Showing results by narrator "L. J. Ganser" in All Categories

Nikola Tesla was a man forever misunderstood. From his boyhood in what is present-day Croatia, where his father, a Serbian Orthodox priest, dismissed his talents, to his tumultuous years in New York City, where his heated rivalry with Thomas Edison yielded triumphs and failures, Tesla was both demonized and lionized. Tesla captures the whirlwind years of the dawn of the electrical age, when his flair for showmanship kept him in the public eye.

Central Park is perhaps the most well-trod and familiar green space in the country. It is both a refuge from the city and Manhattan's very heart; a respite from the urban grind and a hive of activity all its own. Eight hundred forty-three carefully planned acres allow some 37 million visitors each year to come and get lost in a sense of nature. Unsurprisingly, the park also inspires a wealth of great writing, and here Andrew Blauner collects some of the finest fiction and nonfiction - 20 pieces in all.

A popular author of fiction and nonfiction works for children, Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen can often be found in schools sharing her beloved works with children all across the country. With its clever rhymes and cute-creepy storyline, Quackenstein Hatches a Family is the irresistible tale of a very special duck. Quackenstein has no family or friends to play with, until he finds an egg. But when it hatches, it’s not exactly what Quackenstein was expecting!

The college basketball scandals of 1951 were to basketball what the 1919 Black Sox scandals were to baseball - a loss of innocence, after which the game would be permanently tarnished, its relationship to power and big money firmly established. In Scandals of '51, Charley Rosen identifies all the major figures - including players, coaches, gangsters, clergymen, politicians - that made up the elaborate network that controlled the outcomes to many games or protected those who did so.

In the New York Times best seller Becoming China’s Bitch, Peter Kiernan presents an unflinching manifesto in which he explores five factors that have sustained our national paralysis, then uncovers the 10 challenges that pose the greatest threat to the future of America. Presented from a fresh yet informative Centrist perspective, these ten impending catastrophes include our semi-conscious dependency on China, our lack of a centrally coordinated intelligence effort, and more.

A thrilling and irreverent memoir about the transformation of the advertising business from the 1980s to today. Richard Kirshenbaum was born to sell. Raised in a family of Long Island strivers, this future advertising titan was just a few years old when his grandfather first taught him that a Cadillac is more than a car, and that if you can’t have a Trinitron you might as well not watch TV. He had no connections when he came to Madison Avenue, but he possessed an outrageous sense of humor that would make him a millionaire.

To paraphrase Don Draper's character on the hit show Mad Men, "What do people want?" What is the new American psyche, and how do America's shrewdest marketers tap it? Drawing from dozens of disciplines, the internationally acclaimed marketing expert Harry Beckwith answers these questions with some surprising, even startling, truths and discoveries about what motivates us.

Harry Denton is behind on his rent, his phone bill, and his life. He is just about to close down his private investigation business when he finally gets a client. The job sounds like a simple one: photograph a famous self-help author with his mistress. When Harry finds him, however, the creator of Life's Little Maintenance Manual is very alone - and very dead.

Moscow: present day. Atlanta lawyer Miles Lord, fluent in Russian and well versed in the country's history, is thrilled to be in Moscow on the eve of such a momentous event. After the fall of Communism and a succession of weak governments, the Russian people have voted to bring back the monarchy. The new tsar will be chosen from the distant relatives of Nicholas II by a specially appointed commission.

When Southern belle Ellie McBride moves her twins from Vertigo, Tennessee to New York City, they wouldn't dream of leaving behind the family pig, Rumpy. But the posh hotel where Ellie has found work (and living space) has "No Pets" writ large on its portal.

Wilson has spent his entire life under the radar. Few people know who he is, and even fewer know how to find him. Only two people even know his real occupation: carrying out confidential - and illegal - jobs for a very bad man. But one day he crosses the line, saving his friends and earning the hatred of a vengeful mob boss.

When Jack Knight takes off in his biplane from North Platte, Nebraska, in 1921, hundreds of people crowd the airstrip. Is Jack transporting a famous passenger? Is he ferrying medicine for a sick child? Nope—Jack has six sacks of mail. For the past few years, biplanes like Jack's have been flying the mail only during daylight hours. Flying after dark is risky and crashes are too common, so lawmakers decide to cut funding for the US Air Mail Service. Outraged officials and pilots want to prove that flying the mail is best, so they concoct a plan—a coast-to-coast race.

Walt Whitman is celebrated as an iconic American poet, but few know of the crucial and heroic role he played tending to the wounded and dying in Civil War hospitals. This nonfiction book highlights Whitman’s compassion and teaches an important lesson about empathy. New York Times-bestselling author Gary Golio and Caldecott Honor artist E. B. Lewis bring Whitman’s story and his passion for America to life.

Hang on for dear life -- what a ride! At first, young Ryan Chase thought it was no big deal. A minor space collision with a creepy-looking refurbished Paotow Tanker. Hey, these things happen … right? Sure, unless the one you’ve plowed into is a murderous psychopath, who’s been lying in wait for the young Consignment Freight delivery pilot.

The NCAA and the Exploitation of College Profit-Athletes: An Amateurism That Never Was provides a comprehensive historical, sociological, legal, financial, and managerial argument for the reclassification of profit-athletes as employees. Such a reclassification would permit profit-athletes to gain not only fair financial compensation but also equal access to educational benefits that have been promised but systematically denied. The authors trace how Power Five college sports have morphed into a hyper professionalized and commercialized sport-business enterprise.

In this engaging young readers edition of The Monster’s Bones, David K. Randall journeys from prehistory to present day on a gripping, gritty expedition through the history of one of the world’s greatest scientific discoveries. At its heart are two men from vastly different backgrounds: socialite Henry Fairfield Osborn, the president of the fledgling—and struggling—American Museum of Natural History, and intrepid fossil hunter Barnum Brown, who blazed a path out of his small-town life in Kansas with an uncanny gift for uncovering dinosaur bones.