Showing results by narrator "Eric Martin" in All Categories

A groundbreaking new history, telling the stories of hundreds of African-American activists and officeholders who risked their lives for equality - in the face of murderous violence - in the years after the Civil War. By 1870, just five years after Confederate surrender and 13 years after the Dred Scott decision ruled blacks ineligible for citizenship, Congressional action had ended slavery and given the vote to black men. That same year, Hiram Revels and Joseph Hayne Rainey became the first African-American U.S. senator and congressman respectively.

Have lawmakers helped themselves while helping the country? After the nation's financial crisis led Congress to unprecedented economic intervention, The Washington Post began an investigation that pierced the secrecy of the deeply flawed financial disclosure system that governs the 535 men and women who draft the nation's laws. Members of Congress directed millions of dollars to infrastructure projects near their residences and businesses, in some cases paving roads in front of their houses.

By combining two Ellen G. White books, Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing and Christ's Object Lessons, we make available to you Christ's parables, along with the most insightful book ever published on His Sermon on the Mount.

Utina, Florida, is a small, down-at-heels southern town. Once enlivened by the trade in Palm Sunday palms and moonshine, Utina hasn’t seen economic growth in decades, and no family is more emblematic of the local reality than the Bravos. Deserted by the patriarch years ago, the Bravos are held together in equal measure by love, unspoken blame, and tenuously brokered truces.

The tale of St. Josaphat, a prince who gave up his wealth and kingdom to follow Jesus, was widely told and read in the Middle Ages, translated into a dozen languages, and even cited by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. Only in the 19th century did scholars note the parallels between the lives of Buddha and Josaphat. In Search of the Christian Buddha traces the Buddha’s story from India to Persia to Jerusalem and then throughout Europe, as it was rewritten by Muslim, Jewish, and Christian authors, illustrating its unsuspected integration into European culture.

In recent years, scientists have hypothesized life-forms that can only be called "weird": organisms that live off acid rather than water, microbes that thrive at temperatures and pressure levels so extreme that their cellular structures should break down, perhaps even organisms that reproduce without DNA. Some of these strange life-forms, unrelated to all life we know, might be nearby: on rock surfaces in the American southwest, hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, or even in our own bodies. Some, stranger still, might live in Martian permafrost, swim in the dark oceans of Jupiter's moons, or survive in the exotic ices on comets.

Sarno's casinos - and his ideas about how to build casinos - created the template for Las Vegas today. Before him, Las Vegas meant dealers in string ties and bland, functional architecture. He taught the city how to dress up its hotels in fantasy, putting toga dresses on cocktail waitresses and making sure that even the stationery carried through with the theme. He saw Las Vegas as a place where ordinary people could leave their ordinary lives and have extraordinary adventures.

The Devil Wins uncovers the complicated history of lying from the early days of the Catholic Church to the Enlightenment, revealing the diversity of attitudes about lying by considering the question from the perspectives of five representative voices - the Devil, God, theologians, courtiers, and women.

As penance for not being honest with his admiral, Captain Tanner Scott has been sent on a boring routine maintenance mission of checking the RIM boundary buoys one after another, and that lets him enjoy his Scotch in peace. Imagine his surprise when a Sleeper ship suddenly arrives on the RIM, and he learns that the thousands of alien Sleepers are all children! While making that known has already gotten RIM confederacy realms fighting, the real hidden problem is the secret that a virus infects the alien Sleepers.

The Ship fled a dying Earth to save the human race. Launched as the last gasp of humanity, the Ship set out to preserve the species by seeding the universe with one billion colonists. Generations of crew, trained to be either flight or marines, have spent 5,000 years protecting the Ship and its civilian cargo from the constant threat of alien violence. Fifteen-year-old Zax has always had trouble fitting in with the other cadets, but he's finally on the cusp of attaining his dream and gaining entrance to the Pilot Academy.

Jack Nolan had his life all mapped out as he pursued a promising career as an attorney in Michigan. Suddenly his world was knocked out of orbit and he found himself living with his Uncle Mickey above Mickey's bar in South Florida. Mickey's untimely death leads to Jack becoming a bar owner. Jack's protective approach to his life includes staying emotionally uninvolved with everyone around him, those who work at the bar, customers, and the objects of his frequent one-night stands.

From celebrated historian of knowledge Jonathan Lyons comes The Society for Useful Knowledge, telling the story of America's coming-of-age through its historic love affair with practical invention, applied science, and self-reliance. Lyons illustrates how a social movement in support of useful knowledge is key to understanding the flow of American history and the development of our society and culture from colonial times to our digital present.

The challenges facing General Dwight Eisenhower before the Invasion of Normandy were not merely military, but political as well. He knew that to liberate France, and to hold it, the Allies needed local help, which would necessitate coordinating with the highly independent French resistance groups known collectively as the maquis. The Allies' objective was to push the Germans out of France. The French objective, on the other hand, was a France free of all foreign armies, including the Allies.

When 54 million dollars of client funds vanishes in the dark of night, San Francisco stockbroker Travis Black finds he's been set up to take the fall in an international game of high stakes money laundering and deception. Run for the Money takes Travis from San Francisco to the Caribbean in a race against time before the missing funds are scattered into offshore banks and shell corporations are designed to hide the money for good.

Dumped in the bay off the California coast by an unknown assailant, Elaine Dodge felt her life gradually fade away. But what had it been over the last five years? Miserable. Her adopted mom is dead. Her friends have turned their backs. She should have expected it to end like this. Except, after being rescued from drowning by Anchor Dawkins, a superhuman boy at home in the water, she's thrown into a world where all is not what it seems. Not her being there. Not who's threatening them. Not their future together.

Tanner Scott, a RIM confederacy naval officer, has fought many battles against both humans and aliens. Years ago he proved victorious against a band of aliens. His ongoing fight with his own alcoholism, however, remains a stalemate.

What is birkie fever? Cross-country skiers are hearty folk. The compulsion to race marathon-length distances in subfreezing conditions requires an eternally optimistic and fiercely independent spirit. The fear of blinding snow or paralyzing cold does not deter them, and it has been said that skiers do not merely laugh at adversity; they are completely oblivious to its existence. America's greatest cross-country ski race is the American Birkebeiner or "Birkie" for short.

Drew Nolan and Sophia Mason have weathered many storms together over the course of their relationship, but things are looking up. Sophia is finishing up her degree and has landed an internship at a hotshot marketing firm, and Drew is managing an exciting new business venture. The couple even has the Masons’ support, which is either a blessing or a sign of the apocalypse.

Covering wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, interventions in Iran, Guatemala and Chile, and a retreat from international engagement with the UN, WHO and, increasingly, trade agreements, Pembroke sketches the history of America's retreat from universal principles to provide a clear-eyed analysis of the dangers of American exceptionalism.

The United States and China are engaged in a broad-gauged and global competition for power. While this competition ranges across the entire world, it is centered in Asia. In this book, David Shambaugh focuses on the critical sub-region of Southeast Asia. The United States and China constantly vie for position and influence across this enormously significant area - and the outcome of this contest will do much to determine whether Asia leaves the American orbit after seven decades and falls into a new Chinese sphere of influence.