Showing results by narrator "Stephen Graybill" in All Categories

Wesley Gates is down on his luck. He's drowning in debt. His demanding career isn't letting up. And, to top it all off, after years of ignoring their failing marriage, his wife has had enough. Heartbroken and in desperate need of a place to stay while he gives his wife the space she's asked for, Wes is shocked when he runs into a familiar face from his past.

Why didn't the ancient Greeks or Romans wear pants? How did they shave? How likely were they to drink fine wine, use birth control, or survive surgery? In a series of short and humorous essays, Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants explores some of the questions about the Greeks and Romans that ancient historian Garrett Ryan has answered in the classroom and online. Unlike most books on the classical world, the focus is not on famous figures or events, but on the fascinating details of daily life.

Power in the modern world—military, economic, geopolitical—is built on a foundation of computer chips. America has maintained its lead as a superpower because it has dominated advances in computer chips and all the technology that chips have enabled. In Chip War economic historian Chris Miller recounts the fascinating sequence of events that led to the United States perfecting chip design, and how faster chips helped defeat the Soviet Union (by rendering the Russians’ arsenal of precision-guided weapons obsolete).

Big Swiss. That's Greta's nickname for her - she is tall, and she is from Switzerland. Greta can see her now: dressed top to toe in white, that adorable gap between her two front teeth, her penetrating blue eyes. She's a head-turner: including the heads of infants and dogs. Well that's how Greta imagines seeing her; they haven't actually ever met in person. Nor has Greta actually ever been to Switzerland. Greta and Big Swiss are not in the same room, or even the same building.

We all know and love The Sopranos, one of the most important television dramas to ever hit the small screen, having run for six seasons on HBO. The story of the Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano balancing his family life with his role as the leader of a criminal organization pioneered decades of genre-bending "peak TV". Now, Off the Back of a Truck takes you one step further into the world of Tony Soprano and his families, offering an Italian potluck of fresh and fun takes that any true fan can get lost in for hours.

Travel the Nine Worlds with your favourite characters from the world of Magnus Chase in a brand-new series of adventures. Find out why Amir Fadlan hates clothes shopping in Midgard, see how Mallory Keen learns in icy Niflheim that insulting a dragon can be a good idea, and join Alex Fierro as they play with fire (and a disco sword) in the home of the fire giants, Muspellheim.

Troias Drakos awakens to find that the world he knew is gone. Most of Earth's life was killed in a single instant, and those that survived have been granted powers and abilities that seem almost magical. Unfortunately, this world is filled with terrors and monsters that are equally powerful or far more so. Only by uniting and learning to use their new abilities will humanity survive. Troias has been given a unique set of powers. He must learn to master these and become a true Spirit Warrior. Will even his great abilities be enough to survive the Quantum Shift?

In The Circle of Fire, best-selling author, don Miguel Ruiz, inspires us to enter into a new and loving relationship with ourselves, with our fellow humans, and with all of creation. Through a selection of beautiful essays, prayers, and guided meditations, Ruiz prepares our minds for a new way of seeing life, and opens our hearts to find our way back to our birthright: heaven on earth. The result is a life lived in joy, harmony, and contentment.

The present framing of the cultural debate in terms of materialism versus religion has allowed materialism to go unchallenged as the only rationally viable metaphysics. This book seeks to change this. It uncovers the absurd implications of materialism and then, uniquely, presents a hard-nosed non-materialist metaphysics substantiated by skepticism, hard empirical evidence, and clear logical argumentation.

By the authors of the international best seller Why Nations Fail, based on decades of research, this powerful new big-picture framework explains how some countries develop towards and provide liberty while others fall to despotism, anarchy or asphyxiating norms - and explains how liberty can thrive despite new threats.

In The Optimist, David Coggins makes a case for the skills and sensibility of an enduring sport and shares the secrets, frustrations, and triumphs of the great tradition of fly fishing, which has captivated anglers worldwide. Written in wry, wise, and keenly observed prose, each chapter focuses on a specific place, fish, and skill. Few individuals, for example, have the visual acuity required to catch the nearly invisible bonefish of the Bahamas flats.

Ken and Abby Gardner were raised in a remote home on Cape Cod. As adults, their relationship is strained, but their lives are still deeply intertwined. Ken is a successful businessman with political ambitions and a picture-perfect family, but when his wife walks in on him in an internet chatroom, she demands they go to therapy. Abby is a talented artist who depends on her brother's goodwill, in part because he owns the studio where she lives and works.

Humanity has often found itself on the precipice. We've survived and thrived because we've never stopped moving. In this eye-opening book, Johannes Krause, chair of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Humanity, offers a new way of understanding our past, present and future. Marshalling unique insights from archaeogenetics, an emerging new discipline that allows us to read our ancestors' DNA like journals chronicling personal stories of migration, Krause charts two millennia of adaption, movement and survival.

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election shocked the world. Yet his defeat in 2020 may have been even more surprising: he received 12 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016 and his unexpectedly diverse coalition included millions of nonwhite voters, a rarity for the modern Republican party. In 2020, Trump defied expectations and few journalists, strategists, or politicians could explain why Trump had nearly won reelection. Patrick Ruffini, a Republican pollster and one of the country’s leading experts on political targeting, technology, and demography, has the answers.

Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships begins by showing how all our relational problems arise out of a universal, core wounding around love that affects not only our personal relationships but the quality of life in our world as a whole. This wounding shows up as a pervasive mood of unlove - a deep sense that we are not intrinsically lovable just as we are. And this shuts down our capacity to trust, so that even though we may hunger for love, we have difficulty opening to it and letting it circulate freely through us.

These are the stories that defy conventional logic. The proverbial vanished without a trace incidences, which happen a lot more (and a lot closer to your backyard) than almost anyone thinks. These are the missing whose situations are the hardest on loved ones left behind. The cases that are an embarrassment for park superintendents, rangers, and law enforcement charged with Search & Rescue.

The legendary investor and bestselling author shares his unique template for how debt crises work and principles for dealing with them well. This template allowed his firm, Bridgewater Associates, to antic­ipate 2008’s events and navigate them well while others struggled badly. As he explained in his international best­seller Principles, Ray Dalio believes that almost everything happens over and over again through time, so that by studying patterns one can understand the cause-effect relationships behind events and develop principles for dealing with them well.

Lessons from an American Stoic has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

Two years ago, Martha didn't know that Alan existed. Now, they're married - it was easy to say yes to someone so sweet. But when Martha thinks she sees Alan's mask slip, she starts to fear that the conferences he travels the country to attend might be a cover for something far more sinister. As her research unearths a string of dead women, she enlists the help of Lily Kintner, an old friend from grad school. What Martha doesn't know is that Lily has a dark side of her own . . .

In her great historical epic Kristin Lavransdatter, set in fourteenth-century Norway, Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset tells the life story of one passionate and headstrong woman. Painting a richly detailed backdrop, Undset immerses audiences in the day-to-day life, social conventions, and political and religious undercurrents of the period. Now in one volume, Tiina Nunnally’s award-winning definitive translation brings this remarkable work to life with clarity and lyrical beauty.