Showing results by narrator "Sean Runnette" in All Categories

For the last half century, as administrations have come and gone, the fundamental assumptions about America's military policy have remained unchanged: American security requires the United States (and us alone) to maintain a permanent armed presence around the globe, to prepare our forces for military operations in far-flung regions, and to be ready to intervene anywhere at any time. In the Obama era, just as in the Bush years, these beliefs remain unquestioned gospel.

No other president in American history faced so many decisions about the scope of his constitutional powers as did George Washington. Keenly aware that his interpretations of the fundamental charter would set precedent for future generations, and reluctant to appear that he was gathering power like a king, Washington was extremely cautious as chief executive.

President Rutherford B. Hayes, the first Gilded Age president, began his career as an antislavery Union soldier. Yet the Compromise of 1877, which led to his prevailing in the wake of the hotly contested Hayes-Tilden elec­tion, caused Hayes to abandon Reconstruction and turn his attention to economic priorities such as using federal troops to subdue railroad strikes.

It's 1976. Dr. Colin Sanford, a brilliant, ambitious obstetrician in the Pacific Northwest city of Emerald, has a plan to create the first in vitro baby. He recruits Dr. Giselle Hearn, an experienced laboratory geneticist/embryologist at the university who’s frustrated by the ultraconservative policies of her department chairman. Drs. Sanford and Hearn, working secretly, set out to put their names in the history books. Unfortunately, a secret that big is hard to keep....

Andrew Jackson ushered in a new age, in which populist democracy (at least for white males) was favored over the more deferential politics of an earlier era. During Jackson’s presidency, the country stopped doing busi­ness with the Bank of the United States and left the business of inter­nal improvements largely to the states.

Three titans of finance predicted the current economic crisis several years ago, but their warnings went unheeded. A New York Times best-selling author distills the wisdom of all three.

Throughout the violent financial disruptions of the past several years, three men have stood out as beacons of judgment and wisdom: Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Paul Volcker.

President Teddy Roosevelt was a colorful leader who had been a boxer as a young man and took a free-swinging, pugilistic approach to the presi­dency. A dedicated Progressive, he pushed through important initiatives like the Panama Canal plan by dint of sheer willpower and devoted much of his career seeking to whittle down the Supreme Court (and his own appointee Oliver Wendell Holmes).

The ISIS Solution takes a look at the current geopolitical situation, organizational structure of ISIS, and provides new thinking and strategies for dealing with the Islamic State in the Middle East. Its authors and contributors have over 50 years of combined experience in the intelligence, analyst, and Special Operations communities. Leadership and a new philosophical conversation of action is needed to eliminate violent terrorism. This book starts the conversation.

Calvin Coolidge inherited a presidency tainted by the Teapot Dome scandal and sought to bring stability to the White House to restore public trust. He won a victory in asserting his pardon power to commute the jail sentence of an Illinois man imprisoned for violating the unpopular Pro­hibition laws, and he appointed Justice Harlan Fiske Stone—a forward-thinking justice—to the Supreme Court.

Millard Fillmore, who fell into the presidency when Zachary Taylor died unexpectedly, is often regarded as a weak leader and a failed chief executive. Eager to show that he could heal the rift between North and South, Fillmore reversed some of Taylor’s cautious policies. He zealously supported the controversial Compromise of 1850, which some historians believe worsened the sectional divide.

Harry S. Truman, a farmer and soldier from Missouri and a latecomer to politics, was thrust unexpectedly into the presidency when President Roo­sevelt died in office with World War II raging in Europe. Truman was a plain-speaking, decisive, and sometimes impulsive leader who dropped the atomic bomb to end the war.

President Richard M. Nixon, the first president to resign from office in disgrace, sought to exert so much power in office that he eventually became tangled up in the Watergate scandal and its cover-up. These incidents ultimately led to the appointment of a special prosecutor and a burgeoning criminal investigation of his own conduct. Nixon’s secret White House taping system provided the smoking gun that would lead to the unraveling of his administration.

While examining the history of our planet and actively exploring our present environment, science journalist Michael Tennesen describes what life on Earth could look like after the next mass extinction.

This dark yet funny story is told by a man who for two months has been a patient at a New York City mental ward. Having suffered a breakdown, he now finds himself caught between two worlds: the world of the ward, where abnormality and an odd sort of freedom reign, and the outside world, where convention and restrictive behavior rule. Finally on his way to becoming reasonably "normal" again, he is granted a “solo pass”, which allows him to leave the ward for several hours and visit the city.

President George H. W. Bush (“Bush 41”) was a one-term president who some detractors believed lacked the charisma, vision, and political skill of his predecessor, Ronald Reagan. Consequently, Bush’s domestic record was mixed; it was worsened when he broke his “no new taxes” pledge. Yet Bush exercised his constitutional powers in the realm of foreign policy with strength and decisiveness, driving Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

Herbert Clark Hoover, first an international businessman, a global hero during World War I, and then a cabinet officer under Presidents Harding and Coolidge, was elected president in 1928. The next year, as President Hoover embarked on his progressive agenda for the country, the Roaring Twenties ended, crashingly, in the Great Depression.

President William Henry Harrison died after only thirty-one days in office, the shortest term served by any American president. A celebrated military hero who had defeated Native American tribes at the Battle of Tippecanoe, Harrison delivered an inaugural address that lasted nearly two hours.

A witty and touching novella about life on the periphery of academia and Hollywood. Robert is an adjunct, a university lecturer commuting between two-far flung Los Angeles colleges. He doesn't have health insurance - a serious problem when he develops a violent allergy to student writing. Meanwhile he's trying to keep his car, and his relationship with a successful but skittish TV writer, from falling apart.

As a United States general, he had an unparalleled genius for military strategy, and it was under his leadership that Japan was rebuilt into a democratic ally after World War II. But MacArthur carried out his zero-sum philosophy both on and off the battlefield. During the Korean War, in defiance of President Harry S. Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he pushed for an aggressive confrontation with Communist China - a position intended to provoke a wider war, regardless of the cost or consequences.

In this excerpt from So Many Roads, Rolling Stone contributing editor David Browne chronicles one of the most conflicted years in the Dead's history—1977, when the band’s popularity soars thanks to a massive free concert, but Jerry Garcia begins to dabble in the hard drugs that would ultimately kill him.