Showing results by narrator "Robertson Dean" in All Categories

This is not just another book about Pearl Harbor. It is the story of Joseph Grew, America’s ambassador to Japan, and his frantic effort in the months before the Pearl Harbor attack to orchestrate an agreement between Japan and the United States to avoid the war he saw coming. It is a story filled with hope and heartache, with complex and fascinating characters, and with a drama befitting the momentous decisions at stake.

"This book is in part a detective story. After 9/11 I knew, if I needed further reinforcement, that we are living in a new world - the world of a global capitalist economy that is vastly more flexible, resilient, open, self-correcting, and fast-changing than it was even a quarter century earlier. It's a world that presents us with enormous new possibilities but also enormous new challenges. The Age of Turbulence is my attempt to understand the nature of this new world." (Alan Greenspan)

Imagine a robotic stuffed animal that can read and respond to a child's emotional state or a commercial that can change based on a customer's facial expression. Heart of the Machine explores the next giant step in the relationship between humans and technology: the ability of computers to recognize, respond to, and even replicate emotions. Computers have long been integral to our lives, and their advances continue at an exponential rate.

Every day, President Obama reads ten representative letters among the thousands he receives from citizens across the land. The letters come from people of all ages, walks of life, and political points of view. Some are heart­breaking, some angry, some hopeful. Indeed, Obama reads as many letters addressed “Dear Jackass” as “Dear Mr. President.” Eli Saslow, a young and rising star at the Washington Post, became fascinated by the power of these letters and set out to find the stories behind them. Ten Letters is an inspiring and important book about ordi­nary people....

Jeff Shaara, America's premier Civil War novelist, gives a remarkable guided tour of one of the Civil War battlefields every American should visit. He captures the true meaning and magnitude of the conflict.

The author of The Pilgrim's Progress, one of the most influential books in English literature, had little formal education. Born in 1628, the son of a tinker, John Bunyan was expected to follow in his father's footsteps. Bunyan experienced his first sorrow in adolescence, when both his mother and sister died. It wasn't his last. He was jailed twice for preaching the Gospel. Yet amidst repeated imprisonments, civil war, and violent persecution, Bunyan crafted The Pilgrim's Progress, a testament unlike any other to the triumph of the human spirit.

The Quiet Americans chronicles the exploits of four spies - Michael Burke, a charming former football star fallen on hard times, Frank Wisner, the scion of a wealthy Southern family, Peter Sichel, a sophisticated German Jew who escaped the Nazis and Edward Lansdale, a brilliant ad executive. The four ran covert operations across the globe, trying to outwit the ruthless KGB in Berlin, parachuting commandos into Eastern Europe, plotting coups and directing wars against Communist insurgents in Asia.

Another prominent journalist is found murdered in Putin’s Russia, shot to death on the banks of the Techa River near the radioactive village of Metlino. Katarina Mironova, known around the world as Kato, could simply fade from the public eye, one more journalist killed during Putin’s war on the free press, one more statistic in a grim tally. But to Russian agent Alexei Volkovoy, Kato’s murder evokes far more emotion. It summons too many memories, haunts him in too many ways for him to allow her death go unavenged.

Aviator Lincoln Beachey broke countless records: He looped-the-loop, flew upside down and in corkscrews, and was the first to pull his aircraft out of what was a typically fatal tailspin. As Beachey and other aviators took to the skies in death-defying acts in the early 20th century, these innovative daredevils not only wowed crowds but also redefined the frontiers of powered flight.

An End to Evil charts the agenda for what’s next in the war on terrorism, as articulated by David Frum, former presidential speechwriter and best-selling author of The Right Man, and Richard Perle, former assistant secretary of defense and one of the most influential foreign-policy leaders in Washington.

Bobby has taken a year off from grad school to help with the meticulous clean-up at ground zero after 9/11. Each day, he enters a nightmarish otherworld of smoke and ash, where pieces of broken lives emerge from the rubble like lost soul fragments. Haunted by what he has seen, he finds himself collecting pieces from the wreckage. Yet he is unable to talk about his experience - until he finds himself drawn to an enigmatic, solitary woman at the bar who is seeking her own resolution.

For mysterious reasons, a man forsakes his American life and arrives in a strange country called Andorra. He settles into the grand - and only - hotel in its seaside capital and gradually makes the acquaintance of this tiny city's most prominent residents: the ancient Mrs. Reinhardt, who has a lifetime lease on the penthouse in the hotel; Sophonsobia Quay, the kayaking matriarch of an Andorran dynasty; and the Ricky Dents, an Australian couple who share a first name, a gigantic dog, and a volatile secret.

Children’s author and lifelong baseball fan Dan Gutman recounts how he himself was actually the hero in the New York Mets’ miraculous defeat of the Boston Red Sox in Game Six of the 1986 World Series - the infamous Bill Buckner game.

The die is cast. Their lives will cross in Jurjevics's engrossing debut thriller, brilliant and terrifying in its medical and historical accuracy. Hanley's inquiry and Admiral Rudenko's quest bring them up against hazards much bigger than microbes: scientific megalomania, lingering cold war tensions, world-threatening environmental toxins, all unfolding in the unforgiving extremes of the Arctic.

The Chief Washington Correspondent for The New York Times examines the effect the Bush Administration’s foreign and domestic policies will have on global politics. This trenchant analysis of the Bush Administration’s legacy is a riveting, behind-the-scenes account of the foreign policy decisions that have come out of the White House in the last eight years. Detailing the administration’s few successes and its stunning string of failures, this audiobook maps the world America faces after the Bush presidency.

Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Red Shoes", New York Times best-selling author K. W. Jeter's "La Valse" forges a fable about love, the decadence of technology, and a gala dance that becomes the obsession of a young engineer - and the doom of those who partake in it. In "You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens", national best-selling author and John W. Campbell Award winner Jay Lake tells the story of Sleeping Beauty - and how the princess was conceived in deception, raised in danger, and rescued by a prince who may be less than valiant.

Hayley Jo Zimmerman is gone. Taken. And the people of the small town of Twisted Tree must come to terms with this terrible loss and their place in it. In this brilliantly written novel, one girl's story unfolds through the stories of those who knew her.

Molly lives with her repugnant father, who has betrayed her many times. From a young age, living on the streets of London's East End, she has seen the harsh realities of life.... When she's kidnapped by a gang and forced into their underworld, her future seems bleak. Flo spent her early years in an orphanage and is about to turn her hand to teacher training. When a kindly teacher at her school approaches her about a job at Bletchley Park, it could be everything she never knew she wanted.

While the conflict over slavery was a factor in the Civil War, the abolition of slavery did not become a stated objective until President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which went into effect on January 1, 1863. Freeing the slaves held in the still Confederate controlled states, it is heralded as one of America's most significant documents.

In one of the most stunning debuts to come along in years, reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's best work and P. D. James' classic The Children of Men, David Oppegaard gives us a world whose near future presents some terrifying realities. The Despair has plagued the earth for five years. Most of the world's population has inexplicably died by its own hand, and the few survivors struggle to remain alive.