Showing results by narrator "Kevin Stillwell" in All Categories

Instead of trying to predict "Black Swan" events such as coups or crises, forecasters should look at how political systems handle disorder. The best indicator of a country's future trajectory is not a lengthy past stability, but recent moderate volatility.

N. K. Jemisin is one of the most powerful and acclaimed speculative fiction authors of our time. In the first collection of her evocative short fiction, Jemisin equally challenges and delights listeners with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption. In these stories, Jemisin sharply examines modern society, infusing magic into the mundane, and drawing deft parallels in the fantasy realms of her imagination. Dragons and hateful spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Father Steady Capri knows quite a bit about helping others. But he is afraid Katie Quinn's problems may be beyond his abilities. But there is one person who still may be able to save her from herself. He will show her an alternate escape, a way to write a new life. Ultimately, he will need to leave his secluded home and sacrifice the serenity he's found to help her. From the Florida coast, they will travel to the French countryside where they will discover the unwritten story of both their pasts and their future.

Cain Lemaire, a Secret Service agent from New Orleans, has the dream job he’s always wanted - until a single night results in a scandal that loses him his post. Needing a new direction, Cain follows his sister to Japan and takes a job in Tokyo as head of security for the CEO of a top company. But what he thought was a simple security assignment unravels into a tangled web of corruption, greed and extortion.

Charlie Finn had to grow up fast, living alone by age 16. Highly intelligent, he earned a life-changing scholarship to Harvard, where he learned how to survive and thrive on the outskirts of privileged society. That skill served him well in the cutthroat business world, as it does in more lucrative but dangerous ventures he now operates off the coast of Miami. Charlie tries to separate relationships from work.

In the second book of the Blue Gemini trilogy, air force majors Scott Ourecky and Drew Carson continue to fly highly classified missions to intercept and destroy suspect Soviet satellites. But after experiencing numerous close calls in orbit, the astronauts soon discover that not all perils reside in the sky. With his marriage already at risk because he cannot explain his frequent absences and strange activities to his wife, Ourecky learns that his unborn child may be in grave danger as a radiation consequence of his flights into space.

It is always easy to find people who want a job, but it's never easy to find and hire A-players. In How to Hire A-Players, consultant Eric Herrenkohl shows owners, executives, and managers of small and medium-size businesses where and how to find A-player employees. It is these individuals who will help keep quality high and growth and profits strong. Herrenkohl explains how to use your existing marketing, sales, and networking efforts to find top candidates. He provides current examples of companies that consistently hire A-players without big recruiting departments....

Conventional wisdom in the West blames the Ukraine crisis on Russian aggression. But this account is wrong: Washington and its European allies actually share most of the responsibility, having spent decades pushing east into Russia’s natural sphere of interest.

For more than 20 years, management expert Bruce Tulgan has been asking, "What are the most difficult challenges you face when it comes to managing people?" Regardless of industry or job title, managers cite the same core issues - 27 recurring challenges: the superstar whom the manager is afraid of losing, the slacker whom the manager cannot figure out how to motivate, the one with an attitude problem, and the two who cannot get along, to name just a few.

What happened when a wealthy industrialist and a visionary evangelist unleashed forces that joined to subjugate an entire continent? Historians Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett tell the story of the 40-year campaign led by Standard Oil scion Nelson Rockefeller and Wycliffe Bible Translators founder William Cameron Townsend to establish a US imperial beachhead in Central and South America.

As the Project enters its final phase, air force majors Carson and Ourecky are dispatched on an urgent mission to intercept and investigate a massive orbiting object suspected of harboring nuclear weapons. Emotionally exhausted, with his marriage teetering on the brink, Ourecky reluctantly accepts the assignment; in return for his sacrifice, he is promised an opportunity to go to MIT to pursue the PhD he has long desired.

Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects.

In Presidents in Crisis, a former director of the Situation Room takes the listener inside the White House during 17 grave international emergencies handled by the presidents from Truman to Obama: from North Korea's invasion of South Korea to the revolutions of the Arab Spring, and from the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis to the taking of American diplomats hostage in Iran and George W. Bush's response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Having awakened from its communist slumber, Russia in the roaring '90s is a place where everything and everyone is for sale and fortunes can be made and lost overnight. Into this maelstrom steps rookie Wall Street Journal reporter Matthew Brzezinski. Assigned to make sense of the financial markets, he is instantly plunged into the crazed world of Russian capitalism, where corrupt Moscow bankers and American carpetbaggers preside over the greatest boom and bust in international financial history. Brzezinski knows he's in over his head; what he comes to realize is that "so is the entire country".

Brust has returned to the Khaavren epic, first with last year's The Paths of the Dead, and now with its direct continuation, The Lord of Castle Black, a novel that gives Vlad Taltos and Khaavren fans alike a new look at one of Brust's most popular characters, the Dragonlord Morrolan. Along the way, we'll also encounter swordplay, intrigues, quests, battles, romance, snappy dialogue, and the missing heir to the Imperial Throne. It's an old-fashioned adventure, moving at a 21st-century pace.

Every summer, college baseball teams from around the nation come to Omaha, Nebraska, to play pure move-the-man-over, run-manufacturing baseball in a series that's part college bowl game, part county fair. In the spirit of 3 Nights in August and The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, veteran sports writer Ryan McGee goes behind the scenes, into the stands, and onto the field to reveal an exciting yet personal look at one of the hottest sports championships in the country - the College World Series. In 2008, the 10-day, eight-team tournament was the scene of one of the greatest series in its illustrious history.

Senator Frank Church of Idaho was an unlikely hero. He led congressional opposition to the Vietnam War and had become a scathing, radical critic of what he saw as American imperialism around the world. But he was still politically ambitious, privately yearning for acceptance from the foreign policy establishment that he hated and eager to run for president. Despite his flaws, Church would show historic strength in his greatest moment, when in the wake of Watergate he was suddenly tasked with investigating abuses of power in the intelligence community.

The 18th-century British politician and writer Edmund Burke is often called the father of modern conservatism. A new intellectual biography of Burke shows why that label fails to capture the complexity of Burke's thought and legacy.

After living in the White House for four years, in November 1980, Jimmy Carter lost the presidential election to Republican Ronald Reagan in a landslide. Carter's unpopularity helped Republicans win seats in the House and gain control over the Senate for the first time in over 20 years. The Reagan Era had begun, ushering in a generation of conservative power. Democrats blamed Carter for this catastrophe and spent the next decade pretending he had never existed.

Over the past decade, Inbound Marketing has changed the way companies earn buyers’ trust and build their brands - through meaningful, helpful content. But with that change comes unprecedented access to information in a few quick keystrokes. Enter the age of the empowered buyer, one who no longer has to rely on a sales rep to research their challenges or learn more about how a company’s offering might fit their needs. Now, with more than 60 percent of purchasing decisions made in the absence of a sales rep, the role of the rep itself has been called into question.