Showing results by narrator "Rob Shapiro" in All Categories

From launchpad explosions to a pernicious cricket infestation to the demanding management style of Musk himself, the rise of SpaceX was beset with challenges and far from inevitable. Find out how the startup beat the odds and flew high enough to outpace their rivals... and where they're going next.

When infamous outlaw Butch Cassidy decides to go straight, he discovers that too many of the powerful men he crossed won’t let bygones be bygones. To have a chance at a new life, he’ll have to become someone else entirely. A brief, fateful encounter with the celebrated singer Jane Touissant on the eve of his escape offers a glimpse of what might have been, but Butch disappears, leaving her behind, until their paths unexpectedly converge again in Paris.

Meet Victor. He's an assassin - a man with no past and no surname. He lives alone. He operates alone. He's given a job; he takes out the target; he gets paid. He's The Killer. Victor arrives in Paris to perform a standard kill and collect for an anonymous client. He completes it with trademark efficiency - only to find himself in the middle of an ambush and fighting for his life.

After a CIA covert mission goes badly awry, US Air Force intelligence officer Nicholas Flynn is exiled to guard a remote radar post along Alaska’s Arctic frontier. This dead-end assignment is designed to put his career permanently on ice, but Flynn’s not the type to fade quietly into obscurity.... As winter storms pound Alaska and northern Canada, Russian aircraft begin penetrating deep into friendly airspace. Are these rehearsals for a possible first strike, using Russia’s new long-range stealth cruise missiles?

Victor, a former assassin-for-hire, has joined forces with a CIA special unit. His first assignment: Three strangers. Three hits. Fast and clean. Victor's a natural for this.It should have been simple. But with each hit Victor is plunged deeper into an unimaginable conspiracy where no one, least of all the people he knows, can be trusted.With the stakes growing higher by the minute, Victor realizes he's been forced into playing a game he never expected. Because he's the next target. And there's no way out.

Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant, new reality. Think of how the Empire State Building went from a sketch to the jewel of New York's skyline in twenty-one months, or how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to a product launch in eleven months.

The Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s DNA. From the very beginning of its statehood in 1948, protecting the nation from harm has been the responsibility of its intelligence community and armed services, and there is one weapon in their vast arsenal that they have relied upon to thwart the most serious threats: Targeted assassinations have been used countless times, on enemies large and small....

The dramatic inside story of the first four historic flights that launched SpaceX - and Elon Musk - from a shaky startup into the world's leading-edge rocket company.

James Gleick explains the theories behind the fascinating new science called chaos. Alongside relativity and quantum mechanics, it is being hailed as the 20th century's third revolution.

In How to Educate a Citizen, E.D. Hirsch continues the conversation he began 30 years ago with his classic best seller Cultural Literacy, urging America’s public schools, particularly at the elementary level, to educate our children more effectively to help heal and preserve the nation. Since the 1960s, our schools have been relying on “child-centered learning”. History, geography, science, civics, and other essential knowledge have been dumbed down by vacuous learning “techniques” and “values-based” curricula.

Former US Air Force officer Nick Flynn joined the clandestine Quartet Directorate to continue its long-standing mission: to act decisively against serious threats to the free world. And with the backing of Russia’s authoritarian president, no threat is more deadly than that of Pavel Voronin and his mercenary Raven Syndicate. Twice they have almost succeeded in bringing the United States to its knees, only to be stopped at the last moment by Flynn and his team of highly trained operatives.

When Nick Flynn left the US Air Force to join the Quartet Directorate, he did so with the full knowledge that no one could ever know. This covert private force—called Four by its members—promised him the chance to lead his own missions and make his own decisions, though the risks are high. When a former senior CIA executive goes dark, Flynn and his team—including the daring Laura Van Horn—are ready to step in. What begins as a quiet check on his home turns into a firefight against a familiar enemy who is more dangerous than ever.

Nick Flynn is back in action, and he has a new employer—a shadowy intelligence outfit whose roots go back to the very beginning of the Cold War. But his first mission for them almost becomes his last. While meeting with a high-ranking Iranian dissident in the Austrian Alps, Flynn is ambushed and nearly killed… just after learning that Iran and Russia are working together on a mysterious project—one they have codenamed MIDNIGHT.

How will artificial intelligence affect crime, war, justice, jobs, society, and our very sense of being human? The rise of AI has the potential to transform our future more than any other technology - and there's nobody better qualified or situated to explore that future than Max Tegmark, an MIT professor who's helped mainstream research on how to keep AI beneficial.

In this fresh take on love and trouble in America, Brock Hobson, an insurance salesman and Sunday-school teacher, finds his equilibrium disturbed by the results of a predictive blood test. Baxter, a master storyteller, brings us a gradually building rollercoaster narrative, and a protagonist who is impertinent, searching, and hilariously relatable.

General George Patton needed a miracle. In December 1944, the Allies found themselves stuck. Rain had plagued the troops daily since September, turning roads into rivers of muck, slowing trucks and tanks to a crawl. A thick ceiling of clouds had grounded American warplanes, allowing the Germans to reinforce. The sprint to Berlin had become a muddy, bloody stalemate, costing thousands of American lives. Patton seethed, desperate for some change, any change, in the weather.

Hezbollah is the most powerful Islamist group operating in the Middle East today, and no other Western journalist has penetrated as deeply inside this secretive organization as Nicholas Blanford. Now Blanford has written the first comprehensive inside account of Hezbollah and its enduring struggle against Israel.

I knew the moment Katy Swartz moved in next door there was going to be trouble. Lots of it. And trouble's the last thing I need, since I'm not exactly from around here. My people arrived on Earth from Lux, a planet 13 billion light-years away. Plus, if there's one thing I know, it's that humans can't be trusted. We scare them. We can do things they only dream about, and honestly, we make them look weak as hell. Cuz they are.

Victor is the killer who always delivers...for the right price. And Heloise Salvatierra, patron of Guatemala's largest cartel, is ready and willing to pay him just that to eliminate the competition: her sister. Heloise has been battling Maria for control of the cartel in an endless and bloody war. Now, Victor decides who survives. An easy job if it weren't for the sudden target on his back.

Victor the assassin is living a solitary, peaceful life in Iceland when he's drawn into a job for an unidentified Swiss broker. Having passed the test, he's introduced to a group of mercenaries and killers who are tasked to perform the ultimate assassination.In this group, Victor meets someone from his past, someone who recruited him to the life he now knows-someone he thought was dead. And when he wants out, it's too late-his former mentor has other plans for him...