Showing results by narrator "Ganim Peter" in All Categories

Charles Lindbergh is just one of several American icons whom Joshua Kendall puts on the psychologist's couch in America's Obsessives. In this fascinating look at the arc of American history through the lens of compulsive behavior, he shows how some of our nation's greatest achievements - from the Declaration of Independence to the invention of the iPhone - have roots in the disappointments and frustrations of early childhood.

Insectoid Dronons have slain the queen Semarritte, throwing into chaos the ten thousand worlds over which she reigned. Desperate to save mankind, Lord Veriasse, Semarritte's near-immortal consort, has created a new queen: Everynne, cloned from her dead mother. Born to rule, Everynne instead is on the run, often only one planet ahead of advancing forces of the invaders, who recognize that Everynne is a powerful rallying point for threatened humanity.

As a snowfall blankets 8th century Mosul, a Persian noblewoman arrives at the home of the scholar Dabir and his friend the swordsman Captain Asim. Najya has escaped from a dangerous cabal that has ensorcelled her to track down ancient magical tools of tremendous power, the bones of the old ones.

Find a future. Lose a past. She's a star on the rise, singing about the hard life behind her. She's also on the run. Nashville is where she's come to claim her destiny. It's also where the darkness she's fled might find her. And destroy her.

It's Halloween, and John Justin Mallory's partner, Winnifred Carruthers, has been so busy preparing for the biggest holiday of the year (in his Manhattan, anyway) that she seems short of energy and pale. Mallory is worried that she's been working too hard. Then he notices the two puncture marks on her neck....

In A Grave in Gaza, Omar Yussef and his boss, Magnus Wallender, travel to the Gaza Strip for a routine inspection of the UN schools in the Gaza refugee camps. Upon their arrival they meet James Cree, the UN security officer for Gaza, who informs them that a teacher at one of their schools has been accused of spying and imprisoned.

Fazlur Rahman was one of the great 20th-century Muslim modernists, whose prolific writing and sheer number of students who make up a who’s who of Islamic studies throughout North America reveal the impact that he has had on both academe and on Muslim communities throughout the world. The modernist approach is contrasted with the radical approach of Mawlana Mawdudi of Pakistan.

Al Qaeda is no longer the central organizing force that aids or authorizes terrorist attacks or recruits terrorists. It is now more a source of inspiration for terrorist acts carried out by independent local groups that have branded themselves with the Al Qaeda name. Building on his previous groundbreaking work on the Al Qaeda network, forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman has greatly expanded his research to explain how Islamic terrorism emerges and operates in the 21 century.

For over a quarter century, Iran has been one of America's chief nemeses. Ever since Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah in 1979, the relationship between the two nations has been antagonistic: revolutionary guards chanting against the Great Satan, Bush fulminating against the Axis of Evil, Iranian support for Hezbollah, and President Ahmadinejad blaming the U.S. for the world's ills.

Over the last few years, Moustafa Bayoumi has been an extra in Sex and the City 2 playing a generic Arab, a terrorist suspect (or at least his namesake "Mustafa Bayoumi" was) in a detective novel, the subject of a trumped-up controversy because a book he had written was seen by right-wing media as pushing an "anti-American, pro-Islam" agenda, and was asked by a US citizenship officer to drop his middle name of Mohamed. Others have endured far worse fates.

Alex and Leslie Twisden lead charmed lives - fabulous jobs, a town house on Manhattan's Upper East Side, a passionate marriage. What they don't have is a child, and as they try one infertility treatment after the next, yearning turns into obsession. As a last-ditch attempt to make their dream of parenthood come true, Alex and Leslie travel to Slovenia, where they submit to a painful and terrifying procedure that finally gives them what they so fervently desire...but with awful consequences.

Maddie James and her colleagues are terrorism experts working in a crumbling intelligence agency. They are certain another terrorist attack is coming, but in a post-9/11 election year the Administration is stressing its victories in the War on Terror - and few want to hear the team's warnings. Reluctantly, Maddie's given a team of five analysts to focus on the impending threat. The crew labors through bureaucratic obstacles, personal problems, and a blossoming romance between its senior members. They come heartbreakingly close to stopping the attack....

Rusty Sabin extracts two bags of gold from the Sacred Valley, partly to spend on Maisry Lester, the girl he hopes to marry. When frontiersman Charlie Galway tries to steal the gold, Galway murders Maisry's father and blames Rusty's friend, Standing Bull.

Long before the advent of conservative talk radio and Fox News, Robert Ringer was an outspoken advocate for the cause of freedom and free enterprise. In this classic work - updated for the 21st century - Ringer's basic premise is that liberty must be given a higher priority than all other objectives.

In Earth-Shattering, astronomy writer Bob Berman guides us through an epic, all-inclusive investigation into these instances of violence both mammoth and microscopic. From the sudden creation of dazzling "new stars" to the furiously explosive birth of our moon, from the uncomfortable truth about ultra-high-energy cosmic rays bombarding us to the incredible ways in which humanity has harnessed cataclysmic energy for its gain, Berman masterfully synthesizes some of our worst fears into an astonishing portrait of the universe.

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama famously announced the "end of history." The Berlin Wall had fallen; liberal democracy had won out. But what of illiberal democracy - the idea that popular majorities, working through the democratic process, might reject gender equality, religious freedoms, and other norms that Western democracies take for granted? Nowhere have such considerations become more relevant than in the Middle East, where the uprisings of 2011 swept the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups to power.

John L. Esposito is one of America's leading authorities on Islam. Now, in this brilliant portrait of Islam today - and tomorrow - he draws on a lifetime of thought and research to sweep away the negative stereotypes and provide an accurate, richly nuanced, and revelatory account of the fastest-growing religion in the world. Here Esposito explores the major questions and issues that face Islam in the 21st century and how that will deeply affect global politics.

Hewlett Packard is an American icon, the largest information technology company in the world. The bedrock of Silicon Valley, it employs more than 300,000 people, its market capitalization is in excess of $100 billion, and its products are in almost every home in the country where there is a printer or computer. But the story of Hewlett-Packard reflects power struggles that shape corporate America and is an alarming morality tale for our times.

The citizens of Plainfield, Texas, have had it with the broke-down United States. So they vote to secede, rename themselves America in memory of their former country, and happily set themselves up to receive tourists from their closest neighbor: America. Couldn’t happen? Well, it might, and so it goes in the 13 stories in Matthew Baker’s brilliantly illuminating, incisive, and heartbreaking collection Why Visit America.

Daniel Boone opened up the American west; more than 200,000 settlers poured into Kentucky on the Wilderness Road he helped establish. John Mason Brown's classic biography brilliantly depicts Boone's life and times, delving into all the complexities of this fascinating man as well as the landmark historical events he lived through - including the Revolutionary War and Louisiana Purchase.