Showing results by narrator "Tom Beyer" in All Categories

For the last two centuries, groups of influential men have, in the professed interest of fiscal responsibility, crime reduction, and outright racism, attempted to control who was allowed to bear children. Their efforts, "eugenics," characterize a movement that over the last century swept across the world—from the US to Brazil, Japan, India, Australia, and beyond—in the form of marriage restrictions, asylum detention, and sterilization campaigns affected millions. German physicians and scientists adopted and then heightened these eugenics practices beginning in 1939.

Captain Alfred Lowenstein was known as many things during his glamorous and gaudy life. Companion of the Bath, friend of kings, an aviator and sportsman, a maker and loser of fortunes, and most favorably, a multi-millionaire. That is, until his mysterious death. The Man Who Fell from the Sky contains excitement and mystery as Norris researches the business tycoon's life, death, and aftermath of his demise and comes to a conclusion of how Alfred Lowenstein vanished into thin air.

It's hard to imagine our world without its stars and celebrity geniuses—they become a part of our culture and history, seeming permanent and preordained. But as Cass Sunstein shows in this startling book, that is far from the case. Focusing on both famous and forgotten (or simply overlooked) artists and luminaries in music, literature, business, science, politics, and other fields, he explores why some individuals become famous and others don't, and offers a new understanding of the role of greatness, luck, and contingency in the achievement of fame.

Follow along with researcher/author Paul Blake Smith as he pieces together an explosive puzzle, which reveals that President Eisenhower met with friendly aliens, and that other American presidents likely renewed Ike's secret agreement with the visitors, who remain aloof to this day, to avoid triggering social chaos. 

In this classic work of twentieth-century history, William Sheridan Allen demonstrates how dictatorship subtly surmounted democracy in Germany and how the Nazi seizure of power encroached from below. Relying upon legal records and interviews with primary sources, Allen dissects Northeim, Germany with microscopic precision to depict the transformation of a sleepy town to a Nazi stronghold. This cogent analysis argues that Hitler rose to power primarily through democratic tactics that incited localized support rather than through violent means.

In 1927, Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein began a debate about the interpretation and meaning of the new quantum theory. This would become one of the most famous debates in the history of science. What (if any) limits should we place on our expectations for what science can tell us about physical reality? As Quantum Drama reveals, science owes a large debt to those who kept the discussions going before definitive experimental inquiries became possible. Although experiment moved the Bohr-Einstein debate to a new level, it has by no means removed or resolved the fundamental question.

George Anastasia exposes what it really means to be married to the mob—and fathered by it. As revealed in their personal accounts, life for the wife and sons of Thomas "Tommy Del" DelGiorno became a descent into hell. In the end, guilty of a raft of crimes that included multiple murders, Tommy Del served less than a year in prison in exchange for turning government witness during a dozen trials against fellow mobsters. Based on years of reporting, thousands of pages of court testimony, and extensive interviews, Mobfather takes the listener deep into the heart of corruption.

Angela is beautiful and charismatic on the outside. But on the inside, evil rages and she's determined to get anyone and anything she wants. And now with her biological clock ticking, she seduces her old friend Philip, and his partner Jonathan, into having a child with her through artificial insemination.

Bring out their best. If you read (or listen to) nothing else on managing people, listen to this book. We've chosen a new selection of current and classic Harvard Business Review articles that will help you earn your people's trust, build successful teams, and coach employees to help them reach...

Amid growing international concerns about income inequality, labor abuses, racial injustice, and disinformation online, Conscience Incorporated examines the gaps in current corporate social responsibility measures and what more needs be done to address these challenges. The rise of new technologies such as smartphones and social media have made it easier than ever to document and spread awareness of corporate actions. Despite these developments, large corporations often fail to meaningfully address the human rights abuses linked to their business models and practices.

Andrew Richard Barnes is known as the man who flew the very first shipment of cocaine for the Medellín Cartel into the United States. A young pilot with a family at home, and little money to spare, he was easily coerced by promises of wealth to make these dangerous excursions. After his first trip, he realized there was no going back and continued the dangerous flight for over a decade.

2023 Winner of the Gold Nautilus Book Award! Spirituality is the Final Frontier for Science Contrary to popular belief, not all scientists are materialists fervently discounting the spiritual. Science, Being, & Becoming shares interviews with some of the world's foremost scientists who recount...

For nearly 100 years, the Lindbergh Kidnapping still remains a major topic of controversy and fascination. A Talent to Deceive uses investigative journalism to dive into evidence ignored by previous investigators in search of the truth. Who really committed the crime? What really happened the night of March 1, 1932? What was the motive to kidnap and murder the Lindbergh baby? Follow Norris in this history-meets-mystery tale as he performs a thorough investigation to solve the case that will never die.

We all keep secrets—from our locker codes to our passwords to our online interactions. And we choose to share those secrets only with those whom we trust. So, too, do organizations, businesses, governments, and armies. In Cryptography, Panos Louridas provides a broad and accessible introduction to cryptography, the art and science of keeping and revealing secrets.

A Pagan Polemic curates the evolving perspective of Jack Loeffler—itinerant wanderer, environmental warrior, storyteller, and story collector—whose true education began when he was marched into the Nevada desert one day at dawn to play "The Stars and Stripes Forever" during an atomic bomb test a scant few miles away. Since that day in 1957, Jack's mission in life has been to record peoples of the borderlands and to bring "indigenous mindedness" to the forefront of the conversation about our precarious environments and our decaying planet.

What true statecraft consists of, and how to know a statesman when we see one In the modern world we yearn for great leaders but resist them when they come along. In this much-needed essay, Steven B. Smith tells us that a statesman is something far different from a demagogue or a technocrat; he...

In 1991, Ioan Culianu was on the precipice of a brilliant academic career. Culianu had fled his native Romania and established himself as a widely admired scholar at just forty-one years old. He was teaching at the University of Chicago Divinity School where he was seen as the heir apparent to his mentor, Mircea Eliade, a fellow Romanian expatriate and the founding father of the field of religious studies, who had died a few years earlier. 

In Canopy of Titans, Paul Koberstein and Jessica Applegate examine the global importance of the Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest that stretches from Northern California to Alaska. Their urgent and authoritative account sets out the threats facing a vital environmental resource, and celebrates the beauty and complexity of one of the world's great forests.

Jake lost his wife and unborn daughter on a West Texas highway when three police officers abused their authority. The pigs thought they had got off scot-free until Jake took justice into his own hands.

America's political parties are hollow shells of what they could be, locked in a polarized struggle for power and unrooted as civic organizations. The Hollow Parties takes listeners from the rise of mass party politics in the Jacksonian era through the years of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Today's parties, overbearing and ineffectual, have emerged from the interplay of multiple party traditions that reach back to the Founding.