Showing results by narrator "Kevin Stillwell" in All Categories

Compared with the most sophisticated weapons systems in use today, tunnels have withstood the test of time. There’s no way to know how long drones or lasers or anti-missile defense systems will last, but as long as there is warfare, tunnels will almost certainly be part of the fight.

Today, there is essentially one accepted narrative of the economic crisis that began in late 2007. Overly optimistic homebuyers and reckless lenders in the United States created a housing price bubble. Regulators were asleep at the switch. When the bubble inevitably popped, the government had to bail out the banks, and the United States suffered its deepest and longest slump since the 1930s. For anyone who has seen or read The Big Short, this story will be familiar.

Four months into his presidency, at a summit in Prague, Barack Obama pledged to take “concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons.” Yet nearly eight years later, he presides over a program to modernize the entire US nuclear arsenal at a cost of $35 billion a year through the next decade and beyond. To those who accuse him of hypocrisy, Obama has said that he always regarded a nuclear-free world as a long-term goal, unlikely to be met in his lifetime, much less his time in office.

The mood of much of the world is grim these days. Turmoil in the Middle East, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees; random terrorist attacks across the globe; geopolitical tensions in eastern Europe and Asia; the end of the commodity supercycle; slowing growth in China; and economic stagnation in many countries - all have combined to feed a deep pessimism about the present and, worse, the future.

Ray Slaverson, a world-weary Florida police detective, has his hands full with the murders of two attorneys and a third suspicious death, all within 24 hours. Ray doesn’t believe in coincidences, but he can’t find a single link between the dead men, and he and his partner soon smash into an investigative stonewall.

Millionaire ad executive Landon Downey has a policy: no romantic relationships allowed. So when he's saddled with his six-year-old nephew for a week, he doesn't think twice about asking Kimber Reynolds to act as live-in nanny. What he doesn't expect is the undeniable attraction to the woman he hasn't seen since they were kids. And not only does she like him back, she suggests they work their way down a list of extracurricular activities in the bedroom. How can he resist?

Pat Williams has drawn on his basketball industry connections to compile great stories from on and off the court. Fans will be inspired, surprised, and even amused, by inside stories from well-known coaches and players, fascinating looks behind the scenes, and anecdotes from the people who make it all possible - the fans. Includes first person stories from 21 basketball celebrities, plus Pat Williams.

After being sworn in as president, Richard Nixon told the assembled crowd that "government will listen...Those who have been left out, we will try to bring in." But that same day, he obliterated those pledges of greater citizen control of government by signing National Security Decision Memorandum 2, a document that made sweeping changes to the national security power structure. Nixon's signature erased the influence that the Departments of State and Defense, as well as the CIA, had over war.

In the 1840s and 1850s, "Brady of Broadway" was one of the most successful and acclaimed Manhattan portrait galleries. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Dolley Madison, Henry James as a boy, Horace Greeley, Edgar Allan Poe, the Prince of Wales, and Jenny Lind were among the dignitaries photographed in Mathew Brady's studio. But it was during the Civil War that he became the founding father of what is now called photojournalism and his photography became an enduring part of American history.

Populism is gaining ground. Around the world, economic hardship and growing unease with globalization, immigration, and the established elite have propelled such movements into power, leading to a groundswell of public support for parties and leaders viewed as capable of holding the forces of cultural and social change at bay. In Europe, populist parties dominate parliaments in Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, and Switzerland.

The year is 1796, and a trading ship arrives in the vibrant trading town of Newburyport, Massachusetts. But it's a ghost ship - her entire crew has been decimated by a virulent fever which sweeps through the harbor town, and Newburyport's residents start to fall ill and die with alarming haste. Something has to be done to stop the virus from spreading further.

Two years ago, I argued in these pages that America was suffering from political decay. The country’s constitutional system of checks and balances, combined with partisan polarization and the rise of well-financed interest groups, had combined to yield what I labeled “vetocracy,” a situation in which it was easier to stop government from doing things than it was to use government to promote the common good.

Obama's signature international economic initiative is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but bipartisan majorities of both houses of Congress have insisted that the TPP forcefully address the manipulation of exchange rates. Here's how to resolve this dilemma.

Scholars have long known that Martin Heidegger was a Nazi, but many doubted that his philosophy had anything to do with Hitler’s ideology. Now Peter Trawny, drawing on Heidegger’s hidden notebooks, argues that the philosopher’s anti-Semitism was deeply entwined with his ideas.

After serving five terms in the US Senate - including four years heading the Foreign Relations Committee and surviving one unsuccessful run for president, John Kerry became President Barack Obama’s secretary of state in February 2013. Since then, Kerry, a deco-rated Vietnam veteran, has been in near-constant motion, logging more miles than any of his predecessors (1,281,744 at last count).

As the youngest daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the right-wing French political party the National Front, Marine Le Pen grew up in politics, starting to campaign with her father at 13. Trained as a lawyer, she won her first election in 1998, as a regional councilor, and in 2011, she succeeded her father as party leader. She soon distanced herself from his more extreme positions, and eventually - after he reiterated his claim that the Holocaust was a "detail" of history - she expelled him from its ranks.

A conversation with Ashton Carter.

Two days before the collapse of Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt, one man gathered the courage to tell the president the truth: he would be killed in his palace if he did not step down. What came next revealed the bitter power struggles atop the most populous country in the Middle East at its most vulnerable moment in six decades. This is the inside story of the final days of Egypt's modern day pharaoh, who ruled with near autocratic powers for three decades before being forced to resign on February 11, 2011.

Meet some of God's heroes, heroines, and colorful characters of a little-known and isolated part of the Cumberland Mountains. Enjoy and celebrate seeing God's hands at work in the spiritual awakening spilled over into all aspects of the lives of the people.

The Greek crisis erupted in 2009 and peaked for the first time in the spring of 2010. Unable to refinance its enormous debt, Greece was bailed out by the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the IMF. The bailout prevented a major economic catastrophe but signaled the start of a protracted economic and political drama that spread to the rest of the Eurozone.