Showing results by narrator "Mark Deakins" in All Categories

College football has never been more popular - or more chaotic. Millions fill 100,000-seat stadiums every Saturday; tens of millions more watch on television every weekend. The 2013 Discover BCS National Championship game between Notre Dame and Alabama had a viewership of 26.4 million people, second only to the Super Bowl. Billions of dollars from television deals now flow into the game; the average budget for a top-ten team is $80 million; top coaches make more than $3 million a year; the highest paid, more than $5 million.

In infancy, Junior Thibodeaux is encoded with a prophesy: A comet will obliterate life on Earth in 36 years. Alone in this knowledge, he comes of age in rural Maine grappling with the question: Does anything I do matter? While the voice that has accompanied him since conception appraises his choices, Junior's loved ones emerge with parallel stories - his anxious mother.

In a barracks on an abandoned military base, miles from the nearest road, Thomas watches as the man he has brought wakes up. Kev, a NASA astronaut, doesn't recognize his captor, though Thomas remembers him. Kev cries for help. He pulls at the chain. Thomas didn't want to have to resort to this. But they really needed to have a conversation, and Kev didn't answer his messages. And now, Thomas has a few questions.

The NFL has come a long way from its founding in Canton, Ohio, in 1920. In the 100 years since that fateful day, football has become America’s most popular and lucrative professional sport. The former scrappy upstart league that struggled to stay afloat has survived a host of challenges to produce American icons like Vince Lombardi, Joe Montana, and Tom Brady. It is an extraordinary and entertaining history that could be told only by Joe Horrigan, former executive director of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and perhaps the greatest living historian of the NFL.

Kit Noonan is an unemployed art historian with twins to help support and a mortgage to pay—and a wife frustrated by his inertia. Raised by a strong-willed, secretive single mother, Kit has never known the identity of his father—a mystery that his wife insists he must solve to move forward with his life. Out of desperation, Kit goes to the mountain retreat of his mother’s former husband, Jasper, a take-no-prisoners outdoorsman.

Lily Young thought traveling across the globe with a reawakened sun prince was a grand adventure. Now she's about to embark on the journey of a lifetime. When Amon and Lily part tragically, he transports himself to the Netherworld - what mortals call hell. Tormented by the loss of his one true love, he'd rather suffer in agony during Lily's mortal years than fulfill his duty to protect humanity.

Thirty-year-old George Davies can't bring himself to hold his newborn son. After months of accepting his lame excuses and strange behavior, his wife demands that he see a therapist, and George, desperate to save his unraveling marriage and redeem himself as a father and husband, reluctantly agrees.

A decade from now, in the historic town of Vigil Harbor, there's been a rash of divorces among the yacht-club set; a marine biologist despairs at the state of the world; a spurned wife is bent on revenge; and the renowned architect Austin Kepner pursues a passion for building homes designed to withstand the escalating fury of relentless storms. Austin's stepson, Brecht, has dropped out of college in New York and returned home after narrowly escaping one of the terrorist acts that, like hurricanes, have become increasingly common.

Kyra is an architect involved in a project to design a new city. Andreas, a theater director, is staging an innovative production of the opera Tosca. Both have come through political upheaval and personal loss. Neither wants to fall in love. Yet when she asks him, what the opposite of losing is, and he says, "finding", it galvanizes a powerful attraction, and they risk opening themselves to love once again. But a shocking betrayal awaits.

Since the end of World War II, the United States has set out to oust governments in the Middle East on an average of once per decade - in places as diverse as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan (twice), Egypt, Libya, and Syria. The reasons for these interventions have also been extremely diverse, and the methods by which the United States pursued regime change have also been highly varied, ranging from diplomatic pressure alone to outright military invasion and occupation

After surviving her otherworldly adventure, Lily wakes up on her nana's farm having forgotten everything. Her sun prince, her travels to Egypt, and her journey to the Afterlife are all distant memories. But Lily is not the girl she once was. Her body is now part human, part lion, and part fairy. And if that isn't bad enough, she must harness this power of three and become Wasret: a goddess destined to defeat the evil god Seth once and for all.

This is the book you want to keep with you at all times: the full text of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the two documents that are the backbone of United States government. Hearing them as they were written is a must for every American. Regular listening is required for any historian or member of the legal profession, and a good idea for all Americans.

This is the story of the last holder of the scrolls, an old chief named Zafir. Worried that his life was nearly spent, Zafir chose young Bassam to be his heir to the scrolls. Was Bassam ready? To prove the young man Zafir took him on a caravan trek with the intent of teaching him the scrolls. And then, partway into the trip, a startling surprise changed everything. The scrolls are timeless.

In Wonderful Marriage, Lilo and Gerard Leeds share with listeners the habits of mind and heart that all great relationships, including their own 56-year marriage, have in common. From sex to communication, they discuss all aspects of marriage, offering profound insight and thoughtful advice to help couples improve and maintain their own relationships.

The Buddha's teaching on the five hindrances to awakening in the ancient scripture Samyutta Nikaya, where he contrasts them to the seven factors of enlightenment. They are a feature of what's taught in all the Buddhist traditions. Mitch Abblett gives the teaching a unique modern and secular interpretation, combining traditional wisdom with contemporary psychology - with examples from the lives of the real people he has worked with on the hindrances in his psychotherapy practice. 

Best-selling author Steven Johnson recounts - in dazzling, multidisciplinary fashion - the story of the brilliant man who embodied the relationship between science, religion, and politics for America's Founding Fathers. The Invention of Air is a title of world-changing ideas wrapped around a compelling narrative, a story of genius and violence and friendship in the midst of sweeping historical change that provokes us to recast our understanding of the Founding Fathers.

At age 20, marine scout-sniper Jack Valentine had his first kill in Iraq, at the start of the Persian Gulf War. Now it's 2006, and he's back in Baghdad, obsessed with taking down al-Qaeda terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Jack missed his first shot at Zarqawi, and it's haunted him ever since - even though the attack struck fear into the black hearts of the jihadists and earned him the name the Ghost of Anbar.

Have you ever wanted to read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and really understand what they're saying? Millions of others have, too. But getting a real understanding of the legal language of 200 years ago can be challenging - and as a result, few Americans know these important documents as well as they should. Recognizing this, Paul Skousen has written exactly the book you've been looking for. It's an easy step-by-step guide that makes these documents come alive.

In 1830, a young seer and sometime treasure hunter named Joseph Smith began organizing adherents into a new religious community that would come to be called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (and known informally as the Mormons). One of the nascent faith’s early initiates was a twenty-three-year-old Ohio farmer named Parley Pratt, the distant grandfather of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In The Mormon People, religious historian Matthew Bowman peels back the curtain on more than 180 years of Mormon history and doctrine.

From the acclaimed author of The Pencil and To Engineer Is Human, The Essential Engineer is an eye-opening exploration of the ways in which science and engineering must work together to address our world's most pressing issues, from dealing with climate change and the prevention of natural disasters to the development of efficient automobiles and the search for renewable energy sources.