Showing results by narrator "Malcolm Hillgartner" in All Categories

Seldom does a book come along that speaks to the core issues of life with such clarity and wisdom. This profound book is deeply informed by the spiritual traditions of the West, the Far East, and the Native Americans, with whom the author has worked. It is a small treasure of wisdom about life’s deepest issues.

Today, millions of Americans are struggling with alcoholism, but millions are also in long-term recovery. Alcoholics Anonymous and a growing number of recovery organizations are providing support for alcoholics who will face the danger of relapse for the rest of their lives. We have finally come to understand alcoholism as a treatable illness rather than a moral failure. Today's advocates can draw inspiration from the victories of sober drunks throughout American history.

Ripple: An Intimate Exchange of Urgency and Hope Between an Ecologist and His Daughter is a narrative of letters written by an ecologist dad to his daughter upon her coming-of-age. Drawing upon his personal history, family anecdotes, and shared memories, Powers envisions a path for humanity's reintegration with nature, and a chance to save the life force that runs through all of us.

The Vietnam War is largely recalled as a mistake, either in the decision to engage there or in the nature of the engagement. Or both. Veterans of the war remain largely anonymous figures, accomplices in the mistake. Critically recounting the steps that led to the war, this book does not excuse the mistakes, but it brings those who served out of the shadows. Enduring Vietnam recounts the experiences of the young Americans who fought in Vietnam and of families who grieved those who did not return.

A starlet's plot to blackmail a film-studio executive results in her murder. Only the "trouble chaser" can clear her volatile lover and solve the crime.

“Lucid, quietly urgent, and relentlessly logical . . . this is Bigthink with a capital B.” —The New York Times Book Review “Common Wealth explains the most basic economic reckoning that the world faces.” —Al Gore, winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and former vice president of...

Arthur Parkinson is 14 during the dreary winter of 1974, experiencing the confusing pangs of adolescence and the pain of his parents' divorce. His world is shattered further by the sudden and violent death of Annie Marchand, his beloved former babysitter.

The 2015 Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks heralded the beginning of a new wave of terrorism - one rooted in the ongoing conflict in Syria and Iraq that shows the possibility of foreign attackers working with citizens of the country. As ISIS seeks to expand its reach in the Middle East, its territory serves as a training and operations base for a new generation of jihadis.

Frederick Kaufman tackles the complex history of money, beginning with the earliest myths and wrapping up with Wall Street’s byzantine present-day doings. Along the way, he exposes a set of allegorical plots, stock characters, and stereotypical metaphors that have long been linked with money and commercial culture, from Melanesian trading rituals to the dogma of Medieval churchmen faced with global commerce, the rationales of Mercantilism and colonial expansion, and the U.S. dollar’s 1971 unpinning from gold.

February 1942: Terrifying reports of the Wehrmacht’s advance across the Soviet Union spread like wildfire, striking new fear into the already oppressed German families living there. Harri Pfeiffer, now sixteen, is summoned to the forced labour camp in Chelyabinsk. Three years later, with the war finally over, Yvo Scholz arrives in Chelyabinsk, desperate for news of her brother. Still uncertain of the fate of her father, it takes all Yvo’s unshakeable courage to build a new life for herself. When their paths intersect, Harri and Yvo find a connection they never thought possible.

By turns a family drama and an action-adventure story, The Age of Daredevils chronicles the lives of the men and women who devoted themselves to the extraordinary sport of jumping over Niagara Falls in a barrel - a death-defying gamble that proved a powerful temptation to a hardy few. Internationally known in the 1920s and '30s for their barrel-jumping exploits, the Hills were a father-son team of daredevils who also rescued dozens of misguided thrill seekers and accident victims who followed them into the river.

From the bestselling author of The Age of Turbulence and Capitalism in America Like all of us, though few so visibly, Alan Greenspan was forced by the financial crisis of 2008 to question some fundamental assumptions about risk management and economic forecasting. No one with any meaningful role...

Federal judge Edward Lamport is no stranger to controversy and danger. Nine months into his tenure, he's received two death threats and is under the protection of US Marshals. But when he receives a plea for help from a woman with whom he had a brief romance twenty-five years earlier, he must face a peril of a different sort, one that involves his long-lost son, Carlos.

Patrick Henry Hughes was born with a rare genetic disorder that left him without eyes and physically disabled. But he was also blessed with exceptional musical talent, able to play the piano at the age of two. Now, at age 19, he is a nationally known pianist, singer, and trumpeter who has performed at the Kennedy Center. But he's best known for playing in the University of Louisville marching band, while his devoted father pushes him in formation in his wheelchair.

In A Legacy of Discrimination, leading constitutional scholars Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone trace affirmative action's history and the legal challenges it has faced over the decades. They argue that in order to fully comprehend affirmative action's original intent and impact, we must reacquaint ourselves with the era in which it arose, beginning with the most important Supreme Court decision of the twentieth century, 1954's Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

It's 1918. The war in Europe grinds on, and the Spanish flu seems to be on an insatiable killing spree. But in the small fishing village of Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, a more confined drama-harrowing and provocative-slowly unfolds. It begins when Elizabeth Frame murders her husband hours after their wedding and thrusts the revolver into the blowhole of a beached whale.

The Gunner and the Grunt is written in the voices of two soldiers who fought in the same battles as members of the same recon unit but from different angles. Michael Kelley, the "Gunner," was flying in an armed helicopter above the jungle providing suppressive fire support, while Peter Burbank, the "Grunt," was down in the jungle on foot patrol involved in fire fights with Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army troops. The book follows these two Boston boys from army training through deployment to the war zone and the shock of first combat missions.

Set in the working-class district of Benfica in Lisbon, The Piano Cemetery tells the story of a family, and especially of the hopes and fears of the fathers who pass the baton of the generations on to their sons. The Lazaro family are cabinet-makers who would rather be piano-makers.

On the seventy-fifth anniversary, the authors of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Eleventh Day unravel the mysteries of Pearl Harbor to expose the scapegoating of the admiral who was in command the day 2,000 Americans died, report on the continuing struggle to restore his lost honor—and clear...

Toxic Water, Toxic System exposes the consequences of a seemingly anonymous authoritarian state willing to maintain white supremacy at any cost—including poisoning an entire city and shutting off water to thousands of people. Weaving together narratives of frontline activists along with archival data, Michael Mascarenhas provides a powerful exploration of the political alliances and bureaucratic mechanisms that uphold inequality.