Showing results by narrator "David Drummond" in All Categories

As Carl Safina's compelling natural-history adventure makes clear, the fate of the leatherback turtle is in our hands. The distressing decline of these ancient sea turtles in Pacific waters and their surprising recovery in the Atlantic illuminate the results - both positive and negative - of our interventions and the lessons that can be applied, globally, to restore the oceans and their creatures. We accompany award-winning natural-history expert Safina and his colleagues as they track leatherbacks across the world's oceans and onto remote beaches of every continent.

Taiji (pronounced Tie-jee) is an excellent system of exercise characterized by spiraling, supple, lithe movements, but it is much more than just a mild exercise. Taiji can also be used as an effective martial art, moving meditation, a way by which blood, nerve, and lymph blockages can be reduced, as well as reducing needless tensions, thus improving health; a way to develop good balance and power, clearer thinking, smooth and more effective actions, and is even able to make one better looking.

The art of argument: It's mysterious and powerful. It's the art of having things go your way. But also it's the art of getting out of your own way. It's having The Moves. But it's also about having The Touch.

This is the story of the war we won and the peace we lost, told with a clear historical perspective and a warm interest in the remarkable people who guided the United States through one of the most crucial periods. Foremost in the cast of characters is Woodrow Wilson, the shy, brilliant, revered, and misunderstood "schoolmaster", whose administration was a complex of apparent contradictions.

Microsoft commands the high ground of the information superhighway by owning the operating systems and basic applications programs that run on hundreds of millions of computers around the world. Beyond the unquestioned genius and vision of Bill Gates, what accounts for Microsoft's astounding success? Drawing on almost two years of on-site observation at Microsoft headquarters, eminent scientists Michael A. Cusumano and Richard W. Selby reveal many of Microsoft's innermost secrets.

Dev Cameron helped the rebel Confederation defeat the Hegemony forces at Herakles, but his experience merging with an alien Naga consciousness has changed him irrevocably, and the rebellion rages on. After the passive DalRiss unexpectedly attack the Hegemony, Dev and Katya Alessandro are sent to meet with the aliens to determine if they have a common enemy.

In his famous farewell address in 1961, President Eisenhower urgently warned Americans to guard against the "disastrous rise of misplaced power" in the leviathan he dubbed the military-industrial complex. As Eugene Jarecki powerfully portrays in this piercing and necessary book, Eisenhower's worst fears have been realized.

Cassian March, the public face of Tampa's most exclusive nightspot, Club X, has a great life. Women, sex, and money are his for the taking, and no man indulges his desires more. Life is short, and he plays hard. He lives by only one rule - never let a woman get close.

In Operation Shakespeare, investigative journalist John Shiffman traces a high-risk undercover operation launched by an elite undercover Homeland Security unit created to stop the Iranians, Russians, Chinese, Pakistanis, and North Koreans from acquiring sophisticated American-made electronics capable of guiding missiles, jamming radar, and triggering countless weapons - from wireless IEDs to nuclear bombs.

Journalist Chris Tomlinson grew up hearing stories about his family's abandoned cotton plantation in Falls County, Texas. Most of the tales lionized his white ancestors for pioneering along the Brazos River. His grandfather often said the family's slaves loved them so much that they also took Tomlinson as their last name. LaDainian Tomlinson, football great and former running back for the San Diego Chargers, spent part of his childhood playing on the same land that his Black ancestors had worked as slaves.

Abyss Deep is a foreboding ocean planet torn by extremes: boiling storm world on one side, unbroken glacier on the other. Humans established a research colony there to study the planet's giant sea serpents - but the colony has gone ominously silent. When Carlyle's team arrives, they discover a vessel belonging to a warlike alien species hovering above the atmosphere. But below the ice lurks a mystery so chilling it will make even Elliot Carlyle's blood run cold.

In these affectionate letters to Francesca, a first-grade teacher at an inner-city school in Boston, Jonathan Kozol vividly describes his repeated visits to her classroom while, under Francesca's likably irreverent questioning, also revealing his own most personal stories of the years that he has spent in public schools.

By far the most important figure in the history of the United States, George Washington liberated the 13 colonies from the superior forces of the British Empire against all military odds, and presided over the production and ratification of a constitution that (suitably amended) has lasted for more than 200 years. Yet today, Washington remains a distant figure to many Americans, a failing that acclaimed author Paul Johnson sets out to rectify with this brilliantly vivid, sharply etched portrait.

In this vibrant, eye-opening tour of milestones in the history of our universe, Chris Impey guides us through space and time, leading us from the familiar sights of the night sky to the dazzlingly strange aftermath of the Big Bang. What if we could look into space and see not only our place in the universe but also how we came to be here? As it happens, we can. Because it takes time for light to travel, we see more and more distant regions of the universe as they were in the successively greater past.

Navy Corpsman Elliot Carlyle joined up to save lives and see the universe. Now he and Bravo Company's Black Wizards of the interstellar Fleet Marine Force are en route to Bloodworld - a hellish, volatile rock colonized by the fanatical Salvationists who desired an inhospitable world where they could suffer for humanity's sins. Their penance could prove fatal - for the Qesh, a strange alien race detected but still mysterious for six decades, have made violent first contact. Suddenly countless lives depend upon Bravo Company - perhaps even the fate of homeworld Earth itself.

Cassian March finally found a reason to give up his player ways. Crazy in love, he and Olivia are ready to take the next step and make it official, but just when life is perfect is exactly when everything can slip away.

Over 20 years have passed since the events of Warstrider: Symbionts. Contact with the DalRiss and Naga, and their technology, has radically altered human society - as has the constant struggle between the Hegemony and the rebel Confederation for control over the dozens of human-inhabited planets. But the Hegemony has a new technology that could suppress any resistance to Earth's rule.

In the satirical tradition of Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, Fobbit takes us into the chaotic world of Baghdad's Forward Operating Base Triumph. The Forward Operating base, or FOB, is like the back-office of the battlefield - where people eat and sleep, and where a lot of soldiers have what looks suspiciously like an office job. Male and female soldiers are trying to find an empty Porta Potty in which to get acquainted, grunts are playing Xbox, and watching NASCAR between missions....

Once he was the gaijin champion of a cruel and oppressive empire. Now Dev Cameron is a military commander for the rebellious newborn Confederation and at tentative peace with the galaxy's all-powerful rulers. But treachery has shattered the uneasy truce, as the imperial lords prepare to rain destruction down upon the outpost of New America, delivering the final death blow to the still young revolution.

Here is a fascinating compact history of Chinese political, economic, and cultural life, ranging from the origins of civilization in China to the beginning of the 21st century. Historian Paul Ropp combines vivid story-telling with astute analysis to shed light on some of the larger questions of Chinese history. Offering a global perspective, the book tells how China's nomadic neighbors to the north and west influenced much of the political, military, and even cultural history of China.