Showing results by narrator "Brian Holsopple" in All Categories

Who are we, and how do we relate to each other? Luciano Floridi, one of the leading figures in contemporary philosophy, argues that the explosive developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is changing the answer to these fundamental human questions. As the boundaries between life online and offline break down, and we become seamlessly connected to each other and surrounded by smart, responsive objects, we are all becoming integrated into an "infosphere".

The flies in the ointment. Once upon a time, the dying ruler of a small interstellar kingdom made a minor Old-Earth bureaucrat named Hobart Floyt the surprised inheritor of an interstellar spaceship. And that was wonderful, for in those days, when mankind was again expanding into the galaxy, a private spaceship was a license to coin credits. There were just a couple of minor problems.

Ken Rosen argues that successful real estate investors do not get rich in an up market. They get rich and stay rich by investing in real estate for the long-run. And, in fact, they view market downturns as opportunities.

As the saying goes, you can't pick your friends. If you could, Mac McCorkle would disown Padilla. They owned a bar together in Bonn, the West German capital, and stayed partners even after Padilla's sideline as a CIA operative got the bar blown up. Padilla was thought to be dead and erased from the CIA’s files - but now he's back on the agency's turf. Mac moved to Washington, D.C., after the trouble in Bonn, to get married and open his bar anew. His new bride is beautiful, the bar is a success, and Padilla's reappearance threatens everything.

Uneasy lies the head. In just a few months Alacrity Fitzhugh and Hobart Floyt had claimed Hobart's inheritance from the ruler of a small interstellar empire then returned to Earth and toppled its government. They'd also become good friends. But Alacrity had more important goals than bodyguarding Hobart - he wanted command of the fabulous White Ship, the starship designed to track down the secrets of the ancient and powerful Precursor aliens.

In the Age of the Customer, sales effectiveness depends mightily on the buyer experience. Despite nearly universal agreement on the need for creating value in every step of the buyer’s journey, sellers continue to struggle with how to create that value and connect meaningfully with buyers. New research bridges the gap and reveals the behavioral blueprint for sellers that makes buyers more likely to meet with them - and more likely to buy from them.

Societies all over the world are getting older, the result of the fact that we are living longer and having fewer children. At some point in the near future, much of the developed world will have at least twenty percent of their national populations over the age of sixty-five. Bradley Schurman calls this the Super Age. Today, Italy, Japan, and Germany have already reached the Super Age, and another ten countries will have gone over the tipping point in 2021.

Just as grownups do not believe in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus, "Investing adults" know that there is no such creature as the Stock-picking Fairy or the Market-timing Fairy. Further, there is no Risk Fairy who will write you cheap options that will protect your stock holdings against loss. Investing adults are familiar with Gene Fama, Zvi Bodie, Jack Bogle, and Burton Malkiel, and understand that a mean variance optimizer does not blend vegetables. In other words, this series is not for beginners.

Can humanity survive what it never saw coming? On October 15 at 2:15 a.m. Earth vanished. A scattered few woke alone in a world with no rules, other than survival at any cost. These survivors aren't truly alone... Someone or something is watching them. And waiting... Strangers unite. Sides are chosen.

Velocity Overdrive: The Road to Reinvention is the third book from entrepreneur and former dealer Dale Pollak's Velocity series. In his prior books, Velocity: From the Front Line to the Bottom Line and Velocity 2.0: Paint, Pixels & Profitability, Pollak introduced the Velocity Method of Inventory Management TM and the application of market-based metrics for improving the performance of used vehicle departments. Velocity Overdrive shifts the discussion of velocity principles and metrics to the next level.

Dale Pollak believes that the car business - and the dealers who make their living in it - are in more trouble than anyone cares to admit. After four decades and three best-selling books, Pollak has witnessed the trials and triumphs of the retail automotive industry from a vantage point that few get. While car dealers are making good money, he warns that the industry is at a critical turning point, with too few paying attention to how inefficiency and lack of transparency are sapping the industry’s true potential.

Lee Nez is a nightwalker - a Navajo vampire. He's also a New Mexico state police officer. Paired with sexy FBI agent Diane Lopez, Lee is tracking down violent smugglers who have killed two cops while bringing silver and turquoise across the border from Mexico. Shocked to discover that the smugglers are Navajo shapeshifters/skinwalkers, Lee and Diane realize they must wipe out the whole pack, and fast, before the skinwalkers realize there's a nightwalker on their tails. Werewolves and vampires are deadly enemies.

The Rangers’ mission was clear. They were to lead the assault on Omaha Beach and break out inland. Simultaneously, other Ranger units would scale the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc to destroy the ostensibly huge gun battery there and thus protect the invasion fleet from being targeted. But was the Pointe du Hoc mission actually necessary? Why did the Allies plan and execute an attack on a gun battery that they knew in advance contained no field guns? And more importantly, why did they ignore the position at Maisy that did?

As one of the world’s leading field biologists, George Schaller has spent much of his life traversing wild and isolated places in his quest to understand and conserve threatened species - from mountain gorillas in the Virunga to pandas in the Wolong and snow leopards in the Himalaya. Throughout his celebrated career, Schaller has spent more time in Tibet than in any other part of the world, devoting more than thirty years to the wildlife, culture, and landscapes that captured his heart and continue to compel him.

During the 1840s and 1850s, a dangerous ferment afflicted the North-South border region, pitting the slave states of Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri against the free states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Aspects of this struggle - the underground railroad, enforcement of the fugitive slave laws, mob actions, and sectional politics - are well known as parts of other stories.

In this Very Short Introduction, David Seed doesn't offer a history of science fiction, but instead attempts to tie examples of science fiction to different historical moments, in order to demonstrate how science fiction has evolved over time, especially the emergence of science fiction as a popular genre in the 20th century. Seed looks not only at literature, but also at drama and poetry, as well as film. Examining recurrent themes in science fiction, he looks at voyages into space, the concept of the alien and alternative social identities....

In August 2006, many senior U.S. officials thought America had lost the war in Iraq, as the senior U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer there wrote that control of al Anbar Province, the seat of the raging Sunni insurgency, was irrevocably lost to the insurgents. In January 2007, the 3rd Battalion, 69th Armored Regiment deployed to Ramadi as part of the 3rd Infantry Division, the first regular Army unit to deploy to Iraq for a third time. The battalion and its went to work in a campaign that will be seen as the D-Day of the Global War on Terror.

Can humanity survive what it never saw coming? On October 15 at 2:15 a.m. Earth vanished. A scattered few woke alone in a world with no rules, other than survival at any cost. These survivors aren't truly alone... Someone or something is watching them. And waiting... Strangers unite. Sides are chosen.

The Cutter Stream colonies were at peace. If everybody behaved reasonably, that peace could last a thousand years. Allen Allenson had known war; it had made him peaceful and reasonable. He was far too experienced to believe the same was true of all his fellow colonists, however, let alone the government of the distant homeworld across the Bight.

One hundred and two years ago Teddy Roosevelt split the Republican Party to advance his progressive agenda. Progressivism, or Big Government Republicanism, became the philosophy of the Republican Party's establishment elite. Fifty years ago conservatives began a battle for control of the party. Now is the time for conservatives to finish the job and take back the Republican Party.