Showing results by narrator "Eric Jason Martin" in All Categories

Helping the Good Do Better pulls back the curtain on the corridors of power in Washington to reveal how social change really happens. This book offers lessons from the trenches on how some of this generation's most defining social issues - AIDS, disabilities, global poverty, cancer, human trafficking, national service, early childhood education, and social entrepreneurship - engendered landmark federal policies. Each chapter tells the story of how a particular issue was shaped by the movements and legislation at the center of public debate.

The definitive portrait of the powerful, corruption-ridden Teamsters union and its legendary president Jimmy Hoffa - organizer, gangster, convict, and conspirator - with a new afterword by the author.

From the best-selling author of A Vast Conspiracy and The Run of His Life comes Too Close to Call - the definitive story of the Bush-Gore presidential recount. A political and legal analyst of unparalleled journalistic skill, Jeffrey Toobin is the ideal writer to distill the events of the 36 anxiety-filled days that culminated in one of the most stunning Supreme Court decisions in history.

What happens when you pack almost a dozen jails, bulging at the seams with society’s cast-offs, onto a spit of landfill purposefully hidden from public view? Prize-winning journalists Graham Rayman and Reuven Blau have spent two years interviewing more than 130 people comprising a broad cross section of lives touched by New York City's Rikers Island prison complex—from incarcerated people and their relatives, to officers, lawyers, and commissioners, with stories spanning the 1970s to the present day. The portrait that emerges calls into question the very nature of justice in America.

Taking listeners from the snows of the Pamir Mountains to the backstreets of Kashgar—a Central Asian city that could be the setting for One Thousand and One Nights—to the Tian Shan Mountains to the endless Taklamakan and Gobi Deserts of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Bernard Ollivier continues his epic foot journey along the Great Silk Road hoping to make his way to Han China and reach, at long last, the legendary city of Xi'an.

Tyler is back to work as a classic auto mechanic. When a young woman - and car enthusiast - brings her vintage Porsche in for some work, Tyler is glad to talk shop with her. When she never returns for her car, he wonders what's going on. His daughter, Lexi, doesn't want him to investigate. Something bothers Tyler about what happened, though, and he's determined to uncover what happened to the mysterious woman from the shop.

In China and the World, one of the world's leading China specialists, David Shambaugh, has assembled 15 leading international authorities on China to create the most comprehensive and up-to-date scholarly assessment of China's foreign relations and roles in international affairs.

The challenges facing General Dwight Eisenhower before the Invasion of Normandy were not merely military, but political as well. He knew that to liberate France, and to hold it, the Allies needed local help, which would necessitate coordinating with the highly independent French resistance groups known collectively as the maquis. The Allies' objective was to push the Germans out of France. The French objective, on the other hand, was a France free of all foreign armies, including the Allies.

From celebrated historian of knowledge Jonathan Lyons comes The Society for Useful Knowledge, telling the story of America's coming-of-age through its historic love affair with practical invention, applied science, and self-reliance. Lyons illustrates how a social movement in support of useful knowledge is key to understanding the flow of American history and the development of our society and culture from colonial times to our digital present.

Thirteen months after Trump allegedly captured the allegiance of "the white working class", a strike wave - the first in over four decades - rocked the United States. Inspired by the wildcat victory in West Virginia, teachers in Oklahoma, Arizona, and across the country walked off their jobs and shut down their schools to demand better pay for educators, more funding for students, and an end to years of austerity.

The Transatlantic Train Tunnel, connecting New York and London, was meant to be the next Wonder of the World. But after the disastrous maiden voyage seven years ago, it's generated nothing but protests, lawsuits, and bankruptcy. The only traffic the tunnel sees these days is scrappers harvesting its useless remains before it's fully dismantled. Not everyone is willing to take a tedious job one hundred and fifty feet below sea level, but Ben Breckenridge doesn't have a choice. He needs the money, and the work will help quiet his anxieties.

The curse of the lost goddess Inanna would not allow Lukas Aguilar to hide out in obscurity for long. To become the conquering invader, the protective monster, and the selfish Outsider who would risk the end of the world itself, he must instead embrace audacity.

For generations, the big city has promised romance, danger, opportunity. But what happens when you wake up one hungover morning and realize the promise is gone...along with your cheap apartment? That your whole existence in Berlin - 10 years of easy living based on cheap rent and the ability to just barely make it in the creative industry - was just a historical accident, the cheap rent and Bohemian setting products of a perverse economy, a miracle that couldn't possibly last?

The Chinese government has more control over more wealth than any other government in world history. With the Communist Party controlling the "commanding heights" of the world's second-largest economy, China appears ideally structured to pursue economic statecraft, using economic resources to advance its foreign policy goals. Yet as this book shows, domestic complications frequently constrain Chinese leaders. They have responded with a distinctive approach to economic statecraft: orchestration.

John Tyler finally built the life he wanted. But his past casts a long shadow. Eight years retired from the army, Tyler manages his PTSD and begins a job as a classic car mechanic. He's a single dad to Lexi, who's about to enter college. Life is looking up. Then, everything comes crashing down. Tyler's former commanding officer is out of prison and hellbent on revenge. Their mutual hatred has been simmering for years. When it finally boils over, everyone and everything in Tyler's life is threatened.

Daniel Chai has fallen into a routine of adventuring and dungeon-delving with his friends. They aren't making quick progress, but it's steady improvements and honest work. Unfortunately, Daniel's ability as a healer, and one who is truly gifted, has come home to roost with a vengeance. As his secret is exposed, Daniel's greatest fears come to play and adventuring guilds of all stripes attempt to recruit him and his friends, whether he wants it or not. Forced to navigate guild politics and noble interest, Daniel's simple life has once more grown complicated.

Like so many of us, McKibben grew up believing—knowing—that the United States was the greatest country on earth. As a teenager, he cheerfully led American Revolution tours in Lexington, Massachusetts. He sang “Kumbaya” at church. And with the remarkable rise of suburbia, he assumed that all Americans would share in the wealth. But fifty years later, he finds himself in an increasingly doubtful nation strained by bleak racial and economic inequality, on a planet whose future is in peril. And he is curious: What the hell happened?

Somalia was Tom Pecora's first deployment as a CIA Protective Operations Cadre (POC) officer, responsible for providing protective operations support in hostile areas of the world. He later headed up a series of the Agency's undisclosed protective operations teams. From 1989 until his retirement in 2013, he was assigned to multiple war zones across Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, doing the kind of work few are even aware exists.

In the first months of 1936, Adolf Hitler risked everything by ordering his untrained military to reoccupy the Rhineland. It was a bluff. The Germans would have been forced to retreat if the French or British had offered the slightest opposition. But the bluff succeeded. History changed decisively. Hitler quieted the opposition at home, and marched the world relentlessly on, to the edge of destruction and beyond.

Hiroshima was one of the great tragedies of WWII. But out of the devastation of the first atomic bomb, some survivors emerged, 25 courageous Japanese women who became part of a remarkable humanitarian epic. Victims of the atomic blast that ushered in the Nuclear Age, these women were brought to the United States in 1955, where they underwent reconstructive surgery to repair the ravages of the bomb. Schoolgirls when the bomb destroyed their futures, they began to remake their lives and re-create themselves. This is the compassionate, often bittersweet chronicle of the Hiroshima Maidens.