Showing results by narrator "Kevin Stillwell" in All Categories

The year is 2018. The United States has finally emerged from the previous decade's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the economic recession that threatened to tear the country apart. Eighteen months into his first term, President Tom Knowles sees a chance to put his stamp on world affairs when 32 American aid workers are massacred in Uganda by a group of rebel partisans. Knowles decides to send in troops into an area that China considers its African sphere of influence.

In recent years, as public anxiety over growing inequality has intensified, policymakers and academics have started scrambling for some increasingly extreme solutions. The good news is that these and other radical solutions are also unnecessary. Over the last dozen years or so, one country - Brazil - has shown that there’s a far better, less provocative, and more market-friendly way to fight inequality.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, talks to Foreign Affairs about American competitiveness, creative disruption, and why he runs into the office every morning.

A Southern gambler hunts a killer in the thick of the first great battle of the Civil War. It's July 1861, and both the Union and Confederate armies expect to win the war within 24 hours. For Harrison Raines, a Southern dandy ensconced in DC society, it's time to choose a side. Though Raines loves Virginia, he hates slavery with a passion. And joining either army would mean leaving Washington and deserting the beautiful Caitlin Howard.

A Civil War spy is pulled out of retirement to find a killer. It's 1862, and for Harrison Raines, the Civil War is finished. Since the First Battle of Bull Run, he has served the Union Army as a spy, crisscrossing the war-torn country and witnessing more death, misery, and carnage than any man should. Although a Virginian, he loathes slavery and is proud to have served Abraham Lincoln. But Raines has had enough killing and wishes only to retire to a tranquil patch of land.

It's been years since Harrison Raines set foot in Richmond. Although a proud Virginian, he fled the South before the Civil War, unable to bear the evil of slavery. In 1862, battles rage on all sides of the Confederate capital, but Raines is not here as a soldier - he comes as a spy. Union intelligence, led by the formidable Allen Pinkerton, has sent him to steal the plans for a rumored Confederate superweapon: a seagoing ship clad entirely in iron that could break the Union blockade and turn the war around.

Your Comprehensive Guide to Triple Net Investing is designed to help new and seasoned real estate investors in all stages of life learn the ins and outs of triple-net lease investing and take hold of the exciting opportunities these investments offer. It will help you make informed decisions and encourage you to start your commercial real estate venture with stable, profitable triple-net lease properties.

Four months into his presidency, at a summit in Prague, Barack Obama pledged to take “concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons.” Yet nearly eight years later, he presides over a program to modernize the entire US nuclear arsenal at a cost of $35 billion a year through the next decade and beyond. To those who accuse him of hypocrisy, Obama has said that he always regarded a nuclear-free world as a long-term goal, unlikely to be met in his lifetime, much less his time in office.

When his girlfriend, Jillian Russo, washes up on the shore of the Merrimack River in Essex County, Massachusetts, Carmen Vaughn immediately finds himself the main suspect in her murder investigation. Desperate, he turns to his college professor and former criminal prosecutor, Timothy Pickering, for help clearing his name and figuring out what really happened. Against his family’s wishes, Pickering decides to help and recruits Adrian Watson, a private investigator who’s worked on other government cases in the past.

Harrison Raines struggles to keep the Civil War from overtaking the West. It's 1862, and the Civil War hangs in the balance. Although the Union has beaten back the Southern armies in the East, the Confederacy is intent on opening new fronts to the west - and perhaps securing British support to widen this ugly conflict into a world war.

Revolts against authoritarian regimes don’t always succeed - but they're more likely to if they embrace civil resistance rather than violence. Over the last century, nonviolent campaigns have been twice as likely to succeed as violent ones and they increase the chances that toppling a dictatorship will lead to peace and democracy.

Washington doesn’t have the luxury of simply avoiding insurgencies, so it needs to figure out how to fight them better. Drawn from more than a decade of war, here are 10 lessons for doing so.

Nathan Porter, a young war veteran haunted by an atrocity he witnessed, ends up in an animation studio in southern California, where his dismal romantic history is upended by Violet Delmar, an older voice-over artist known nationally as "The Voice." Violet's siren song wafts in and out of Nathan's entire life, twisting through his misguided affairs and marriage, until he finds himself awakened, thanks to Violet, about no less than all of love and art.

Harrison Raines is caught in no-man's-land - and suspected of murder. The messenger finds Harrison Raines in one of the finest gambling halls in Washington. As usual, Raines is losing. Union intelligence demands his presence immediately - it's a matter that could affect the outcome of the Civil War - but Raines delays. He's holding four eights, and as a Southern dandy who renounced his family to serve the Union government as a secret agent, Raines can't resist a bet.

Jack Carney’s life is unexpectedly put on hold. He is not a criminal lawyer, but his friend needs help. He remembers his time in Japan flying covert missions against the Russians. What would his flight crew think of him now? By comparison, his legal career lacks purpose. If he defends Connor, there will be consequences. His firm does not allow involvement in criminal cases.

Merry Strand spent all her days in a rural North Carolina mountain town before being lured to the Atlantic coast by the promise of an inheritance from the biological father she never knew existed. The windfall could save her adopted family from financial ruin, but in order to receive it she must earn it by completing a series of tasks.

The New Rochelle High School team in suburban New York is like many across the country: a source of civic pride, a manhood workshop for a revered coach, and an emotional proving ground for boys of widely different backgrounds. In the fall of 2014, New Rochelle's season unfolded alongside watershed NFL head injury revelations and domestic abuse cases (remember Ray Rice?) as well as fatalities on nearby fields. The dramatic story of that season, for players, parents and coaches, underscores fundamental questions.

Cohen and Cogan portray U.S. involvement in Congo in the 1960s as necessary and relatively benign. Weissman replies.

Almost seven years after the Great Recession officially ended, the U.S. economy continues to grow at a sluggish rate. Real wages are stagnant. The real median wage earned by men in the United States is lower today than it was in 1969. Median household income, adjusted for inflation, is lower now than it was in 1999 and has barely risen in the past several years despite the formal end of the recession in 2009.

This is a common critique of Obama’s foreign policy: that he evades hard decisions, that he is allergic to military force if it risks American casualties or escalation, that there is often a mismatch between his words and his deeds. “This is a pattern,” one retired four-star general said. “He issues stern warnings, then does nothing. It damages American credibility.”Is the charge true?