Showing results by narrator "Peter Berkrot" in All Categories

In the late Fifties and Sixties, iconoclastic young rebels in Chicago opened two tiny theaters—The Compass and The Second City—where they satirized politics, religion, and sex. Developing scenes by improvising based on audience suggestions turned out to be a fine way to develop great actors, directors, and writers. Alumni went on to create such groundbreaking works as The Graduate, Groundhog Day, and Don't Look Up. Many of them also became stars on Saturday Night Live. Something Wonderful Right Away features the pioneers who founded the empire that transformed American comedy.

In Married and Still Loving It, renowned relationship expert Gary Chapman and Harold Myra, longtime CEO of Christianity Today International, offer wise counsel and practical insight on making your marriage thrive. Real couples share honestly about their joys and struggles, including Jerry and Dianna Jenkins and Ken and Joni Eareckson Tada, who talk movingly about their marital journeys.

The halls are decked, the deck is stacked, and here comes that jolly old elf. Junior Bender, divorced father of one and burglar extraordinaire, finds himself stuck inside the Edgerton Mall, and not just as a last-minute shopper (though he is that too). Edgerton isn't exactly the epicenter of holiday cheer, despite its two Santas, canned Christmas music, chintzy bows, and festive lights. The mall is a fossil of an industry in decline; many of its stores are closed, and to make matters worse, there is a rampant shoplifting problem.

Rae and Ingram are 19 days out of the Panama Canal, sailing slowly across the wide, flat Pacific on the Saracen, when they find Hughie Warriner in his dinghy. He was on a pleasure cruise on his yacht, the Orpheus, he says, when food poisoning killed his passengers and his ship began to sink. After an alleged 10 days of desperately fighting to stay afloat, he spied the Saracen and rowed to his salvation.

Los Angeles burglar Junior Bender is in the middle of burgling a house and has just gotten his hands on one of the world's rarest stamps when the job goes terrifically wrong. After barely escaping, Junior realizes the danger is far from over. He's gotten himself on the wrong side of a man whose name is synonymous with violence, and to save his own skin he's set off a chain reaction of blackmail, strong-arming, and escalating crime.

Hex Thorn, a hard-bitten veteran of the elite Special Operations Unit of the Dominion Empire, was content with retirement. He’d seen his share of firefights and bloodshed in a bitter war that ripped the galaxy apart. But when an enigmatic stranger makes him an offer he can’t refuse–a chance to own a legendary Lancer ship–Hex is thrust back into the fray.

The "meat" of The Mueller Report is contained in his summaries of the report. Did the Russians interfere in our 2016 election? Did the Trump campaign collude with the Russians? Did Trump attempt to obstruct the investigation? Mueller presents the evidence but does not make judgments.

No Encore! is an unflinchingly honest account of the shows that tested the dedication to a dream - from Alice Cooper's python having a violent, gastric malfunction on stage to Lou Barlow's disastrous attempt to sober up at Glastonbury, from Shirley Manson's desperate search for a bathroom to the extraordinary effort made to awaken Al Jourgenson as Ministry was taking the stage. As Hunter S. Thompson famously wrote, "Buy the ticket, take the ride."

As the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy rolls south to the oil-rich Netherlands East Indies, a handful of Allied airmen and sailors stand in their way. Two brothers, Jack and Charlie Davis, pilots in the US Army Air Forces, are among that handful who face overwhelming odds to buy time for America to gear up to fight the war in the Pacific.

The House of Twenty Thousand Books is the story of Chimen Abramsky, an extraordinary polymath and bibliophile who amassed a vast collection of socialist literature and Jewish history. For more than 50 years, Chimen and his wife, Miriam, hosted epic gatherings in their house of books that brought together many of the age's greatest thinkers.

When Kenny is chosen for InterRealm, a real-life wargame where defenders are portaled in from their homeworld, he is forced to survive in a violent fantasy landscape. Build a powerful presence in InterRealm, and his homeworld will likely remain safe. Fail, and the invaders will break through. To top it all off, the game master in his head couldn’t be any less impressed with his assignment. Someone obviously botched their chances when they chose future-college-dropout Kenny. His opportunity to prove everyone wrong starts now.

Drawing on first-person interviews, unpublished memoirs, newspaper accounts, contemporary studies, government documents, and recent scholarship, Sin, Sex & Subversion argues that "deviant" sexuality was subversive, and that unique New York "outsiders" of the 1950s set the stage for the following decades and the world we know today. In each chapter, author David Rosen examines a critical moral issue through an in-depth profile of figures such as Liberace, Samuel Roth, Bettie Page, the Rosenbergs, and others.

Featuring a foreword from legendary director Martin Scorcese, Woodstock: Interviews and Recollections combines stories, anecdotes, and perspectives from dozens of musicians and filmmakers about the making of the Academy Award-winning documentary Woodstock. Assembled by associate producer Dale Bell, the oral history takes listeners behind the scenes - and behind the camera - at the decade-defining event.

In Superman Is Jewish? Harry Brod reveals the links between Jews and superheroes in a penetrating investigation of iconic comic book figures. He describes how the role of each hero reflects the evolution of the Jewish place in American culture - an alien in a foreign land, like Superman; a figure plagued by guilt for not having saved his family, like Spider-Man; outsiders persecuted for being different (X-Men); a nice, smart guy afraid people won't like him when he's angry (the Hulk).

America is on the brink of crisis. Unless we can curb our dangerous appetite for foreign oil, petroleum-rich countries and speculators will bring our economy to its knees… long before CO2 emissions will devastate our ecosystem. The President has answered the call with the Dakota District Initiative, a top-secret research team hidden deep in the Badlands of North Dakota.

Why has American politics fallen into such a state of horrible dysfunction? Can it ever be fixed? These are the questions that motivate Michael Tomasky’s deeply original examination into the origins of our hopelessly polarized nation. “One of America’s finest political commentators” (Michael J. Sandel), Tomasky ranges across centuries and disciplines to show how America has almost always had two dominant parties that are existentially, and often violently, opposed.

On the surface, the court-appointed case that lands on young Dean Abernathy's desk is a biggie; he is slated to defend a homeless man accused of the felony murder of the popular black New York City Police commissioner during an early-morning mugging attempt. But at second look, the case promises to be a routine conviction. The evidence is overwhelming.

In Against Football Steve Almond details why, after 40 years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he still loves. Using a synthesis of memoir, reportage, and cultural critique, Almond asks a series of provocative questions: Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia? What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood--run, leap, throw, tackle--into a billion-dollar industry?

Look in the mirror: You're nobody anybody knows. You know pursuing the truth will get you killed. But you refuse just to fade away. So you're designated an enemy of the largest secret national security apparatus in America's history. Good guys or bad guys, it doesn't matter: All assassins' guns are aimed at you. And you run for your life, branded with the code name you made iconic: Condor.

The year is 1977, and America is finally getting over the nightmares of Watergate and Vietnam and the national hangover that was the 1960s. But not everyone is ready to let it go. Not aging comedian Koo Davis, friend to generals and presidents and veteran of countless USO tours to buck up American troops in the field. And not the five remaining members of the self-proclaimed People’s Revolutionary Army, who’ve decided that kidnapping Koo Davis would be the perfect way to bring their cause back to life....