Showing results by narrator "Michael Langan" in All Categories

When David Bowie died on January 10th, 2016, aged sixty-nine, his death was greeted with the greatest display of public mourning since Princess Diana three decades before. His home cities of New York and London saw thousands of well-wishers assemble to play his music and console each other in their hour of grief. Twenty-five years before, Bowie appeared to be washed up. His '80s career had been a slow descent into self-parody, his attempts to diversify into hard rock had been disastrous, and the art-rock music was badly out of fashion.

Nonprofit leadership is hard. Most new nonprofit leaders are ill-prepared for the challenges they will face, and even those who are more experienced struggle to ensure their organizations deliver the change they are committed to.

Impossible Monsters reveals the central role of dinosaurs and their discovery in toppling traditional religious authority, and in changing perceptions about the Bible, history, and mankind's place in the world.

This is the first thoroughly revised edition of The Rape of the Nile—Fagan’s classic account of the cavalcade of archaeologists, thieves, and sightseers who have flocked to the Nile Valley since ancient times. Featured in this edition are new accounts of stunning recent discoveries, including the Royal Tombs of Tanis, the Valley of Golden Mummies at Bahariya, the Tomb of the Sons of Ramses, and the sunken city of Alexandria (whose lighthouse was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World).

Since Alan Turing first posed the question "Can machines think?" artificial intelligence has evolved from a speculative idea to a transformative force. The Shortest History of AI traces this evolution, from Ada Lovelace's visionary work to IBM's groundbreaking defeat of the chess world champion and the revolutionary emergence of ChatGPT. It also explores AI's cultural journey, touching on classics such as Frankenstein, A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Money issues dominate the news, but economic jargon and the complexity of it all can be bamboozling for regular folks. Paul Sheard, a leading economist and research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, is known for his ability to see the forest and the trees and demystify complex economic phenomena. With The Power of Money, Sheard empowers listeners to become better-informed economic citizens by providing context for some of the biggest questions surrounding money.

Bestselling authors and international speakers Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram share their simple but powerful strategies for boosting your emotional intelligence and elevating your interpersonal communication skills. Step by step, you will learn to integrate Care, Celebration, Collaboration, Critique, and Clarification into your communication toolbox. Using one of these 5 Cs, you can verbally ask someone to respond in the way that you most want, and as a result, facilitate a successful interaction.

In this game-changing book, Keith Frayn, an international expert in human metabolism and nutrition, dispels common misconceptions about human metabolism, explaining in everyday language the important metabolic processes that underlie all aspects of our daily lives. Frayn describes the communication systems that enable our different organs and tissues to cooperate, for instance in providing fuel to our muscles when we exercise, and in preserving our tissues during fasting.

It's easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk of extinction. In What Is Ancient History?, Walter Scheidel presents a compelling case for a new kind of ancient history—a global history that captures antiquity's pivotal role as a decisive phase in human development, one that provided the shared foundation of our world and continues to shape our lives today.

A decade before his death, Dr. Watson let it be known that with his passing he wished his nephew, Christopher Henry Watson, MD, to be the executor of his will and guardian of all his personal and pecuniary affairs. One of the tasks he sanctioned was that his nephew should use his discretion in selecting for publication some of the three dozen or so cases involving Holmes and Watson that had not already seen the light of day.

In 410 CE, Roman rule of Britain collapsed, bringing a centuries-long occupation to an end. A century later, Britain was dividing into two areas with contrasting cultures, an expansive "Anglo-Saxon" south and east, and a shrinking Celtic west and north. How did this transition happen? And why did the customs of the Germanic incomers prevail in England, unlike elsewhere in Europe? In this account, Nicholas J. Higham addresses these questions head on. Higham draws on archaeological evidence and contemporary literature, including the writings of Gildas, to reconsider the accepted narrative.

In this Very Short Introduction, Paul Klenerman describes the immune system, and how it works in health and disease. He considers how the immune system evolved, the basic rules that govern its behavior, and the major health threats where it is important. Paul Klenerman also explains how things can go wrong when there is too little or too much immunity. The book also addresses what we learned about the immune system from the COVID-19 pandemic and how that has influenced thinking about future pandemics.

Using academic, comprehensive, logical, and, at times, mathematical approaches, The Science of Weird Shit convincingly debunks ESP, communicating with the dead, and alien abduction claims, among other phenomena. All the while, however, French maintains that our belief in such phenomena is neither ridiculous nor trivial; if anything, such claims can tell us a great deal about the human mind if we pay them the attention they are due.

A seemingly innocent concern from Lestrade about his cousin leads Holmes back into a world left behind after the affair of The Five Orange Pips. Investigating the appearance of a body at the base of Tower Bridge unveils a hidden cult of Satanists performing ritual sacrifices, until Holmes and the British Secret Service intervenes. Called to Scotland Yard, Holmes is reunited with an old acquaintance and dragged into a plot to undermine the government and give its secrets to Russian spies.

Many of the adventures of my friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes the consulting detective, in which I was privileged to assist him, I have recorded elsewhere. There were however, a number of instances when, sometimes for reasons of his own which I could not fathom, he expressly forbade me to forward others for publication.

Sherlock Holmes is no stranger to humanity's most fiendish crimes. In fourteen classic stories, Holmes and Dr. Watson confront exceptionally challenging and notoriously vicious cases. Can guilt be used as a murder weapon? When does beauty become a deadly lure? Are even the most seemingly innocent members of society capable of killing in cold blood? Cloaked in terror and tragedy, dangerous and often bloody, these are adventures which plunge Holmes and Watson into the realm of nightmares.

Another eight eclectic tales from the pen of Stephen Herczeg. All have featured in annals of the MX Books of New Sherlock Holmes stories and the many anthologies from Belanger Books. The body was in the box, and then it wasn't. Holmes must find the dead girl and the identity of her killer. A young girl appears to be possessed by a demon. What is the truth and who is behind it? Dead bees. Honey that tastes of ash. A retired Holmes must track down the cause and unearth the mystery behind the strange colour creeping across the countryside.

More tales from the dispatch box of Doctor John Watson. These 10 stories have appeared previously in various volumes of The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories and other anthologies. They come together as a collection for the first time.

On the eve of Newgate Prison's demolition, Watson spies Holmes leaving a public sale of the prison's miscellany in the company of a beautiful stranger, and in possession of an unusual trophy–the death mask of a woman who, more than 20 years earlier, had been executed for the murder of her three children. Holmes agrees to satisfy Watson's curiosity about the memento by recounting the decades-old history of its subject.

Are you thinking about adding a little furry friend to your family, but you don’t know where to start looking? Don’t fear! The good news is you can rest assured that Puppy Training for Beginners in 7 Easy Steps: Complete Guide to the Basics of Training Your Puppy for Life Long Results offers you everything that you need to make sure you are the perfect puppy trainer, fully prepared to raise one of your own. With these seven easy steps, anyone will be able to follow them and train their own puppy for life!