83.5 Charing Cross Road

The Magic Army

2011-10-15T15:56:00.000-05:00

The Magic Army: Complete & Unabridged by Leslie Thomas Read By: Simon Coady
Publisher: Chivers Audio Books (Mar 1993) | ISBN: 0745141293 | Language English | Audio CD in MP3 | 467 MB

The story of the so-called American 'occupation' of a large area of South Devon, whose inhabitants were summarily evacuated so that this inexperienced army could prepare for D-Day.

About the Author
Born in Newport, Monmouthshire, 1931, Leslie Thomas is the son of a sailor who was lost of sea in 1943. His boyhood in an orphanage is evoked in This Time Next Week published in 1964. At sixteen, he became a reporter, before going on to do his national service. He won worldwide acclaim with his bestselling novel The Virgin Soldiers, which has achieved international sales of over two million copies.

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The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs

2011-10-14T15:53:00.000-05:00

Albie Sachs was a judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He was appointed to the court by Nelson Mandela in 1994 and retired in October 2009. Justice Sachs gained international attention in 2005 as the author of the Court's holding in the case of Minister of Home Affairs v. Fourie, in which the Court overthrew South Africa's statute defining marriage to be between one man and one woman as a violation of the Constitution's general mandate for equal protection for all and its specific mandate against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Justice Sachs is also recognized for the development of the differentiation between constitutional rights in three different degrees or generations of rights.

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The Psychopath Test

2011-10-13T15:51:00.000-05:00

In this madcap journey, a bestselling journalist investigates psychopaths and the industry of doctors, scientists, and everyone else who studies them.

The Psychopath Test is a fascinating journey through the minds of madness. Jon Ronson's exploration of a potential hoax being played on the world's top neurologists takes him, unexpectedly, into the heart of the madness industry. An influential psychologist who is convinced that many important CEOs and politicians are, in fact, psychopaths teaches Ronson how to spot these high-flying individuals by looking out for little telltale verbal and nonverbal clues. And so Ronson, armed with his new psychopath-spotting abilities, enters the corridors of power. He spends time with a death-squad leader institutionalized for mortgage fraud in Coxsackie, New York; a legendary CEO whose psychopathy has been speculated about in the press; and a patient in an asylum for the criminally insane who insists he's sane and certainly not a psychopath.

Ronson not only solves the mystery of the hoax but also discovers, disturbingly, that sometimes the personalities at the helm of the madness industry are, with their drives and obsessions, as mad in their own way as those they study. And that relatively ordinary people are, more and more, defined by their maddest edges.

About the Author
Jon Ronson is a writer and documentary filmmaker. His books Them: Adventures with Extremists and The Men Who Stare at Goats were both international bestsellers. The Men Who Stare at Goats was released as a major motion picture in 2009, starring George Clooney. Ronson lives in London.

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Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

2011-10-12T15:49:00.000-05:00

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (Audiobook) By Jung Chang, read by Anna Massey
Publisher: Ha,rperColl,ins Audio; Unabridged edition 2000 | 6 hours and 17 mins | ISBN: 000714539X | MP3 | 272 MB

In Wild Swans Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and insistently gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Chang's grandmother was a warlord's concubine. Her gently raised mother struggled with hardships in the early days of Mao's revolution and rose, like her husband, to a prominent position in the Communist Party before being denounced during the Cultural Revolution. Chang herself marched, worked, and breathed for Mao until doubt crept in over the excesses of his policies and purges. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents.

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Outwitting History

2011-10-11T15:45:00.000-05:00

Lansky was a 23-year-old graduate student in 1980 when he came up with an idea that would take over his life and change the face of Jewish literary culture: He wanted to save Yiddish books. With few resources save his passion and ironlike determination, Lansky and his fellow dreamers traveled from house to house, Dumpster to Dumpster saving Yiddish books wherever they could find them—eventually gathering an improbable 1.5 million volumes, from famous writers like Sholem Aleichem and I.B. Singer to one-of-a-kind Soviet prints. In his first book, Lansky charmingly describes his adventures as president and founder of the National Yiddish Book Center, which now has new headquarters at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. To Lansky, Yiddish literature represented an important piece of Jewish cultural history, a link to the past and a memory of a generation lost to the Holocaust. Lansky's account of salvaging books is both hilarious and moving, filled with Jewish humor, conversations with elderly Jewish immigrants for whom the books evoke memories of a faraway past, stories of desperate midnight rescues from rain-soaked Dumpsters, and touching accounts of Lansky's trips to what were once thriving Jewish communities in Europe. The book is a testimony to his love of Judaism and literature and his desire to make a difference in the world.

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The American Civil War By John Keegan

2011-10-10T15:41:00.000-05:00

The American Civil War: A Military History (Audiobook) By John Keegan, read by Robin Sachs
Publisher: Ran.dom Hou.se Au.dio 2009 | 16 hours and 40 mins | ISBN: 0739354639 | MP3 | 373 MB

American scholars tend to write the Civil War as a great national epic, but Keegan (The First World War), an Englishman with a matchless knowledge of comparative military history, approaches it as a choice specimen with fascinating oddities. His more thematic treatment has its shortcomings—his campaign and battle narratives can be cursory and ill-paced—but it pays off in far-ranging discussions of broader features: the North's strategic challenge in trying to subdue a vast Confederacy ringed by formidable natural obstacles and lacking in significant military targets; the importance of generalship; the unusual frequency of bloody yet indecisive battles; and the fierceness with which soldiers fought their countrymen for largely ideological motives. Keegan soars above the conflict to delineate its contours, occasionally swooping low to expand on a telling detail or a moment of valor or pathos. Some of his thoughts, as on the unique femininity of Southern women and how the Civil War stymied socialism in America, are less than cogent. Still, Keegan's elegant prose and breadth of learning make this a stimulating, if idiosyncratic, interpretation of the war.

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Easy Company Soldier

2011-10-09T15:38:00.000-05:00

Easy Company Soldier: The Legendary Battles of a Sergeant from World War II's "Band of Brothers" (Audiobook) By Don Malarkey, Bob Welch, read by John Bedford Lloyd
Publisher: Mac.mil.lan Au.dio; Unabridged edition 2008 | 8 hours and 8 mins | ISBN: 1427204500 | MP3 | 352 MB

This better-than-average military memoir is the story of an NCO of the famous Easy Company that historian Stephen Ambrose dubbed Band of Brothers. Raised in the Pacific Northwest, Malarkey first vividly recounts growing up during the Depression, following up with paratrooper training and the exhausting physical regimen that went with it, not to mention the departure of Easy Company’s first commander. A sea voyage and life in England preceded the jump into Normandy, at which point the narrative almost attains the level of Donald Burgett’s Currahee! (1967). Malarkey jumped into the Netherlands thereafter and, like so many other paratroopers, fought for months in static warfare such as he hadn’t expected to face. Malarkey ended the war at Bastogne, where even his hardened veteran’s morale sagged to the point of considering a self-inflicted wound just to get out of the frozen hell of the place. Shelve this with the classic accounts of the infantryman’s war.

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Rose Madder by Stephen King

2011-10-08T15:36:00.000-05:00

After 14 years of being beaten, Rose Daniels wakes up one morning and leaves her husband -- but she keeps looking over her shoulder, because Norman has the instincts of a predator. And what is the strange work of art that has Rose in a kind of spell? In this brilliant dark-hued fable of the gender wars, Stephen King has fashioned yet another suspense thriller to keep readers right at the edge. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Relentlessly paced and brilliantly orchestrated, this cat-and-mouse game of a novel is one of King's most engrossing and topical horror stories. At the center of the action is heroine Rose McClendon, a battered wife who starts life anew by leaving her police officer husband, a consummately cruel man depicted by King as a paragon of evil. Crowded with character and incident, the novel builds to a nearly apocalyptic conclusion that combines the best of King's long novels?the breadth of vision of The Stand, for example?with the focused plot and careful psychological portraiture of Dolores Claiborne. The story of Rose's joyous growth from tortured wife (her persecution gruesomely but realistically portrayed) to independent woman alternates with the terrifying details of her husband's deliberate pursuit to create unflagging tension. The book is a phantasmagorical roller-coaster ride, peopled by a broad array of indelibly characterized men and women and fueled by an air of danger that is immediate and overwhelming. 1.75 million first printing; BOMC main selection; simultaneous Penguin Audio; paperback sale to Signet.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Millions Like Us: Women's Lives in the WWII

2011-10-07T14:39:00.001-05:00

Millions Like Us: Women's Lives in the Second World War
by Virginia Nicholson; Read by Fenella Woolgar; Abridged by Doreen Estall; Produced by Elizabeth Allard
Publisher: BBC Radio 4 (5 May 2011) | ISBN n/a | Language English | Audio CD in MP3 / 64Kbps | 32 MB

In 1942 Cora Johnston is grieving over the death of her young husband, torpedoed in the Atlantic; Aileen Morris is intercepting Luftwaffe communications during the siege of Malta – and Clara Milburn, whose son was captured after Dunkirk, is waiting, and waiting …

We tend to see the Second World War as a man’s war, featuring Spitfire crews and brave deeds on the Normandy beaches. But in conditions of “Total War” millions of women – in the Services and on the Home Front - demonstrated that they were cleverer, more broad-minded and altogether more complex than anyone had ever guessed.

In Millions Like Us Virginia Nicholson tells the story of the women’s war, through a host of individual women’s experiences. She tells how they loved, suffered, laughed, grieved and dared; how they re-made their world in peacetime. And how they would never be the same again …

Virginia Nicholson's evocative account of the Second World War is told through a multitude of individual women's experiences. As their stories unfold we discover how they loved, suffered, laughed, grieved and dared.

Episode 1:

The conflict begins, and thirty-seven year old Frances Faviell learns to administer first-aid, and Lorna Bradey, serving as a nurse in France, witnesses the horror of Dunkirk first hand.

Episode 2:

A ship is hit by a torpedo, and Mary Cornish's terrifying account of the hours and days that followed is recalled.

Episode 3:

Women enter the workplace in ever increasing numbers.

Episode 4:

Rumours and speculation about a second front gather pace, and Doris Scorer is transferred from the aircraft factory to the woodwork shop, where she starts making gliders.

Episode 5:

As the celebratory atmosphere of VE day fades, many women are left wondering what the future holds.

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David Morrell--The Successful Novelist

2011-10-06T14:34:00.000-05:00

"Like listening to a beloved brother. I found the acute observations and his narrative philosophy more valuable for the new writer than the contents of any 100 other texts." - Dean Koontz

"The Successful Novelist is the vehicle you want if you plan to drive your way to successful fiction." - Joe R. Lansdale

David Morrell, bestselling author of First Blood, The Brotherhood of the Rose and The Fifth Profession, distills four decades of writing and publishing experience into this single masterwork of advice and instruction for fiction writers looking to make it big in the publishing world. With advice proven to create successful novels, Morrell teaches you everything you need to know about: • Plot • Character • Research • Structure • Viewpoint • Description • Dialogue • The business of publishing • And much more

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A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

2011-10-05T14:29:00.000-05:00

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey & Oliver Wyman (Reader)
Publisher: HighBridge Company; 1st,Abridged edition (April 14, 2003) | ISBN: 1565117786 | Language English | Audio CD in MP3 / 32kbps | 145 MB

At the age of 23, James Frey woke up on a plane to find his front teeth knocked out and his nose broken. He had no idea where the plane was headed nor any recollection of the past two weeks. An alcoholic for ten years and a crack addict for three, he checked into a treatment facility shortly after landing. There he was told he could either stop using or die before he reached age 24. This is Frey’s acclaimed account of his six weeks in rehab.

Amazon.com Review
The electrifying opening of James Frey's debut memoir, A Million Little Pieces, smash-cuts to the then 23-year-old author on a Chicago-bound plane "covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood." Wanted by authorities in three states, without ID or any money, his face mangled and missing four front teeth, Frey is on a steep descent from a dark marathon of drug abuse. His stunned family checks him into a famed Minnesota drug treatment center where a doctor promises "he will be dead within a few days" if he starts to use again, and where Frey spends two agonizing months of detox confronting "The Fury" head on:

I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag filled with mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can.

One of the more harrowing sections is when Frey submits to major dental surgery without the benefit of anesthesia or painkillers (he fights the mind-blowing waves of "bayonet" pain by digging his fingers into two old tennis balls until his nails crack). His fellow patients include a damaged crack addict with whom Frey wades into an ill-fated relationship, a federal judge, a former championship boxer, and a mobster (who, upon his release, throws a hilarious surf-and-turf bacchanal, complete with pay-per-view boxing). In the book's epilogue, when Frey ticks off a terse update on everyone, you can almost hear the Jim Carroll Band's brutal survivor's lament "People Who Died" kicking in on the soundtrack of the inevitable film adaptation.

The rage-fueled memoir is kept in check by Frey's cool, minimalist style. Like his steady mantra, "I am an Alcoholic and I am a drug Addict and I am a Criminal," Frey's use of repetition takes on a crisp, lyrical quality which lends itself to the surreal experience. The book could have benefited from being a bit leaner. Nearly 400 pages is a long time to spend under Frey's influence, and the stylistic acrobatics (no quotation marks, random capitalization, left-aligned text, wild paragraph breaks) may seem too self-conscious for some readers, but beyond the literary fireworks lurks a fierce debut. --Brad Thomas Parsons

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly
For as long as he can remember, Frey has had within him something that he calls "the Fury," a bottomless source of anger and rage that he has kept at bay since he was 10 by obliterating his consciousness with alcohol and drugs. When this memoir begins, the author is 23 and is wanted in three states. He has a raw hole in his cheek big enough to stick a finger through, he's missing four teeth, he's covered with spit blood and vomit, and without ID or any idea where the airplane he finds himself on is heading. It turns out his parents have sent him to a drug rehab center in Minnesota. From the start, Frey refuses to surrender his problem to a 12-step program or to victimize himself by calling his addictions a disease. He demands to be held fully accountable for the person he is and the person he may become. If Frey is a victim, he comes to realize, it's due to nothing but his own bad decisions. Wyman's reading of Frey's terse, raw prose is ideal. His unforgettable performance of Frey's anesthesia-free dental visit will be recalled by listeners with every future dentist appointment. His lump-in-the-throat contained intensity, wherein he neither sobs nor howls with rage but appears a breath away from both, gives listeners a palpable glimpse of the power of addiction and the struggle for recovery.

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23 Things They Don't Tell You about Capitalism

2011-10-04T14:23:00.000-05:00

Thing 1: There is no such thing as the free market.
Thing 4: The washing machine has changed the world more than the Internet.
Thing 5: Assume the worst about people, and you get the worst.
Thing 13: Making rich people richer doesn't make the rest of us richer.

If you've wondered how we did not see the economic collapse coming, Ha-Joon Chang knows the answer: We didn't ask what they didn't tell us about capitalism. This is a lighthearted book with a serious purpose: to question the assumptions behind the dogma and sheer hype that the dominant school of neoliberal economists - the apostles of the freemarket - have spun since the Age of Reagan.

Chang, the author of the international best seller Bad Samaritans, is one of the world's most respected economists, a voice of sanity - and wit - in the tradition of John Kenneth Galbraith and Joseph Stiglitz.

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism equips listeners with an understanding of how global capitalism works - and doesn't. In his final chapter, "How to Rebuild the World", Chang offers a vision of how we can shape capitalism to humane ends, instead of becoming slaves of the market.

Ha-Joon Chang teaches in the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge. His books include the best-selling Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. His Kicking Away the Ladder received the 2003 Myrdal Prize, and, in 2005, Chang was awarded the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

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The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt

2011-10-03T13:50:00.000-05:00

Drawing on unpublished research on Theodore Roosevelt and the rise of conservationism in America—no small task, considering the many biographies on Roosevelt published over the last decade—Brinkley offers a weighty tome that, while shedding new insight into the former president's environmentalism, tends to overwhelm with detail and, according to some critics, underwhelm with substance. Over two decades and more than two dozen books, Brinkley has mastered the art of balancing scholarship and research with readability. In Wilderness Warrior, though, the author's affinity for his subject and the vastness of the literature on Roosevelt get in the way of a message that might have been made clearer with some prudent cutting.

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Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, by Alan Alda

2011-10-02T13:44:00.000-05:00

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned by Alan Alda
Publisher: Random House Audio; Abridged edition (August 9, 2005) | ISBN: 073932277X | Language English | Audio CD in FLAC | 1.1 GB

Alan Alda's autobiography travels a path less taken. Instead of a sensationalist, name-dropping page-turner, Alda writes about his life as a memory play, an exercise in recollecting his childhood, his parents (dad Robert was a veteran on stage, film, and vaudeville), and his career. You want to know about Alda's most famous work, the eleven years on M*A*S*H? You have exactly 16 pages to do so, and guess what: It's one of the least entertaining parts of the book. But should fans of the award-winning actor-writer-director avoid this slim memoir? Not in the slightest. Slyly humorous and open-hearted, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is a breezy, most enjoyable read. Alda's ability to recall his childhood (including backstage at raunchy vaudeville shows), school years, stage struggles and successes is as entertaining as one of his Emmy-winning teleplays. Alda is inordinately attune recalling life's crystallizing moments: when religion no longer worked for him, how something in his pocket made him forever a better actor, or his mother's painful descent into dementia. Alda's ever present humor is a great asset whether telling a charming love story on meeting his wife Arlene or a life-threatening illness in a remote part of Chile ("I am in and out of consciences, but I never take a break from the screaming. The show must go on."). Like Alda's persona, his book is more human and less flash. What would be filler in most books is often the mot entertaining and revealing here; especially Alda's dynamic relationship with his parents. Really, who else would name his memoir after an unfortunate trip to the taxidermist? The year the book was published during a revival for the 69-year-old; he was nominated for an Oscar, Emmy, and Tony in the same year. --Doug Thomas --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
While listening to Alda's colorful and often poignant recollections, it becomes clear that, in addition to being a consummate actor, he is an introspective storyteller who isn't constrained by memory. Indeed, Alda's tales are sometimes surreally vivid, particularly those from when he was a toddler. "From my earliest days, I was standing off to the side watching, trying to understand a world that fascinated me," he recalls. Alda's autobiography is equally fascinating. With a touch of wonderment in his voice, he tells of weeks spent traveling with his father's burlesque company, of time spent with his dog Rhapsody (before he was stuffed), of a lifetime spent coping with his mother's mental illness and of the highs and lows of his acting career. Though the organization of these musings can feel disjointed, Alda's intimate, dynamic narration makes one feel as if you're sitting across from a wise and entertaining friend, the kind you could listen to for hours.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink

2011-10-01T13:39:00.000-05:00

This volume of food writing from the New Yorker proves again that famous weekly's reputation for literary and journalistic excellence. An anthology of reporting both recent and vintage, this book takes readers from the oyster beds of Long Island to the bistros of Paris, from artisanal tofu joints in Japan to a Miami restaurant serving Basque food to homesick Cubans. Along the way, lucky readers get to travel to fun food towns like San Francisco and New York, drink martinis with Roger Angell, make fun of menus with Steve Martin and reminisce about Julia Child's winsome public television series. A particularly wonderful profile introduces a wild-foods forager capable of making a ten course meal from ingredients in the field near his house; he and the author dine on cattails and watercress while canoeing through an icy November river. Another winning profile explores the life and times of a cheese-making nun with a Ph.D. in microbiology. But perhaps the greatest pleasure here is the gorgeous prose of masters like M.F.K. Fisher and A.J. Liebling. Liebling, in particular, knows how to turn meals into stories; though he wrote of Paris before the war, his descriptions are so immediate and enticing a reader wants to run out and buy the first plane ticket to France.

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Lost on Planet China

2011-09-30T13:35:00.000-05:00

J. Maarten Troost, "Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Became Comfortable Eating Live Squid"[Audiobook, Unabridged]
Bl-ck-t-ne Audio | 2008 | ISBN: 1433248646 | MP3@78 kbps | 10 hrs 51 mins | 370.09 Mb

In his latest, veteran traveler Troost (The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Getting Stoned with Savages) embarks on an extended tour of "the new wild west," China. Troost travels from the megalopolis of Beijing to small, remote trails in the hinterlands, the fabled Shangri-La and all points in between, allowing for a substantive look at an incredibly complex culture. He does an admirable job of summing up the country's rich history, venturing to Nanjing to learn about China's deep-seated animosity toward Japan; he also visits the Forbidden City, and the tomb of Mao Zedong, still very much revered despite his horrific record of human rights abuses. Gross disparity in wealth, omnipresent pollution and the teeming mass of humanity that greet Troost at every opportunity wear on him and the reader alike; the sense of claustrophobia only relents when he gets into more remote areas. Throughout, Troost is refreshingly upbeat, without a hint of ugly American elitism; he often steps aside to let the facts speak for themselves, and rarely devolves into complaints over the language barrier or other day-to-day frustrations. Those looking for tips on Hong Kong night life or other touristy secrets will be disappointed-few names are named-but readers interested in a warts-and-all look at this complicated, evolving country will find this a rich education.

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Henry Kissinger--On China

2011-09-29T13:32:00.000-05:00

In this sweeping and insightful history, Henry Kissinger turns for the first time at book-length to a country he has known intimately for decades, and whose modern relations with the West he helped shape. Drawing on historical records as well as his conversations with Chinese leaders over the past forty years, Kissinger examines how China has approached diplomacy, strategy, and negotiation throughout its history, and reflects on the consequences for the global balance of power in the 21st century.

Since no other country can claim a more powerful link to its ancient past and classical principles, any attempt to understand China's future world role must begin with an appreciation of its long history. For centuries, China rarely encountered other societies of comparable size and sophistication; it was the "Middle Kingdom," treating the peoples on its periphery as vassal states. At the same time, Chinese statesmen-facing threats of invasion from without, and the contests of competing factions within-developed a canon of strategic thought that prized the virtues of subtlety, patience, and indirection over feats of martial prowess.

In On China, Kissinger examines key episodes in Chinese foreign policy from the classical era to the present day, with a particular emphasis on the decades since the rise of Mao Zedong. He illuminates the inner workings of Chinese diplomacy during such pivotal events as the initial encounters between China and modern European powers, the formation and breakdown of the Sino-Soviet alliance, the Korean War, Richard Nixon's historic trip to Beijing, and three crises in the Taiwan Straits. Drawing on his extensive personal experience with four generation of Chinese leaders, he brings to life towering figures such as Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping, revealing how their different visions have shaped China's modern destiny.

With his singular vantage on U.S.-China relations, Kissinger traces the evolution of this fraught but crucial relationship over the past 60 years, following its dramatic course from estrangement to strategic partnership to economic interdependence, and toward an uncertain future. With a final chapter on the emerging superpower's 21st-century world role, On China provides an intimate historical perspective on Chinese foreign affairs from one of the premier statesmen of the 20th century.

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The Floor of Heaven

2011-09-28T13:27:00.000-05:00

It is the last decade of the 19th century. The Wild West has been tamed and its fierce, independent and often violent larger-than-life figures - gun-toting wanderers, trappers, prospectors, Indian fighters, cowboys, and lawmen - are now victims of their own success. They are heroes who've outlived their usefulness.

But then gold is discovered in Alaska and the adjacent Canadian Klondike and a new frontier suddenly looms - an immense unexplored territory filled with frozen waterways, dark spruce forests, and towering mountains capped by glistening layers of snow and ice.

"Klondicitis," a giddy mix of greed and lust for adventure, ignites a stampede. Fleeing the depths of a worldwide economic depression and driven by starry-eyed visions of vast wealth, tens of thousands rush northward.

Joining this throng of greenhorns and grifters, whores and highwaymen, sourdoughs and seers are three unforgettable men. In a true-life tale that rivets from the first page, we meet Charlie Siringo, a top-hand sharp-shooting cowboy who, after futilely trying to settle down with his new bride, becomes one of the Pinkerton Detective Agency's shrewdest; George Carmack, a California-born American Marine who's adopted by an Indian tribe, raises a family with a Taglish squaw, makes the discovery that starts off the Yukon Gold Rush - and becomes fabulously rich; and Soapy Smith, a sly and inventive predator-conman who rules a vast criminal empire.

As we follow this trio's lives, we're led inexorably into a perplexing mystery. A fortune in gold bars has somehow been stolen from the fortress-like Treadwell Mine in Juneau, Alaska, with no clues as to how the thieves made off with such an immensely heavy cargo. To many it appears that the crime will never be solved.

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What Happened: Inside The Bush White House

2011-09-27T13:25:00.000-05:00

What Happened: Inside The Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception by Scott Mcclellan
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks, Inc.; Unabridged edition (June 2, 2008) | ISBN: 1433214342 | Language English | Audio CD in FLAC | 717 MB

Some listeners may get to the end of this audiobook and still be asking "What happened?" for even in his own words, McClellan's book appears either woefully naïve to the point of negligence or a continuance of spin and lying (or has he says, "shading"). As he traces his early years working with Bush in the Texas government through his tenure as White House press secretary, McClellan continues to applaud Bush with only a mild dash of criticism while laying much of the blame for Bush's poor decisions upon the "permanent campaign" political culture of Washington. Hailing from the party of "personal responsibility," this approach seems awkward at best. Even when he identifies the administration as a group of "well intentioned but flawed people," he still shies away from making strong and definitive statements. Predominantly hovering around his experience and problems as press secretary at the height of the Valerie Plame incident, McClellan's analysis and reporting of the Bush administration doesn't forge any new ground. As narrator, he manages well enough in a matter of fact tone with moderate inflection, minimally hindered with background noises and some stumbling or mispronunciations. However, on occasion, he does execute a good Bush impersonation. A Public Affairs hardcover.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"The former press secretary of President Bush (No. 43 version) empties out his notebooks, and all of Washington will be holding its breath." -- Seattle Times, March 16, 2008 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Falling Behind--Rising Inequality

2011-09-26T13:19:00.000-05:00

Although middle-income families don't earn much more than they did several decades ago, they are buying bigger cars, houses, and appliances. To pay for them, they spend more than they earn and carry record levels of debt. In a book that explores the very meaning of happiness and prosperity in America today, Robert Frank explains how increased concentrations of income and wealth at the top of the economic pyramid have set off "expenditure cascades" that raise the cost of achieving many basic goals for the middle class.

Writing in lively prose for a general audience, Frank employs up-to-date economic data and examples drawn from everyday life to shed light on reigning models of consumer behavior. He also suggests reforms that could mitigate the costs of inequality. Falling Behind compels us to rethink how and why we live our economic lives the way we do.

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J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer Of Worlds

2011-09-25T13:15:00.000-05:00

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer Of Worlds by Peter Goodchild & read by Jonathan Reese [Unabridged]
Publisher: Books on Tape, Inc. (February 21, 1995) | ISBN: 0736630007 | Language English | Audio CD in MP3 ~ ripped from Cassette | 492 MB

The FBI said J. Robert Oppenheimer had "Communist" written all over him. But Hoover and his gang didn't discover it until well after Oppenheimer became a government servant and fathered the potent U.S. nuclear weapons program. Suspicion grew after WWII when he began opposing atomic technology development. If he were a Soviet spy, Hoover reasoned, Oppenheimer had gathered data for the enemy and then tried to ensure the U.S. would lose the upper hand.

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Everything Is Obvious: Once You Know the Answer

2011-09-24T13:10:00.000-05:00

Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world? Why did Facebook succeed when other social-networking sites failed? Did the surge in Iraq really lead to less violence? How much can CEO's impact the performance of their companies? And does higher pay incentivize people to work hard?

If you think the answers to these questions are a matter of common sense, think again. As sociologist and network science pioneer Duncan Watts explains in this provocative book, the explanations that we give for the outcomes that we observe in life - explanation that seem obvious once we know the answer - are less useful than they seem.

Drawing on the latest scientific research, along with a wealth of historical and contemporary examples, Watts shows how common sense reasoning and history conspire to mislead us into believing that we understand more about the world of human behavior than we do; and in turn, why attempts to predict, manage, or manipulate social and economic systems so often go awry.

It seems obvious, for example, that people respond to incentives; yet policy makers and managers alike frequently fail to anticipate how people will respond to the incentives they create. Social trends often seem to have been driven by certain influential people; yet marketers have been unable to identify these "influencers" in advance. And although successful products or companies always seem in retrospect to have succeeded because of their unique qualities, predicting the qualities of the next hit product or hot company is notoriously difficult, even for experienced professionals.

Only by understanding how and when common sense fails, Watts argues, can we improve how we plan for the future, as well as understand the present - an argument that has important implications in politics, business, and marketing, as well as in science and everyday life.

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In Search of Churchill

2011-09-23T13:05:00.000-05:00

In Search of Churchill: A Historian's Journey by Martin Gilbert & Read by David Case
Publisher: Books on Tape, Inc. May 1996 | ISBN: 0736633928 | Language English | Audio CD in MP3 | 563 MB

Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill's official biographer, has devoted nearly 30 years to his subject. It's taken that long to track down every scrap of information about this twentieth century titan. Gilbert received his appointment after Randolph Churchill's death, more than 20 years ago.

Randolph had started his father's biography, Gilbert assisted him and was there to take charge after Randolph's untimely death. From this new book emerges an intimate portrait of Churchill's character, untrammeled by formality and the fruit of Gilbert's work.

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My Thoughts Be Bloody

2011-09-22T13:01:00.000-05:00

If one chooses to do so, one could probably discover a complex of personal demons that supposedly motivated every lone political assassin. So Oswald was acting out his frustration over his failures as a husband and political activist. Sirhan Sirhan was seeking relief from loneliness rather than striking a blow for Palestine. And so on and so on to the point of absurd psychobabble. Yet, given the limitations inherent in such efforts, this is actually a very well-done examination of the trials and tribulations of a remarkable family. The family patriarch, Junius, was a heralded Shakespearean actor, an alcoholic, and an often emotionally abusive parent. His favored son, Edwin, was generally regarded as the greatest American actor of the nineteenth century. Then there was poor John—desperate for his father’s approval, intensely jealous of his brother, and frustrated by his reputation as a mediocre performer. Titone does a fine job of contrasting the personalities and even the acting styles of the brothers. Her portrait of Edwin as a decent man haunted by his brother’s act is often moving.

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The Art of Making Money

2011-09-21T12:58:00.000-05:00

Kersten traces the history of Art Williams from his impoverished childhood to (infamous) career as one of the greatest counterfeiters in modern times. Though Williams serves as the center, Kersten also provides critical commentary on the institutions that shaped Williams, notably his family structure and the American prison system. The prose proves accessible and enjoyable, but Jim Bond's performance makes the book significantly more intriguing. His deep projection coupled with his matter-of-fact delivery make even the most technical passages enjoyable and relatable, and his masterful emphasis and pace help listeners slip into Williams's psyche.

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The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty

2011-09-20T12:49:00.000-05:00

Against a richly detailed backdrop of history, the story of this unique American family unfolds. It begins with John D. Rockefeller Sr., who amassed a fortune amid the muck and disorder of the Pennsylvania oil fields and left his son to deal with the public outcry. It follows Rockefeller Jr. as he built the charities and foundations that made the name a public institution. And it tracks the lives of the 5 Rockefeller brothers. Here then is Laurance, clever and charming as a youth, burned out and cynical by middle age; Winthrop, the shy, awkward, black sheep who finally made a mark for himself in the eyes of everyone but his family; JDR3, introverted and anxious even after years of proving himself; David, a man on the move who took the nation's front-ranking bank and made it number 3; and Nelson, ambitious, aggressive, the brother who broke the unwritten family code.

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Michael Lewis--The New New Thing

2011-09-19T12:43:00.000-05:00

Michael Lewis was supposed to be writing about how Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape, was going to turn health care on its ear by launching Healtheon, which would bring the vast majority of the industry's transactions online. So why was he spending so much time on a computerized yacht, each feature installed because, as one technician put it, "someone saw it on Star Trek and wanted one just like it?"

Much of The New New Thing, to be fair, is devoted to the Healtheon story. It's just that Jim Clark doesn't do startups the way most people do. "He had ceased to be a businessman," as Lewis puts it, "and become a conceptual artist." After coming up with the basic idea for Healtheon, securing the initial seed money, and hiring the people to make it happen, Clark concentrated on the building of Hyperion, a sailboat with a 197-foot mast, whose functions are controlled by 25 SGI workstations (a boat that, if he wanted to, Clark could log onto and steer--from anywhere in the world). Keeping up with Clark proves a monumental challenge--"you didn't interact with him," Lewis notes, "so much as hitch a ride on the back of his life"--but one that the author rises to meet with the same frenetic energy and humor of his previous books, Liar's Poker and Trail Fever.

Like those two books, The New New Thing shows how the pursuit of power at its highest levels can lead to the very edges of the surreal, as when Clark tries to fill out an investment profile for a Swiss bank, where he intends to deposit less than .05 percent of his financial assets. When asked to assess his attitude toward financial risk, Clark searches in vain for the category of "people who sought to turn ten million dollars into one billion in a few months" and finally tells the banker, "I think this is for a different ... person." There have been a lot of profiles of Silicon Valley companies and the way they've revamped the economy in the 1990s--The New New Thing is one of the first books fully to depict the sort of man that has made such companies possible.

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The Bible: A Very Short Introduction

2011-09-18T12:39:00.000-05:00

It is sometimes said that the Bible is one of the most unread books in the world, yet has been a major force in the development of Western culture and continues to exert an enormous influence over many people's lives.

This Very Short Introduction looks at the importance accorded to the Bible by different communities and cultures and attempts to explain why it has generated such a rich variety of uses and interpretations. It explores how the Bible was written, the development of the canon, the role of Biblical criticism, the appropriation of the Bible in high and popular culture, and its use for political ends.

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Ernest Hemingway: Death in the Afternoon

2011-09-17T12:34:00.000-05:00

Death in the Afternoon is an impassioned look at bullfighting by one of its true aficionados. It reflects Hemingway's conviction that bullfighting was more than mere sport and reveals a rich source of inspiration for his art. The unrivaled drama of bullfighting, with its rigorous combination of athleticism and artistry, and its requisite display of grace under pressure, ignited Hemingway's imagination. Seen through his eyes, bullfighting becomes a richly choreographed ballet, with performers who range from awkward amateurs to masters of great elegance and cunning. Death in the Afternoon is also a deeper contemplation of the nature of cowardice and bravery, sport and tragedy, and is enlivened throughout by Hemingway's sharp commentary on life and literature.

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The Rape of Nanking

2011-09-16T12:12:00.000-05:00

The Rape of Nanking (Audiobook) By Iris Chang, read by Barbara Rosenblat
Publisher: Pe,ngu,in Audio; Abridged edition 1998 | 3 hours and 11 mins | ISBN: 0140868569 | MP3 | 92 MB

China has endured much hardship in its history, as Iris Chang shows in her ably researched The Rape of Nanking, a book that recounts the horrible events in that eastern Chinese city under Japanese occupation in the late 1930s. Nanking, she writes, served as a kind of laboratory in which Japanese soldiers were taught to slaughter unarmed, unresisting civilians, as they would later do throughout Asia. Likening their victims to insects and animals, the Japanese commanders orchestrated a campaign in which several hundred thousand--no one is sure just how many--Chinese soldiers and noncombatants alike were killed. Chang turns up an unlikely hero in German businessman John Rabe, a devoted member of the Nazi party who importuned Adolf Hitler to intervene and stop the slaughter, and who personally saved the lives of countless residents of Nanking. She also suggests that the Japanese government pay reparations and apologize for its army's horrific acts of 60 years ago.

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Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises

2011-09-15T12:09:00.000-05:00

Manias, Panics, and Crashes probes the most recent natural disasters of the markets - from Black Monday to the Japanese boom and bust, from the sterling crisis and peso devaluation to the explosion in today's technology stocks." "Kindleberger's writing leads the reader through a myriad of financial free falls. From the currency devaluation in the Holy Roman Empire in 1618, through the California gold rush of the 1840s and '50s to the crash of 1987, all the way up to the present day, his sharply drawn history confronts a host of key questions: In the ups and downs of market behavior, where is the line between rational and irrational? Are the markets a fool's paradise in an explosive world? When the storm expands to dangerous proportions, who will calm the panic? Should a "lender of last resort" intervene to repair the wreckage? Manias, Panics, and Crashes can be regarded as a warning or a proposition, reminding readers, in many ways, that what goes around comes around. Like all true classics, Kindleberger's book remains timely - for better or for worse.

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Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

2011-09-14T12:04:00.000-05:00

Mary Roach, "Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex" [Audiobook, Unabridged]
B-illi-n-e Audio | 2008 | ISBN: 1423316703 | M4B, AAC@58 kbps | 246.79 Mb

Roach is not like other science writers. She doesn't write about genes or black holes or Schrödinger's cat. Instead, she ventures out to the fringes of science, where the oddballs ponder how cadavers decay (in her debut, Stiff) and whether you can weigh a person's soul (in Spook). Now she explores the sexiest subject of all: sex, and such questions as, what is an orgasm? How is it possible for paraplegics to have them? What does woman want, and can a man give it to her if her clitoris is too far from her vagina? At times the narrative feels insubstantial and digressive (how much do you need to know about inseminating sows?), but Roach's ever-present eye and ear for the absurd and her loopy sense of humor make her a delectable guide through this unesteemed scientific outback. The payoff comes with subjects like female orgasm (yes, it's complicated), and characters like Ahmed Shafik, who defies Cairo's religious repressiveness to conduct his sex research. Roach's forays offer fascinating evidence of the full range of human weirdness, the nonsense that has often passed for medical science and, more poignantly, the extreme lengths to which people will go to find sexual satisfaction.

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Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better

2011-09-13T12:01:00.000-05:00

People who spend hours playing video or online games are often maligned for “wasting their time” or “not living in the real world,” but McGonigal argues persuasively and passionately against this notion in her eminently effective examination of why games are important. She begins by disabusing the reader of some inherent prejudices and assumptions made about gamers, such as that they’re lazy and unambitious. Quite the opposite: McGonigal finds that gamers are working hard to achieve goals within the world of whatever game they are playing, whether it’s going on a quest to win attributes to enhance their in-game characters or performing tasks to get to a higher level in the game. Games inspire hard work, the setting of ambitious goals, learning from and even enjoying failure, and coming together with others for a common goal. McGonigal points out many real-world applications, including encouraging students to seek out secret assignments, setting up household chores as a challenge, even a 2009 game created by The Guardian to help uncover the excessive expenses of members of Parliament. With so many people playing games, this comprehensive, engaging study is an essential read.

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The 4% Universe

2011-09-12T11:57:00.000-05:00

Exploring “one of the most important stories in the history of science” (Washington Post), Panek nimbly outlines recent findings in physics, astronomy, and cosmology and evaluates rival theories in clear, comprehensible language. He also dives into the bureaucratic morass and professional enmities of contemporary research, examining how these discoveries were made as well as who made them. While some critics appreciated this behind-the-scenes human drama as a tool for understanding the full story, others believed that Panek’s alternating focus on the scientists themselves detracted from the actual science. However, even readers who prefer their science straight up will find much to admire in this accessible and fascinating survey of one of the most exciting—and maddening—fields of study.

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King of Capital: Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone

2011-09-11T11:53:00.000-05:00

David Carey and John E. Morris reveal the untold story of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone, the financier and his financial powerhouse that avoided the self-destructive tendencies of Wall Street.

“The authors link Blackstone’s history to the larger story of private equity’s expansion and its relationship to corporate America. They offer a lucid explanation of how the debt markets evolved from junk bonds to securitised loans, changing the types of deals that private-equity firms were able to finance.” — The Economist

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Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism

2011-09-10T11:48:00.000-05:00

Goldhagen expands the controversial argument of his bestselling Hitler's Willing Executioners to indict the world in this relentless j'accuse. His comparative study surveys a panorama of modern atrocities, encompassing the Holocaust, the Soviet gulag, Cambodia, the Rwandan and Darfur genocides, and even Harry Truman, a mass murderer who should be put in the dock no less than Stalin [and] Pol Pot for the atomic bombing of Japan. Goldhagen's elaborate concept of eliminationism, complete with a two-dimensional matrix of Types of Excess Cruelty (is the action ordered or not? individually or collectively performed?) is similarly broad, comprising massacres along with nonlethal expulsions and repressions; in his hectoring, incantatory prose (Think of hearing your victim's screams as you hack at or 'cut' her and then cut her again, and again and again), it's less a theory than a nomenclature for cataloguing human devilry. As in Executioners, Goldhagen convincingly disparages bureaucratic banality of evil explanations of genocide and spotlights the ideologies of leaders who exploit ordinary citizens' hate-filled beliefs to instigate mass murder. It's not easy reading, but Goldhagen's vehemence and the sheer weight of horrors that he recounts move one's conscience.

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Stanislaw Lem: Solaris

2011-09-09T11:45:00.000-05:00

Stanislaw Lem, Bill Johnston, "Solaris: The Definitive Edition (Audiobook)"
Audible Frontiers | 2011 | ASIN: B0054N6KH0 | Audio CD | 7 hour(s) and 48 min. | Mp3 | 320 MB

At last, one of the world's greatest works of science fiction is available - just as author Stanislaw Lem intended it.

To mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Solaris, Audible, in cooperation with the Lem Estate, has commissioned a brand-new translation - complete for the first time, and the first ever directly from the original Polish to English. Beautifully narrated by Alessandro Juliani (Battlestar Galactica), Lem's provocative novel comes alive for a new generation.

In Solaris, Kris Kelvin arrives on an orbiting research station to study the remarkable ocean that covers the planet's surface. But his fellow scientists appear to be losing their grip on reality, plagued by physical manifestations of their repressed memories. When Kelvin's long-dead wife suddenly reappears, he is forced to confront the pain of his past - while living a future that never was. Can Kelvin unlock the mystery of Solaris? Does he even want to?

Young Stalin

2011-09-08T11:42:00.000-05:00

Russian historian and author Montefiore presents an exciting, exemplary biography of the nondescript peasant boy who would become the most ruthless leader in Soviet history, a prequel of sorts to his Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. Born in 1878 in the Caucasus of Georgia to an overprotective mother (who had already lost two sons) and a father opposed to education ("I'm a shoemaker and my son will be one too"), Stalin possessed a talent for poetry and mischief. Amidst his mom's trysts (with men she hoped would further Stalin's education), his father's alcohol-fueled violence and the powder-keg environment of the Caucasus, Stalin turned from priesthood training to gang life and petty crime. As he grew, so did his hatred of Tsarist Russia, leading him to meet the initial Bolsheviks, and to more spectacular and violent capers. From the start, Stalin proved a remarkable talent for meticulous planning, a skill that would become vital to the revolutionaries and, later, to his iron-fisted reign. Using recently opened records, Montefiore turns up intriguing new information (like the "Fagin-like" role he played among "a prepubescent revolutionary street intelligence" network), Montefiore captures in an absorbing narrative both Stalin's conflicted character-marked by powerful charisma and deep paranoia-and the revolution's early years with stunning clarity.

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Niall Ferguson: The Pity of War

2011-09-07T11:41:00.000-05:00

In The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson makes a simple and provocative argument: that the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England's fault. Britain, according to Ferguson, entered into war based on nave assumptions of German aims-and England's entry into the war transformed a Continental conflict into a world war, which they then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces. That the war was wicked, horrific, inhuman, is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but also by cold statistics.

More British soldiers were killed in the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans in the Vietnam War; indeed, the total British fatalities in that single battle-some 420,000-exceeds the entire American fatalities for both World Wars. And yet, as Ferguson writes, while the war itself was a disastrous folly, the great majority of men who fought it did so with enthusiasm. Ferguson vividly brings back to life this terrifying period, not through dry citation of chronological chapter and verse but through a series of brilliant chapters focusing on key ways in which we now view the First World War.

For anyone wanting to understand why wars are fought, why men are willing to fight them, and why the world is as it is today, there is no sharper nor more stimulating guide than Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War.

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Neptune's Inferno

2011-09-06T11:32:00.000-05:00

Hornfischer’s third outstanding book on the U.S. Navy’s surface forces in WWII will have a ready-made audience because its subject is the naval side of the Guadalcanal campaign of 1942. The campaign began when marines landed on that deservedly unfrequented island to halt the creation of a Japanese airbase that might threaten U.S. communications with Australia. The Japanese riposte inflicted a disaster on the U.S. Navy second only to Pearl Harbor, called the Battle of Savo Island. Over the next few months, the two navies went at each other hammer and tongs in what was probably the most intense naval campaign of the war. The Japanese had an ace up their sleeve in the Long Lance torpedo, the best in the world. The U.S. eventually counterbalanced the Japanese by learning (all too slowly) to use radar-directed gunfire to take back the night seas. The author offers balanced assessments of the leaders on both sides, but the real heroes are the American bluejackets, who too often paid with suffering and death for those leaders’ slowness to learn. And as in his first two books, the author’s narrative gifts and excellent choice of detail give an almost Homeric quality to the men who met on the sea in steel titans.

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he Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors

2011-09-05T11:18:00.000-05:00

Told from the point of view of the men who waged this steel-shattering battle, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors captures Navy pilots attacking enemy battleships with makeshift weapons and sacrificial valor, a veteran commander improvising tactics never taught in Annapolis, and young crews from across America rising to an impossible challenge. It takes us into the heart and mind of an iron-willed, self-made executive officer leading his men throughout a sea of carnage and two hellish days and nights clinging to survival amid oil, blood, sharks, and madness. And it dramatizes how the overmatched U.S. force, enduring the loss of five gallant ships and nearly a thousand brave men, turned a certain crashing defeat into a momentous victory that would lead to the final surrender of America's ruthless imperial foe.

Filled with riveting detail and based on the author's extensive interviews and correspondence with veterans, unpublished eyewitness accounts, declassified documents, and rare Japanese sources, this is war at sea as it has seldom been presented before. It is an unforgettable narrative that captures the essence of heroism, the power of loyalty, and the way in which the unadorned truth is more stirring than legend itself.

Also, this audio program contains excerpts of exclusive interviews with Navy veterans conducted by the author.

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Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston

2011-09-04T11:15:00.000-05:00

James D. Hornfischer, acclaimed author of The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, delivers an unflinching account of heroism and honor at the limit of human endurance, and of the unsung warriors who waged one of the most remarkable battles of World War II.

Renowned as FDR's favorite warship, the cruiser USS Houston was a prize target trapped in the far Pacific after Pearl Harbor. Without hope of reinforcement, her crew faced a superior Japanese force ruthlessly committed to total conquest.

Hornfischer brings to life the awesome terror of nighttime naval battles that turned decks into strobe-lit slaughterhouses, until the Houston was finally sunk and its survivors taken prisoner.

For more than three years, the war continued for the crew in the brutal privation of jungle POW camps. But the men of the Houston fought back against their dehumanization with dignity, ingenuity, sabotage, willpower, and the undying faith that their country would prevail.

Using journals and letters, rare historical documents, and the eyewitness accounts of the Houston's survivors, James Hornfischer has crafted an account of human valor so riveting and awe-inspiring, it's easy to forget that every single word of it is true.

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The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

2011-09-03T11:12:00.000-05:00

"In 2010, about six hundred thousand Americans, and more than 7 million humans around the world, will die of cancer." With this sobering statistic, physician and researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee begins his comprehensive and eloquent "biography" of one of the most virulent diseases of our time. An exhaustive account of cancer's origins, The Emperor of All Maladies illustrates how modern treatments--multi-pronged chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, as well as preventative care--came into existence thanks to a century's worth of research, trials, and small, essential breakthroughs around the globe. While The Emperor of All Maladies is rich with the science and history behind the fight against cancer, it is also a meditation on illness, medical ethics, and the complex, intertwining lives of doctors and patients. Mukherjee's profound compassion--for cancer patients, their families, as well as the oncologists who, all too often, can offer little hope--makes this book a very human history of an elusive and complicated disease.

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Ernest Hemingway: To Have and Have Not

2011-09-02T11:08:00.000-05:00

First things first: readers coming to To Have and Have Not after seeing the Bogart/Bacall film should be forewarned that about the only thing the two have in common is the title. The movie concerns a brave fishing-boat captain in World War II-era Martinique who aids the French Resistance, battles the Nazis, and gets the girl in the end. The novel concerns a broke fishing-boat captain who agrees to carry contraband between Cuba and Florida in order to feed his wife and daughters. Of the two, the novel is by far the darker, more complex work.

The first time we meet Harry Morgan, he is sitting in a Havana bar watching a gun battle raging out in the street. After seeing a Cuban get his head blown off with a Luger, Morgan reacts with typical Hemingway understatement: "I took a quick one out of the first bottle I saw open and I couldn't tell you yet what it was. The whole thing made me feel pretty bad." Still feeling bad, Harry heads out in his boat on a charter fishing expedition for which he is later stiffed by the client. With not even enough money to fill his gas tanks, he is forced to agree to smuggle some illegal Chinese for the mysterious Mr. Sing. From there it's just a small step to carrying liquor--a disastrous run that ends when Harry loses an arm and his boat. Once Harry gets mixed up in the brewing Cuban revolution, however, even those losses seem small compared to what's at stake now: his very life.

Hemingway tells most of this story in the third person, but, significantly, he brackets the whole with a section at the beginning told from Harry's perspective and a short, heart-wrenching chapter at the end narrated by his wife, Marie. In between there is adventure, danger, betrayal, and death, but this novel begins and ends with the tough and tender portrait of a man who plays the cards that are dealt him with courage and dignity, long after hope is gone.

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WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy

2011-09-01T12:04:00.000-05:00

A team of journalists with unparalleled inside access provides the first full, in-depth account of WikiLeaks, its founder Julian Assange, and the ethical, legal, and political controversies it has both uncovered and provoked.

The extraordinary twists and turns of WikiLeaks have been closely followed by the Guardian newspaper ever since the website launched in 2006, and Guardian journalists have had unprecedented access to all the major players, from angry and embarrassed politicians and diplomats to the extraordinary figure of Julian Assange himself. At different times Assange hid at David Leigh's homes. Here they reveal the many strands -- legal, ethical, security related -- of a story that continues to dominate world headlines. They look at the Internet culture and technology that made the mining of secret information possible and at the fanatical hackers who set up WikiLeaks. They explore the secret goings-on that WikiLeaks has uncovered, from the revelation of extrajudicial killings in Kenya in 2008 to the avalanche of US diplomatic cables in 2010. They study the implications of the latest revelations and reveal the strange and contradictory nature of Assange himself: a man praised by Amnesty International in 2009 but also, barely a year later, accused by Swedish police of sex crimes.

The WikiLeaks story has received worldwide attention and reaction. WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy presents the whole history of the organization and the ethical debate that surrounded the use of its material, plus the inside story of the personalities that created then threatened to destroy the website that has changed our view of secrecy forever.

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Denialism

2011-08-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

Although denialists, according to Specter, come from both ends of the political spectrum, they have one important trait in common: their willingness to replace the rigorous and open-minded skepticism of science with the inflexible certainty of ideological commitment. Specter analyzes the consequences of this inflexibility and draws some startling and uncomfortable conclusions for the health of both individuals and society. For example, though every reputable scientific study demonstrates the safety of major childhood vaccines, opponents of childhood immunization are winning the publicity war; childhood immunizations are tumbling and preventable diseases are increasing, often leading to unnecessary deaths. Specter, a New Yorker science and public health writer, does an equally credible job of demolishing the health claims made by those promoting organic produce and all forms of alternative medicine. Specter is both provocative and thoughtful in his defense of science and rationality—though he certainly does not believe that scientists are infallible. His writing is engaging and his sources are credible, making this a significant addition to public discourse on the importance of discriminating between credible science and snake oil.

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The Future of Power

2011-08-30T11:55:00.000-05:00

In the 16th century, control of colonies and gold bullion gave Spain the edge; 17th-century Netherlands profited from trade and finance; 18th-century France gained from its larger population, while 19th-century British power rested on its primacy in the Industrial Revolution and its navy. In the era of Kennedy and Khrushchev, power resources were measured in terms of nuclear missiles, industrial capacity, and numbers of men under arms and tanks lined up ready to cross the plains of Eastern Europe. But the global information age of the 21st century is quickly rendering these traditional markers of power obsolete, remapping power relationships.

In The Future of Power, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., a longtime analyst of power and a hands-on practitioner in government, delivers a new power narrative that considers the shifts, innovations, bold technologies, and new relationships that will define the 21st century. He shows how power resources are adapting to the digital age and how smart power strategies must include more than a country's military strength. Information once reserved for the government is ow available for mass consumption. The Internet has literally put power at the fingertips of nonstate agents, allowing them to launch cyberattacks on governments from their homes and creating a security threat that is felt worldwide. But the cyberage has also created a new power frontier among states, ripe with opportunity for developing countries. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, America had about a quarter of the world's product but only 5 percent of its population. It was indisputably the most powerful nation in the world, unsurpassed in military strength and ownership of world resources. Today, China, Brazil, India, and others are increasing their share of world power resources, but remain unlikely to surpass America as the most powerful nation if the United States adopts new strategies designed for a global information ...

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Tropic of Capricorn-By Henry Miller,

2011-08-29T11:53:00.000-05:00

Tropic of Capricorn (Audiobook) By Henry Miller, read by Campbell Scott
Publisher: Ca.ed.mon; Unabridged edition 2009 | 12 hours and 25 mins | ISBN: 0061477907 | MP3 | 348 MB

'The world of Capricorn is peopled by eccentrics and nymphomaniacs, to say nothing of the incorrigibly eccentric Miller himself. There is also a memorable portrait of his father, a delicate account of childhood, and savage, humane comedy in the bedlam of an employment office. The rest: fornication and anarchism, sometimes very funny, always rich, exultant and honest.' Sunday Times 'In the course of Tropic of Capricorn, Miller as a Miss Lonelyhearts of the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company, hires and fires an inexhaustible queue of ex-convicts and whores who turn the office into a hive of degradation. Miller lives constantly at the flashpoint of violence, which he manages to convert to comedy without undermining the anger' Observer 'Tropic of Capricorn is a teeming frieze of fights, copulations and epiphanies. The emphasis is on the mysterious value of ordinary life, not its futility' New Statesman 'A superb entertainment' New York Times

Banned in America for almost thirty years because of its explicit sexual content, this companion volume to Miller's Tropic of Cancer chronicles his life in 1920s New York City. Famous for its frank portrayal of life in Brooklyn's ethnic neighborhoods and Miller's outrageous sexual exploits, Tropic of Capricorn is now considered a cornerstone of modern literature.

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The First Family- Birth of the American Mafia

2011-08-28T11:47:00.000-05:00

Before the notorious Five Families who dominated U.S. organized crime for a bloody half century, there was the one-fingered criminal genius Giuseppe Morello known as The Clutch Hand and his lethal coterie of associates. In The First Family, historian, journalist, and New York Times bestselling author Mike Dash brings to life this little-known story, following the rise of the Mafia in America from the 1890s to the 1920s, from the lawless villages of Sicily to the streets of Little Italy. Using an impressive array of primary sourcesќhitherto untapped Secret Service archives, prison records, trial transcripts, and interviews with surviving family membersќthis is the first Mafia history that applies scholarly rigor to the story of the Morello syndicate and the birth of organized crime on these shores.

Progressing from small-time scams to counterfeiting rings to even bigger criminal enterprises, Giuseppe Morello exerted ruthless control of Italian neighborhoods in New York, and through adroit coordination with other Sicilian crime families, his Clutch Hand soon reached far beyond the Hudson River.

The men who battled Morello's crews were themselves colorful and legendary figures, including William Flynn, a fearless Secret Service agent, and Lieutenant Detective Giuseppe Joe Petrosino of the New York Police Department's elite Italian Squad, whose pursuit of the brutal gangs ultimately cost him his life.

Combining first-rate scholarship and pulse-quickening action, and set amid rustic Sicilian landscapes and the streets of old New York, The First Family is a groundbreaking account of the crucial period when the American criminal underworld exploded with violent fury across the nation.

Mike Dash is a historian with an M.A. from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. from the University of London. A former professional journalist whose work has appeared in numerous national newspapers and magazines, Dash is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including Satanњs Circus, Thug, Bataviaњs Graveyard, and Tulipomania. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.

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How I Killed Pluto

2011-08-27T11:43:00.000-05:00

The solar system most of us grew up with included nine planets, with Mercury closest to the sun and Pluto at the outer edge. Then, in 2005, astronomer Mike Brown made the discovery of a lifetime: a 10th planet, Eris, slightly bigger than Pluto. But instead of its resulting in one more planet being added to our solar system, Brown's find ignited a firestorm of controversy that riled the usually sedate world of astronomy and launched him into the public eye. The debate culminated in the demotion of Pluto from real planet to the newly coined category of "dwarf" planet. Suddenly Brown was receiving hate mail from schoolchildren and being bombarded by TV reporters - all because of the discovery he had spent years searching for and a lifetime dreaming about.

Filled with both humor and drama, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming is Mike Brown's engaging first-person account of the most tumultuous year in modern astronomy - which he inadvertently caused. As it guides readers through important scientific concepts and inspires us to think more deeply about our place in the cosmos, it is also an entertaining and enlightening personal story: While Brown sought to expand our understanding of the vast nature of space, his own life was changed in the most immediate, human ways by love, birth, and death. A heartfelt and personal perspective on the demotion of everyone's favorite farflung planet, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming is the book for anyone, young or old, who has ever dreamed of exploring the universe - and who among us hasn't?

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All the Devils Are Here. The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis

2011-08-26T11:39:00.000-05:00

According to Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, two of America’s most acclaimed business journalists, no-one has put all the pieces of the financial crisis together. The finger was pointed at greedy traders, cowardly legislators and clueless home buyers, but many devils helped bring hell to the economy.

All The Devils Are Here goes back several decades to explore the motivations of everyone from CEOs and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers and Wall Street traders. It exposes the hidden role of companies including AIG and Goldman Sachs. It delves into the powerful mythology of homeownership. And it proves that the crisis ultimately wasn’t about finance at all; it was about human nature.

Bethany McLean’s The Smartest Guys in the Room was the best Enron book on a crowded shelf. All the Devils Are Here will be remembered for finally making sense of the meltdown.

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The Authoritarians

2011-08-25T11:35:00.000-05:00

The Authoritarians summarizes the research of Dr. Robert Altemeyer, whose professional career has focused on the study of the Authoritarian Personality, and development of the Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) personality and ideological variable widely studied in political, social, and personality psychology. The foreword is provided by John W. Dean, former Nixon White House Counsel and New York Times bestselling author.

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Into Thin Air- Mt. Everest Disaster

2011-08-24T11:32:00.000-05:00

Into Thin Air is the definitive, personal account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of Eiger Dreams and Into the Wild. On assignment for Outside magazine, Krakauer, an accomplished climber, went to the Himalayas to report on the growing commercialization of the planet's highest mountain. Everest has always been a dangerous mountain. From the first British expeditions in the 1920s until 1996, one climber has died for ever 4 who have attained the summit. This shocking death toll has not put a damper on the burgeoning business of guided ascents, however, in which amateur alpinists with alarmingly disparate skills are ushered up the mountain for a $65,000 fee. To ascend into the thin, frigid air above 26,000 feet - the cruising altitude of a commercial jetliner - is an inherently irrational act. The environment is unimaginably harsh, the margin for error miniscule. Krakauer examines what it is about Everest that has compelled so many people - including himself - to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concern of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense. Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer's frank eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement.

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The New Nobility-the Enduring Legacy of the KGB

2011-08-23T11:29:00.000-05:00

In The New Nobility, two courageous Russian investigative journalists open up the closed and murky world of the Russian Federal Security Service.

While Vladimir Putin has been president and prime minister of Russia, the Kremlin has deployed the security services to intimidate the political opposition, reassert the power of the state, and carry out assassinations overseas. At the same time, its agents and spies were put beyond public accountability and blessed with the prestige, benefits, and legitimacy lost since the Soviet collapse.

The security services have played a central and often mysterious role at key turning points in Russia during these tumultuous years: from the Moscow apartment house bombings and theater siege, to the war in Chechnya and the Beslan massacre. The security services are not all-powerful; they have made clumsy and sometimes catastrophic blunders. But what is clear is that after the chaotic 1990s, when they were sidelined, they have made a remarkable return to power, abetted by their most famous alumnus, Putin.

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Bill Bryson: Made in America

2011-08-22T11:14:00.000-05:00

In Made in America, Bryson de-mythologizes his native land, explaining how a dusty hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn't won, why Americans say 'lootenant' and 'Toosday', how Americans were eating junk food long before the word itself was cooked up, as well as exposing the true origins of the G-string, the original $64,000 question, and Dr Kellogg of cornflakes fame.

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The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression

2011-08-21T11:11:00.000-05:00

This breezy narrative comes from the pen of a veteran journalist and economics reporter. Rather than telling a new story, she tells an old one (scarcely lacking for historians) in a fresh way. Shlaes brings to the tale an emphasis on economic realities and consequences, especially when seen from the perspective of monetarist theory, and a focus on particular individuals and events, both celebrated and forgotten (at least relatively so). Thus the spotlight plays not only on Andrew Mellon, Wendell Wilkie and Rexford Tugwell but also on Father Divine and the Schechter brothers—kosher butcher wholesalers prosecuted by the federal National Recovery Administration for selling "sick chickens." As befits a former writer for the Wall Street Journal, Shlaes is sensitive to the dangers of government intervention in the economy—but also to the danger of the government's not intervening. In her telling, policymakers of the 1920s weren't so incompetent as they're often made out to be—everyone in the 1930s was floundering and all made errors—and WWII, not the New Deal, ended the Depression. This is plausible history, if not authoritative, novel or deeply analytical. It's also a thoughtful, even-tempered corrective to too often unbalanced celebrations of FDR and his administration's pathbreaking policies.

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The Canal Builders

2011-08-20T11:08:00.000-05:00

Like preceding chronicles of the construction of the Panama Canal (Matthew Parker’s Panama Fever, 2008), Greene’s account focuses on its feats of engineering, but in this case, social engineering. Previously an author of a history about the American Federation of Labor, Greene includes the workers’ experience within the context of the creation of a community from scratch, and that, within the wider contexts of empire building and Progressivism. Many Progressives, Greene relates, visited the canal project; the encouragement some of them took from an American example of governmental socioeconomic intervention contrasts with the actual on-the-ground character of the canal zone until the completion of the canal in 1914. Greene portrays a complex web of regulations that authority applied to those drawn to the zone. Through many personal accounts, Greene covers conflicts that inevitably arose, centrally over labor rules and a pay structure that discriminated against black workers, among others means of enforcing segregation. Interests in social history and attitudes of the Progressive Era will be drawn to Greene’s perspective on the building of the Panama Canal.

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J.G. Ballard - Empire of the Sun

2011-08-19T11:03:00.000-05:00

J.G. Ballard - Empire of the Sun [Audiobook]
Publisher: Audioworks | ISBN: 0671652389 | 1987 | MP3@56 kbps | ~12:10:00 | 295 Mb

The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film, tells of a young boy's struggle to survive World War II in China.

Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him.

Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world.

Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.

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Stephen King – Cycle of the Werewolf

2011-08-18T10:57:00.000-05:00

When the full moon shines, a paralysing fear descends on the isolated Maine town of Tarker Mills. No one knows who will be attacked next, but snarls that sound like human words can be heard and all around are the footprints of a monster whose hunger cannot be sated.

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The Battle for Spain- Antony Beevor

2011-08-17T10:51:00.000-05:00

To mark the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War's outbreak, Antony Beevor has written a completely updated and revised account of one of the most bitter and hard-fought wars of the twentieth century. With new material gleaned from the Russian archives and numerous other sources, this brisk and accessible book (Spain's #1 bestseller for twelve weeks), provides a balanced and penetrating perspective, explaining the tensions that led to this terrible overture to World War II and affording new insights into the war-its causes, course, and consequences.

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The Omnivore's Dilemma

2011-08-16T10:46:00.000-05:00

Michael Pollan (Author), Scott Brick (Narrator) "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals"Michael Pollan (Author), Scott Brick (Narrator) "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals"

Penguin Audio | 2006-04-11 | ISBN: 014305841X | MP3/64Kbps | 15:54:40 | 437 Mb

Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. Will it be fast food tonight, or something organic? Or perhaps something we grew ourselves? The question of what to have for dinner has confronted us since man discovered fire. But as Michael Pollan explains in this revolutionary book, how we answer it now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century may determine our survival as a species.

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Penguin Audio | 2006-04-11 | ISBN: 014305841X | MP3/64Kbps | 15:54:40 | 437 Mb

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The Things They Carried

2011-08-15T10:43:00.000-05:00

Tom Stechschulte (Author), Tom Stechschulte (Narrator) "The Things They Carried"
Recorded Books | 2003-11 | ISBN: 1402574495 | MP3/56Kbps | 07:04:00 | 170 Mb

A finalist for both the 1990 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, The Things They Carried marks a subtle but definitive line of demarcation between Tim O'Brien's earlier works about Vietnam, the memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone and the fictional Going After Cacciato, and this sly, almost hallucinatory book that is neither memoir nor novel nor collection of short stories but rather an artful combination of all three. Vietnam is still O'Brien's theme, but in this book he seems less interested in the war itself than in the myriad different perspectives from which he depicts it. Whereas Going After Cacciato played with reality, The Things They Carried plays with truth. The narrator of most of these stories is "Tim"; yet O'Brien freely admits that many of the events he chronicles in this collection never really happened. He never killed a man as "Tim" does in "The Man I Killed," and unlike Tim in "Ambush," he has no daughter named Kathleen. But just because a thing never happened doesn't make it any less true. In "On the Rainy River," the character Tim O'Brien responds to his draft notice by driving north, to the Canadian border where he spends six days in a deserted lodge in the company of an old man named Elroy while he wrestles with the choice between dodging the draft or going to war. The real Tim O'Brien never drove north, never found himself in a fishing boat 20 yards off the Canadian shore with a decision to make. The real Tim O'Brien quietly boarded the bus to Sioux Falls and was inducted into the United States Army. But the truth of "On the Rainy River" lies not in facts but in the genuineness of the experience it depicts: both Tims went to a war they didn't believe in; both considered themselves cowards for doing so. Every story in The Things They Carried speaks another truth that Tim O'Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact and fiction, that makes his book unforgettable.

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My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles

2011-08-14T10:41:00.000-05:00

Geoff Emerick, Howard Massey (Author), Martin Jarvis (Narrator) "Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles"
Penguin Audio; Abridged edition | 2006-03-16 | ISBN: 0143058592 | MP3/192Kbps | 622 Mb

An engineer who worked with the Beatles during the productions of "Revolver," "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," and other albums describes his innovative recording techniques, and shares his insights into the band's creative processes.

Geoff Emerick was only fifteen years old when he began working with the Beatles as assistant engineer for their early classics “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You.” Incredibly, at the age of nineteen, he was promoted to full engineer, taking the helm for the group’s groundbreaking album Revolver. Ten months later, he joined forces with the Beatles for the recording of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, hailed by Rolling Stone as the greatest album ever made. In their constant quest for experimentation and new sounds—and despite the technical limitations of the pre-digital age—Emerick developed a slew of innovative recording techniques, many of which are still in use today.
In Here, There and Everywhere, Emerick tells his story for the first time, taking the reader through the hallowed (though somewhat dingy) corridors of Abbey Road Studios to give rare insights into the Beatles’ unique creative processes and personalities and provide a behind-the- scenes look at how the greatest band of all time made their greatest records. As Emerick describes the Beatles’ transformation from wide-eyed Liverpool teenagers into tour-savvy professionals, he provides a startling picture of the Fab Four. Fascinating and moving, Here, There and Everywhere illuminates the creative tensions within the band that fueled their early success, but would ultimately lead them to record in separate studios while the partnership was disintegrating.

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American Fantastic Tales

2011-08-13T10:32:00.000-05:00

The Library of America presents American Fantastic Tales, an unrivaled two-volume boxed collection of the American Gothic tradition, from Edgar Allan Poe to today's masters of terror and the uncanny -86 stories in all.

I. Terror and the Uncanny: From Poe to the Pulps.
II. Terror and the Uncanny: From the 1940s to Now.

Featuring:
Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Robert W. Chambers, Kate Chopin, Lafcadio Hearn, F. Marion Crawford, Ambrose Bierce, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, John Collier, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, Jack Finney, Shirley Jackson, Paul Bowles, Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, Vladimir Nabokov, Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson, Isaac Bashevis Singer, John Crowley, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Michael Chabon, Steven Millhauser, Brian Evenson, Kelly Link, and dozens more.

"An encompassing and essential voyage to the dark side of the moon of American literature and a stupendous, spellbinding reading experience waiting to be had." - Jonathan Lethem

About the Author
Peter Straub, editor, is the author of 18 novels, which have been translated into more than 20 languages. He has won the British Fantasy Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, and two World Fantasy Awards. He edited H. P. Lovecraft: Tales, volume #155 of The Library of America series.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

2011-08-12T10:29:00.000-05:00

The breadth and scope of this gripping narrative is almost as impressive as the story itself. Rhodes ( Looking for America describes the theoretical origins of the bomb, the lab experiments, the building of the prototype, the test at Alamagordo, the training of the B-29 crews assigned to deliver the first two combat bombs and the missions themselves. There's much more. Rhodes, gifted with sharp psychological insight and a novelist's ability to convey character, reveals the personalities and emotional dynamics among Niels Bohr, Leo Szilard, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Ernest Lawrence, Robert Oppenheimer, General Leslie Groves, Colonel Paul Tibbets and others responsible for conceiving, engineering, testing and ultimately dropping the apocalyptic devices on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In addition he describes the struggle in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to make the first bomb, as well as the political and military events that led inexorably to the destruction of the Japanese cities. This is the most comprehensive and authoritative book on the subject to date.

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JFK and the Unspeakable

2011-08-11T10:25:00.000-05:00

At the height of the Cold War, JFK risked committing the greatest crime in human history: starting a nuclear war. Horrified by the specter of nuclear annihilation, Kennedy gradually turned away from his long-held Cold Warrior beliefs and toward a policy of lasting peace. But to the military and intelligence agencies in the United States, who were committed to winning the Cold War at any cost, Kennedy's change of heart was a direct threat to their power and influence. Once these dark "Unspeakable" forces recognized that Kennedy's interests were in direct opposition to their own, they tagged him as a dangerous traitor, plotted his assassination, and orchestrated the subsequent cover-up.

Douglass takes listeners into the Oval Office during the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, along on the strange journey of Lee Harvey Oswald and his shadowy handlers, and to the winding road in Dallas where an ambush awaited the president's motorcade. As Douglass convincingly documents, at every step along the way, these forces of the Unspeakable were present, moving people like pawns on a chessboard to promote a dangerous and deadly agenda.

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The Story of Sushi

2011-08-10T10:23:00.000-05:00

Everything you never knew about sushi: its surprising origins, the colorful lives of its chefs, and the bizarre behavior of the creatures that compose it. Trevor Corson takes us behind the scenes at America's first sushi-chef training academy, as eager novices strive to master the elusive art of cooking without cooking. He delves into the biology and natural history of the edible creatures of the sea, and tells the fascinating story of an Indo-Chinese meal reinvented in 19th-century Tokyo as a cheap fast food. He reveals the pioneers who brought sushi to the United States and explores how this unlikely meal is exploding into the American heartland just as the long-term future of sushi may be unraveling.

The Story of Sushi is at once a compelling tale of human determination and a delectable smorgasbord of surprising food science, intrepid reporting, and provocative cultural history.

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Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon

2011-08-09T10:19:00.000-05:00

Buzz Aldrin & Ken Abraham (Author), Patrick Egan (Narrator) "Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon"
Random House Audio | 2009-06-23 | ISBN: 0307577465 | MP3/64Kbps | 14:01:00 | 385 Mb

The flight of Apollo 11 made Aldrin one of the most famous persons on our planet, yet few people know the rest of this true American hero’s story. In Magnificent Desolation, Aldrin not only gives us a harrowing first-person account of the lunar landing that came within seconds of failure and the ultimate insider’s view of life as one of the superstars of America’s space program, he also opens up with remarkable candor about his more personal trials–and eventual triumphs–back on Earth. From the glory of being part of the mission that fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge to reach the moon before the decade was out, Aldrin returned home to an Air Force career stripped of purpose or direction, other than as a public relations tool that NASA put to relentless use in a seemingly nonstop world tour. The twin demons of depression and alcoholism emerged–the first of which Aldrin confronted early and publicly, and the second of which he met with denial until it nearly killed him. He burned through two marriages, his Air Force career came to an inglorious end, and he found himself selling cars for a living when he wasn’t drunkenly wrecking them. Redemption came when he finally embraced sobriety, gained the love of a woman, Lois, who would become the great joy of his life, and dedicated himself to being a tireless advocate for the future of space exploration–not only as a scientific endeavor but also as a thriving commercial enterprise.

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Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legasy

2011-08-08T10:17:00.000-05:00

Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legasy (Audiobook) By Jane Leavy, read by Charley Steiner
Publisher: Rec..ordedBoo..ks 2005 | 9 hours and 53 mins | ISBN: 1402586787 | MP3 | 287 MB

No immortal in the history of baseball retired so young, so well, or so completely as Sandy Koufax. After compiling a remarkable record from 1962 to 1966 that saw him lead the National League in ERA all five years, win three Cy Young awards, and pitch four no-hitters including a perfect game, Koufax essentially disappeared. Save for his induction into the Hall of Fame and occasional appearances at the Dodgers training camp, Koufax has remained unavailable, unassailable, and unsullied, in the process becoming much more than just the best pitcher of his generation.

He is the Jewish boy from Brooklyn, who refused to pitch the opening game of the 1965 World Series on Yom Kippur, defining himself as a man who placed faith over fame. This act made him the standard to which Jewish parents still hold their children. Except for his autobiography (published in 1966), Koufax has resolutely avoided talking about himself. But through sheer doggedness that even Koufax came to marvel at, Jane Leavy was able to gain his trust to the point where they talked regularly over the three years Leavy reported her book. With Koufax's blessing, Leavy interviewed nearly every one of his former teammates, opponents, and friends, and emerged with a portrait of the artist that is as thorough and stylish as was his command on the pitching mound.

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The Baseball Codes

2011-08-07T10:11:00.000-05:00

The Baseball Codes: Beanballs, Sign Stealing, and Bench-Clearing Brawls: The Unwritten Rules of America's Pastime (Audiobook) By Jason Turbow, Michael Duca, read by Michael Kramer
Publisher: Bla..ckst..one Audio; Unabridged edition 2010 | 10 hours and 6 mins | ISBN: 1441763015 | MP3 | 292 MB

Nearly as long as baseball has existed in its current form, so too have unofficial rules that professional players have strictly adhered to. Yet as Turnbow demonstrates in this highly entertaining read, every rule of the code has certain variations. Most casual baseball fans are keenly aware of many topics that Turnbow broaches, and some are universally agreed upon—hitters admiring home runs is severely frowned on, as is arguing with one's manager in public view and being caught stealing signs. But other rules are less cut-and-dried. On the subject of retaliating for a teammate being hit by a pitch: some believe the pitcher should be plunked in his next at-bat, while others say it should be a player with corresponding talent to the hit batter. Turnbow has an example for nearly every conceivable situation, and with quotes from dozens of former major league players, managers, and broadcasters, the reader can better understand the actions that can set off even the most even-tempered ball player. It's a comprehensive, sometimes hilarious guide to perhaps a misunderstood aspect of our national pastime, and will come in handy should one ever be involved in a beanball war.

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Third Annual Best Horror Stories of the Year

2011-08-06T10:08:00.000-05:00

Third Annual Best Horror Stories of the Year - Orson Scott Card (Audiobook)
Publisher: D,.er.cum A..udi.o (April 1993) | Language: English | ISBN-10: 1556561636 | 5 hrs 59 min. | 339.26 MB
Narrators: Nelson Runger, Bill Fantini, Ann Wilcox, Nina Kiriki Hoffman | MP3 @ 128kbps / 44.1 kHz | 3% Recovery

A collection of horrifying stories by Stephen Gallagher, Graham Masterson, Gene Wolf, Joyce Carol Oates, Nancy Collins, and others.

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The Hot Zone-Ebola

2011-08-05T10:05:00.000-05:00

Richard Preston is not a horror novelist, but this will be one of the scariest stories you've ever read. The cause of all this terror is from little beasts that are only microns in size, filoviruses. "Hot Zone" discusses four of these viruses, Marburg, Ebola Sudan, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Reston. I first came across Preston in his New Yorker article, "Crisis in the Hot Zone" which is basically the cliff notes to this book. It piqued my interest and eventually led to me reading this book.

Everyone knows that they should be afraid of Ebola. The Zaire strand only kills 90% of those it infects, in just a matter of day, in the worst way imaginable. Filoviruses are hemorrhagic viruses, causing those unfortunate enough to be infected to crash and bleed out. Preston goes into grisly detail about how these viruses work, and the symptoms that occur in humans. He traces the history of these viruses from their discovery. These are just set up for his main topic, the discovery of Ebola in Washington D.C. A monkey house in Reston Virginia is full of dying monkeys that apparently are infected with Ebola. Preston tracks down the mystery behind this domestic infection.

This book does bring up an all-important point; we are only an airplane ride away from the outbreak of a pandemic. It is very possible that a highly contagious disease may break out and cover the earth in a matter of days leaving a large portion of the population dead, making the premise behind Stephen King's novel "The Stand" not so far fetched after all. These filoviruses are very interesting, and Preston reveals them in such a way that you want to know more about them. The only hint I have to offer is, to avoid Intern's Disease, don't read this when you have a cold. - Russell Diederich

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John Steinbeck: Travels with Charley

2011-08-04T10:02:00.000-05:00

With his dog Charley, John Steinbeck set out in his truck to explore and experience America in the 1960s. As he talked with all kinds of people, he sadly noted the passing of region speech, fell in love with Montana, and was appalled by racism in New Orleans.

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Methland

2011-08-03T09:59:00.000-05:00

The dramatic story of the methamphetamine epidemic as it sweeps the American heartland a timely, moving, very human account of one community s attempt to battle its way to a brighter future.

Crystal methamphetamine is widely considered to be the most dangerous drug in the world, and nowhere is that more true than in the small towns of the American heartland. Methland tells the story of Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), which, like thousands of other small towns across the country, has been left in the dust by the consolidation of the agricultural industry, a depressed local economy, and an out-migration of people. As if this weren't enough to deal with, an incredibly cheap, long lasting, and highly addictive drug has rolled into town.

Over a period of four years, journalist Nick Reding brings us into the heart of Oelwein through a cast of intimately drawn characters, including: Clay Hallburg, the town doctor, who fights meth even as he struggles with his own alcoholism; Nathan Lein, the town prosecutor, whose caseload is filled almost exclusively with meth-related crime; and Jeff Rohrick, a meth addict, still trying to kick the habit after 20 years. Tracing the connections between the lives touched by the drug and the global forces that set the stage for the epidemic, Methland offers a vital and unique perspective on a pressing contemporary tragedy.

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Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories

2011-08-02T09:57:00.000-05:00

Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories (Audiobook) By Tobias Wolff, read by Anthony Heald
Publisher: Black..stone Audiob..ooks; Unabridged edition 2008 | 13 hours and 9 mins | ISBN: 1433203987 | MP3 | 352 MB

Wolff's first story collection, In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (1981), was a major salvo in the short story renaissance that included Raymond Carver. The 10 spare, elegant new stories here, collected with 21 stories from Wolff's three previous collections, are as good as anything Wolff has done. In most, there is a moment of realization, less a startling epiphany than a distant, gradual ache of understanding, that changes how the character looks at the world. The retired, 41-year-old female Marine of A Mature Student, compares her female professor's experiences in Communist-era Prague and her own son's service in Iraq. Deep Kiss movingly chronicles the fractious results when a teenaged boy, infatuated with a promiscuous classmate, neglects to bond with his dying father. A hilarious description of a brash, ignorant thug in Her Dog shows Wolff's gift for demotic speech. In an author's note, Wolff says that since he has never considered any of his stories sacred texts, he has edited some clumsy or superfluous passages in earlier works. In all the stories, Wolff expertly uses irony and empathy to explore facets of contemporary life.

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The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif

2011-08-01T09:55:00.000-05:00

The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif (Audiobook) By Najaf Mazari, Robert Hillman, read by Humphrey Bower
Publisher: Louis Braille Audio 2008 | 7 hours and 46 mins | ISBN: 1742121772 | MP3 | 112 MB

The Rugmaker of Mazar-e-Sharif traces an Afghani refugee's extraordinary journey – from his early life as a shepherd boy in the mountains of Northern Afghanistan, to his forced exile after being captured and tortured by the Taliban, to incarceration in an Australian detention centre ... and finally, to freedom.

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Ordinary People, By Condoleezza Rice

2011-07-31T09:51:00.000-05:00

Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family (Audiobook) By Condoleezza Rice
Publisher: Ran..dom Ho..use Audio; Unabridged edition 2010 | 8 hours and 49 mins | ISBN: 0307750639 | MP3 | 245 MB

Having served under two Bush presidencies—as national security advisor and secretary of state—Rice is well known for her icy demeanor and steely disposition. This memoir presents a young woman deeply attached to her devoted parents, who encouraged her at every step of her life to overcome racism, sexism, and her own personal doubts. Her roots are deep in the South, with a family that pridefully skirted racism—never using the “colored” facilities or riding in the back of the bus. Her mother, Angelena, was a cultured teacher who taught her piano, while her father, John, was a Presbyterian minister and later a college administrator who, despite his Republican politics, strongly admired black radicals, developing a friendship with Stokely Carmichael. He declined to march with Martin Luther King in nonviolent protests and was more inclined to sit on the front porch with a loaded shotgun to ward off white night riders. The Rice family personally knew the young girls who were killed in the church bombing, one of the more violent episodes the family endured before they eventually left the South. Rice presents a frank, poignant, and loving portrait of a family that maintained its closeness through cancer, death, career ups and downs, and turbulent changes in American society.

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In Deep Water: The Anatomy of a Disaster

2011-07-30T09:48:00.000-05:00

Peter Lehner, Bob Deans, "In Deep Water: The Anatomy of a Disaster, the Fate of the Gulf, and Ending Our Oil Addiction" [Audiobook]
Publisher: Blackstone Audio | ISBN: 1441773661 | 2010 | MP3@64 kbps | ~04:25:00 | 121 Mb

NRDC director Lehner and author Deans (The River Where America Began) open their informative anatomy with three questions: What happened? How did we arrive at this point? And where must we go from here? Their answers form a concise narrative about the politics of oil and the environmental implications, and the human impact from current production and accidents. Equally comfortable describing the geological history of the Gulf and the fishing life known to generations, the authors trace the story of a disaster that resulted in an oil spill of 200 million gallons. Readers will be disturbed to learn that BP's engineers and executives had been warned of faults in the process, offering them numerous chances to avoid the 11 deaths and resulting spill. Lehner and Deans discuss the ultimate disaster's source - the unquenchable American thirst for oil - and suggest well-known means of reducing dependency, such as hybrid vehicles, electric trains and increased use of rail transport, and alternative fuels. While the authors do interpret government policy, readers will find the book based in facts and research.

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Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

2011-07-29T09:43:00.000-05:00

If the conscious mind - the part you consider to be you - is just the tip of the iceberg, what is the rest doing?

In this sparkling and provocative new book, the renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman navigates the depths of the subconscious brain to illuminate surprising mysteries: Why can your foot move halfway to the brake pedal before you become consciously aware of danger ahead? Why do you hear your name being mentioned in a conversation that you didn't think you were listening to? What do Ulysses and the credit crunch have in common? Why did Thomas Edison electrocute an elephant in 1916? Why are people whose names begin with J more likely to marry other people whose names begin with J? Why is it so difficult to keep a secret? And how is it possible to get angry at yourself - who, exactly, is mad at whom?

Taking in brain damage, plane spotting, dating, drugs, beauty, infidelity, synesthesia, criminal law, artificial intelligence, and visual illusions, Incognito is a thrilling subsurface exploration of the mind and all its contradictions.

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The Life and Legend of Mithradates

2011-07-28T09:41:00.000-05:00

Machiavelli praised his military genius. European royalty sought out his secret elixir against poison. His life inspired Mozart's first opera, while for centuries poets and playwrights recited bloody, romantic tales of his victories, defeats, intrigues, concubines, and mysterious death. But until now no modern historian has recounted the full story of Mithradates, the ruthless king and visionary rebel who challenged the power of Rome in the first century BC. In this richly illustrated book--the first biography of Mithradates in fifty years--Adrienne Mayor combines a storyteller's gifts with the most recent archaeological and scientific discoveries to tell the tale of Mithradates as it has never been told before.

The Poison King describes a life brimming with spectacle and excitement. Claiming Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia as ancestors, Mithradates inherited a wealthy Black Sea kingdom at age fourteen after his mother poisoned his father. He fled into exile and returned in triumph to become a ruler of superb intelligence and fierce ambition. Hailed as a savior by his followers and feared as a second Hannibal by his enemies, he envisioned a grand Eastern empire to rival Rome. After massacring eighty thousand Roman citizens in 88 BC, he seized Greece and modern-day Turkey. Fighting some of the most spectacular battles in ancient history, he dragged Rome into a long round of wars and threatened to invade Italy itself. His uncanny ability to elude capture and surge back after devastating losses unnerved the Romans, while his mastery of poisons allowed him to foil assassination attempts and eliminate rivals.

The Poison King is a gripping account of one of Rome's most relentless but least understood foes.

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Robert Wright: The Evolution of God

2011-07-27T09:36:00.000-05:00

In his illuminating book, The Moral Animal, Wright introduced evolutionary psychology and examined the ways that the morality of individuals might be hard-wired by nature rather than influenced by culture. With this book, he expands upon that work, turning now to explore how religion came to define larger and larger groups of people as part of the circle of moral consideration. Using a naïve and antiquated approach to the sociology and anthropology of religion, Wright expends far too great an effort covering well-trod territory concerning the development of religions from primitive hunter-gatherer stages to monotheism. He finds in this evolution of religion, however, that the great monotheistic (he calls them Abrahamic, a term not favored by many religion scholars) religions—Christianity, Islam, Judaism—all contain a code for the salvation of the world. Using game theory, he encourages individuals in these three faiths to embrace a non–zero-sum relationship to other religions, seeing their fortunes as positively correlated and interdependent and then acting with tolerance toward other religions. Regrettably, Wright's lively writing unveils little that is genuinely new or insightful about religion.

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John Irving - Until I Find You

2011-07-26T09:33:00.000-05:00

John Irving - Until I Find You [Audiobook]
Publisher: Random House Audio | ASIN: B000CQK052 | 2005 | MP3@64 kbps | ~35:11:00 | 964 Mb

Until I Find You is the story of the actor Jack Burns, his life, loves, celebrity, and astonishing search for the truth about his parents.
When he is four years old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate womanizer, is always a step ahead, has always just departed in a wave of scandal, with a new tattoo somewhere on his body from a local master or "scratcher".
Alice and Jack abandon their quest, and Jack is educated at schools in Canada and New England, including, tellingly, a girls' school in Toronto. His real education consists of his relationships with older women, from Emma Oastler, who initiates him into erotic life, to the girls of St. Hilda's, with whom he first appears on stage, to the abusive Mrs. Machado, whom he first meets when sent to learn wrestling at a local gym.
A melancholy tale of deception, Until I Find You is also a swaggering comic novel, a giant tapestry of life's hopes. It is a masterpiece to compare with John Irving's great novels, and restates the author's claim to be considered the most glorious, comic, moving novelist at work today.

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Arturo Perez-Reverte - La Reina del Sur

2011-07-25T09:29:00.000-05:00

Con "La Reina del Sur" (Alfaguara), su última novela, Pérez-Reverte recuperó sus técnicas periodísticas para obtener información y escribió una historia de narcotraficantes ambientada en México y en el estrecho de Gibraltar. Teresa Mendoza, una figura legendaria de los "narcocorridos" mexicanos, es la protagonista de una novela que, además, pretende profundizar en el interior de la mujer. “La novela es una manera de comprender el mundo y ésta en concreto me ha ayudado a entender la soledad, el silencio de la mujer contemporánea”, declaró Pérez-Reverte.
En "La Reina del Sur", Teresa es el soldado perdido en territorio hostil que aparece en todas sus novelas. Una mujer que pelea en un mundo de hombres, como es el narcotráfico, y consigue sobrevivir. Teresa pasa de ser la novia analfabeta de una narco mexicano a ser una reina del tráfico de drogas, llena de glamour, que se codea con el jet-set. Según el escritor español, "La Reina del Sur" es una novela totalmente amoral. “No pretendo justificar, explicar ni condenar el narcotráfico porque sólo lo utilizo como escenario”, sentenció. Sobre los orígenes que le impulsaron a escribir esta nueva aventura, Pérez-Reverte destacó, como siempre, la sencillez. “Esta vez todo empezó con una canción”...

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The Wings of the Dove - Henry James

2011-07-24T09:27:00.000-05:00

Beautiful Kate Croy may have been left penniless by her relatives, but her bold, ambitious nature ensures she will not succumb meekly to a life of poverty. If the financial circumstances of Merton Densher, the man she is passionately in love with, are not sufficient to secure her future, perhaps her cunning will.

So when Milly Theale arrives in Europe from America, laden with wealth but also gravely ill, Kate sees an opportunity to exploit Milly's vulnerability and devises a plan that will see herself and Merton financially provided for. Her scheming is flawed, though, for it fails to take into account the inconstancies of the human heart.

First published in 1902, this rich and intriguing novel has lost none of its fascination and relevance.

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The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff

2011-07-23T09:23:00.000-05:00

Who is Bernie Madoff, and how did he pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history? These questions have fascinated people ever since the news broke about the respected New York financier who swindled his friends, relatives, and other investors out of $65 billion through a fraud that lasted for decades. Many have speculated about what might have happened or what must have happened, but no reporter has been able to get the full story - until now.

In The Wizard of Lies, Diana B. Henriques of the New York Times - who has led the paper's coverage of the Madoff scandal since the day the story broke - has written the definitive book on the man and his scheme, drawing on unprecedented access and more than 100 interviews with people at all levels and on all sides of the crime, including Madoff's first interviews for publication since his arrest. Henriques also provides vivid details from the various lawsuits, government investigations, and court filings that will explode the myths that have come to surround the story.

A true-life financial thriller, The Wizard of Lies contrasts Madoff's remarkable rise on Wall Street, where he became one of the country's most trusted and respected traders, with dramatic scenes from his accelerating slide toward self-destruction. It is also the most complete account of the heartbreaking personal disasters and landmark legal battles triggered by Madoff's downfall - the suicides, business failures, fractured families, shuttered charities - and the clear lessons this timeless scandal offers to Washington, Wall Street, and Main Street.

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The Logic of Life

2011-07-22T09:20:00.000-05:00

The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World by Tim Harford & Narrated by John Lee
Publisher: Random House Audio; UNABRIDGED 2008 | ISBN: 0739365568 | Language English | Audio CD in MP3 / 64 kbps | 258 MB

Give yourself a pat on the back. You're not as stupid as everyone says you are, and now there's a book that proves it.

When I first conceived of The Logic of Life, my aim was to show that a world full of smart people--people like you, that is--doesn’t necessarily look logical on the surface. We eat too much and worry about being fat; drink too much and cringe when we remember; spend too much at Christmas and worry about the bills in New Year. And that’s just the small stuff: what about crime, racial segregation, divorce, big-money politics?

And yet underneath it all there is a hidden logic. It isn’t always pretty, but it’s there if you know how to see it. That is what The Logic of Life is all about.

But when I'd finished the first draft, my editor told me that he didn't think that people were as logical as I'd said. He wanted me to prove my point.

At first, I thought it was my editor thinks people are illogical because he works in the publishing business. Of course life looks illogical if you do that. (In fact, life looks crazy in most offices: see "Why Your Boss is Overpaid," chapter four.) But then I realised he was right. I'd left the most important step out.

So I went back and made sure that I laid out all the amazing evidence. I looked at single women hitting the dating scene in American cities; I looked at juvenile delinquents across the US; I looked at Mexican prostitutes; I looked at traders at a convention in Disney World; I looked at professional poker players in Las Vegas and professional soccer players in Europe. I looked at violent spouses, alcoholics, and school bullies.

In every case I discovered a story of hidden incentives and unexpected logic. And through the process of writing--and living--the book, I discovered that this crazy world of ours makes more sense than you might think.

From Publishers Weekly
Financial Times and Slate.com columnist Harford (The Undercover Economist) provides an entertaining and provocative look at the logic behind the seemingly irrational. Arguing that rational behavior is more widespread than most people expect, Harford uses economic principles to draw forth the rational elements of gambling, the teenage oral sex craze, crime and other supposedly illogical behaviors to illustrate his larger point. Utilizing John von Neumann and Thomas Schelling's conceptions of game theory, Harford applies their approach to a multitude of arenas, including marriage, the workplace and racism. Contrarily, he also shows that individual rational behavior doesn't always lead to socially desired outcomes. Harford concludes with how to apply this thinking on an even bigger scale, showing how rational behavior shapes cities, politics and the entire history of human civilization. Well-written with highly engaging stories and examples, this book will be of great interest to Freakonomics and Blink fans as well as anyone interested in the psychology of human behavior. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Keep the Change

2011-07-21T09:15:00.000-05:00

Keep the Change: A Clueless Tipper's Quest to Become the Guru of the Gratuity by Steve Dublanica & Dan John Miller (Reader)
Publisher: Brilliance Audio on CD Unabridged (November 2, 2010) | ISBN: 1423396030 | Language English | Audio CD in MP3 / 96kbps | 442 MB

The concept of gratuity is the subject of this second book from the unmasked author of Waiter Rant and, like his first, has its own lad-lit charms and contrivances. Opening with a broad and light cultural history of tipping, the book then delves briefly into the tip's primary restaurant industry role before moving on to its impact in lesser known and often neglected businesses by examining their gratuity-related transactions. There's enough raw, self-deprecating autobiography to keep the anthropological enterprise comic; in addition, the author steps in the shoes of those in various industries and discloses the hidden codes of parking valets, Starbucks "tip jars," and the beauty industry. Dublanica breaks down a dizzying variety of service-related exchanges along with the inner worlds of casino dealers and sex-trade workers (in fact, there's an awful lot about Vegas) and even provides a couple of tip-helpful appendixes. (Nov.) (c)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
For four years Dublanica authored the blog Waiter Rant, chronicling the frustrations of an anonymous waiter working in an upscale New York restaurant. In 2008 he went public with his best-selling book, Waiter Rant, unmasking annoying foodies, bad tippers, and the bad behavior of restaurant staff. Gratuities were one of the hottest, most-talked-about subjects of that book, so Dublanica ran with it. A short history of the custom reveals that tipping was a particularly European practice that we took to new heights in the U.S. Dublanica shines light on those awkward tipping situations that we all face at one time or another: tip the parking valet when he takes your car, delivers it, or both? How much and in what fashion do you tip your hotel maid? And what about “tip creep,” those ubiquitous tip jars that are springing up in every coffee shop and fast-food restaurant these days? Dublanica offers tips on how to tip hairstylists, car-wash attendants, auto mechanics, deliverymen, and more, including the joint where tipping rules: the strip club. Valuable information is interspersed with amusing anecdotes and interviews. --David Siegfried --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Just For Fun, By Linus Torvalds

2011-07-20T09:12:00.000-05:00

Just For Fun: The Story of An Accidental Revolutionary (Audiobook) By Linus Torvalds, David Diamond
Publisher: Har..perAu..dio; Abridged edition 2001 | 5 hours and 45 mins | ISBN: 0694525391 | MP3 | 164 MB

Most 31-year olds can't boast of being the instigator of a revolution. But then again, the world's leading promoter of open source software and creator of the operating system Linux does humbly call himself an accidental revolutionary--accidental being the operative word here. Just for Fun is the quirky story of how Linus Torvalds went from being a penniless, introverted code writer in Helsinki in the early 1990s to being the unwitting (and rather less than penniless) leader of a radical shift in computer programming by the end of the decade.
OK, perhaps "story" in the traditional sense of the term is stretching it a bit. This whole book is more like a series of e-mails, an exercise in textual communication for someone more used to code language than conversation: choppy sentences packed into short paragraphs, and sometimes just one-liners. The pace is fast, but the quippy tone can get somewhat tiring, though it definitely suits the portrayal of a computer-dominated life. And like an e-mail conversation, the tense often changes, the topics jump back and forth, and the narrators occasionally change, mostly alternating between the Linux man himself and Red Herring executive editor David Diamond, who convinced the difficult-to-pin-down Torvalds to write his story (or at least allow Diamond to poke, prod, and pull it out of him, all the while giving his own impressions and interpretations). But Torvald's tale contains enough informative and entertaining tidbits--on growing up in dark, strangely silent but communication-gadget-obsessed Finland (which boasts more cell phones per capita than anywhere else), on what makes passionate code writers tick, on making the transition from unknown computer geek to world-famous computer geek, on the convergence of technology and ideology, on his work for Transmeta and involvement (or lack thereof) with all the players worth mentioning in Silicon Valley - to keep more than just computer programmers engrossed in his story. For the latter, of course, Just for Fun will be required reading.
If you pick up this book as a geek's guide to the meaning of life (which, believe it or not, Torvalds does ramble on about at the beginning and the end), then you're in for a bit of a shallow take on the whole thing. But if you're interested in the idea of technological development as a global team sport, and how a nerdy Finnish transplant to California got the whole game going in the first place, check out Linus's story... just for fun, of course.

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iWoz, by Steve Wozniak

2011-07-19T09:09:00.000-05:00

iWoz: How I Invented the Personal Computer and Had Fun Along the Way (Audiobook) By Steve Wozniak, Gina Smith, read by Patrick Lawlor
Publisher: Ta..nt..or Media; Unabridged edition 2006 | 9 hours and 14 mins | ISBN: 1400133289 | M4A | 132 MB

The mastermind behind Apple sheds his low profile and steps forward to tell his story for the first time. From the invention of the first personal computer to the rise of Apple as an industry giant, iWoz presents a no-holds-barred, rollicking, firsthand account of the humanist inventor who ignited the computer revolution.

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Reagan: The Hollywood Years

2011-07-18T09:07:00.000-05:00

Reagan: The Hollywood Years (Audiobook) By Marc Eliot
Publisher: Tan..tor Me..dia; Unabridged edition 2008 | 14 hours and 27 mins | ISBN: 1400157781 | MP3 | 201 MB

For 30 years, Ronald Reagan was dedicated to a film and television career. Yet Eliot (who has written bios of Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, among others) claims previous studies of the former president gloss over this influential era. To be able to fully comprehend Reagan the man, one must also understand Reagan the actor. With that charge, Eliot chronicles Reagan's film career, from his numerous B pictures, such as Girls on Probation, to the image-enhancing Knute Rockne All American, which contained Reagan's future political rallying cry: Win one for the Gipper. Interspersed with tales of Hollywood casting maneuvers, Eliot takes a no-holds-barred approach to Reagan's personal life, whether his numerous affairs, his rocky marriage to Jane Wyman or Nancy Davis's single-minded determination to marry him. Eliot also examines his time heading SAG, the actors' union, which proved prescient. By 1962, Reagan was out of work, reduced to giving his Price of Freedom speech to interested groups. His delivery at a Goldwater fund-raiser was so inspiring that it jump-started his second career, clearing the way for the Central Casting version of what an American president should look like. Extensively researched, this biography is an accessible and eye-opening read.

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The World of Philosophy

2011-07-17T08:58:00.000-05:00

The World of Philosophy - Knowledge Products Narrated by Lynn Redgrave
Publisher: Knowledge Products 1997- 2009 | ISBN n/a | Language English | Audio CD in MP3 / 64Kbps | 1 GB

With the World of Philosophy audiobooks, your newfound knowledge will span the ages encompassing philosophy from ancient Greece and China to twentieth century America and Europe. You'll better understand the world as you join history's greatest philosophers, like Socrates; Confucius; Descartes; Voltaire; Peirce; Russell and de Beauvoir, in wrestling with the profound meanings of science and reason, religion and belief, innovation and tradition, moral virtue, knowledge, love, community, language... and much more.

Complete Series of 26 Audio Cassettes
# SOCRATES
# STOICISM AND EPICUREANISM
# CONFUCIUS, LAO TZU, & CHINESE PHILOSOPHY
# MAIMONIDES & MEDIEVAL JEWISH PHILOSOPHY
# AVICENNA & MEDIEVAL MUSLIM PHILOSOPHY
# DUNS SCOTUS & MEDIEVAL CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY
# DESCARTRES, BACON, & MODERN PHILOSOPHY
# VOLTAIRE & ROUSSEAU
# THE PHILOSOPHIES OF INDIA
# WILLIAM JAMES, CHARLES PEIRCE, & AMERICAN PRAGMATISM
# BERTAND RUSSELL & A.N. WHITEHEAD
# SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
# 20TH CENTURY EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY

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American Rose--Gypsy Rose Lee

2011-07-16T12:09:00.001-05:00

With the critically acclaimed Sin in the Second City, best-selling author Karen Abbott "pioneered sizzle history" (USA Today). Now she returns with the gripping and expansive story of America's coming-of-age - told through the extraordinary life of Gypsy Rose Lee and the world she survived and conquered.

America in the Roaring Twenties. Vaudeville was king. Talking pictures were only a distant flicker. Speakeasies beckoned beyond dimly lit doorways; money flowed fast and free. But then, almost overnight, the Great Depression leveled everything. When the dust settled, Americans were primed for a star who could distract them from grim reality and excite them in new, unexpected ways. Enter Gypsy Rose Lee, a strutting, bawdy, erudite stripper who possessed a preternatural gift for delivering exactly what America needed.

With her superb narrative skills and eye for compelling detail, Karen Abbott brings to vivid life an era of ambition, glamour, struggle, and survival. Using exclusive interviews and never-before-published material, she vividly delves into Gypsy's world, including her intensely dramatic triangle relationship with her sister, actress June Havoc, and their formidable mother, Rose, a petite but ferocious woman who seduced men and women alike and literally killed to get her daughters on the stage.

American Rose chronicles their story, as well as the story of the four scrappy and savvy showbiz brothers from New York City who would pave the way for Gypsy Rose Lee's brand of burlesque. Modeling their shows after the glitzy, daring reviews staged in the theaters of Paris, the Minsky brothers relied on grit, determination, and a few tricks that fell just outside the law - and they would shape, and ultimately transform, the landscape of American entertainment.

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