Showing results by narrator "Chris Abernathy" in All Categories

In 2006, Johnny's pie-in-the-sky dreams of becoming world champion were dashed when his kings ran into aces in the World Series of Poker Main Event. But lady luck was with him when he met Amy, the woman of his dreams, who soon became his wife. Like many players, he drifted away from the game after Congress passed a law later that year that cut off funds to online poker and harkened the decline of the game. But even as Johnny returned to the working world, the itch remained.

Ian and Jenny Bragg are contracted by the highest levels of the government. They can share none of the secrets they learn. They have to do the job alone. The contracted value is enough that they'll never have to work again, but that's not Ian's plan. Ian and Jenny are taking care of a small army of employees. From The Club to their independent operators.

The Bourbon Drinker's Companion is a narrative journey into the heart of American craft distilleries, taking listeners from the well-known Jim Beam Booker Noe plant to craft whiskey brewers on the West Coast to the emerging new traditional distillers of the South, in search of America's best whiskey. Bestselling author Colin Spoelman is back to celebrate all things whiskey as he explores the effect branding, taste, region, and distilling processes have on America's beloved and most notorious drink.

Join Cindy and Sammy on a new guide dog team adventure to the zoo.

Med school dropout Harlan Winter returns to his impoverished West Virginia hometown, where the law is scarce, arsonists are turning everything to ash, and his family’s turbulent history lingers. All he wants is to keep the peace in a community cowering from the Lighthouse, a local cult preying on people’s fears. Harlan’s own fears, too, when he’s hired to play detective and find a young couple gone missing.

In the early 1960s, the nation was on track to fulfill its destiny in what was being called "the American Century." Baby boomers and rock & roll shared the country's optimism and energy. For "one brief, shining moment" in the early 1960s, both President John F. Kennedy and young people across the country were riding high. The dream of a New Frontier would soon give way, however, to a new reality involving assassinations, the Vietnam War, Cold War crises, the civil rights movement, a new feminist movement, and various culture wars.

This Very Short Introduction takes an expansive and inclusive approach meant to broaden and challenge traditional views of music and technology. In its most common use, "music technology" tends to evoke images of twentieth and twenty-first century electronic devices: synthesizers, recording equipment, music notation software, and the like. This volume, however, treats all tools used to create, store, reproduce, and transmit music—new or old, electronic or not—as technologies worthy of investigation.

For over eighty years, tourists have flocked to Natchez, Mississippi, seeking the "Old South," but what they encounter is invention: a pageant and rewrite of history first concocted during the Great Depression. Paul Hardin Kapp explores how meaning is assigned to place and how meaning evolves over time. In showing how and why the Natchez buildings of the "Old South" were first preserved, commercialized, and transformed into a brand, this volume makes a much-needed contribution to debates over the meaning attached to cultural patrimony.

Twenty years ago, his Chicago political column was syndicated in two hundred papers, but he had an affair—and a son—with his intern, and lost it all. Now he writes a local column and drives for Uber to pay his bills. Jake is playing out the string when his tranquil world is turned upside down. His biracial son—an ambitious entrepreneur—is marked for death by a street gangster, his alcoholic daughter is pregnant and wants an abortion.

Our lives are built around businesses that connect far-flung rural places to urban centers and global destinations. This "country capitalism" that proved successful in the US South has made it possible to satisfy our demands at the click of a button, but each click comes with hidden environmental costs.

Reinventing the Supply Chain explores the historical role of supply chains in the global economy, outlines where the system went wrong and what needs to be done to fix it, and demonstrates how a retooled supply chain can lead to the revitalization of American communities. Jack Buffington proposes a transformation of the global supply chain system into a community-based value chain, led by the communities themselves and driven by digital platforms for raising capital and blockchain technology.

From opening his first hot dog stand in 1961 to growing his business to over three hundred restaurants nationwide, John Galardi wholeheartedly shared each new success with his loved ones, his friends, and the many people who helped him realize his vision. His journey to achieve the American dream shows his struggles and triumphs, his disappointments and determination, and the hard work and imagination required to build the world’s largest hot dog chain.

In Draining New Orleans, renowned geographer Richard Campanella recounts the epic challenges and ingenious efforts to dewater the Crescent City. With forays into geography, public health, engineering, architecture, politics, sociology, race relations, and disaster response, he chronicles the herculean attempts to "reclaim" the city's swamps and marshes and install subsurface drainage for massive urban expansion.

In this true story of adventure, author Jack Nisbet recreates the life and times of David Thompson—fur trader, explorer, surveyor, and mapmaker. From 1784 to 1812, Thompson explored western North America, and his field journals provide the earliest written accounts of the natural history and indigenous cultures of the what is now British Columbia, Alberta, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Thompson was the first person to chart the entire route of the Columbia river, and his wilderness expeditions have become the stuff of legend.

Harlan Winter has returned to his corner of Appalachia, where his fiery history with a depraved cult has made him a legend. All Harlan wants is to run his occult bookshop and get on with his life—if only his unsettling visions would let him. But when a fellow devotee of the dark arts moves to Coopersville and Harlan’s coveted grimoire is stolen, he’s pulled into a world deadlier than the one that already scarred his soul.

How does one begin to understand the idea of a distinctive southern way of life—a concept as enduring as it is disputed? In this examination of the American South in national and global contexts, celebrated historian Charles Reagan Wilson assesses how diverse communities of southerners have sought to define the region's identity.

Giff Dixon doesn't remember how he got to the town of Corazon. All he knows is that some cowboys found him way off the beaten path in Oklahoma cattle country, barely alive, and carrying a belly full of buckshot. Now, he's broke, friendless, and at the end of his rope. Everything changes when, out of the blue, he's offered a job guiding a government expedition to investigate reports of homesteaders being forced off their land by the all-powerful Torreon Cattle Company. It seems an easy enough ride until Grady Sebree, the iron-fisted boss of Torreon, approaches Dixon.