Showing results by narrator "Peter Lerman" in All Categories

Mr. Wrenn is part Walter Mitty and part Forrest Gump - decades before either came to be. A most well-meaning but completely unsophisticated 36-year-old clerk in a novelty and souvenir company, he dreams of great travels, adventure, and romance. He lives in a boarding house in New York City and travels by cattle boat to Europe when an unexpected windfall puts one thousand dollars in his hands. His good-hearted misunderstandings of the world around him amuse and entertain. He does realize his dreams.

The Revolution of ’28 explores the career of New York governor and 1928 Democratic presidential nominee Alfred E. Smith. Robert Chiles peers into Smith’s work and uncovers a distinctive strain of American progressivism that resonated among urban, ethnic, working-class Americans in the early 20th century. The book charts the rise of that idiomatic progressivism during Smith’s early years as a state legislator through his time as governor of the Empire State in the 1920s, before proceeding to a revisionist narrative of the 1928 presidential campaign.

When the terrorist attacks struck New York City on September 11, 2001, boat operators and waterfront workers quickly realized that they had the skills, the equipment, and the opportunity to take definite, immediate action in responding to the most significant destructive event in the United States in decades. For many of them, they were “doing what needed to be done”. American Dunkirk shows how people, many of whom were volunteers, mobilized rescue efforts in various improvised and spontaneous ways on that fateful date.

A dark and humorous, albeit, twisted story of two opposites on their sixth anniversary. They should never have married. Violet is submersed in fantasy and denial. She is blindly in love with Gideon who cannot bear to breathe in the same room with her. She manages her day in the ignorance of bliss, an element of the marriage that only she knows. Gideon is in torment every moment of each passing day. He finally realizes that it must end if he is to be free to search for his own happiness. What will he do?

An amusing story about two elderly men who stumble upon an unusual way to make money by creating a new religion. Jack and David are the main characters--both about 80 years old. Their unique plan to get rich unfolds one morning when they're sitting on their beach chairs in Florida lamenting the limited income they receive from Social Security and want more.

In Saving Our Cities, William W. Goldsmith shows how cities can be places of opportunity rather than places with problems. With strongly revived cities and suburbs, working as places that serve all their residents, metropolitan areas will thrive, thus making the national economy more productive, the environment better protected, the citizenry better educated, and the society more reflective, sensitive, and humane.

Don't Forget Me tells the story of Steve's two sons, Chris and Kelly, who took distinctly different paths to the same outcome: death by overdose. Steve reveals not only a highlight reel of the things he got right but takes an honest look at the mistakes he made along the way to help other parents avoid those same mistakes. Don't Forget Me offers time-tested, practical suggestions to assure family members of those struggling with substance abuse they have not lost their mind and encourages them to find hope-even on the darkest days. 

While certainly flawed in many aspects - the New Deal was implemented by a Democratic Party still beholden to the segregationist South for its majorities in Congress and the Electoral College - the New Deal was instated at a time of mass unemployment and the rise of fascistic government models and functioned as a bulwark of American democracy in hard times. This book looks at how this legacy, both for good and ill, informs the current debates around governmental responses to crises. 

Based in the idea that social phenomena are best studied through the lens of different disciplinary perspectives, Empty Churches studies the growing number of individuals who no longer affiliate with a religious tradition. Coeditors Jan Stets, a social psychologist, and James Heft, a historian of theology, bring together leading scholars in the fields of sociology, developmental psychology, gerontology, political science, history, philosophy, and pastoral theology.

In The Fourth Branch: Reconstructing the Administrative State for the Commercial Republic Brian J. Cook confronts head-on the accumulating derangements in the American constitutional system and how the administrative state has contributed to the problems, how it has been a key force in addressing the troubles, and how it can be reformed to serve the system better. Cook calls for a decisive, pattern-breaking response in the form of a constitutional redesign to accommodate a fourth branch, an administrative branch. 

Scrutinizing house dust and air samples with a microscope, indoor-air-quality expert Jeffrey C. May has spent his career helping people identify what's causing their chronic health problems. In this thoroughly revised edition of My House Is Killing Me! Jeff and Connie May draw on the dramatic personal stories of their clients' suffering and relief to help listeners understand the links between environmental factors and human health.  

The Nature of the Judicial Process by Benjamin N. Cardozo is one of the most influential works on American jurisprudence. Written while Cardozo was a judge on the New York Court of Appeals (before joining the US Supreme Court), it explores how judges actually decide cases and the philosophy behind judicial decision-making.

Travis A. Weisse tells a new history of modern diets in America that goes beyond the familiar narrative of the nation’s collective failure to lose weight. By exploring how the popularity of diets grew alongside patients' frustrations with the limitations and failures of the American healthcare system in the face of chronic disease, Weisse argues that millions of Americans sought “fad” diets—such as the notorious Atkins program which ushered in the low-carbohydrate craze—to wrest control of their health from pessimistic doctors and lifelong pharmaceutical regimens.

In 1957 Sputnik launched toward the stars. President Kennedy then announced that the United States would send men to the Moon and then return them to Earth.These pivotal moments sparked an unequaled bound forward in human innovation and scientific exploration. At the heart of this momentous time were the men and women working behind the scenes. Scientists, historians, and astronomers share their memories and contributions from this unparalleled era in essays told in their own words.

William Dudley Haywood, nicknamed “Big Bill,” was an American labor organizer as well as founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (commonly referred to as the “Wobblies”). He was also a member of the executive committee of the Socialist Party of America.