Showing results by narrator "George Newbern" in All Categories

In The Golden Bird, a king who has been robbed of a golden apple commands his gardener's sons to watch the tree. Seeing that the thief is a golden bird, the youngest son tries to shoot it but only knocks a feather off. Fascinated by the feather, the king decides he wants the whole bird. The gardener's son and his two brothers must make fateful choices in what turns into a fearsome quest to capture the bird.

This cultural analysis of visual and narrative elements within Batman comics provides an important exploration of the ways readers and creators negotiate gender, identity, and sexuality in popular culture.

It does not minimize the devastation of that hurt. It does not require reconciliation with the one who inflicted the hurt. Rather, it describes a process, followed with success by people around the world, to confront the pain, rise above it to forgive, and in so doing, to loosen the grip of depression, anger, and resentment that has soured life.

In this book, Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman offer listeners insight into the risks and benefits of driverless cars, and a lucid and engaging explanation of the enabling technology. Recent advances in software and robotics are toppling long-standing technological barriers that for decades have confined self-driving cars to the realm of fantasy. A new kind of artificial intelligence software called deep learning gives cars rapid and accurate visual perception. Human drivers can relax and take their eyes off the road.

David Hedges’ life is coming apart at the seams. His job helping San Francisco rich kids get into the colleges of their (parents’) choice is exasperating; his younger boyfriend has left him; and the beloved carriage house he rents is being sold. His solace is a Thai takeout joint that delivers 24/7.

Eric Brach's new book Double Lives: True Tales of the Criminals Next Door offers terrifying true stories about the criminals hidden among us and the banality of evil and crime, elevated by its frank discussion of the nation-wide criminal scourge of the moment: opioid addiction. Double Lives chronicles the very monsters who walk unnoticed among us - even serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, or John Wayne Gacy. They are neighbors and students, professionals and friends living out criminal double lives.

1874. After losing his innocence in the Civil War and risking his life as a Texas Ranger, Samuel Pritchard has finally settled into a peaceful life in his hometown of Atherton, Missouri. As marshall, he hopes to put his bloody past behind him. To see his sister marry his lifelong friend. To find a wife and raise a family. For the first time in his life, Pritchard isn't gunning for anyone - and no one is gunning for him. Or so he thinks. Strangers have arrived in Atherton.

In This Earthly Frame, David Sehat describes the making of American secularism through its most prominent proponents and most significant detractors. He shows how its foundations were laid in the US Constitution and how it fully emerged only in the 20th century.

Evicted from their trailer on New Year's Eve, Henry and his son, Junior, have been reduced to living out of a pick-up truck. Six months later, things are even more desperate. Henry, barely a year out of prison for selling drugs, is down to his last pocketful of cash, and little remains between him and the street. But hope is on the horizon: today is Junior's birthday, and Henry has a job interview tomorrow.

The first great novel of the war in Afghanistan' Wall Street Journal You’ve had no sleep since the firefight last night. The morning fog beyond the walls of your base lifts to reveal a lone woman approaching the gate. She says she has come to claim the body of her brother killed in last night’s attack. Is she a terrorist? A spy? A lunatic? Or what she says she is – a grieving sister? What should you do? What do you do?

Cape May, New Jersey. September 1957. Newlyweds Henry and Effie arrive from Georgia for their honeymoon. It's the end of the summer season, and as they tentatively discover each other - walking on the deserted beach overlooking the vast, darkening Atlantic, clumsily making love in the dusty rooms of a distant relative's house - they begin to realize that everyday married life might be disappointingly different from their happy-ever-after fantasy.

Benjamin was never the sharpest tool in the shed. For as long as he can remember, he’s longed for adventure in far-away lands. But every day he wakes up in the same boring suburb, where nothing ever happens.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans on August 29, 2005, but the decisions that caused the disaster extend across the 20th century. After the city weathered a major hurricane in 1915, its Sewerage and Water Board believed that developers could safely build housing away from the high ground near the Mississippi. And so New Orleans grew in lowlands that relied on significant government subsidies to stay dry.

When was the last time you cried? Was it because you were sad? Or happy? Overwhelmed, or frustrated? Maybe from relief or from pride? Was it in public or in private? Did you feel better afterwards, or worse? The reasons that we cry—and the circumstances in which we shed a tear—are often surprising and beautiful. Sad Happens is a collective, multi-faceted archive of tears that captures the complexity and variety of these circumstances.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, college football was at the height of its popularity. As the nation geared up for total war, one branch of the service dominated the aspirations of college football stars: the United States Marine Corps. Which is why, on Christmas Eve of 1944, when the 4th and 29th Marine regiments found themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean training for what would be the bloodiest battle of the war – the invasion of Okinawa—their ranks included one of the greatest pools of football talent ever assembled.

Jen is just getting used to her life on Peapod Farm with her new stepsisters, Andy and Reese. But when the school year starts, there are even more changes in store for her. Jen has to navigate new friends and new challenges--but at least she'll have Andy with her, right? As she starts the sixth grade, she finds that her stepsister seems way more interested in crushes and boys than hanging out with her, while Jen wants to know when the world decided boys and girls couldn't be "just friends" anymore.

Food writer Jonathan Kauffman journeys back more than half a century - to the 1960s and 1970s - to tell the story of how a coterie of unusual men and women embraced an alternative lifestyle that would ultimately change how modern Americans eat. Impeccably researched, Hippie Food chronicles how the longhairs, revolutionaries, and back-to-the-landers rejected the square establishment of President Richard Nixon's America and turned to a more idealistic and wholesome communal way of life and food.

Recently recovered from his epic bicycle journey that took him from the Delaware shore to the Oregon coast, distinguished climate scientist David Goodrich sets out on his bike again to traverse the Western Interior Seaway - an ancient ocean that once spread across half of North America. When the waters cleared a geologic age ago, what was left behind was vast flat prairie, otherworldly rock formations, and oil shale deposits.

A miller's careless boast that his clever daughter can spin gold from straw is forced by the king to deliver on this claim. A little man arrives to help the miller's distraught daughter in exchange for her firstborn child. Later, when the daughter, now the queen, gives birth to her first child, the little man comes to collect. He agrees to release the queen from her promise if she can learn his name.

The essential novels of Jules Verne include the classics such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. Enjoy all three novels in this enthralling science-fiction collection.