking response in the form of a constitutional redesign to accommodate a fourth branch, an administrative branch. 

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the 20th century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, MD, who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman's documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.

The essential handbook for doing historical research in the 21st century, The Princeton Guide to Historical Research provides students, scholars, and professionals with the skills they need to practice the historian's craft in the digital age, while never losing sight of the fundamental values and techniques that have defined historical scholarship for centuries.

In today's corporate world, 87 percent of companies fail to successfully execute the strategy they set for any given year. In this book, CEO mentor and coach Dan Prosser tells you how to make your company one of the other 13 percent. In the process, he explains that the true challenge of building a great company - one that consistently executes its strategy - is understanding the real nature of human interaction and the key to success: connectedness.

All that serenity was broken by human behavior gone off the rails. Philanthropist Marilyn Boggs, is murdered on her private island near Naples. Though irresponsible and spoiled, Marilyn was a pillar of the community. Who'd want her dead? There's a huge difference between fear and being afraid and the suspects in this murder feared their existence was in jeopardy. Det. Luca instincts point to the husband whose motives are clear but inconveniently, other, credible suspects surface. Full of betrayal, tension, and suspense, Det. Luca is back in another hard-boiled mystery.

The commonly held view of Albert Einstein is of an eccentric genius for whom the pursuit of science was everything. But in actuality, the brilliant innovator whose Theory of Relativity forever reshaped our understanding of time was a man of his times, always politically engaged and driven by strong moral principles. An avowed pacifist, Einstein’s mistrust of authority and outspoken social and scientific views earned him death threats from Nazi sympathizers in the years preceding World War II.

Travis A. Weisse tells a new history of modern diets in America that goes beyond the familiar narrative of the nation’s collective failure to lose weight. By exploring how the popularity of diets grew alongside patients' frustrations with the limitations and failures of the American healthcare system in the face of chronic disease, Weisse argues that millions of Americans sought “fad” diets—such as the notorious Atkins program which ushered in the low-carbohydrate craze—to wrest control of their health from pessimistic doctors and lifelong pharmaceutical regimens.

Building off the framework of Schultheis' The Coffeehouse Investor philosophy, this book will instill the common man and woman with the confidence to take control over their long-term financial goals and journey toward financial freedom in retirement. The Coffeehouse Investor's Ground Rules encourages listeners to ignore stock market "rules" and "perfect portfolio" pursuits to focus on the only three essential components to long-term financial security: saving, investing, and planning.

Stories abound of immigrant Jews on the outside looking in, clambering up the ladder of social mobility, successfully assimilating and integrating into their new worlds. But this book is not about the success stories. It's a paean to the bunglers, the blockheads, and the just plain weird—Jews who were flung from small, impoverished eastern European towns into the urban shtetls of New York and Warsaw, where, as they say in Yiddish, their bread landed butter side down in the dirt.

In this practical guidebook, Dr. Dan Morhaim and Shelley Morhaim offer listeners hope, empowerment, and inspiration. What we choose for our end-of-life care, they assert, depends on accurate information and on our personal values. We need these not only to understand new medical advances, but also to appreciate the wisdom of humanity's past and present.

Jack London—author of The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Sea Wolf—was among the most highly regarded and most successful writers of the early 20th century. This is a collection of eight of his best short stories.

Rot and Revival is one of the first scholarly works to comprehensively theorize and document how politics make American constitutional law and how the courts affect the path of partisan politics. Rejecting the idea that the Constitution's significance and interpretation can be divorced from contemporary political realities, Anthony Michael Kreis explains how American constitutional law reflects the ideological commitments of dominant political coalitions, the consequences of major public policy choices, and the influences of intervening social movements.

In this memoir of a lost America, Hal Borland tells the story of his family's migration to eastern Colorado as homesteaders at the turn of the twentieth century. On an unsettled and unwelcoming prairie landscape, the Borlands build a house, plant crops, and eke out a meager existence. While life is difficult—and self-reliance is necessary with no neighbors for miles—the experience brings the family close and binds them closer to the terrible and beautiful natural patterns that govern their lives.

A provocative look at the relationship between the far right and the American conservative movement from the 1930s to the end of the Cold War. As David Austin Walsh shows, the mainstream conservative movement and the far right have been intertwined for nearly a century, and both were born out of a “right-wing popular front” linking racists, anti-Semites, and fascists in a broad coalition opposed to socialism, communism, and New Deal liberalism.

William Dudley Haywood, nicknamed “Big Bill,” was an American labor organizer as well as founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (commonly referred to as the “Wobblies”). He was also a member of the executive committee of the Socialist Party of America.

‘Other People’s Money and How Bankers Used It’ was a seminal text in the Progressive Era, aligning with broader calls for reform in American society. The book contributed to the growing push for financial regulation, and its ideas influenced the creation of laws such as the Federal Reserve Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, which were intended to curb the power of monopolies and promote fair competition.

In 1957 Sputnik launched toward the stars. President Kennedy then announced that the United States would send men to the Moon and then return them to Earth.These pivotal moments sparked an unequaled bound forward in human innovation and scientific exploration. At the heart of this momentous time were the men and women working behind the scenes. Scientists, historians, and astronomers share their memories and contributions from this unparalleled era in essays told in their own words.

In Under the Dome, Alan Hantman, the Architect of the Capitol from 1997 to 2007, provides a personal account of how the Capitol works as a physical space; who runs it, how and why decisions are made about the security of the Capitol and the people who work there, and how politicians think about the Capitol Building.

The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902 tells the twin stories of mostly uneducated women immigrants who discovered their collective consumer power and of the Beef Trust, the midwestern cartel that conspired to keep meat prices high despite efforts by the U.S. government to curtail its nefarious practices.