Showing results by narrator "George Newbern" in All Categories

The fascinating and very moving story of the lovers, lawyers, judges, and activists behind the groundbreaking Supreme Court case that led to one of the most important national civil rights victories in decades - the legalization of same-sex marriage.

Given a chance to salvage his law enforcement career, Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Detective Clayton Istee catches a bizarre late-night double homicide at a Las Cruces hotel. Both victims, a man and a woman, have been scalped with their throats cut. The murders show all the signs of a signature hit, but national and state crime databases reveal no similar profiles. Digging into the victims’ backgrounds, Clayton discovers that six months prior the couple had walked out of a nearby casino with $200,000 of a high-stakes gambler’s money.

The funeral of Charles Henry Topping on Manhattan’s Upper East Side would have been a minor affair (his two-hundred-word obit in The New York Times notwithstanding) but for the presence of one particular mourner: the notoriously reclusive author A. N. Dyer, whose novel Ampersand stands as a classic of American teenage angst. But as Andrew Newbold Dyer delivers the eulogy for his oldest friend, he suffers a breakdown over the life he’s led and the people he’s hurt and the novel that will forever endure as his legacy.

Whole hog barbecue is a culinary art form that is both disappearing and experiencing a renaissance. In The One True Barbecue, Rien Fertel chronicles the uniquely Southern art of whole hog barbecue - America's original barbecue - through the professional pitmasters who make a living firing, smoking, flipping, and cooking 200-plus pound pigs.

In this "sophisticated international thriller" ( The New York Times Book Review), an American antiques dealer turned reluctant private eye must use his knowledge of Japanese culture to unravel a major murder in San Francisco - before he and his daughter become targets themselves. San Francisco antiques dealer Jim Brodie receives a call one night from a friend at the SFPD: An entire family has been senselessly gunned down in the Japantown neighborhood of the bustling city.

After observing his cat, Ziggy, for years, Stephane Garnier became convinced that cats have life down to an art form, so he set out to share Ziggy's je ne sais quoi with the world. Highlighting 40 trademark cat qualities that are (almost) entirely applicable to human daily living, Garnier provides insights that are delightfully useful as well as tips for living a day in the life of a cat - and a Q&A to test your cat quotient to see how much work you have to do learn the subtle art of living like a feline.

Tucker Decker is an infamous billionaire. He likes his relationships casual and his commitments without strings. But when it comes to his former bandmates, he’d do anything for them. Tragedy demands sacrifice. I’m an independent woman. I’ve learned never to ask for help. And I certainly didn't want it from Tucker. When my sister left us both to care for my niece, we realize co-parenting may be harder than we thought. Especially when we're fighting a desire for each other. When the ghosts of our past come back to haunt us, will we find that there's still an us after all?

If the confusion following the last presidential election is any indication, the average citizen knows precious little about the democratic system and the laws that affect their daily lives. The Everything American Government Book unravels the complexities of our democracy and provides listeners with the knowledge necessary to make the right decisions and take an active role in the management of their country. This thoroughly researched work is ideal for anyone brushing up on civics, as well as students of all ages.

Humanity is currently facing a series of interconnected emergencies that threaten our very survival—from climate change to economic inequality and beyond. And yet, at the same time, a global shift towards harnessing our collective power to create a life-affirming future is flourishing. Featuring chapters by forty-three leading-edge contributors, Our Moment of Choice provides eye-opening and inspirational visions for a unified, peaceful, and thriving world.

The year is 2052. Climate change has had a predictably devastating effect: Venice submerged, cyclones in Oklahoma, megafires in South America. Yet it could be much worse. Two decades earlier, the global protest movement known as the Upheavals helped break the planet’s fossil fuel dependency, and the subsequent Nuremberg-like Toronto Trials convicted the most powerful oil executives and lobbyists for crimes against the environment. Not all of them. A few executives escaped arrest and went into hiding, including pipeline mastermind Robert Cave.

George Chakiris famously played the angry gang leader Bernardo in the film version of West Side Story (1961), for which he won an Oscar for best supporting actor. My West Side Story is an insider's look at how this theatrical and cinematic landmark evolved from a conversation in Jerome Robbins's Manhattan apartment between him, Arthur Laurents, and Leonard Bernstein to ten Oscars, three Golden Globes, two Tony Awards, and a Grammy.

With help from Pondside Manor’s quirky, 20-something kitchen worker Foster Kresowik, resident Robert Kallman creates The World of Pondside, a video game that delights the nursing home’s residents by allowing them to virtually relive blissful moments from days long past—or even create new ones. Robert’s game enlivens the halls of Pondside Manor, but chaos ensues when he is found dead, submerged in the pond, still strapped into his wheelchair. If any resident witnessed his death, they’re not telling—either covering up or, quite possibly, forgetting.

The legendary warlord, Dardas, died more than 250 years ago. Now, his spirit lives on in a host body, resurrected by a magician to lead a conquering army across the city-states of Isthmus. But there are military scholars familiar with Dardas's tactics - scholars who may hold the key to stopping his army.

In About You, Dick Staub addresses irreligious, religious, spiritual seekers, and all kinds of Christians and shows us that Jesus came to satisfy our universal longing for a fully human life, not to establish a narrow us-versus-them religion. In short, Jesus didn't come to make us Christian; Jesus came to make us fully human.

Jody Asher had a plan. Her charismatic husband, Martin, would be a political icon. She, the charming wife, would fuel his success. For fifteen congressional terms, they were the golden couple on the Hill. Life was good. Until he wasn’t. Martin’s secret affair with a young staffer doesn’t bother Jody personally. But professionally? It’s a legacy killer. Soon a reporter gets word of this scandal in the making, and Martin’s indiscretions threaten to ruin everything Jody has accomplished.

Welcome to Silvertown, Washington. Population 602 (for now). Despite its small size, the small mountain town is home to more conspiracy theories than any other place in America. Officer Mary Whittaker is slowly acclimating to the daily weirdness of life here, but when the chief of police takes a leave of absence, she is left alone to confront a series of abnormal incidents - strange even by Silvertown standards.

A rural working-class New England town elects as its mayor a New York hedge fund millionaire in this inspired novel for our times - fiction in the tradition of Jonathan Franzen and Jennifer Egan. Here are the dramas of 21st-century America - rising inequality, working class decline, a new authoritarianism - played out in the classic setting of some of our greatest novels: the small town. The Locals is that rare work of fiction capable of capturing a fraught American moment in real time.

Former CIA agent George Mueller arrives in Havana in August 1958 - the last months before the fall of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista - to look into the activities of Toby Graham, a CIA officer suspected of harboring sympathies for the rebel forces fighting the unpopular Batista regime. Mueller knew Graham as an undergraduate, and later they were colleagues in Berlin fighting the Soviet NKVD. Under the guise of their long acquaintance, Mueller is recruited to vet rumors that Graham is putting weapons into the hands of Castro's forces.

Magnanimous and charming, Bob Guterl knew that he could solve the racial problems bedeviling postwar America. Determined to stave off impending global catastrophe, the larger-than-life judge and his resolute wife, Sheryl, launched a radical experiment, raising their two biological sons alongside four children adopted from Korea, Vietnam, and the South Bronx―the so-called “war zones of the American century”―in a white clapboard house with a white picket fence in small-town New Jersey.

In this book, Hod Lipson and Melba Kurman offer listeners insight into the risks and benefits of driverless cars, and a lucid and engaging explanation of the enabling technology. Recent advances in software and robotics are toppling long-standing technological barriers that for decades have confined self-driving cars to the realm of fantasy. A new kind of artificial intelligence software called deep learning gives cars rapid and accurate visual perception. Human drivers can relax and take their eyes off the road.