Showing results by narrator "Michael Butler-Murray" in All Categories

The first fifty years of America's most popular spectator sport have been strangely neglected by historians claiming to tell the "complete story" of pro football. Well, here are the early stories that "complete story" has left out. What about the awful secret carried around by Sid Luckman, the Bears' Hall of Fame quarterback whose father was a mobster and a murderer? Or Steve Hamas, who briefly played in the NFL then turned to boxing and beat Max Schmeling, conqueror of Joe Louis?

John Schulian, a much-honored sportswriter for nearly forty years, takes us back to a time when our greatest athletes stood before us as human beings, not remote gods. In this compelling collection, Schulian paints prose portraits to remind fans of what today's cloistered stars won't share with them. The result is an audiobook guaranteed to stir memories for the generation that was - and to leave subsequent generations wishing they had it so good.

Secrets and Leaks examines the complex relationships among executive power, national security, and secrecy. State secrecy is vital for national security, but it can also be used to conceal wrongdoing. How then can we ensure that this power is used responsibly?

In May 1866, just a year after the Civil War ended, Memphis erupted in a three-day spasm of racial violence that saw whites rampage through the city's black neighborhoods. By the time the fires consuming black churches and schools were put out, forty-six freed people had been murdered. This is a portrait of a Southern city that opens an entirely new view onto the Civil War and its aftermath. A momentous national event, the riot is also remarkable for being "one of the best-documented episodes of the American nineteenth century."

What is the future of news? That question takes on greater urgency with each passing year, and has triggered no shortage of controversy among journalists, scholars, and the public - some warning of serious journalism's imminent demise as traditional business models collapse, others anticipating its rebirth as networked citizens participate in the news process. What remains clear is that in our media shift from analog to digital, from one-way to increasingly many-to-many forms of communication, we need to rethink much of what we know about journalism - who produces it, under what conditions, and with what kind of impact in society.

Early in his career, Dan Beaver discovered that people were never taught how to develop an intimate relationship. We are taught how to read, how to write, drive, play sports, and use a computer. But nowhere in our society are we taught how to develop or maintain an intimate relationship. Most of us learned from TV shows. Some generations were taught by Ozzie and Harriet Nelson or Ward and June Cleaver. Other generations learned from their favorite soap operas, or maybe The Waltons, Cliff and Clair Huxtable, Roseanne, Friends, or 7th Heaven.

The road to Major League Baseball goes through the minor leagues. Every year there are over 5,500 players trying to work their way to the top of the tiered minor league system. Very few people know what life is really like for these aspiring players - until now. This collection of stories from actual minor league players is a hilarious, heartbreaking, and honest account of the struggle to make it to the big leagues.

Rock Stars on the Record is a collection of firsthand tales by artists of all ages, backgrounds, and musical influences, remembering the meaning behind the records that mattered most to them. From Laura Jane Grace to Ian MacKaye, Don McLean to Cherie Currie, Alice Bag to Mac DeMarco, and many more, best-selling author Eric Spitznagel talks to rock stars across the sonic spectrum about the albums that changed them in ways only music can change someone.

Crusades against the automobile are nothing new. Its arrival sparked battles over street space, pitting the masses against the millionaires who terrorized pedestrians. When the masses got cars of their own, they learned to love driving, too. During World War II, Washington nationalized Detroit and postwar Americans embraced car and country as if they were one.

Since 2001, the US Department of State has been sending hip hop artists abroad to perform and teach as goodwill ambassadors. There are good reasons for this: Hip hop is known and loved across the globe, acknowledged and appreciated as a product of American culture. Hip hop has from its beginning been a means of creating community through artistic collaboration, fostering what hip hop artists call building.

The leaders of Razorfish share their strategies for merging marketing and IT.

Innovation is worth little unless it generates lasting success, and gaining measurable results from new ideas requires more than creative risk-taking. Successful innovation demands a tactical approach, and Getting Innovation Right reveals how your company can secure real traction and growth in the marketplace.

Leaders tend to obstinately stick to the leadership style that brought them most success in the past, usually one of two extreme styles: functional leadership that focuses on operational excellence or smart leadership that focuses on growth. When a leader's focus is too functional, the organization becomes introverted and can focus too much on bottom-line profitability while missing out on top-line growth opportunities.

Mason Bee Revolution explains how docile, hard-working, solitary mason bees (and their compatriots, the leafcutter bees) are even more productive pollinators than honeybees, and keeping them can be a fun, easy, backyard hobby for gardeners, conservationists, foodies, and families everywhere. While scientists search for answers to save the honeybee, Dave Hunter and his company, Crown Bees, are leading the effort to increase the population of other highly efficient pollinators.

The cannabis industry is seeing an explosion of entrepreneurship and a great amount of capital is flowing into the sector globally. It is essential for cannabis business owners to understand how to be one of the few businesses that secure funding. The answer to bridging this disconnect lies in not only understanding how to build a successful business but, directly listening from investors on what is required when backing a company. And most importantly, why they invest in certain companies, entrepreneurs, and not others.

Less and less Christian demographically, America is now home to an ever-larger number of people who say they identify with no religion at all. These non-Christians have increasingly been demanding their full participation in public life, bringing their arguments all the way to the Supreme Court. The law is on their side, but that doesn't mean that their attempts are not met with suspicion or outright hostility.

First introduced in Vaughan's A Rambling Man, Lucas Cain is back in the saddle, searching for some peace of mind and some solace after the loss of his wife and newborn child. He has continued his traveling from town to town, an itinerant lawman focused on capturing the bad guys for whatever amount is on the wanted papers for them. Local sheriffs and marshals, though initially wary of him, come to love him because does what he does without pay—other than the reward money.

Growing the Top Line: Four Key Questions and the Proven Process for Scaling Your Business delivers the step-by-step approach to topline growth used by some of the word's most successful companies. In this book, leading growth strategy consultant and author Cliff Farrah reveals the copyrighted growth strategy that he has developed over the last 20 years through 1,400 successful client engagements and input from leaders at Fortune 500 organizations.

In today's fast-moving and competitive business environment, strong leadership, insightful strategy, and effective innovation are critical links to staying ahead of your competition. Getting your business house in order can often be complicated, but does it really have to be? How do you take MBA 101 lessons, great models, and exceptional concepts and put them into play in the real world? Business Strategy: Plan, Execute, Win! strives to answers these questions in an educational and entertaining format.

In Teach for Climate Justice, accomplished educator and social and emotional learning expert Tom Roderick proposes a visionary interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to PreK-12 climate education. He argues that meaningful instruction on this urgent issue of our time must focus on climate justice—the convergence of climate change and social justice—in a way that is emotionally safe, developmentally appropriate, and ultimately empowering.