Showing results by narrator "Pam Ward" in All Categories

From the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street, however divergentt heir political views, these groups seem united by one thing: outrage over a system of power and influence that they feel has stolen their livelihoods and liberties. Increasingly, protesters on both ends of the political spectrum and the media are using the word corrupt to describe an elusory system of power that has shed any accountability to those it was meant to help and govern. But what does corruption and unaccountability mean in today's world?

The "settling" of the American West has been perceived throughout the world as a series of quaint, violent, and romantic adventures. But in fact, Patricia Nelson Limerick argues, the West has a history grounded primarily in economic reality - in hardheaded questions of profit, loss, competition, and consolidation. Here, she interprets the stories and the characters in a new way: The trappers, traders, Indians, farmers, oilmen, cowboys, and sheriffs of the Old West "meant business" in more ways than one, and their descendants mean business today.

Every town has at least one beloved if misunderstood eccentric, and Beanie Bradsher belongs to Mayhew Junction. Some - LouWanda Crump, for example - would call Beanie a spectacle, but Beanie just marches - and dresses - to the beat of a different drum.

Impromptu shows leaders how to think on their feet and respond eloquently in every situation. Never have there been so many opportunities to inspire and influence in everyday situations - elevator chats, corridor conversations, networking gatherings, meetings, and ceremonial events. Indeed, today the most iconic leadership moments are spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment events that reveal the inner workings of the leader's mind. When these impromptu opportunities arise, leaders must be able to listen, think, and respond within seconds.

Today it is known as Roosevelt Island. In 1828, when New York City purchased this narrow, two-mile-long island in the East River, it was called Blackwell's Island. There, over the next hundred years, the city would build a lunatic asylum, prison, hospital, workhouse, and almshouse. Stacy Horn has crafted a compelling and chilling narrative told through the stories of the poor souls sent to Blackwell's, as well as the period's city officials, reformers, and journalists (including the famous Nellie Bly). Damnation Island re-creates what daily life was like on the island....

The race is on, and Hillary Clinton is looking to transform herself into a candidate that middle-Americans might elect as our first woman president. Can she do it? Positioning herself for her 2008 presidential run, Hillary has put away the trappings of a liberal and wrapped herself in a cloak of moderation. The senator who had been one of the stars of the Democratic Party's left wing is now being packaged as a centrist, which castigates any attempts to expose her real agenda.

A woman goes about certain rituals of sex with her second husband, sharing the bed with the ghosts of her sexual past. A beautiful young art student embarks on an affair with a much older, married, famous artist. A middle-aged woman struggles with the decline of her mother, once glamorous and still commanding; their fraught relationship causes unexpected feelings, both shaming and brutal. A man finds that his father has died while in the midst of extramarital sex and wonders what he should do with the body.

It’s always somebody else’s kid - until it’s yours. When Katherine James and her husband found out their son was using heroin, their responses ran the gamut: disbelief, anger, helplessness, guilt. As they struggled to come to grips with their son’s addiction and decide how best to help him, their home became a refuge for an unlikely assortment of their son’s friends, each with their own story, drawn by the simple love and acceptance they found there - “the Lost Boys”, James calls them.

The Big Ratchet is the story of the ratchets: the technologies and innovations, big and small, that propelled our species from hunters and gatherers on the savannahs of Africa to shoppers in the aisles of the supermarket. Our species long lived on the edge of starvation. Now we produce enough food for all 7 billion of us to eat nearly 3,000 calories every day. This is such an astonishing thing in the history of life as to verge on the miraculous. The Big Ratchet is the story of how it happened.

Personal answers to the difficult "whys" of suffering. New 16-page photo section and illustrations by Joni. Originally published in 1978, A Step Further is Joni Eareckson Tada's response to thousands of letters she received from people puzzled about the "whys" of suffering. Joni answers these...

Ruth Graham—third child and youngest daughter of Billy and Ruth Bell Graham—offers a rare, inside look at the twentieth century’s most influential evangelist. In this substantive portrait, Ruth reflects on several different subjects, including her father’s love for the world, his...

Every year, 30–40 young Amish men descend on the cozy little town of West Kootenai, Montana, arriving in the spring to live there for six months and receive “resident” status for the hunting season in the fall. They arrive as bachelors, but go home with brides! Sarah Shelter has lived in...

A response to all those grandmother books with flowers and puppies on the cover, Grandma Rules is a book for the hip, baby boomer grandma who realizes that after all the work she put into her own kids, she can take a break and have fun with her grandkids. A perfect gift for the greatest grandmothers you know, this book is laugh-out-loud funny while offering useful insights and tips on how to embrace the world’s greatest job.

Permanent Present Tense tells the incredible story of Henry Gustav Molaison, known only as H. M. until his death in 2008. In 1953, at the age of 27, Molaison underwent a dangerous "psychosurgical" procedure intended to alleviate his debilitating epilepsy. The surgery went horribly wrong, and when Molaison awoke he was unable to store new experiences. For the rest of his life, he would be trapped in the moment. But Molaison’s tragedy would prove a gift to humanity.

Set in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Coming to America series is Love Comes Softly meets Little House on the Prairie. Dear Mary, New Prospects, Montana, is nothing like England--so terrifying and beautiful at the same time, and much larger than I dared imagine when you and I first embarked...

With Christmas approaching, Sadie is preparing for a large blended-family gathering including many new grandchildren - in their home in Fort Collins, Colorado. Even with the festive chaos, Sadie drops everything when word gets out that her friend, Mary, is the victim of a holiday robbery. Though priceless to the family, the collection has been valued at $40,000, and the Christmas tree in the care facility has never looked so good. But before the ornaments can be retrieved by Mary, 11 of the most expensive ornaments are stolen.

Marlene Wagman-Geller, author of Once Again to Zelda and Behind Every Great Man, presents a fascinating collection of biographical vignettes of dozens of women of a certain age who have excelled, inspired, and achieved. Learn how these women changed their respective fields of art, politics, science, mathematics, media, literature, activism, education, and more. From actresses, yoga teachers, folk artists to business women, prime ministers, monarchs, and authors, this group of exceptional women will illustrate that women can achieve anything, no matter their age. 

Let Bill and Gloria take you on a sleigh ride of sights, sounds, aromas, feelings and flavors! This Christmas—and every Christmas—you and your family can join Bill and Gloria Gaither and their Homecoming friends as they celebrate this most sacred holiday—that historic moment in time when God’s Son, the Glory of heaven, came to earth to be “God with us.”

Alafair Tucker is a strong woman and the core of her family’s life on a farm in Oklahoma where backbreaking work and the daily logistics of caring for her husband and their nine children, and of being a good neighbor, requires determination and a clear head. She’s also a woman of strong opinions, and it is her opinion that her neighbor, Harley Day, is a drunkard and a reprobate. So, when Harley’s body is discovered frozen in a snowdrift one January day in 1912, she isn’t surprised that his long-suffering family isn’t particularly broken up. When Alafair helps Harley’s wife prepare the body for burial, she discovers that Harley’s demise was anything but natural.

In 1932, the city of Natchez, Mississippi, reckoned with an unexpected influx of journalists and tourists as the lurid story of a local murder was splashed across headlines nationwide. Two eccentrics, Richard Dana and Octavia Dockery, enlisted an African American man named George Pearls to rob their reclusive neighbor, Jennie Merrill, at her estate. During the attempted robbery, Merrill was shot and killed.