Showing results by narrator "Kevin Stillwell" in All Categories

There are reasons other than his longevity why so many world leaders - among them the Chinese President Xi Jinping - continue to seek the counsel of Henry Kissinger, who stepped down as U.S. secretary of state close to four decades ago.

For the last 60 years, fear has seeped into every area of American life: Americans own more guns than citizens of any other country, sequester themselves in gated communities, and retreat from public spaces. And yet, crime rates have plummeted, making life in America safer than ever. Why, then, are Americans so afraid - and where does this fear lead to? In this remarkable work of social history, May demonstrates how our obsession with security has made citizens fear each other and distrust the government, making America less safe and less democratic.

Washington’s foreign policy elites have been left just as disoriented by the rise of presidential hopefuls, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, as everyone else. In signaling the rise of populism as a dominant strain in US politics, Trump and Sanders challenge the basic assumptions on which decades of US foreign and domestic policy have been built.

Best-selling authors Jeffery Deaver and Anne Perry join rising stars like Dana Chamblee Carpenter and Paul Gail Benson in a collection that proves Music City is a deadly place to be when your song gets called. Featuring stories by Donald Bain, Robert Dugoni, Jefferson Bass, Mary Burton, Jonathan Stone, Steven James, Maggie Toussaint, Clay Stafford, Heywood Gould, Jaden Terrell, and more....

Since Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president on November 8, the liberal commentariat has been sounding the alarm on the fate of the international order: the Pax Americana is over. Four years after dismissing American decline as a myth, Robert Kagan now claims we’re nearing the “end of the 70-year-old U.S. world order.” Ian Buruma laments that those who voted for Trump and Brexit wish to “pull down the pillars” of liberal internationalism and retreat into isolation.

Even now, gazing back through the jaundiced lens of subsequent experience, Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign speech in Berlin still seems an extraordinary occasion.

It is a new world, stunned by the horrors that linger in the aftermath of total war. The United States and Soviet Union are squaring off in a different kind of conflict, one that’s fought in the shadows, where there are whispers of strange and mysterious developments.... Normal people across the United States have inexplicably gained paranormal abilities. A factory worker can heal the sick and injured. A schoolteacher bends emotions to her will. A car salesman alters matter with a simple touch. A former soldier speaks to the dying and gains their memories as they pass on.

For 12 years, Katrina held all the "most horrible, most expensive" titles for US hurricanes. When the monster storm slammed into Mississippi's Gulf Coast in 2005, public health physician Dr. Robert Travnicek firmly faced the disaster. In Katrina, Mississippi: Voices from Ground Zero, Dr. Travnicek and other first responders reveal what really happened during Katrina: what they did to get ready, how they managed from inside the emergency operations centers in Hancock and Harrison Counties, and the catastrophic destruction they dealt with for several years to come.

Newly available evidence shows that the CIA engaged in pervasive political meddling and paramilitary action in Congo during the 1960s - and that the local CIA station chief directly influenced the events that led to the death of Patrice Lumumba, the country's first democratically elected prime minister.

Responding to Mearsheimer's controversial essay blaming the West for the Ukraine crisis, McFaul and Sestanovich put the blame back on Putin and his ideological extremism, denying that NATO expansion provoked him. Mearsheimer replies.

Sam seems like an ordinary guy. While he is filling up his car with gas at a Stamford, Connecticut, station, a car whips into the station lot, stops alongside, and asks him for directions to LaGuardia airport. Gian claims that he is from Milan, but Sam can spot an imitation in a second. The "Italian's" accent is all wrong, and when he tries to sell him counterfeit luxury coats that he can't take back on the plane to Italy, they bump hips. And Sam feels that Gian has a gun tucked into his belt.

Conventional wisdom about the 1953 coup in Iran rests on the myth that the CIA toppled the country's democratically elected prime minister. In reality, the coup was primarily a domestic Iranian affair, and the CIA's impact was ultimately insignificant.

An aversion to urban density and all that it contributes to urban life, and a perception that the city was the place where "big government" first took root in America fostered what historian Steven Conn terms the "anti-urban impulse." In this provocative and sweeping audiobook, Conn explores the anti-urban impulse across the 20th century, examining how the ideas born of it have shaped both the places in which Americans live and work, and the anti-government politics so strong today.

The anger of less educated white voters in rural and exurban areas that Trump tapped into so effectively has been building for half a century. Its roots lie in Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” and only by understanding the mistakes made in that war can politicians hope to heal the country’s wounds.

For much of human history, only wars, revolutions, state collapses, or pandemics have reduced inequality. But a combination of government policy and technological progress offers hope for changing that grim formula.

When his girlfriend, Jillian Russo, washes up on the shore of the Merrimack River in Essex County, Massachusetts, Carmen Vaughn immediately finds himself the main suspect in her murder investigation. Desperate, he turns to his college professor and former criminal prosecutor, Timothy Pickering, for help clearing his name and figuring out what really happened. Against his family’s wishes, Pickering decides to help and recruits Adrian Watson, a private investigator who’s worked on other government cases in the past.

Jimmy Joste was a powerhouse in the oil and gas industry, but he was a weakling when it came to his gorgeous, athletic, longtime lover, Rhonda Glover. Addicted to her sexual prowess and madly in love, Joste gave her homes, cars, cash, and a $350,000 engagement ring. Their 15 years of passion and excess ended the day Rhonda drove directly from a shooting range to the Austin home they once shared. After pumping 10 bullets into him from a Glock 9mm, she stood over Joste's blood-splattered body and shot him six more times, twice below the waist.

This is the dramatic story of a conservative champion who shaped modern America—by leading a Golden Age of Bipartisanship and passing more legislation than any other Senator in the post-Vietnam era. Senator Orrin Hatch co-wrote the most sweeping civil rights bill since the 1960s, launched a health insurance program for 25,000,000 uninsured children, co-created the generic drug industry, and championed the greatest HIV/AIDS legislation in American history, while sponsoring or co-sponsoring over 750 pieces of legislation.

Thirty years ago, many Europeans saw multiculturalism - the em-brace of an inclusive, diverse society - as an answer to Europe’s social problems. Today, a growing number consider it to be a cause of them.

Just because a US presidential candidate bashes free trade on the campaign trail does not mean that he or she cannot embrace it once elected. After all, Barack Obama voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement as a US senator and disparaged the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a presidential candidate. In office, however, he came to champion the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a giant trade deal with 11 other Pacific Rim countries.