Showing results by narrator "Joe Barrett" in All Categories

JAG lawyer Sean Drummond has gotten himself in way over his head - with a case that challenges his deepest fears and a co-counselor who challenges just about everything else. Assigned to South Korea as an advocate for a gay officer accused of brutally killing the son of a South Korean war hero, Drummond is teamed up with an old law-school nemesis. Katherine Carson is a curvy, liberal, William Kunstler-like attorney with a reputation for manipulating the media on behalf of her mostly gay clients.

King Baryn has decided that if he marries his daughter Amalie to a high-ranking noble, the rebellious marlords might be pacified and he might be able to avert a war. So he invites all the young serramar to the royal city to court his daughter. To protect Amalie from any unsavory suitors, the mystic Cammon is installed to monitor all of Amalie's courtships, because Cammon is a reader who can tell if someone harbors violence or malevolence in his heart.

Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads. William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi." His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.

"Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable." So begins Thomas Nagel's classic 1974 essay "What is it Like to be a Bat?" Nagel's essay initiated the now widespread attention to consciousness as a central problem for philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience; it also influenced the recognition of the consciousness of nonhuman creatures as an important subject of study.

On the morning of April 16, 1945, the crewmen of the USS Laffey saw what seemed to be the entire Japanese air force assembled directly above. They were about to become the targets of the largest single-ship kamikaze attack of World War II.

Richard Holbrooke was brilliant, utterly self-absorbed, and possessed of almost inhuman energy and appetites. Admired and detested, he was the force behind the Dayton Accords that ended the Balkan wars, America's greatest diplomatic achievement in the post-Cold War era. His power lay in an utter belief in himself and his idea of a muscular, generous foreign policy. From his days as a young adviser in Vietnam to his last efforts to end the war in Afghanistan, Holbrooke embodied the postwar American impulse to take the lead on the global stage.

In the early 23rd century, one of very few ways to rise above your caste is to become a player in the extreme martial arts game known as the Musashi Flex. Lazlo Mourn, a battle-scarred veteran, is ready to hang up his blades when his moves suddenly evolve toward a form of fighting unlike any the galaxy has seen. Journalist Cayne Sola wants the big story on the games, and not even the fiercest warrior will stop her.

This riveting and entertaining thriller by Thomas Perry follows a husband-and-wife con team on the run from the Mob, a soldier of fortune between jobs, a two-bit operator with grandiose dreams of tribal dynasty, a sultry CIA operative with divided loyalties, the most dazzling defector ever to hurl a split-fingered fastball, and 20th-century buccaneers who wash up on a tiny island in the Caribbean and turn it into a multinational cash machine. But then the shooting starts.

The story of Flem Snopes' ruthless struggle to take over the town of Jefferson, Mississippi, this is the second volume of Faulkner's trilogy about the Snopes family, his symbol for the grasping, destructive element in the post-bellum South.

The Mafia in the United States might be a shadow of its former self, but in the New York/New Jersey metro area, there are still wise guys and wannabes working scams, extorting businesses, running gambling, selling drugs, and branching out into white collar crimes. And they are continuing a tradition that's over 100 years old. Some of the most powerful mobsters on a national level were from New Jersey, and they spread their tentacles down to Florida, across the Atlantic, and out to California.

Powerfully plotted and funny, Big Fish follows dangerous and mysterious Los Angeles entrepreneur Altmeyer, and his wife Rachel, whose quiet lives in the Hollywood hills are disrupted when a multi-million-dollar gunrunning deal goes bad. Under most circumstances, Altmeyer might be mildly amused by the audacity of the double-cross. But whoever cheated Altmeyer may also be planning to destroy the world. With so much at stake, Altmeyer and Rachel and their friend, super-agent to the stars Bucky Carmichael, set off on a perilous adventure in search of the identity of the Big Fish.

For the first time ever, the intimate thoughts and political decisions of Abraham Lincoln’s entire presidency - day by day. In a startlingly innovative format, journalist Stephen A. Wynalda has constructed a painstakingly detailed day-by-day breakdown of president Abraham Lincoln’s decisions in office - including his signing of the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862; his signing of the legislation enacting the first federal income tax on August 5, 1861; and more personal incidents like the day his 11-year-old son, Willie, died.

May 1945. Hitler is dead, and the Third Reich is little more than smoking rubble. No GI wants to be the last man killed in action against the Nazis. But for cigar-chewing, rough-talking, hard-drinking, hard-charging Captain Jack Lee and his men, there is one more mission: rescue 14 prominent French prisoners held in an SS-guarded castle high in the Austrian Alps. It's a dangerous mission, but Lee has help from a decorated German Wehrmacht officer and his men, who voluntarily join the fight.

The first in-depth look at the marine hero who has become one of the most beloved and admired men in America today: Secretary of Defense James Mattis. In this illuminating biography, Jim Proser looks beyond Mattis’ professional competence to focus on the driving element behind Mattis’ success: his unimpeachable character - a formidable personal integrity that fosters universal confidence. Proser carefully examines the events of Mattis’ life and career to reveal a man who leads with insight, humor, fighting courage, and fierce compassion.

Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career - both his successes and his failures - and his motivations for becoming a biologist.

Everyone loves adventure, and Otto Penzler has collected the best adventure stories of all time into one mammoth volume. With stories by Jack London, O. Henry, H. Rider Haggard, Alastair MacLean, Talbot Mundy, Cornell Woolrich, and many others, this wide-reaching and fascinating volume contains some of the best characters from the most thrilling adventure tales, including The Cisco Kid.

This remarkable book synthesizes a lifetime of in-depth research into one of America's most storied disasters, the defeat of Custer's 7th Cavalry at the hands of the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, as well as the complete annihilation of that part of the cavalry led by Custer himself. The author, Gordon Harper, spent countless hours on the battlefield itself as well as researching every iota of evidence of the fight from both sides, white and Indian. He was, thus, able to recreate every step of the battle as authoritatively as anyone could, dispelling myths and falsehoods along the way.

The Last Don is Mario Puzo at his finest - a masterful saga of the last great American crime family, the Clericuzios, and their powerful reach into Hollywood and Las Vegas. Domenico Clericuzio is a wise and ruthless man who, in his old age, is determined to create a life free from criminal activities for his grandchildren. But as he strives to establish his heirs in legitimate society, secrets from his family's past spark a vicious and bloody war between cousins.

Being a man or a woman in your early 60s is different than it was a generation or two ago, at least for the more fortunate of us. We aren't old...yet. But we sense it coming: Careers are winding down, kids are gone, parents are dying (friends, too), and our bodies are no longer youthful or even middle-aged. Learning to play tennis in your 50s is no small feat, but becoming a serious, competitive tennis player at the age of 60 is a whole other matter.

The United States is near total collapse. But 87% of the population doesn't care: they're addicted to flashback, a drug that allows its users to re-experience the best moments of their lives. After ex-detective Nick Bottom's wife died in a car accident, he went under the flash to be with her; he's lost his job, his teenage son, and his livelihood as a result. Nick may be a lost soul, but he's still a good cop, so he is hired to investigate the murder of a top governmental advisor's son.