Showing results by narrator "Jonathan Cowley" in All Categories

Lowland Way is the suburban dream. The houses are beautiful, the neighbors get along, and the kids play together on weekends. But when Darren and Jodie move into the house on the corner, they donʼt follow the rules. They blast music at all hours, begin an unsightly renovation, and run a used-car business from their yard. It doesn’t take long for an all-out war to start brewing. Then, early one Saturday, a horrific death shocks the street. As police search for witnesses, accusations start flying - and everyone has something to hide.

Who was the real Marie-Antoinette? She was mistrusted and reviled in her own time, and today she is portrayed as a lightweight incapable of understanding the events that engulfed her. In this new account, John Hardman redresses the balance and sheds fresh light on Marie-Antoinette's story. Hardman shows how Marie-Antoinette played a significant but misunderstood role in the crisis of the monarchy.

Here is a gripping novel, inspired by real-life events, about a private team of British vigilantes that sets out to eliminate a gang of cold-blooded contract killers. From 1977 to 1990, four former British soldiers die, one by one, supposedly due to accident or illness. But soon a link is established between the victims: a shared mission in the desert kingdom of Oman, where they fought for a sultan against insurgents and ruined the life of a rival sheikh.

From investors and monetary authorities to governments and policy makers, almost everyone had assumed inflation was dead and buried. But now people the world over are confronting a poisonous new economic reality and, with it, the prospect of vast and increasing wealth inequality. How have we arrived in this situation? And what, if anything, can we do about it? Celebrated economist Stephen D. King—one of the few to warn ahead of time about the latest inflationary upheaval—identifies key lessons from the history of inflation that policy makers chose not to heed.

It's an old story—a fighter gains fame, drives fast cars, makes piles of cash, and dates beautiful women. Then comes the fall—booze, drugs, depression, poverty, illness. This dark narrative has been playing out for a hundred years. Doctors first identified "Punch Drunk Syndrome" in 1928. It later became known as "Dementia Pugilistica." Today, we call it CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). The secret history of this disease in boxing has never been fully told—until now.

Post-modernity is the creative destruction that has shattered our present times into fragments. Post-modernism stood for everything modernism rejected: fun, exuberance, irresponsibility. But beneath its glitzy surface, post-modernism had a dirty secret: It was the fig leaf for a rapacious new kind of capitalism. It was also the forcing ground of the "post-truth", by means of which Western values got turned upside down. In his brilliant history of a dangerous idea, Stuart Jeffries tells a narrative that starts in the early 1970s and continues to today.

It takes 450 years for a plastic bottle to fully biodegrade, and there are around 12.7 million tons of plastic entering the ocean each year. At our current pace, in the year 2050 there could be more plastic in the oceans than fish, by weight. These are alarming figures, but plastic pollution is an environmental crisis with a solution we can all contribute to.

When old friends Henry and Cato reunite after years apart, they quickly become embroiled in the drama of each other’s lives. Henry, who has just returned to England as the sole heir to his recently deceased brother’s estate, quickly begins to uncover secrets buried long ago. Meanwhile, Cato, a Catholic priest, has fallen in love with the criminal Beautiful Joe, and struggles to reform him despite the thief’s continual efforts to rob him.

Little more than 100 years ago, maps of the world still boasted white space: places where no human had ever trod. Within a few short decades the most hostile of the world's environments had all been conquered. Likewise, in the 20th century, medicine transformed human life. Doctors took what was routinely fatal and made it survivable. As modernity brought us ever more into different kinds of extremes, doctors pushed the bounds of medical advances and human endurance. Extreme exploration challenged the body in ways that only the vanguard of science could answer.

In this Very Short Introduction, Paul B. Wignall looks at the causes and nature of extinctions, past and present, and the factors that can make a species vulnerable. Summarizing what we know about all of the major and minor extinction events, he examines some of the greatest debates in modern science, such as the relative role of climate and humans in the death of the Pleistocene megafauna, including mammoths and giant ground sloths, and the roles that global warming, ocean acidification, and deforestation are playing in present-day extinctions.

In The Startup Story: An Entrepreneur's Journey from Idea to Exit, renowned serial entrepreneur Martin Warner takes a fledgling company all the way from zero to hero, selling it for $50 million after a mere seventeen months. It's a memoir of whirlwind entrepreneurial success, a nonfiction narrative that puts the listener in the CEO's seat, giving the feel of what it's really like to steer a company around the toughest of tracks and come out with a massive payday.

Most of us are familiar with probiotics added to milk or yogurt to improve gastrointestinal health. In this ambitious and original work, Jamie Lorimer offers a sweeping overview of diverse probiotic approaches and an insightful critique of their promise and limitations.

Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues is Murdoch’s philosophical masterpiece featuring fictionalized discussions between the intellectual giants of the classical world, including Socrates and Plato. Described by Acastos, a friend of Plato’s, the riveting debates center on the nature of goodness and faith, told through the voices of history’s most celebrated thinkers.

Witty and profound, these debates apply the timeless wisdom of history’s renowned philosophers to the most contentious issues of the modern day.

In an old mansion in Cennethisar, a former fishing village near Istanbul, a widow, Fatma, awaits the annual summer visit of her grandchildren. She has lived in the village for decades, ever since her husband, an idealistic young doctor, ran afoul of the sultan's grand vizier and arrived to serve the poor fishermen. Now mostly bedridden, she is attended by her constant servant Recep, a dwarf - and the doctor's illegitimate son.

Great leaders and teams don't know everything, and they don't get it right every time. What sets them apart is their commitment to continual learning and vertical growth. Vertical growth is about cultivating the self-awareness to see our self-defeating thoughts, assumptions, and behaviors, and then consciously creating new behaviors that are aligned with our best intentions and aspirations.

Ed Stafford - adventurer extraordinaire and Guinness World Record holder for walking the length of the Amazon River - likes a challenge. Casting about for an adventure that would top the extraordinary feat he recounts in Walking the Amazon, Stafford decides to maroon himself on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. His mission: to survive for 60 days equipped with nothing - no food, water, or even clothing - except the video cameras he would use to document his time.

A book guaranteed to touch anyone who has ever had a beloved pet...From instant New York Times best seller, Dr. Nick Trout comes another touching and heartfelt story from the front lines of veterinary medicine - the story of two dogs who forever changed the way he thought about life, death, fate, and love. Love is the Best Medicine immerses you in the true life drama of beloved pets whose lives hang in the balance. It underscores the profound bond we have with the animals in our lives and the incredible responsibility Nick carries as their healer.

What was it like to soar through the night sky fighting enemy aircraft in the Second World War? After completing intensive training Roderick Chisholm was thrust into the height of the Blitz to protect his country in the black of night. Guided by rudimentary radar he, along with his fellow pilots of 604 Squadron, developed the art of night-fighter operations.

A biography of J. B. S. Haldane, the brilliant and eccentric British scientist whose innovative predictions inspired Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Deforestation. Desertification. Species extinction. Global warming. Growing threats to food and water. The driving issues of our times are the result of one huge problem: Us. As the population continues to grow, our problems will increase. And this means that every way we look at it, a planet of 10 billion people is likely to be a nightmare. Stephen Emmott, a scientist whose lab is at the forefront of research into complex natural systems, sounds the alarm. This is a snapshot of our planet, and our species, approaching a crisis, and a stark analysis of where this leaves us.