Showing results by narrator "Sean Runnette" in All Categories

The cycle of day and night and the cycle of seasons are two familiar natural cycles around which many human activities are organized. But is there a third natural cycle of importance for us humans? Nature's Third Cycle discusses the fascinating science behind the sunspot cycle, and gives an insider's perspective of this cutting-edge scientific research from one of the leaders of the field.

We all have the sense that the American economy - and its government - tilts toward big business, but as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains in his powerful new book, People, Power, and Profits, a few corporations dominate entire sectors of the economy, contributing to skyrocketing inequality and slow growth. This is how the financial industry has managed to write its own regulations, tech companies have accumulated reams of personal data with little oversight, and the government has negotiated trade deals that fail to represent the interests of workers.

Personal relationships are key to success: In a time when workplaces are becoming more digital and more automated every day, our mindsets and our personal relationships will determine whether we succeed in tomorrow’s markets. In the coming years, the human success factor will determine who is among the winners and who is among the losers. All business adventures start with a focus on the self. When you know who you are and develop a deep sense of confidence in yourself, you’ll have the flexibility to roll with the punches.

From best-selling author Dennis McFarland comes an extraordinary Civil War novel: the journey of a nineteen-year-old private abandoned by his comrades in the Wilderness, struggling to regain his voice, his identity, and his place in a world - all utterly changed by what he has experienced on the battlefield. In the winter of 1864, young Summerfield Hayes, a pitcher for the famous Eckford Club, enlists in the Union army, leaving his sister, a schoolteacher, devastated and alone in their Brooklyn home.

A revolutionary program that will have everyone in the house sleeping through the night. When Dr Craig Canapari became a father, he realised that even three years of 36-hour hospital shifts didn't prepare him for the extreme sleep deprivation that comes with parenthood. Sleepless nights for kids means sleepless nights for the rest of the family - and a grumpy group around the breakfast table in the morning. In It's Never Too Late to Sleep Train, Canapari harnesses the power of habit to chart a clear and concise path through this crowded, noisy world.

It's 1976. Dr. Colin Sanford, a brilliant, ambitious obstetrician in the Pacific Northwest city of Emerald, has a plan to create the first in vitro baby. He recruits Dr. Giselle Hearn, an experienced laboratory geneticist/embryologist at the university who’s frustrated by the ultraconservative policies of her department chairman. Drs. Sanford and Hearn, working secretly, set out to put their names in the history books. Unfortunately, a secret that big is hard to keep....

In 1995, Darell Hammond read an article in the Washington Post about an unthinkable tragedy: Two young children suffocated in a car on a hot summer day in southeast Washington, D.C. The story indicated that the children had nowhere to play; in the absence of a playground, they had climbed into an abandoned car. Reading the article fueled Hammond's sense of injustice, and his life's mission came into focus

Harry S. Truman, a farmer and soldier from Missouri and a latecomer to politics, was thrust unexpectedly into the presidency when President Roo­sevelt died in office with World War II raging in Europe. Truman was a plain-speaking, decisive, and sometimes impulsive leader who dropped the atomic bomb to end the war.

James Garfield, a powerful figure in the Reconstruction-era Congress, took office in 1881 with a goal of uniting the Republican Party, which was split between the Stalwarts (who strongly favored political patronage) and the so-called Half-Breeds (who believed patronage bred corruption).

From day one of the BP oil spill, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal acted as a leader in a crisis should: quickly and decisively - providing a stark contrast to President Obama, who dithered and bogged down the containment process with needless bureaucracy. In his new book, Leadership and Crisis, Jindal reveals the extent of the Obama administration’s incompetence during the oil spill and shows why commonsense conservative solutions are exactly what we need to solve all of our nation’s biggest problems.

On May 17th, 1968, a group of Catholic antiwar activists burst into a draft board in suburban Baltimore, stole hundreds of Selective Service records (which they called "death certificates"), and burned the documents in a fire fueled by homemade napalm. The bold actions of the ''Catonsville Nine'' quickly became international news and captured headlines throughout the summer and fall of 1968 when the activists, defended by radical attorney William Kunstler, were tried in federal court.

Chester A. Arthur, who had profited from a plum patronage position dur­ing the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, found himself thrust into a dif­ficult role when his predecessor, James Garfield, died of a gunshot wound. With Garfield’s death, the controversy over political patronage bubbled to a head.

Chaplains of the Militia is the extraordinary story of those priests accused of complicity in genocide. Chris McGreal takes us from Rwanda in 1994, where he stood among the bodies at one of the many massacres in churches, to modern day France in pursuit of a priest notorious during the genocide for wearing a gun and selecting victims for the machete-waving militia.

Danny Shapiro is an isolated teenager living with a dying mother, a hostile father, and no friends. To cope with these circumstances, Danny forges a reality of his own, which includes the sinister “Three Men in Black,” mysterious lake creatures with insect-like carapaces, a beautiful young seductress and thief, with whom Danny falls in love, and an alien-human love child who—if only Danny can keep her alive—will redeem the planet.

Warren Buffett compares stock trading to great athletes: They excel, not because of fast neurological responses, but because of their ability to delay as long as possible before reacting. Successful CEOs, fire fighters, and military officers all know how to manage delay to gather as much information as possible to get the results they need. In Wait, Frank Partnoy argues that decisions of all kinds, whether 'snap' or long-term, benefit from being made at the last possible moment. The art of knowing how long you can afford to delay before committing is at the heart of many a great decision, whether in a corporate takeover or a marriage proposal.

Robert Altman and the Elaboration of Hollywood Storytelling reveals an Altman barely glimpsed in previous critical accounts of the filmmaker. This re-examination of his seminal work during the "Hollywood Renaissance" or "New Hollywood" period of the early 1970s (including M*A*S*H and Nashville) sheds new light on both the films and the filmmaker, reframing Altman as a complex, pragmatic innovator whose work exceeds, but is also grounded in, the norms of classical Hollywood storytelling rather than someone who rejected those norms in favor of modernist art cinema.

In this excerpt from So Many Roads, Rolling Stone contributing editor David Browne chronicles one of the most conflicted years in the Dead's history—1977, when the band’s popularity soars thanks to a massive free concert, but Jerry Garcia begins to dabble in the hard drugs that would ultimately kill him.

Political Realignment tracks the evolution of citizen and elite opinions on economic and cultural issues from the 1970s to the 2010s - and the impact of these changes on electoral politics and public policy. Citizen positions on these cleavages have realigned over time, producing a similar realignment in the structure of the party systems to represent these demands. Economic issues remain important, now joined by divisions on cultural issues as a backlash to modernization. Assembling a time series of empirical evidence, this study explains the new forces of elector change in both Europe and the United States.

President Gerald R. Ford, a member of Congress on the verge of retire­ment, was selected by President Nixon to serve as vice president when Spiro T. Agnew abruptly resigned after being charged with accepting bribes. Within months, Ford would become president when Nixon him­self was forced to resign in the wake of the Watergate scandal. An honest, square-jawed, straight-shooting Midwesterner, Ford pardoned Nixon, believing a pardon was the best thing for the country.

In testing the scope of the president’s power in the field of foreign affairs under the Constitution, John Adams quickly learned that an aggressive approach to exercising executive power could backfire. He found himself caught in a political tug-of-war between the Federalists and the Jeffer­sonian Republicans over foreign affairs.