Showing results by narrator "Todd Ross" in All Categories

With vivid, observant reporting, veteran environmental journalist Fred Pearce transports listeners to the remote cloud forests of Ecuador, the remains of a forest civilization in Nigeria, a mystifying mountain peak in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and the boreal forests of western Canada and the United States, where devastating wildfires are linked to suppressing the natural fire cycles of forests and the maintenance practices of Indigenous peoples. Throughout the book, Pearce interviews the people who traditionally live in forests.

"The only thing new in the world," said Harry S. Truman, "is the history you don't know." In this fresh and fascinating collection of historical vignettes, Martin W. Sandler (author of Resolute and Atlantic Ocean) restores to memory important events, people, and developments that have been lost to time. These tales are far from trivia; they illuminate little-known American and foreign achievements, ingenuity, heroics, blunders, and tragedies that changed the course of history and resonate today.

This is the first book to examine how and why the United States refused to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide until the early 2020s. Although the American government expressed sympathy towards the plight of the Armenians in the 1910s and 1920s, historian Julien Zarifian explores how, from the 1960s, a set of geopolitical and institutional factors soon led the United States to adopt a policy of genocide nonrecognition which it would cling to for over fifty years, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike.

Gil Goodson has been studying, training, and preparing for months to compete in the Gollywhopper Games. Everything is at stake. Once Gil makes it through the tricky preliminary rounds and meets his teammates in the fantastical Golly Toy and Game Company, the competition gets tougher. Brainteasers, obstacle courses, mazes, and increasingly difficult puzzles and decisions - not to mention temptations, dilemmas, and new friends (and enemies) - are all that separate Gil from ultimate victory. An interactive and inventive audiobook perfect for young listeners who love to solve puzzles!

Major Megan McClung is the first female United States Naval Academy graduate to be killed in action since the school’s 1845 founding and the highest-ranking female U.S. Marine Corps officer to die during the Iraq war. Be Bold is Megan’s inspirational story of defying steep odds, making the ultimate sacrifice and paving the way for a new era of women at war.

I'm Sam. I'm just this guy. Okay, yeah, I'm a golem created from the substance of his own magic by the late Hierarch of Southern California. With a lot of work, I might be able to wield magic myself. I kind of doubt it, though. Not like Daniel Blackland can.

Darius vaporized the Cygnian home world to end the war before it began. It didn’t work. Little does he know, he's been played for a sucker from the start. Terrible as the Cygnians are, there is a more ruthless enemy manipulating the Union to tear itself apart in a bloody war between the Revenants and the Cygnians. Darius is surging up the ranks in the Revenant fleet, winning victory after victory, but they're all hollow with his daughter, Cassandra, frozen in cryo and no way to safely wake her.

Two 20-something New Yorkers: awkward Seth and Carter, the trust fund hipster. They have one thing in common: an obsession with music. Rising stars on the producing scene, they stumble across a blues song long forgotten by history - and everything starts to unravel as they are drawn down a path that allows no return. Trapped in a game they don't understand, caught between performer and audience, righteous and forsaken....

Solus celebrates the Opening of the Mundus, a two-day holiday for the dead, but the city of the Soleri is hardly in need of diversion. A legion of traitors, led by a former captain of the Soleri military, rallies at the capital's ancient walls. And inside those fortifications, trapped by circumstance, a second army fights for its very existence. In a world inspired by ancient Egyptian history and King Lear, this follow-up to Michael Johnston's Soleri finds Solus besieged from within as well as without, and the Hark-Wadi family is stuck at the heart of the conflict.

The Deliverance is low on fuel and stranded in the middle of a war zone. Tanik Gurhain claims to have relinquished his hold on the crew, and yet they’ve all mysteriously elected him as their rightful leader, anyway. Blake is back to his skeptical self, and alarm bells are going off in Darius’s head, but with no fuel and the Eye of Thanatos blocked by increasingly tight Cygnian patrols, it hardly matters who suspects Tanik of foul play. He has a captive audience for the next phase of his plan.

Even though he seemed to have achieved it all, including landing his dream job at a Fortune 500 company, throughout his twenties Paul Sohn struggled with feelings of inadequacy, emptiness, and disillusionment. Something was very wrong. Finally at 28, after much contemplation and a life-changing encounter with his mentor, Paul traded in his high-paying job and sought a more meaningful life.

In this short accessible book, leading democratic theorist Jason Brennan guides listeners through the evolution of the concept of democracy and actual democratic practice over time to help them understand the foundations of this longstanding and yet newly fragile political system. In his wide-ranging tour of the concept, Brennan will examine what democracy meant to the Greeks who first developed the concept before examining how it changed throughout European and later Western history.

When does a scientific discovery become accepted fact? Why have scientific facts become easy to deny? And what can we do about it? In The Workshop and the World, philosopher and science historian Robert P. Crease answers these questions by describing the origins of our scientific infrastructure - the “workshop” - and the role of 10 of the world’s greatest thinkers in shaping it. As today’s politicians and government officials increasingly accuse scientists of dishonesty, conspiracy, and even hoaxes, engaged citizens wonder how we got to this level of distrust....

First, the bad news: an ancient evil - you know, your standard consume-all-life-in-the-galaxy deal - is about to be unleashed. The good news? Squad 312 is standing by to save the day. They've just got to take care of a few small distractions first. Like the clan of gremps who'd like to rearrange their favourite faces. And the cadre of illegit GIA Agents with creepy flowers where their eyes used to be, who'll stop at nothing to get their hands on Auri. Then there's Kal's long-lost sister, who's not exactly happy to see her baby brother and has a Syldrathi army at her back.

How did species wind up where they are today? Scientists have long conjectured that plants and animals dispersed throughout the world by drifting on large landmasses as they broke up, but in The Monkey’s Voyage, biologist Alan de Queiroz offers a radical new theory that displaces this passive view.

In Middle Men, Stegner Fellow and New Yorker contributor Jim Gavin delivers a hilarious and panoramic vision of California, portraying a group of men, from young dreamers to old vets, as they make valiant forays into middle-class respectability. In "Play the Man", a high-school basketball player aspires to a college scholarship; in "Elephant Doors", a production assistant on a game show moonlights as a stand-up comedian; and in the collection's last story, the immensely moving "Costello", a middle-aged plumbing-supplies salesman comes to terms with the death of his wife.

In this deft, fascinating, and easy-to-digest introduction to one of the most important innovations of recent times, Stephen P. Williams answers all of your blockchain questions, revealing how cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are just one example among dozens of transformative applications that this relatively new technology makes possible. He interprets the complexity into digestible anecdotes, metaphors, and straightforward descriptions for listeners who don’t know tech and explains all of blockchain’s most important aspects.

Status was once easy to identify—fast cars, fancy shoes, sprawling estates, elite brands. But in place of Louboutin’s and Lamborghinis, the relevance of the rich, famous, and gauche is waning and a riveting revolution is underfoot. Chuck Thompson—dubbed “savagely funny” by The New York Times and “wickedly entertaining” by the San Francisco Chronicle—sets out to determine what “status” means today and learns that what was once considered the low life has become the high life.

The book is a seminal contribution from a leading futurist who, over the past three decades, has explored each of the most disruptive forces shaping our world today. Eco Tech brings all this thinking together, fusing insight from thought leaders with the author's own considerable experience, to explore scenarios for 2050 and discuss eco-effectiveness as an established practice for governments, corporations, startups, and individuals.

From the Periphery consists of more than 30 first-person narratives of everyday people who describe what it's like to be treated differently by society because of their disabilities. The stories are raw and painful, but also surprisingly funny and deeply inspiring. The oral histories describe anger, independence, bigotry, solidarity, and love - in the family, at school, and at the workplace. From the Periphery will become a classic collection that increases understanding of the lived experiences of people with disabilities.