Showing results by narrator "LJ Ganser" in All Categories

A new model for productive teamwork that generates wealth. From instincts as ancient as our hunter and gatherer stages, men and women have worked in teams. But what have we really learned about these drives and desires in a lasting way? Does all of the selfishness and scandal in business and government today suggest we have spilt the special sauce of teamwork? Doing More With Teams explores what can be done to encourage a new form of competition so that organizations complete the challenges before them to drive growth and get results.

In Sidewalking, David L. Ulin offers a compelling inquiry into the evolving landscape of Los Angeles. Part personal narrative, part investigation of the city as both idea and environment, Sidewalking is many things: a discussion of Los Angeles as urban space, a history of the city's built environment, a meditation on the author's relationship to the city, and a rumination on the art of urban walking.

From a writer whose every book is a literary event, a superbly accomplished work of fiction. Last Night is a spellbinding collection of stories about passion–by turns fiery and subdued, destructive and redemptive, alluring and devastating. In ten powerful stories, Salter portrays men and women in their most intimate moments. A book dealer faces the truth about his life–as it is and never will be again–when he is visited unexpectedly by his brash former girlfriend.

They're some of the toughest and most highly trained fighting men in the world - going where no ordinary soldier would go and doing what no ordinary soldier would dare. Outnumbered and outgunned, operating in small teams of five- or six-deep in enemy territory far from help, they rely on their wits, their skills, and each other to get out alive. Blood Warriors is a penetrating, no-holds-barred account of the training, missions, and history of the military elites who mold America's most dangerous and highly skilled warriors.

Author J. T. Petty has won critical praise for his witty series featuring the exciting escapades of Clemency Pogue: accidental fairy killer, friend to a hobgoblin, and occasional savior of the land of Make-Believe. In this fun adventure, Clemency gets caught up with some of Make-Believe's most interesting denizens, the Scrivener Bees.

It was the U.K.'s worst rail disaster in years. On the morning of October 5, 1999, two rush-hour commuter trains collided just outside London. Hundreds were feared dead. Though he was traveling in the front-most carriage, the novelist Andrew Rosenheim survived the crash. In The Secrets of Carriage H, Rosenheim recalls in heart-pounding detail the events of that day and opens up about the emotional roller coaster that consumed him for months thereafter.

Hurricane Sandy ravages the Jersey Shore while simultaneously providing the backdrop for a horrible crime. A serial killer takes advantage of the night's ferocity and inflicts his own damage. The madman then disappears, leaving a famed FBI agent broken in the process. Frank Sorello retires from the Bureau only to be drawn back into the game after a best-selling novel by a new author raises suspicions about details inside the book. Is the homicidal maniac announcing his return or is it purely a coincidence?

In The Tenants (1971), Bernard Malamud brought his unerring sense of modern urban life to bear on the conflict between blacks and Jews then inflaming his native Brooklyn. The sole tenant in a rundown tenement, Henry Lesser is struggling to finish a novel, but his solitary pursuit of the sublime grows complicated when Willie Spearmint, a black writer ambivalent toward Jews, moves into the building.

"There are some people that walk around on two feet and others like me that run on all four." Newbie Johnson tries to understand the meaning of this statement while learning about friendship, loss, and love as a small town teenager. The Art Of Raising Hell is a coming of age story set in the 1970s that centers around four teenagers and their involvement with a larger-than-life character named Lonny Nack.

Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat, is having a record-breaking season in his first year as a New York Yankee. Larger than life on the field and off, Ruth is about to discover what the Chicago White Sox players accused of throwing the 1919 World Series are learning - baseball heroes are not invulnerable to scandal. With suspicion in the air, Ruth's 1918 World Series win for the Boston Red Sox is now being questioned. Under scrutiny by the new baseball commissioner and enmeshed with gambling kingpin Arnold Rothstein, Ruth turns for help to Speed Cook, now a promoter of Negro baseball.

In 1957, America turned its back on its earlier self and jumped headlong into the nation it has become today. From Sputnik and the beginning of the space race to Little Richard and the underappreciated influence of rock n' roll in bringing Blacks and Whites closer together, to President Eisenhower's Interstate Highway Act, which forever changed the landscape, 1957 represents the year when all of the energy and anxiety that had followed the end of World War II exploded.

Shale gas extraction - commonly known as fracking - is often portrayed as an energy revolution that will transform the American economy and geopolitics. But in greater Williamsport, Pennsylvania, fracking is personal. Up to Heaven and Down to Hell is a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking account of what happens when one of the most momentous decisions about the well-being of our communities and our planet - whether or not to extract shale gas and oil from the land beneath our feet - is largely a private choice that millions of ordinary people make without the public's consent.

Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997, Don Shula remains the winningest coach of all time with 347 career victories and the only undefeated season in NFL history. But before he became the architect of the Dolphins dynasty, Shula was a hardworking kid selling fish on the banks of Lake Erie. As acclaimed sports biographer Mark Ribowsky shows, Shula met serious resistance at home when he asked to play high school football, but when his parents finally relented, they discovered that their son had an unmatched mind for the game's strategy and a stomach for its brutality.

Joe Grudeck is a living legend - a first-ballot Hall of Famer beloved by Boston Red Sox fans who once played for millions under the bright Fenway lights. Now, he finds himself haunted by his own history. Horace Mueller is a different type altogether - working in darkness at a museum blacksmith shop and living in a rundown farmhouse. He clings to an anachronistic lifestyle, fueled by nostalgia for simpler times and a rebellion against the sport-celebrity lifestyle of Cooperstown, struggling to bring his baseball prodigy son to his side. Gods of Wood and Stone is the story of these two men.

Drawing from a vast array of creation myths - Babylonian, Greek, Aztec, Maya, Inca, Chinese, Hindu, Navajo, Polynesian, African, Norse, Inuit, and more - this concise book uncovers both the similarities and differences in our attempts to explain the universe. Anthony Aveni, an award-winning author and professor of astronomy and anthropology, examines the ways various cultures around the world have attempted to explain our origins, and what roles the natural environment plays in shaping these narratives. The book also celebrates the audacity of the human imagination.

There is an underground telephone network in this country. Al Gilbertson, creator of the "blue box", discovered it the very day news of his own arrest hit the papers. That evening his phone began ringing. Phone phreaks from Seattle, from Florida, from New York, from San Jose, and from Los Angeles began calling him and telling him about the phone-phreak network. He'd get a call from a phone phreak who'd say nothing but, "Hang up and call this number".

One of America’s most unique voices, James Hynes taps his dark humor for this startling novel. In the wake of a terrorist attack, neurotic Kevin Quinn flies to Austin, Texas, for a job interview. But when he lands, he finds himself following the beguiling young woman who sat next to him on the plane.

The 19th addition of this annual anthology exhibits a collection of short fiction from award-winning Southern authors and rising stars including Edward P. Jones and Silas House. Each story’s derivation is explained in an illuminating note from the author following the rich and entertaining tales.

Granted unprecedented access to the Los Angeles Juvenile Court, including the judges, the probation officers, and the children themselves, Edward Humes creates an unforgettable portrait of a chaotic system that is neither saving our children in danger nor protecting us from adolescent violence. Yet he shows us there is also hope in the handful of courageous individuals working tirelessly to triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds.

In the pulsepounding thriller White, Whitcomb unleashes a jawdropping account of terrorist plots, CIA executions, and a trail of clues that stretches all the way to the Oval Office.