Showing results by narrator "Gary Roelofs" in All Categories

The world explodes into war as Austro-Hungary declares war on Serbia following the assassination of the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Russia follows suit and mobilizes, while Germany supports its ally and declares war on Russia. France then joins the conflict as it is Russia’s ally.

Are aliens among us? Take a trip straight into the heart of one of humanity’s biggest mysteries: the alien presence on Earth! Here are more than 40 true eyewitness accounts, many never-before published, that describe in detail personal encounters with alien beings and their craft. The stories come from all over the world and from witnesses in all walks of life - people just like you. Every story is analyzed by a commentary that explores our involvement with alien beings - and why.

In Buffoon Men: Classic Hollywood Comedians and Queered Masculinity, Scott Balcerzak reads the performances of notable comedians such as W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello through humor and queer theory to expose a problematic history of maleness in their personas.

What do a school shooter, a corporate swindler, and a bullheaded ideologue have in common? They all converge on what author Kirk Schneider terms "the polarized mind". The polarized mind, which is the fixation on one point of view to the utter exclusion of competing points of view, is killing us - personally, politically, and environmentally. Drawing from the standpoint of existential psychology, this audiobook details the basis for the polarized mind, how it has ravaged leaders and their cultures throughout history.

I am the narcissist. My love is conditional. My love is passive-aggressive. My love is jealous. My love hurts. My love is like the thorns on a rose. You pick me up, thinking I am beautiful, then you drop me to the ground realizing that I’ve just cut you and made you bleed. My love isn’t what you thought it was. My love isn’t real. My love isn’t the fairy tale that you have imagined it would be. My love is cruel. My love is bitter, like a mouthful of stale, swilled coffee. My love is abusive and controlling. My love is violent.

Life-Enhancing Anxiety makes a bold proposal: It is not less anxiety that we need today, but more, at least of a certain kind. The book comprises a collection of original and previously published essays that converge on what Schneider calls life-enhancing anxiety. Life-enhancing anxiety is the invigorating degree of anxiety needed to become passionately engaged, ethically attuned, and creatively enriched. Set against our anxiety-avoidant times, life-enhancing anxiety enables us to "live with and make the best of the depth and mystery of existence."

Kevin Cowherd was a humor columnist and feature writer for the Baltimore Sun. His columns, which have varied from three times a week to once a week to occasional, began in 1987, and were a featured attraction for the LA Times-Washington Post news service. Last Call at the 7-Eleven, an audiobook of Cowherd’s conversational essays/columns, offers a fresh, inventive comic voice discoursing on the travails of everyday life.

With an economy and population that dwarf most industrialized nations, China is emerging as a 21st century global superpower. Even though China is an international leader in modern business and technology, its ancient history exerts a powerful force on its foreign policy. Christopher A. Ford expertly traces China's self-image and its role in the world order - from the age of Confucius to today. Ford argues that despite its exposure to and experience of the modern world, China is still strongly influenced by a hierarchical view of political order.

In Republican Jesus, Tony Keddie explains not only where this right-wing Christ came from and what he stands for, but also why this version of Jesus is a fraud. By restoring Republicans’ cherry-picked gospel texts to their original literary and historical contexts, Keddie dismantles the biblical basis for Republican positions on hot-button issues like Big Government, taxation, abortion, immigration, and climate change.

Michael P. Hoffmann, Carrie Koplinka-Loehr, and Danielle L. Eiseman offer an eye-opening journey through a complete menu of before-dinner drinks and salads; main courses and sides; and coffee and dessert. Along the way they examine the escalating changes occurring to the flavors of spices and teas, the yields of wheat, the vitamins in rice, and the price of vanilla. Their story is rounded out with a primer on the global food system, the causes and impacts of climate change, and what we can all do.

Will Bevis is a writer of short stories, articles, essays, and memoirs. His best-known story is the Top One Hundred Free for Kindle story, "The Killing of Train-Man Brown". He has written over 50 short stories including, "Then Her Wig Fell Off", "Let the Dog Drive", "Blackbird", and many, many others. About this story: The author stumbles across a "mysterious" yard sale where he almost gets his butt kicked by an "alien" geezer. Come along for the ride. Better his butt than yours, right?

For nearly a century, Kellogg, Idaho, was home to America's richest silver mine, Sunshine Mine. Mining there, as everywhere, was not an easy life, but regardless of the risk, there was something about being underground, the lure of hitting a deep vein of silver. The promise of good money and the intense bonds of friendship brought men back year after year. Mining is about being a man and a fighter in a job where tomorrow always brings the hope of a big score.

Osama bin Laden is dead, and the sensational mission to the compound in Abbottabad is rightly hailed as a heroic Navy Seal operation. But is Al-Qaeda now stronger or weaker? A chance raid into Pakistani bandit country, Waziristan, throws up fresh intel that points to a new threat. Another warlord has emerged, a man who claims to be the brother of Osama bin Laden. Although unheard of in the West, murderous terrorists are about to follow his banner and launch a new jihad in their fanatical and never-ending religious wars. A conflict that threatens the peace and security of the world.

September 1914: The world is at war, and Europe is in flames. Paris had just fallen to the German forces of Kaiser Wilhelm, and the Entente forces are reeling back in disarray. With the fall of Paris, France is in dire straits, and General Joffre, its commander-in-chief, is relieved of command. The two allies meet in London to see how the war can be prosecuted from that point.

When virgin warrior Braga learns from a cross-cult sorcerer that Fate has chosen her to steal the sword of a rogue angel, she lights out on a dangerous quest from mystical Hag Mountain to other worlds, and even into the bowels of hell. With her soul in the balance, she and the mist-walking sorcerer encounter all manner of damned souls, demons, the living dead, and noble fighters.

These Tibetan monks have held these anti-aging secrets in the Himalayan Mountains for centuries but now share them with the Western world.

In this ground-shaking, breath-taking cri de coeur, Bowden delves with love-driven fury for the roots of our brutal history in this once-brave New World. The figures he casts before us - from Pancho Villa to a modern-day drug lord, from General Sherman to a skid-row Sioux named Robert Sundance - trace a story not so much of rapaciousness as of fear and loathing. Bowden twines it with the natural history of the hammer orchid, a carnivore whose deceptive delicacy comes to stand for the terror and hypocrisy that have perverted our love of the land, its peoples, and our very natures.

In this historically accurate work of fiction, listeners follow the journey of Afrika, an African man descended from an emperor who is first enslaved and then given his freedom by white men.Captured in Africa and transported across the ocean to the Americas, Afrika's captors sell him to a German-born plantation owner in Georgia who becomes a father figure to him. A learned man, he teaches Afrika the value and power of an education, instilling in him a love of learning and starting him on a path toward intellectual freedom even before he gains his physical freedom.

Wilber Winkle was called a "national treasure" by no less than TV's Larry King, and his book was dubbed the funniest in decades by American Bookseller. What does Mr. Winkle do? Without fear, he writes letters to the massive corporations responsible for popular consumer products, demanding satisfaction and complaining about even the most minor of flaws. And miraculously, the corporations answer.

Religious Appeals in Power Politics examines how states use, or attempt to use, confessional appeals to religious belief and conscience to advance political strategies and objectives. Through case studies of the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, Peter S. Henne demonstrates that religion, although not as high profile or well-funded a tool as economic sanctions or threats of military force, remains a potent weapon in international relations.