Showing results by narrator "Dennis Holland" in All Categories

A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were - and still are. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book.

In March of 2002, while the eyes of the world focused on Afghanistan, Jack Noble finds himself on the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq. A Marine in name only, Jack is on loan to the CIA. Normally an integral part of the team, he finds that he is nothing more than a security detail in Iraq.

Militant atheism is on the rise. In recent years, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have produced a steady stream of best-selling books denigrating religious belief. These authors are merely the leading edge of a larger movement that includes much of the scientific community. In response, mathematician David Berlinski, himself a secular Jew, delivers a biting defense of religious thought.

It would be sheer folly to try to conceal the true nature of Althalus, for his flaws are the stuff of legend. He is, as all men know, a thief, a liar, an occasional murderer, an outrageous braggart, and a man devoid of even the slightest hint of honor. Yet of all the men in the world, it is Althalus, unrepentant rogue and scoundrel, who will become the champion of humanity in its desperate struggle against the forces of an ancient god determined to return the universe to nothingness.

For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why - and how - it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma.

Washington, DC, midday. A man waits at a bus stop, his intentions unknown. Two government operatives have been stalking him for days, waiting for him to make his move. Unexpectedly the man takes off running and heads for a deserted warehouse. Jack Noble and his partner, Frank Skinner, believe the man to be part of a terrorist organization that is involved in smuggling drugs, guns, and men into the country. But it turns out their plan involves far more export than import and hits a lot closer to home.

Jack Noble races from New York to Paris to Washington, DC, on the trail of a rogue agent marked for termination. When friends can no longer be trusted and enemies must be, Jack is forced to make a decision that will compromise his integrity, his conscience, and his life.

Were it not for the calculus, mathematicians would have no way to describe the acceleration of a motorcycle or the effect of gravity on thrown balls and distant planets, or to prove that a man could cross a room and eventually touch the opposite wall. Just how calculus makes these things possible and in doing so finds a correspondence between real numbers and the real world is the subject of this dazzling book by a writer of extraordinary clarity and stylistic brio.

"Kill them all." The command has been issued. A purging of the black ops community. And the clandestine agency SIS has been hit hardest. All current and former members marked for termination. Including Jack Noble and his known associates. But when the men behind the operation make it personal, Jack cares less about unraveling their plan and more about exacting vengeance. And he doesn't care who gets in his way.

This book will appeal to foodies & those who are deprived of cookbooks in the audio format. Molecular Gastronomy documents the sensory phenomena of eating and uses basic physics to put to bed many culinary myths. This audiobook presents pieces conventional wisdom - such as whether it is better to make a stock by placing meat in already boiling water, or water before it is boiled - and gives its history before making scientific pronouncements.

Season two picks up where season one left off. Jack Noble is dead. That's what the world believes, at least. Truth is he's been lying low on the Greek island of Crete. Six months have passed, and with them so has Jack's edge. But then he gets the call, and it's time to return to action. Jack made a mess, and now is the time to clean it up. One way or another, he's determined to repay his debt. But will it cost him his life?

When Sports Illustrated was launched in 1954, baseball was, indisputable, the national pastime, its stars America's epic heroes, its rivalries the era's mythology. As baseballs fortunes rose and fell over the next 50 years - and then rose again to new heights, drawing more than 65 million fans to ballparks in 2004 - the game never failed to produce great drama and inspired storytelling.

What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? Almost everyone would agree that we - in the West, at least - largely do. And clearly the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly in the last few centuries. In what will be a defining book for our time, Charles Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean - of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others.

A preeminent geneticist hunts the Neanderthal genome to answer the biggest question of them all: what does it mean to be human? What can we learn from the genes of our closest evolutionary relatives? Neanderthal Man tells the story of geneticist Svante Pbo’s mission to answer that question, beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in his sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2009.

The secret to developing a team of high performers isn't more training but better coaching. When managers effectively coach their people around best practices, core competencies and the inner game of coaching that develops the champion attitude, it makes your training stick. With Keith Rosen's coaching methodology and proven L.E.A.D.S. Coaching Framework used by the world's top organizations, you'll get your sales and management teams to perform better - fast. 

With these audacious and murderously witty stories, Donald Barthelme threw the preoccupations of our time into the literary equivalent of a Cuisinart and served up a gorgeous salad of American culture, high and low. Here are the urban upheavals reimagined as frontier myth; travelogues through countries that might have been created by Kafka; cryptic dialogues that bore down to the bedrock of our longings, dreams, and angsts.

A ghost on the Greek island of Crete. Jack Noble is grounded, recovering from his injuries and a near-death experience. The small town isn't so bad. An old guy named Esau has provided him with a place to stay. The food's good. And Isadora, Esau's niece, is easy on the eyes. But tranquility is interrupted when a group of local criminals threatens Esau and kidnaps his niece. Despite his weakened state, Jack risks it all to save the beautiful woman he hardly knows and settle the debt that Esau signed in blood.

Marcus Hamilton Thanos is marked for death, and Jack Noble is the man for the job. But when the high-profile target vanishes the day of the assassination attempt, Jack is forced to team up with a female FBI agent who was poised to learn Thanos' secret that morning. Together, they are plunged into a frantic race across state lines and international borders in order to solve the mystery, all the while unsure of who they can trust. What they discover is that the truth is more chilling and deceptive than either of them could have imagined.

Jack Noble faces off with Frank Skinner one final time. Skinner is judge, jury, and executioner, and he's prepared to carry out a death sentence. There's only one way out. Jack has to break all the rules. One final job to complete. One final life to take.

Jack Noble has crossed the country, never staying too long in one spot. He's not running or hiding. He's buying time. Simply living until the day he can disappear and provide his daughter with a normal life. But when his Jeep dies outside a small Texas town, he finds a reason to stick around for a couple days. An old friend. Someone he thought was gone from his life forever. It quickly becomes evident that there is more going on in the town than Jack realized, and soon he's drawn into a web of secrets and lies that will forever change his life.