Showing results by narrator "Lloyd James" in All Categories

The place of poetry in modern democracy is no place, according to conventional wisdom. The poet, we hear, is a casualty of mass entertainment and prosaic public culture, banished to the artistic sidelines to compose variations on insipid themes for a dwindling audience. Robert Pinsky, however, argues that this gloomy diagnosis is as wrongheaded as it is familiar.

Discipleship can feel like a meandering journey - we don’t know what we want, and none of the programs offered seem to get us anywhere. We need something to orient ourselves and something to direct our steps toward a clear destination. Simple Discipleship, with its companion assessment tool, offers a plan for discipleship that is tailored to your real life and your personality and clearly pointed in the way of Jesus.

A direct-sales superstar offers his tips on how to manage and grow quota-busting sales teams.

Adopting or fostering a child brings its own unique set of challenges only another parent facing the same uphill climb could possibly understand. From parenting children with traumatic pasts, to dealing with attachment issues, to raising a children with special needs, it can sometimes be a struggle just getting through the day. Mike Berry knows the loneliness and isolation you can easily feel in your particular parenting role - because he's been there.

After his daughter was born prematurely in 2010, Matt Burriesci set out to write a book about 32 great books, from Plato to Karl Marx, and how their lessons have applied to his life. As someone who has spent a long and successful career advocating for great literature, Burriesci defends the great books in this series of tender and candid letters, rich in personal experience and full of humor.

What do you do when it seems like everyone in your family has done something magnificent, everyone, that is, except you? That's Andy's problem. He just wants to do something special.

According to business reporter Charles Gasparino, President Obama is faking his outrage at Wall Street, and his calls for new policies to rein in banks that are "too big to fail" are just pabulum. In reality, Obama has climbed into bed with Wall Street CEOs, giving them what they want so they will support his liberal, big-government agenda.

An introductory military history of the American Civil War, Shades of Blue and Gray places the 1861-1865 conflict within the broad context of evolving warfare. Emphasizing technology and its significant impact, Hattaway includes valuable material on land and sea mines, minesweepers, hand grenades, automatic weapons, the Confederate submarine, and balloons. The evolution of professionalism in the American military serves as an important connective theme throughout.

A reckoning with the persistence of evil in post-Civil War Atlanta. After leaving Atlanta in disgrace three years before, detective Thomas Canby is called back to the city on the eve of Atlanta's 1881 International Cotton Exposition to partner with Atlanta's first African American police officer, Cyrus Underwood. The case they're assigned is chilling: a serial murderer who seems to be violently targeting Atlanta's wealthiest black entrepreneurs. The killer's method is both strange and unusually gruesome.

How did The Simpsons, one of the most popular television shows in history, go from being attacked by many religious leaders for its lack of family values to being called one of the most theologically relevant programs in prime time? Religion journalist Mark Pinsky explores the individual characters, interviews several of the show's writers and producers, and concludes with a theological discussion.

In the summer of 1850, Herman Melville finds himself hounded by creditors and afraid his writing career might be coming to an end - his last three novels have been commercial failures, and the critics have turned against him. In despair Melville takes his family for a vacation to his cousin's farm in the Berkshires, where he meets Nathaniel Hawthorne at a picnic - and his life turns upside down. The Whale chronicles the fervent love affair that grows out of that serendipitous afternoon.

In Mississippi Noir, literary crime fiction master Tom Franklin has assembled a phenomenal short-story collection that highlights a mesmerizing and diverse set of styles and subject matter. Urban, suburban, and rural settings alike unveil new shades of darkness that fall upon Mississippi's past and present.

Many Christians are under the impression that God's grace and his favor are two different things - that while his grace may be a gift, his favor is something we must earn. This misunderstanding has led to destructive teachings about "prosperity" and blessings, and ultimately to lives that feel unfulfilled and inadequate. Pastor Greg Gilbert puts favor back in its rightful place, as God's gift through Jesus Christ. He shows how the favor that Jesus earned through his perfect life and sacrificial death becomes ours the moment we believe.

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol - A Ghost Story of Christmas in Five Staves when he was 31. Now with numerous adaptations for film, television, radio, stage - and indeed in audio - it has become an essential part of Christmas for many. Raconteurs Audio has created this collection to include Dickens’ two Christmas novellas, The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth, as well as some of his lesser known short stories with a Christmas theme.

One of Canada’s most acclaimed horror writers, Gemma Files presents a mosaic of interconnected stories about interconnected families. After fleeing Scotland, five clans settled in the fictional town of Dourvale in northern Ontario. Known as the Five-Family Coven, they are the descendants of witches and witch-children, none of whom were spared persecution in their native country. Now shamans, spellcasters, singers, and thieves, the members of the Devize, Druir, Glouwer, Roke, and Rusk families survive by trading their occult powers and talents.

Orson is a young boy whose mother works at the U.S. Army base in Germany in the 1950s. There, he becomes a fan of a G.I. stationed at the base, one Elvis Presley, whose music is played over and over on the radio. When Orson is caught stealing recordings of Elvis' tunes from the PX, the attendant publicity catches the star's attention, and he comes to visit his young fan. Thus begins a lifelong friendship.

Newly minted trial lawyer Abraham Lincoln is riding the circuit, traveling by carriage with other lawyers and a judge to bring justice to the remote parts of Illinois. Meanwhile, Lincoln's close friend, Joshua Speed, is steaming up the Mississippi River, aboard a steamboat owned by Speed's father, when suddenly his journey is interrupted when a rigged card game aboard the ship turns to violence - and then murder.

In a sweeping narrative about the people and the politics behind the budget, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter David Wessel looks at the 2011 fiscal year (which ended September 30) to see where all the money was actually spent, and why the budget process has grown wildly out of control.

In Radical, David Platt’s plea for Christians to take back their faith from the American Dream resonated with readers everywhere, and the book quickly became a New York Times best seller. Now in Radical Together, the author broadens his call, challenging us to unite around a gospel-centered vision.

Listeners will discover lost and forgotten women who wrote horror every bit as effectively as their male contemporaries. They will learn about their lives and careers, the challenges they faced as women working in a male-dominated field, the way they overcame those challenges, and the way they approached the genre - which was often subtler, more psychological, and more disturbing.