Showing results by narrator "David De Vries" in All Categories

From one of the foremost scholars on the subject, comes our most in-depth look at John Steinbeck as a writer deeply connected to the natural world. Among the many reasons that John Steinbeck has reached the highest tier of the American literary canon is what we have come to understand as his...

When 650 of the world’s most violent human beings pour out of the Pronghorn Correctional Facility into the Nevada Desert, the biggest manhunt in US history begins. For John Kradle, this is his chance to prove his innocence, 26 years after the murder of his wife and child. He just needs to stay one step ahead of the law enforcement officers he knows will be chasing down the escapees. 

Twelve-year-old Jeff Michaels, son of a Philadelphia TV sports reporter, is just learning to play soccer on the new sixth-grade team at his middle school. Andrea Carillo has fought her way onto the squad, but the coach doesn’t think girls should play with boys, so she’s riding the bench with Jeff - even though she’s one of the best players. 

On America's 100th birthday, the people of France built a giant gift! It was one of the largest statues the world had ever seen—and she weighed as much as 40 elephants! And when she arrived on our shores in 250 pieces, she needed a pedestal to hold her up. Few of America's millionaires were willing to foot the bill. Then, Joseph Pulitzer (a poor Hungarian immigrant-cum-newspaper mogul) appealed to his fellow citizens. He invited them to contribute whatever they could, no matter how small an amount, to raise funds to mount this statue.

Oh hey, guess what? The Sun never stops working to keep things on Earth running smoothly. (That's why it's been Employee of the Month for 4.5 billion years.) So why does the Sun get to be the center of attention? Because it's our solar system's very own star! This funny and factual tale from Awkward Yeti creator Nick Seluk explains every part of the Sun's big job: keeping our solar system together, giving Earth day and night, keeping us warm, and more. In fact, the Sun does so much for us that we wouldn't be alive without it. That's kind of a big deal.

Defectors fleeing the Soviet Union seized the world's attention during the Cold War. Their stories were given sensational news coverage and dramatized in spy novels and films. Upon reaching the West, they were entitled to special benefits, including financial assistance and permanent residency. In contrast to other migrants, defectors were pursued by the states they left even as they were eagerly sought by the United States and its allies. Defectors follows their treacherous journeys and looks at how their unauthorized flight via land, sea, and air gave shape to a globalized world.

Is moral philosophy more foundational than political theory? It is often assumed to be. David Schmidtz argues that the reverse is true: the question of how to live in a community is more fundamental than questions about how to live. This book questions whether we are getting to the foundations of human morality when we ignore contingent features of communities in which political animals live.

New attention from historians and journalists is raising pointed questions about the founding period: was the American revolution waged to preserve slavery, and was the Constitution a pact with slavery or a landmark in the antislavery movement? We have long needed a history of the founding that fully includes Black Americans in the Revolutionary protests, the war, and the debates over slavery and freedom that followed. We now have that history in Edward J. Larson's insightful synthesis of the founding.

The history of one of World War II's most successful submarines, U-124, is chronicled in Grey Wolf, Grey Sea, from its few defeats to a legion of victories. Kapitanleutnant Jochen Mohr commanded his German submarine and navigated it through the treacherous waters of one of the most destructive, savage wars the world has known.

If 1968 marked a turning point in a pivotal decade, 1964—or rather, the long 1964, from JFK’s assassination in November 1963 to mid-1965—was the time when the sixties truly arrived. It was then that the United States began a radical shift toward a much more inclusive definition of “American,” with a greater degree of equality and a government actively involved in social and economic improvement.

Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment profoundly changed the Constitution, giving the federal judiciary and Congress new powers to protect the fundamental rights of individuals from being violated by the states. Yet, according to Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick, the Supreme Court has long misunderstood or ignored the original meaning of the amendment's key clauses, covering the privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process of law, and the equal protection of the laws.

In the newly revised second edition of Bridging the Soft Skills Gap: How to Teach the Missing Basics to the New Hybrid Workforce, veteran business advisor, speaker, and consultant Bruce Tulgan delivers a practical and incisive roadmap to developing crucial professionalism, critical thinking, and teamwork skills. An essential leadership handbook for executives, managers, and other business leaders, Bridging the Soft Skills Gap is a must-have resource for human resources professionals, team leaders, and front-line employees who deal with promising, but unpolished, talent.

World War II was a media war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the press to a great extent, of course, but as the war progressed, the media also came to influence commanders' decisions on the battlefield. The Media Offensive offers a new way to understand military-media relations during World War II. The press and public opinion shaped not only how the conflict was seen but also how it was fought. In what could be called "the new history of war reporting," the focus is switched from how the military controlled reporters to how military decisions were shaped by the press.

The 1968 Tet uprising plunges America deeper into the abyss of Vietnam. Martin Luther King is shot, and riots rage in 130 burning American cities. Students protesting the War take over American universities, and street battles in Paris nearly topple the French government. Senator Eugene McCarthy enters the Democratic presidential race against Lyndon Johnson, followed by Bobby Kennedy, who goes on to win the California Democratic primary.

From the war-shattered jungles of Vietnam to America’s burning cities, near-death in Tibet, peace marches, the battle of Hué and the battle of the Pentagon, wild drugs, rock concerts, free love, CIA coups in Indonesia and Greece, the Six Days’ War, and Bobby Kennedy’s last campaign, Freedom puts you in the Sixties as if it were now. Mick leaves for the Himalayas while Troy heads to Vietnam with the Marines. Daisy starts her PhD in brain research, and Tara battles heroin as her rock band reaches stardom.

Coming of age is never easy. Coming of age in the 1960s was extraordinary. It was a decade that transformed America. After the post-World War II dreams of a healing nation, the '60s shook America to its foundation - the assassination of an idealistic young president, a tragic and unpopular war, a battle for civil rights, a cosmic clash of riots and burning cities, and an explosion of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Imagine flipping through old family albums. The faces are familiar; their true stories lost to time — half-forgotten family anecdotes woven together by generations of proud aunts and kindly grandmothers conceal more than they reveal.

After the performance of a lifetime at the sold-out Stade de France, comic Édouard Bresson decides to vanish. Très drôle. His estranged son Arthur isn’t laughing. Édouard has sent him a letter and instructions to a puzzle - a treasure hunt for the son he ignored and misses and loves. If Arthur is willing to find out everything there is to know about his father and to understand the choices he made, all he has to do is put the pieces together. As the trail of clues winds its way through the past, what unfolds is a surprising journey of forgiveness, family, and self-discovery.

On the storm-swollen Aisne in northeastern France, an alcoholic actor combats both his demons and nature’s tempests. Along the Main and Rhine in Germany, a kindhearted logger has but one wish: to travel with the lumber from his small Franconian hometown to the end of the river in the Netherlands, where it feeds into the majestic North Sea. In a bucolic vale in the French region of Brittany, two families, divided by religion and an unnamed stream, sustain a centuries-old feud, their resolve no match for the constantly shifting flow of water.

David Portland works security for America’s British Embassy in London. His life is upended when his son Trevor dies mysteriously in Nigeria, while employed by a suspicious security/mercenary company known as SureSafe. One night, Portland sees a man in a bar wearing a bracelet - a family heirloom, which he had given his son - and attacks the man.