Showing results by narrator "Peter Ganim" in All Categories

On leave from Canada's Community Policing department, Esa Khattak is traveling in Iran, reconnecting with his cultural heritage and seeking peace in the country's beautiful mosques and gardens. But Khattak's supposed break from work is cut short when he's approached by a Canadian government agent in Iran, asking him to look into the death of renowned Canadian-Iranian filmmaker Zahra Sobhani.

Long before the advent of conservative talk radio and Fox News, Robert Ringer was an outspoken advocate for the cause of freedom and free enterprise. In this classic work - updated for the 21st century - Ringer's basic premise is that liberty must be given a higher priority than all other objectives.

The author of the acclaimed biography of President James Polk, A Country of Vast Designs, offers a fresh, playful, and challenging way of playing “Rating the Presidents,” by pitching historians’ views and subsequent experts’ polls against the judgment and votes of the presidents’ own contemporaries.

The justification for the atomic bomb was simple: it would defeat Hitler and end the Second World War faster, saving lives. The reality was different. Fallout dismantles the conventional story of why the atom bomb was built. Peter Watson has found documents showing that long before the Allied bomb was operational, it was clear that Germany had no atomic weapons of its own and was not likely to. The British knew this, but didn't share their knowledge with the Americans, who in turn deceived the British about the extent to which the Soviets had penetrated their plans for the bomb.

For 40 years John Hadden and his father of the same name fought at the dinner table over politics, art, and various issues concerning America. One was haunted by what he had witnessed during his long CIA career, from Berlin to Tel Aviv; the other retreated to the Vermont woods to direct Shakespeare until finally he confronted his father at the table one last time with a tape recorder.

Imagine a world where a boy's dreams dictate the behavior of warriors in battle; where a young couple's only release from forbidden love is death; where religious extremism, blind hatred, and endemic corruption combine to form a lethal ideology. This is the world of Terrorists in Love. A gifted listener and storyteller, Ken Ballen takes us where no one has dared to go - deep into the secret heart of Islamic fundamentalism.

In Book 2 of the "Golden Queen" trilogy, Maggie Flynn has become, by test of combat, the new Golden Queen. Maggie and her companions, the bounty hunter Gallen O'Day and the sentient bear Orick, face an attack by Dronons on a planet where humans have achieved the pinnacle of genetic engineering. The trio must stop the invaders while guarding the secret of Maggie's whereabouts, for she is only the Golden Queen until her champion, Gallen, is defeated by a Dronon challenger.

There is something of both the absolutely spectacular and positively disgraceful about Tehran. But most writers around the world are inclined to think that their own sprawling metropolis is the capital of every imaginable vice and crime, of impossible love and tenderness and cruelty and malice in measures that seldom exist anywhere else. For me, Tehran's case is no different - except that there really is a difference here. The city may be a hothouse of decadence, a den of inequity, all that. But it still exists under the watchful eye of a very unique entity, the Islamic Republic.

Renowned Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson leads us through space as much as time: From the river's mystical sources (the Blue Nile which rises in Ethiopia, and the White Nile coursing from majestic Lake Victoria); to Thebes, with its Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, and Luxor Temple; the fertile Delta; Giza, home of the Great Pyramid, the sole surviving Wonder of the Ancient World; and finally, to the pulsating capital city of Cairo, where the Arab Spring erupted on the bridges over the Nile.

In the concluding book of the "Golden Queen" trilogy, the insectoid Dronons have lost their queen, and their invasion has ground to a halt. Unable to deviate from natural law, the invaders cannot continue their conquest of the galaxy until a Dronon is once again the Golden Queen. To do that, they must defeat Maggie Flynn, the beautiful orphan who now reigns.

A powerful book that is both fun to listen to and transformative, Living Serendipitously: Keeping the Wonder Alive motivates people to become "active dreamers" who live their dreams. A lively and joyful listen, it captures the joyful essence of "the art of living", explaining just how simple, easy and natural living serendipitously really is.

One of fantasy fiction's foremost creators concludes the epic Black Throne Saga with this magnificent tale of a world coveted by a ruthless spirit, returned to life in the mind of an innocent monarch.

The City Always Wins is a novel from the front line of a revolution. Deeply enmeshed in the 2011 uprising in Tahrir Square, Mariam and Khalil move through Cairo's surging streets and roiling political underground, their lives burning with purpose, their city alive in open revolt, the world watching, listening, as they chart a course into an unknown future. They are - they believe - fighting a new kind of revolution; they are players in a new epic in the making.

The gods who created this world have abandoned it. In their mercy, however, they chained the rogue god - and the monstrous creatures he created to plague mortalkind - in the vast and inhospitable wasteland of the Bourne. The magical Veil that contains them has protected humankind for millennia, and the monsters are little more than tales told to frighten children. But the Veil has become weak and creatures of Nightmare have come through. To fight them, the races of men must form a great alliance to try and stop the creatures. But there is dissent.

The Fey Empire has been at peace for fifteen years. But Queen Arianna, who holds the Black Throne, has become increasingly troubled by a mysterious presence that is waking in her mind. It is a force of ruthless power, determined to seize the throne even if it means destroying Arianna's very essence in the process. And when the queen's body is not her own, it spells trouble for a warlike empire already beginning to chafe under the strictures of peace. Worse, it seems that the only person who can help Arianna is her brother, Gift, the legitimate heir to the Black Throne - and the one the Throne itself has chosen as ruler.

Charles Lindbergh is just one of several American icons whom Joshua Kendall puts on the psychologist's couch in America's Obsessives. In this fascinating look at the arc of American history through the lens of compulsive behavior, he shows how some of our nation's greatest achievements - from the Declaration of Independence to the invention of the iPhone - have roots in the disappointments and frustrations of early childhood.

As Michael maneuvers through his working-class neighborhood delivering groceries, he enters the homes and lives of his customers. He’s confronted by the school yard and street corner violence of local thugs. With the 1967 Arab-Israeli War fresh in public memory, he passes for Greek or Italian and never summons the courage to explain, exactly, who he is or where his parents came from.

The citizens of Plainfield, Texas, have had it with the broke-down United States. So they vote to secede, rename themselves America in memory of their former country, and happily set themselves up to receive tourists from their closest neighbor: America. Couldn’t happen? Well, it might, and so it goes in the 13 stories in Matthew Baker’s brilliantly illuminating, incisive, and heartbreaking collection Why Visit America.

On October 3, 1985, Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled Jewish New Yorker, and his wife boarded the Achille Lauro to celebrate their 36th wedding anniversary with a Mediterranean cruise. Four days later, four Palestinian fedayeen hijacked the Italian luxury liner and took the passengers and crew hostage. Leon Klinghoffer was shot in the head, his body and wheelchair thrown overboard. His murder became a flashpoint in the intractable struggle between Israelis and Arabs and gave Americans a horrifying preview of what it means when terrorism hits home.

Rusty Sabin, born to white parents, was brought up by the Cheyenne Indians who had given the young red-headed boy the name Red Hawk. His ability to heal the sick and make strange magic were widely honored throughout the tribe. But in his twenties, Red Hawk set out to take his place among white people.