Showing results by narrator "Paul Bellantoni" in All Categories

Batman is one of the most compelling and enduring characters to come from the Golden Age of Comics, and interest in his story has only increased through countless incarnations since his first appearance in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. Why does this superhero without superpowers fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us? Batman and Psychology explores these and other intriguing questions about the masked vigilante.

For more than thirty years, On Being a Therapist has inspired generations of mental health professionals (and their clients) to explore the most private, confusing, and sacred aspects of helping others. In this thoroughly revised and updated sixth edition, Jeffrey Kottler explores many of the challenges that therapists face in their practices today, including pressures from increased technology, economic realities, and advances in theory and technique.

Supported by meticulous research and told in a lively, accessible voice, Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World seamlessly weaves travel, history, humor, and a little adventure (and misadventure) to follow the tomato's trail through history. A fascinating story complete with heroes, con artists, conquistadors, and—no surprise—the Mafia, this book is a mouth-watering, informative, and entertaining guide to the food that has captured our hearts for generations.

A visionary carpenter shares meditations on work, creativity, and design, revealing powerful lessons on building a meaningful life through his experience constructing some of New York’s most iconic spaces.

Shamus "Shame" Flynn is a Death magic user with a smart mouth and a bad attitude. His job riding a desk while keeping an eye on the city's humdrum magic users isn't making his mood any better. Sure, the most dangerous magic was locked away for good three years ago, but that doesn't mean people have stopped trying to access the old, deadly powers.

By the early ninth century, the Carolingian empire was at the height of its power. The Franks, led by Charlemagne, had built the largest European domain since Rome in its heyday. Though they jockeyed for power, prestige, and profit, the Frankish elites enjoyed political and cultural consensus. But just two generations later, their world was in shambles. Civil war, once an unthinkable threat, had erupted after Louis the Pious’s sons tried to overthrow him—and then placed their knives at the other’s neck. Families who had once charged into battle together now drew each other’s blood.

George Michael was an extravagantly gifted, openhearted soul singer whose work was both pained and smolderingly erotic. He was a songwriter of true craft and substance, and his music swept the world, starting in the mid-1980s. His fabricated image—that of a hypermacho sex god—loomed large in the pop culture of his day. It also hid—for a time—the secret he fought against revealing: Michael was gay. George Michael: A Life explores the compelling story of a superstar whose struggles, as well as his songs, continue to touch fans all over the world.

In The Warwolf, Hermann Löns's acclaimed historical novel, the tragedy and horrors of war in general, and these times in particular are revealed. The Warwolf, based on the author's careful research, traces the life of Harm Wulf, a land-owning peasant farmer of the northern German heath who realizes after witnessing the murder of neighbors and family at the hands of marauding troops that he has a choice between compromising his morals or succumbing to inevitable torture and death.

There may never be another era of science like the first half of the twentieth century, when many of the most important physicists ever to live—Marie Curie, Max Planck, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Ernst Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, and others—came together to uncover the quantum world: a concept so outrageous and shocking, so contrary to traditional physics, that its own founders rebelled against it until the equations held up and fundamentally changed our understanding of reality. Tobias Hürter takes us back to this uniquely momentous and harrowing time.

Hell Tanner isn't the sort of guy you'd mistake for a hero: he's a fast-driving car thief, a smuggler, and a stone-cold killer. Facing life in prison for his various crimes, he's given a choice: Rot away his remaining years in a tiny jail cell or drive cross-country and deliver a case of antiserum to the plague-ridden people of Boston, Massachusetts.

Legendary writing coach Jack Hart spent 26 years at The Oregonian and has taught students and professionals of all stripes, including bloggers, podcasters, and more than one Pulitzer Prize winner. Good writing, he says, has the same basic attributes regardless of genre or medium. Wordcraft shares Hart’s techniques for achieving those attributes in one of the most broadly useful writing books ever written. Originally published in 2006 as A Writer’s Coach, the book has been updated to address the needs of writers well beyond print journalists.

Why are we devastated by a word of criticism even when it’s mixed with lavish praise? Because our brains are wired to focus on the bad. This negativity effect explains things great and small: why countries blunder into disastrous wars, why couples divorce, why people flub job interviews, how schools fail students, why football coaches stupidly punt on fourth down. All day long, the power of bad governs people’s moods, drives marketing campaigns, and dominates news and politics.

Rose Barnes has got curves for days—and to Angus Drummond, the big, bearded contractor working on her new house, she's the perfect thorn in his side. Little does she know Angus is perturbed on a daily basis by his attraction to this cheery woman with her sunshiny enthusiasm, her kindness, and her beautiful body. Angus feels he has a debt to pay to the world and doesn't deserve love until he pays it. Best to keep his mind on his work and his hands to himself. But the more Rose sees of Angus's gruff thoughtfulness, and the more rusty laughter she surprises from him, the more she wants him too.

Admiral Hyman George Rickover (1899-1986) remains an almost mythical figure in the United States Navy. A brilliant engineer with a ferocious will and combative personality, he oversaw the invention of the world’s first practical nuclear power reactor. In this exciting biography, historian Marc Wortman explores the constant conflict Rickover faced and provoked, tracing how he revolutionized the navy and Cold War strategy.

When the enemy strikes on the eve of her wedding, Wren has no choice but to fight. Captured, she's dragged before the elvish king and given an ultimatum: death or marriage. She submits, biding her time as she plots and spies, determined to strike at the heart of the elvish royalty and take back her family's throne once more. But the more time she spends with her dangerous and achingly handsome husband, the more she finds herself wavering.

Seduced by the government’s offer of 320 acres per homesteader, Americans and Europeans rushed to Montana and the Dakotas to fulfill their own American dream in the first decade of the twentieth century. Raban’s stunning evocation of the harrowing, desperate reality behind the homesteader’s dream strips away the myth—while preserving the romance—that has shrouded our understanding of our own heartland.

Seren Colburn's had nothing but bad luck her entire life, so she's not surprised when Dave, a possible buyer for her family mansion, mistakes her for a vagrant squatting in the unfurnished home. If she wasn't about to lose her movie-star grandmother’s house to the bank, she wouldn't even be selling it. But after he realizes Seren’s the owner, Dave has an idea. He suggests they work together to turn the mansion into an inn, capitalizing on her grandmother's graceful and timeless image.

Time Rider follows Bowie, an agent from a post-democracy future state known as the Design—where humanity is stratified into genetic castes, and emotional connections have been engineered away. Sent to 1963 on a mission to preserve a lynchpin moment of history from temporal terrorists: the assassination of the American President. Baffled by what he finds in Dallas, Bowie soon discovers that something far more strange and sinister is at work.

Shame Flynn is one of the most powerful Death magic users in the world. He has pushed himself and magic to the limit, even though there's hell to pay. But he's finally miscalculated and pushed magic too far. The price for breaking magic? Death magic is eating him alive. The only thing stopping it from slipping his grip and killing everything in a hundred mile radius, is the Life magic user, Terric Conely. Bad news: Terric is losing his own battle with magic.

This extraordinary Strega Prize-winning novel confirms Domenico Starnone's reputation as one of Italy's greatest living writers. Told against the backdrop of Naples in the 1960s, a city that itself becomes a vivid character in this lush, atmospheric novel, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of Italian fiction.