Showing results by narrator "L.J. Ganser" in All Categories

Lies Across America is a reality check for anyone who has ever sought to learn about America through the nation's public sites and markers. Entertaining and enlightening, it is destined to change the way American listeners see their country. 

In The Futures, Emily Lambert, senior writer at Forbes magazine, tells us the rich and dramatic history of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of Trade, which together comprised the original, most bustling futures market in the world. She details the emergence of the futures business as a kind of meeting place for gamblers and farmers and its subsequent transformation into a sophisticated electronic market where contracts are traded at lightning-fast speeds.

Irving Berlin (1888-1989) has been called - by George Gershwin, among others - the greatest songwriter of the golden age of the American popular song. "Berlin has no place in American music," legendary composer Jerome Kern wrote; "He is American music." In a career that spanned an astonishing nine decades, Berlin wrote some 1,500 tunes, including "Alexander's Ragtime Band", "God Bless America", and "White Christmas". From ragtime to the rock era, Berlin's work has endured in the very fiber of American national identity.

Hang on for dear life -- what a ride! At first, young Ryan Chase thought it was no big deal. A minor space collision with a creepy-looking refurbished Paotow Tanker. Hey, these things happen … right? Sure, unless the one you’ve plowed into is a murderous psychopath, who’s been lying in wait for the young Consignment Freight delivery pilot.

For generations of Americans, the word Antietam - the name of a bucolic stream in western Maryland - held the same sense of horror and carnage that the date 9/11 does for Americans today. But Antietam eclipses even this modern tragedy as America's single bloodiest day, on which 22,000 men became casualties in a war to determine our nation's future.

Being a Secret Service agent is one of the most treacherous jobs in the world and never more so than in today's highly polarized America. Facing threats from fence jumpers and manifesto writers, and from murderous terrorists and sophisticated spies, protecting the president is harder than ever. In an age of hyper-partisan politics, emotions are high and threats are everywhere. On top of that, with international tensions reaching a boiling point, it's harder than ever to determine friend from foe.

Neal Bascomb, a New York Times best-selling author, delivers the spellbinding story of the downed Allied airmen who masterminded the remarkably courageous - and ingenious - breakout from Germany's most devilish POW camp.

Only days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tapped Chester W. Nimitz to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. Nimitz transformed the devastated and dispirited Pacific fleet into the most powerful and commanding naval force in history. Facing demands from Washington to mount an early offensive, he had first to revive the depressed morale of the thousands of sailors, soldiers, and Marines who served under him. And of course, he also confronted a formidable and implacable enemy in the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Outraged when the US Navy seizes three Confederates aboard an English sailing ship, Britain retaliates by entering the fray in support of the Rebels - and suddenly, it's a whole new war. Once again, cotton is king as the North's blockade crumbles before the might of the Royal Navy. While Lincoln confronts the monumental challenge of vanquishing mighty Britannia, the Redcoats revive their 1812 penchant for burning down American cities, and Union troops see Canada as ripe for the picking.

Kim Hvidkjaer was twenty-nine years old when he became a millionaire. Two years later, after a cluster of disasters, he found himself basically broke. Now, having rebuilt his fortune as the founder of several successful enterprises and studied thousands of failed startups, Hvidkjaer has become an expert in failure: what it means, what it looks like, and the strategies that business owners can use to prevent it. In How to F--k Up Your Startup, he takes us on an entertaining and enlightening journey through the complex patterns of failure in the life cycle of a business.

A random bolt from a DC-8 falls from the sky, killing a child and throwing the faith of a young Jesuit Jesuit into crisis. A boy’s mother dies on his fifth birthday, sparking a lifetime of repressed anger that he unleashes once a year in reckless duels with the Fate, God, or Power who let the coincidence happen. A young woman on a run in Seattle experiences a shooting star moment that pierces her with a love that will eventually help heal the Jesuit, the angry young man, and innumerable others.

Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed. Black Snow is the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: "If we lose the war, we'll be tried as war criminals."

Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans - predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth - and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world.

As President Barack Obama's adviser on Russian affairs, Michael McFaul helped craft the United States' policy known as "reset" that fostered new and unprecedented collaboration between the two countries. And then, as US ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, he had a front-row seat when this fleeting, hopeful moment crumbled with Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency. This riveting inside account combines history and memoir to tell the full story of US-Russia relations from the fall of the Soviet Union to the new rise of the hostile, paranoid Russian president.

You've learned the principles in Napoleon Hill's classic Think and Grow Rich - now give them STICKABILITY! The path to personal and professional success is not a one-way street. Most people encounter setbacks and obstacles that threaten to derail them from their chosen route. The most successful people, however, adhere to their principles and goals, capitalizing on hidden opportunities, even in the face of what many would consider unconquerable obstacles. To coin a new word - these people have STICKABILITY!

In disgrace after a badly handled arrest in New Orleans, Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins is assigned as a liaison officer to an FBI investigation of a series of diabolical and clever bank robberies. Three men have done their homework: they choose bank managers who are having affairs, kidnap their girlfriends, and force the managers to open the banks early.

Americans revere the Constitution even as they argue fiercely over its original toleration of slavery. Some historians have charged that slaveholders actually enshrined human bondage at the nation's founding. The acclaimed political historian Sean Wilentz shares the dismay but sees the Constitution and slavery differently. Although the proslavery side won important concessions, he asserts, antislavery impulses also influenced the framers' work. Far from covering up a crime against humanity, the Constitution restricted slavery's legitimacy under the new national government.

Sixth-grader Milo Neal plans to do a science project on "The Complete Life Cycle of a Link in the Food Chain". But when he brings his specimen - a baby chick - to class, everyone falls in love with the cute ball of fluff. Soon she has a name: Henrietta. Not only is Henrietta the class pet, she's even chosen as mascot for the school hockey team! How can Milo finish his project, which calls for frying up his specimen and serving it to the judges of the science fair?

Ellie is leaving her husband … again. After twenty-two years of marriage and an unsuccessful separation, she can’t take it anymore. On the surface, she has a picture-perfect relationship. Jeff has been a steadfast spouse. But what seems like loyalty is in reality an obsessive desire for control. Ellie is slowly losing her sight, which means she needs more and more assistance, and Jeff will stop at nothing to ensure she feels helpless and reliant on him alone.

This audiobook aims to demystify leadership and outlines a specific regimen that will empower you to build your leadership skills. Kaplan tells real-life stories from his own experience of working with various types of leaders seeking to improve their effectiveness and make their organizations more successful. He asks probing questions, provides exercises, and suggests concrete follow-up steps that will help you develop your skills, create new habits, and move you toward reaching your unique leadership potential.