Showing results by narrator "A.R. Thorne" in All Categories

American households are awash in expensive credit card debt. But where did all this debt come from? In this history of the rise of postwar American finance, Sean H. Vanatta shows how bankers created our credit card economy and, with it, the indebted nation we know today.

The numerous daily decisions we make, both at work and in life, are small chances to make big impact. Understanding this—and banishing that "meh" attitude—is key to success. Written with unflinching honesty, humor, and interviews with corporate decision makers, Never Say Whatever offers a blueprint to help everyone understand why and how the choices we make, even the minor ones, are in fact pivotal to professional development and career trajectory.

The year is 2011, and what starts as a pervasive and inexplicable illness ends up as a zombie infestation that devastates the world's population. Taking the form of a biologist's journal found in the aftermath of the attack, this pulse-pounding, suspenseful tale of zombie apocalypse follows the narrator as he flees from city to countryside and heads north to Canada, where he hopes the undead will be slowed by the colder climate.

What would it have been like to be an eyewitness to the Big Bang? In 2014, astronomers wielding BICEP2, the most powerful cosmology telescope ever made, revealed that they'd glimpsed the spark that ignited the Big Bang. Millions around the world tuned in to the announcement broadcast live from Harvard University, immediately igniting rumors of an imminent Nobel Prize. But had these cosmologists truly read the cosmic prologue or, swept up in Nobel dreams, had they been deceived by a galactic mirage?

Tiona, Vaz's daughter, is starting grad school in physics, has a "bad boy" musician boyfriend, and does her own strange variety of charity work at a homeless shelter. Her professor has her start work on a project to try to achieve high-temperature superconduction by doping the graphene membranes her lab partner has figured out how to precipitate.

Higher education has seen better days. Harsh budget cuts, the precarious nature of employment in college teaching, and political hostility to the entire enterprise of education have made for an increasingly fraught landscape. Radical Hope is an ambitious response to this state of affairs, at once political and practical - the work of an activist, teacher, and public intellectual grappling with some of the most pressing topics at the intersection of higher education and social justice.

At the age of 53, Tony walks away from a life of journalism and into an unknown future dogged by self-doubt and financial worry. June is 48 years old then, a writer and a teacher, and over the following nine years she watches as her husband gradually changes - in interests, goals, and behavior - until Tony has a sudden fall, ending their life as they have known it.

Over the last 40 years our choices have narrowed, our opportunities have shrunk, and our lives have become governed by a handful of very large and very powerful corporations. Today, practically everything we buy, everywhere we shop, and every service we secure comes from a heavily concentrated market. This is a world where four major banks control most of our money, four airlines shuttle most of us around the country, and four major cell phone providers connect most of our communications.

The history of pi, says the author, though a small part of the history of mathematics, is nevertheless a mirror of the history of man. Petr Beckmann holds up this mirror, giving the background of the times when pi made progress - and also when it did not, because science was being stifled by militarism or religious fanaticism.

In The Substance of Consciousness, two distinguished philosophers deliver a unique and powerful defense of contemporary substance dualism, which makes the claim that the human person is an embodied fundamental, immaterial, and unifying substance. The authors present the most comprehensive, up-to-date work on substance dualism in the field, as well as a detailed history of how property and substance dualism have been presented and evaluated over the last 150 years.

Given how quickly its operations have achieved global impact, it may seem that the Islamic State materialized suddenly. In fact, al-Qaeda's operations chief, Sayf al-Adl, devised a seven-stage plan for jihadis to conquer the world by 2020 that included reestablishing the Caliphate in Syria between 2013 and 2016. Despite a massive schism between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, al-Adl's plan has proved remarkably prescient. In summer 2014, ISIS declared itself the Caliphate after capturing Mosul, Iraq - part of stage five in al-Adl's plan.

In Monarchs and Milkweed, Anurag Agrawal presents a vivid investigation into how the monarch butterfly has evolved closely alongside the milkweed - a toxic plant named for the sticky white substance emitted when its leaves are damaged - and how this inextricable and intimate relationship has been like an arms race over the millennia, a battle of exploitation and defense between two fascinating species.

In Strong Supply Chains Through Resilient Operations: Five Principles for Leaders to Win in a Volatile World, a team of dedicated veteran operations strategists delivers a practical and hands-on discussion of how to future-proof your company's supply chains through a relentless focus on resilience. In the book, you'll discover how to shift your firm's emphasis from "low-cost" to "low volatility" as you protect your company against the supply and demand shocks associated pandemics, wars, labor disputes, and trade conflicts.

The sexy new Slye Temp romantic suspense series box set of audiobooks 1-3 from New York Times best-seller Dianna Love. This box set features Last Chance to Run, Nowhere Safe, and Honeymoon to Die For.

By one reading, things look pretty good for Americans today: The country is richer than ever before, and the unemployment rate is down by half since the Great Recession. But a closer look shows that something is going seriously wrong. This is the collapse of work - especially among America's men. Political economist Nicholas Eberstadt shows that while "unemployment" has gone down, America's work rate is also lower today than a generation ago - and that the work rate for US men has been spiraling downward for half a century.

Buddhism asserts that we each have the potential to free ourselves from the prison of our problems. As practiced for more than 2,600 years, the process involves working with, rather than against, our depression, anxiety, and compulsions. We do this by recognizing the habitual ways our minds perceive and react - the way they mislead. The lively exercises and inspiring real-world examples Cayton provides can help you transform intractable problems and neutralize suffering by cultivating a radically liberating self-understanding.

Author David Deamer addresses questions that are the cutting edge of research on the origin of life. In Assembling Life, he provides an overview of conditions on the early Earth four billion years ago and explains why freshwater hot springs are a plausible alternative to salty seawater as a site where life can begin.

This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.

This inspiring anthology collects enduring and entertaining stories that have enthralled young and old, by the cherished authors whose tales have captivated children for generations. Perfect for the family car trip or at-home listening, these recordings sparkle with the wit and wonder of time-tested storytelling.

AMPossible is the go-to guide for every amputee from the first day after limb loss to the day they get their life back.