Showing results by narrator "Richard Ferrone" in All Categories

The Founding Fathers have been hailed for centuries as shining examples of men who put aside their own agendas to found a nation. But behind the scenes, there were more petty fights and fraught relationships than signatures on the Declaration of Independence. From the violent brawl between Roger Griswold and Matthew Lyon in the halls of Congress to George Washington's battle against his slave, Harry Washington, these less discussed clashes bring to light the unpredictable and volatile nature of a constantly changing nation.

As the "oracle" who predicted the housing crisis in his 2003 book, The Coming Housing Crisis, and called the election for Obama when the senator from Illinois was still the underdog (Obamanomics), Talbott's revelations about how Wall Street really works are as clear-eyed and undeniable as his predictions and recommendations for our economic future are tough, sensible, and exciting.

Billy Wayne Sinclair was only 21 when he heard the Louisiana judge pronounce these words: "I hereby sentence you to death in the electric chair." It was the culmination of a botched holdup committed the year before in which Billy had accidentally shot and killed a man. Billy spent the next 40 years in Angola Prison - one of the country’s worst - six of those years on death row. When in 1972 the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty as arbitrary and capricious, Billy was re-sentenced to life without parole.

A Crow Indian, two Mexican bandits, a libidinous preacher, and a Pinkerton agent join St. John’s posse to bring in an imaginative con artist who has done his best to scam the entire breadth of the Old West. St. John and his crew are at their boisterous best on this manhunt, and they're riding toward the wildest showdown the West has ever seen....

The only man in Alpha Company to survive a cataclysmic Vietcong attack, Paco Sullivan is sent back to the U.S. with his legs full of pins, daily rations of Librium and Valium, and no sense of what to do next. One evening, he limps off a bus and into the small town of Boone, determined to find a real life; but no matter how hard he works, nothing muffles the anguish in his mind and body.

What Luck, This Life begins in the aftermath of the space shuttle's break-up, as the people of Piney Woods watch their pastures swarm with searchers and reporters bluster at their doors. A shop owner defends herself against a sexual predator who is pushed to new boldness after he is disinvited to his family reunion. A closeted father facing a divorce that will leave his gifted boy adrift retrieves an astronaut's remains. An engineer who dreams of orbiting Earth joins a search for debris and instead uncovers an old neighbor's buried longing.

Gilbert Gilbertson, an inept magic clown whose biggest gigs are kids' birthday parties, suddenly develops skills in sleight-of-hand and stage illusions that confound expert magicians. He also begins affecting people in strange ways, as well as winning staggering amounts of money in Las Vegas, which he donates to the Catholic Church. Enter a far-right fringe group within the Catholic Church, convinced that Gilbert is working legitimate miracles - miracles they believe will convince Catholics to return to more conservative ways.

Ralph Compton created a distinct brand of Western that lives on in the epic tales bearing his name. Bullet for a Bad Man features brothers Boone and Epp, who have little in common besides a God-given ability to draw steel with eyesearing speed. Happy raising cattle, Boone wonders at his brother’s lawlessness. But he never thought Epp’s ambitions would turn brother against brother—nor imagine he’d face the prospect of sending his own kin to the next world.

Arnold J. Toynbee, the most famous professional historian of the twentieth century, is widely quoted as having declared that “History is just one damn thing after another.” This book argues that history is not about “things” at all but is all about turning points—the decisions, acts, innovations, errors, ideas, successes, and failures on which the shape of a nation’s life—our lives—depends. It presents the 100 points at which America’s path decisively turned on its way to where we find ourselves today.