Résultats lu par "J. L." dans Toutes les catégories

A compendium of quotes and riffs by P.J. O'Rourke on subjects ranging from government to fishing to apps, to be published on what would have been his seventy-fifth birthday.

The Craing War is now over, the enemy defeated. As planetary systems around the galaxy try to bring normalcy back to their existence, one thing becomes crystal clear: Without the Craing around to keep everyone in line, space has become a far more dangerous place. As more requests for prompt Allied assistance come in from the farthest reaches of outer space, Admiral Perry Reynolds is compelled to introduce a new stellar over-watch program. With his own career winding down, one of his final directives will be in the formation of a special intergalactic marshaling service…Star Watch.

In the spring of 1871, Ralph Waldo Emerson boarded a train in Concord, Massachusetts, bound for a month-and-a-half-long tour of California—an interlude that became one of the highlights of his life. Based on original research employing newly discovered documents, The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson maps the public story of this trip onto the private story of Emerson's final years. Engaging and compelling, this travelogue makes it clear that Emerson was still capable of wonder, surprise, and friendship, debunking the presumed darkness of his last decade.

Eleven-year-old Tracy Fenton wakes to screams in the night. Bad dreams she’s had since the tragic death of her mother in a mysterious house fire four years earlier, but no real memory of what really happened. Over the past few years, Tracy has bounced from one foster home to the next until finally ending up at Windermere Mental Health, a facility for troubled children. The only good thing about Windermere is that she has made a friend, Mary, a special girl who has Downs syndrome. With the help of psychologist Bonnie Finch, the memories of that horrible night are coming back.

When Jack Knight takes off in his biplane from North Platte, Nebraska, in 1921, hundreds of people crowd the airstrip. Is Jack transporting a famous passenger? Is he ferrying medicine for a sick child? Nope—Jack has six sacks of mail. For the past few years, biplanes like Jack's have been flying the mail only during daylight hours. Flying after dark is risky and crashes are too common, so lawmakers decide to cut funding for the US Air Mail Service. Outraged officials and pilots want to prove that flying the mail is best, so they concoct a plan—a coast-to-coast race.

On the eve of the Sino-American great power competition General Mattis challenged America to move forward at the speed of relevance. To compete effectively America needed to excel in its AI capacity. The call fell on deaf ears—and years later the nation found itself sliding towards a state of irrelevance on the global stage. A series of blunders contributed to what President Biden calls American AI's "failing and falling behind." This is the story of American AI's fall from grace.

David Auerbach’s exploration of the phenomenon he has identified as the meganet begins with a simple, startling revelation: There is no hand on the tiller of some of the largest global digital forces that influence our daily lives: from corporate sites such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, YouTube, Instagram, and Reddit to the burgeoning metaverse encompassing cryptocurrencies and online gaming to government systems such as China’s Social Credit System and India’s Aadhaar.

Did you know that your morning coffee could be thanks to a herd of energetic goats? Or that a forgotten ingredient is behind the invention of the beloved brownie? Who got the fright of their life discovering corn could pop? And which popular soft drink first started out as a medicinal syrup? In Serendipity, Oscar Farinetti, founder of the high-end global food chain Eataly, shares fifty remarkable stories of how some of the greatest successes and examples of excellence in the food world came about by chance.

Discover the lengths Trinity Thompson will go just to make her dreams a reality. She desperately wants her boss Calvin Bailey, and she will stop at nothing until she finally gets him into her bed. Grab a glass of wine, light some scented candles, and dive into this entrancing novella and discover how dreams can become reality. Or can they? Dream Paramour will leave you at the edge of your seat begging for more, with wet panties and all. This sexy erotic tale belongs on the edge of your nightstand as a way to get the flames roaring in your bedroom.

Captain Jason Reynolds and his team—Billy, Rizzo, and the rhino-warrior, Traveler—must attempt to rescue Ricket and Gaddy, still held captive aboard the impregnable Dreathlor prison barge. Only then can Jason return to The Lilly, his highly advanced Caldurian vessel. The elusive Admiral Ot-Mul, leader of the Craing Drac-Vin forces, has not only survived, but thrived, in the far, outer-reaches of space. With hundreds of thousands of warships under his command, Ot-Mul’s combined fleets are on the move. But in truth, he cares about little else than making one man suffer….

After destroying much of Jhardon and the Mau planet of Carz-Mau, an elite Vanguard fleet of seven Craing dreadnaughts, planet killers, enters Earth’s orbit. Captain Jason Reynolds and the crew aboard his Caldurian ship, The Lilly, are once again pulled into action to fend off what just might be their most ruthless and powerful adversary yet. In an unanticipated turn of events, thousands of molt weevils are unleashed on Earth, swarming insectoid aliens with one intent…kill every man, woman, and child on the surface of the planet.

My name is Collin Frost. I’m a fairly unpopular 17-year-old high school student. This is my story…one that chronicles how my already-dredge-of-a-life went from miserable to totally and irreversibly jacked. I guess I should start at the beginning…right before we were shanghaied-up into that alien spaceship. It all started on the way back from the game. I’m the kicker. We lost. It was because of me. Big surprise. But everything started to really go south when the school bus pulled up at another railroad crossing in just one more hicksville small town in rural Texas.

After pulling off their latest train robbery, outlaw leader C. C. Ellis and his unruly gang of long riders set their sights on a new target—a rich mining operation. There are only two men who can stand in their way: Sheriff Max Boyd, a lawman who doesn’t always play by the rules, and Colonel Randolph Doss, the brutal security chief of the Colorado Western Express R.R. Co. Doss pursues Ellis like Ahab pursued the white whale, while Boyd pursues his aim of keeping the town standing … and even some of C.C.’s gang are secretly pursuing their own agendas.

Unity is the most influential factor in team performance and, although it is frequently discussed, it is often misunderstood. This book explains how disunity is the root cause of all team dysfunctions and provides clear instructions on how to define, measure, and increase unity in your organization. Through entertaining and impactful stories, John Ross divides Team Unity into four components—focus, direction, trust, and conflict—and examines how they are related and measured. Notably, Ross introduces The Unity Formula, a simple equation useful for leaders at all levels.

The diplomatic mission has arrived at Viktorkinde. Palmutter is getting more unstable and unreliable each day. On Sarkovie, Anders Eindride learns that the people responsible for the tragedy on Novalis III are planning something big, a real game changer. He's unable to warn his Commonwealth contacts before being put on a ship back to Viktorkinde, where the factions among the Kelk are splintering.

George Kingsley has more money than sense, and when he’s in trouble, he turns to the infamous gunslinger Dan Karr for protection. Dan reluctantly accepts, and he kills every would-be assassin without hesitation or remorse. He’s superstitious, not sentimental, but Kingsley has kids, and Dan doesn’t want to see any child grow up without a father. As the killers keep coming and the bodies stack up, it becomes clear that something is very wrong. Luck favors the prepared, and Dan starts to realize just how little he knows about the family he’s risking his neck for.

After John and Nikaela are rescued from the rogue warship Sycorax, Katrine Primatov has only a lone hunter-killer to back her in the remote Sarkovie system, and she is faced with a Kelk force of overwhelming firepower superiority. The Kelk decide to take John and Nikaela back to Viktorkinde, whether Katrine likes it or not, and everyone is pretending they're not prisoners. But the Kelk are quietly at war among themselves, fighting their own battle against superstition and irrationality. John and Katrine begin to learn the roots of the Kelk hatred of the Blacksword.

It's the first and greatest command - the most important thing. But even if we want to love God that way, most of us don't. Are we doomed? Absolutely not. Drawing from psychology, Shakespeare, loads of Scripture, and her personal experience falling in love at 13 (and staying in love for 26 years), Gerhardt makes a story-rich case for a surefire way to fall in love and stay in love with God. Inspiring, warm, genuine, and practical, Look to Love is both convincing and comforting. This isn’t a book to shame you into reading your Bible. It’s an invitation and a help.

Beer is and has always been more than an intoxicating beverage. Its invention 13,000 years ago was one of the fundamental motivations for the domestication of grains around the world. In early states, the control over the technological knowledge and resources to produce beer contributed to social hierarchies. Beer even likely provided the capital to motivate laborers to construct the ancient pyramids and other large-scale public works. Beer is a social lubricant that brings people together.

In 1974, Jim and Tammy Bakker launched their television show, The PTL Club, from a former furniture store in Charlotte, North Carolina, with half a dozen friends. By 1987, they stood at the center of a ministry empire that included their own satellite network, a 2300-acre theme park visited by six million people a year, and millions of adoring fans.