Showing results by narrator "George Newbern" in All Categories

For fans of Michael Lewis, the astounding untold story of how professional sports transformed, in the span of a single generation, from a cottage industry into a massive global business. In the cash-soaked world of contemporary sports, where every season brings news of higher salaries, endorsement deals, and television contracts, it is mind-boggling to remember that as recently as the 1970s elite athletes earned so little money that many were forced to work second jobs in the off-season to make ends meet.

"An engrossing microcosm of the internet’s Wild West years" (Kirkus Reviews), award-winning journalist David Kushner tells the incredible battle between the founder of Match.com and the con man who swindled him out of the website Sex.com, resulting in an all-out war for control for what still powers the internet today: love and sex.

George Chakiris famously played the angry gang leader Bernardo in the film version of West Side Story (1961), for which he won an Oscar for best supporting actor. My West Side Story is an insider's look at how this theatrical and cinematic landmark evolved from a conversation in Jerome Robbins's Manhattan apartment between him, Arthur Laurents, and Leonard Bernstein to ten Oscars, three Golden Globes, two Tony Awards, and a Grammy.

Devastated after both my fiancée and best friend betrayed me, I traveled to a distant isle in the Pacific Northwest, clinging to a job as an artist's assistant to escape my broken heart. Little did I know that I would find something else entirely when I met Briggs Tutheridge. His kindness and sensitivity were not at all what I expected. Still, his reputation was well-known and notorious, with bevies of admirers who wanted nothing more than a brief affair. That wasn't me. I was a wallflower destined to live in the shadows, and no amount of wishing could change that.

In September 2014, a Chinese company that most Americans had never heard of held the largest IPO in history - bigger than Google, Facebook, and Twitter combined. Alibaba, now the world's largest ecommerce company, mostly escaped Western notice for over 10 years, while building a customer base larger than Amazon's and handling the bulk of ecommerce transactions in China. How did it happen? And what was it like to be along for such a revolutionary ride?

The old axiom is true: people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. We find ourselves in a cultural moment where people simply want to feel seen, heard, and loved. The good news? A little kindness goes a long way. It's time for this overlooked and underappreciated fruit of the Spirit to get its due.

When Dr. John Taylor is found dead in a hotel room in his hometown, the local police find enough incriminating evidence to suspect foul play. Detective Samantha Adams, whose Palo Alto beat usually covers small-town crimes, is innocently thrown into a high-profile murder case that is more intricately intertwined than she could ever imagine. A renowned plastic surgeon, a respected family man, and an active community spokesman, Dr. Taylor was loved and admired. But, hidden from the public eye, he led a secret life - in fact, multiple lives.

While his successful wife goes off to her law office each day, Simon Connolly takes care of their kids, Jake and Laney. Now that they are in high school, the angst-ridden father should feel more relaxed, but he doesn't. He's seen the statistics, read the headlines. And now, his darkest fear is coming true. There has been a shooting at school.

Eric Brach's new book Double Lives: True Tales of the Criminals Next Door offers terrifying true stories about the criminals hidden among us and the banality of evil and crime, elevated by its frank discussion of the nation-wide criminal scourge of the moment: opioid addiction. Double Lives chronicles the very monsters who walk unnoticed among us - even serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, or John Wayne Gacy. They are neighbors and students, professionals and friends living out criminal double lives.

Björn is a compulsive, meticulous bureaucrat who discovers a secret room at the government office where he works—a secret room that no one else in his office will acknowledge. When Björn is in his room, what his co-workers see is him standing by the wall and staring off into space looking dazed, relaxed, and decidedly creepy. Björn’s bizarre behavior eventually leads his co-workers to try and have him fired, but Björn will turn the tables on them with help from his secret room.

After resigning from his agency under an ethical cloud, forty-six-year-old Dan Cahill commits himself to rebuilding his relationship with Megan, the college-aged daughter in Las Vegas he has long neglected. She persuades a reluctant Cahill to join the student-led campaign of a popular professor competing in the Nevada presidential primary against impossible odds. As they face powerful forces conspiring to clear the field, Cahill's deep-seated disdain for electoral politics collides with Megan's higher ideals.

In Cyber Hacking: Wars in Virtual Space, we peer behind the cyber curtain. First, we look at the hackers - who they are, how they work, their motivations, and methods. The opening article examines hardware - specifically microprocessors and why they are vulnerable to tampering. Then we turn to the internal attacks, the worms and viruses whose resulting damage ranges from merely inconvenient and attention-getting to expensive and dangerous. Next, we take a broad look at issues of privacy and the technology used to gather and track personal information.

Whole hog barbecue is a culinary art form that is both disappearing and experiencing a renaissance. In The One True Barbecue, Rien Fertel chronicles the uniquely Southern art of whole hog barbecue - America's original barbecue - through the professional pitmasters who make a living firing, smoking, flipping, and cooking 200-plus pound pigs.

A great script is only as good as the effort you put into your career, but there is little information for the aspiring screenwriter about how to break in. Even those who study TV or film in college are taught to simply “get a production assistant job.” But then what? Anton Schettini provides a rare insider’s glimpse of the modern-day network and streaming TV writers’ room. Here, you will find practical advice, career path strategies, and first-hand accounts for how to establish your network, grow within it, and acquire the necessary tools to become a TV writer.

Just hours after his wife and her entire family perish in the Christmas Eve tsunami in Brisbane, American expat and former police officer Frank Mercy goes out to join his volunteer rescue unit and pulls a little boy from a submerged car, saving the child's life with only seconds to spare. In that moment, Frank's own life is transformed. Not quite knowing why, Frank sidesteps the law when, instead of turning Ian over to the Red Cross, he takes the boy home to the Midwestern farm where he grew up.

In Grimes's new sendup of a world she knows very well, Candy and Karl, hit men with a difference - they have scruples - once again venture into the murky Manhattan publishing scene. This time they come to the aid of a writer who is being sued by her unscrupulous literary agent, L. Bass Hess, a man determined to get a 15 percent commission for a book he didn't sell.

Dorothy Gale and her little dog Toto find themselves traveling through mystical places on their way to Oz. Accompanied by a kind stranger and some other characters, Dorothy follows the road through Foxville and realizes they will make it to the Land of Oz in time for Princess Ozma's royal birthday party. Once the band reaches Oz, Dorothy is met with some familiar faces as the celebration begins.

Mark Sternum, whom listeners first met in Perfect Agreement, is a veteran teacher. Twenty years older, separated for six months from his lover, and desperate to duck the overtures of double-dealing deans above him and disgruntled adjunct faculty below him, Mark has one ambition every day he is on campus - to close the classroom door and leave the world behind. His escape, however, is complicated by his contentious, complicated wrestling match of a relationship with the Professor, the tenured faculty member with whom Mark has co-taught this creative-writing workshop for ten years.

Combining the authors' personal weight-loss stories with their passion for economics, this bold new behavioral approach to dieting recommends micro habits and meta-rules that will enable dieters to control their impulses to overeat, approach food in a healthier way, and lose weight once and for all. Chris Payne and Rob Barnett are two formerly obese economists who met while working at Bloomberg. When they finally decided to do something about it, they lost weight by applying what they know best - economics - to their waistlines.

From the Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of The Theory of Everything, Darkest Hour, and The Two Popes comes the fascinating account of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s friendship—one of the most impactful relationships in history, and the basis of an upcoming play and film.