Showing results by narrator "Gary Roelofs" in All Categories

Before Lawrence v. Texas tells the story of the long, troubled, and ultimately hopeful road to constitutional change. Wesley G. Phelps describes the achievements, setbacks, and unlikely alliances along the way. Over the course of decades, and at great risk to themselves, gay and lesbian Texans and their supporters launched political campaigns and legal challenges, laying the groundwork for Lawrence. Phelps shares the personal experiences of the people and couples who contributed to the legal strategy that ultimately overturned the states discriminatory law.

There were, Peter Thompson notes, some 150 synonyms for inebriation in common use in colonial Philadelphia and, on the eve of the Revolution, just as many licensed drinking establishments. Clearly, 18th-century Philadelphians were drawn to the tavern. In addition to the obvious lure of the liquor, taverns offered overnight accommodations, meals, and stabling for visitors. They also served as places to gossip, gamble, find work, make trades, and gather news.

From social theorist and psychotherapist Rabbi Michael Lerner comes a strategy for a new socialism built on love, kindness, and compassion for one another. Revolutionary Love proposes a method to replace what Lerner terms the "capitalist globalization of selfishness" with a globalization of generosity, prophetic empathy, and environmental sanity.

Travel opens the door to the unknown. When you pack your bags for travel and adventure, you might get more than you expected - a side trip into a phantom world where mysterious things happen. This collection of original true stories tells of travelers around the world who are suddenly faced with ghosts, paranormal phenomena, unusual synchronicities, time slips, magic, visions, past-life connections, premonitions, mystical experiences, mysterious figures, and more.

Among the darkest corners of Kentucky's past are the grisly feuds that tore apart the hills of Eastern Kentucky from the late 19th century until well into the 20th. Now, from the tangled threads of conflicting testimony, John Ed Pearce, Kentucky's best-known journalist, weaves engrossing accounts of six of the most notorious accounts to uncover what really happened and why. His story of those days of darkness brings to light new evidence, questions commonly held beliefs about the feuds.

In Far-Right Vanguard, John Huntington shows how, for almost a century, the far right has forced so-called "respectable" conservatives to grapple with their concerns, thereby intensifying right-wing thought and forecasting the trajectory of American politics. Ultraconservatives of the 20th century were the vanguard of modern conservatism as it exists in the Republican Party of today.

In the popular imagination the picture of slavery, frozen in time, is one of huge cotton plantations and opulent mansions. However, in over a hundred years of history detailed in this book, the hard reality of slavery in Mississippi's antebellum world is strikingly different from the one of popular myth. It shows that Mississippi's past was never frozen, but always fluid. It shows too that slavery took a number of shapes before its form in the late antebellum mold became crystalized for popular culture.

I am the narcissist. I am chock full of wickedness. You think that you can have realistic expectations of me, but I will do whatever I can do to throw you off your game. I love devouring empaths. Those who are lonely. Those who have been abused and damaged. Those are the easiest prey for me. I target especially those who don’t put up much of a fight.

The third book in Charles Bowden’s “accidental trilogy” that began with Blood Orchid and Blues for Cannibals, Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing attempts to resolve the overarching question: How can a person live a moral life in a culture of death? As humanity moves further into the 21st century, Bowden continues to interrogate our roles in creating the ravaged landscapes and accumulated death that still surround us, as well as his own childhood isolation, his lust for alcohol and women, and his waning hope for a future.

On the night of April 8, 1956, Marine drill instructor Matthew McKeon led Platoon 71 on a forced march through the backwaters of Parris Island in an effort to restore flagging discipline. Unexpectedly strong currents in Ribbon Creek and an ensuing panic led to the drowning of six recruits. The tragedy of Ribbon Creek and the court-martial of Staff Sergeant McKeon became the subject of sensational national media coverage and put the future of the US Marine Corps in jeopardy.

Leading analysts have predicted for decades that nuclear weapons would help pacify international politics. But why do international relations in the nuclear age remain so competitive? Indeed, why are today's major geopolitical rivalries intensifying? In The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution, Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press tackle the central puzzle of the nuclear age: The persistence of intense geopolitical competition in the shadow of nuclear weapons.

Author Jason E. Pierce argues that since the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the American West has been a racially contested space. The first comprehensive study to examine the construction of White racial identity in the West, Making the White Man’s West shows how two visions of the West - as a racially diverse holding cell and a White refuge - shaped the history of the region and influenced a variety of contemporary social issues in the West today.

In this third edition of Border Games, Peter Andreas charts the rise and transformation in policing the flow of drugs and migrants across the US-Mexico border. Recent border crackdowns and wall-building campaigns, he argues, are not unprecedented. Rather, they are the outcome of an escalatory dynamic already in motion—but now played out on a far bigger stage, with higher stakes, and in new security and political contexts. Focusing on the power of symbolic politics and policy feedback effects, Andreas traces the logic behind such buildup.

Do you have a person in your life that is just a little off and by a little off, I mean that they're full blown strange? Are they living like an emperor in their world and using everyone around them like pawns? Are they quite possibly the smartest person you know but not living a life that is actually fulfilling by normal standards? Are they nice to you, but only when they really want something from you? You may have found yourself a sociopath.

Longtime fly fisherman Quinn Grover had contemplated the “why” of his fishing identity before, more recently, becoming focused on the “how” of it. He realized he was a dedicated fly fisherman, in large part, because public lands and public waterways in the West made it possible. In Wilderness of Hope Grover recounts his fly-fishing experiences with a strong evocation of place, connecting those experiences to the ongoing national debate over public lands.

How do public employees win and lose their collective bargaining rights? And how can public sector labor unions protect those rights? These are the questions answered in From Collective Bargaining to Collective Begging. Dominic Wells takes a mixed-methods approach and uses more than five decades of state-level data to analyze the expansion and restriction of rights.

What do a school shooter, a corporate swindler, and a bullheaded ideologue have in common? They all converge on what author Kirk Schneider terms "the polarized mind". The polarized mind, which is the fixation on one point of view to the utter exclusion of competing points of view, is killing us - personally, politically, and environmentally. Drawing from the standpoint of existential psychology, this audiobook details the basis for the polarized mind, how it has ravaged leaders and their cultures throughout history.

Michael P. Hoffmann, Carrie Koplinka-Loehr, and Danielle L. Eiseman offer an eye-opening journey through a complete menu of before-dinner drinks and salads; main courses and sides; and coffee and dessert. Along the way they examine the escalating changes occurring to the flavors of spices and teas, the yields of wheat, the vitamins in rice, and the price of vanilla. Their story is rounded out with a primer on the global food system, the causes and impacts of climate change, and what we can all do.

The leader of a gang of high end thieves is trying to outwit the Russian mob, the FBI and stay ahead of his new girlfriend in this fast paced crime thriller. The trail leads from New York, to London, Dubai and Luxembourg as the Thief in Law evades his enemies and pulls off some daring heists.

In his preface to this reissue of the 1990 book, Challenging the Boundaries of Reform, W. J. Conroy reflects on the recent legacy of Bernie Sanders, his agenda for America, and his appeal to young voters. His audiobook then looks back to identify Sanders’ experience in Burlington by examining several case studies that unfolded amid a conservative trend nationally, an unsympathetic state government, and a hostile city council.