Resultados narrador por "Stephen McLaughlin" en Todas las categorias

It seems like pretty much everybody - homeowners, students, those who are ill and without health insurance, and, of course, credit card holders - is up to their neck in debt that can never be repaid. 77% of US households are seriously indebted and one in seven Americans has been pursued by debt collectors. The major banks are bigger and more profitable than before the 2008 crash, and legislators are all but powerless to bring them to heel.

Now that communication can be as quick as thought, why hasn’t our ability to organize politically - to establish gains and beyond that, to maintain them - kept pace? The web has given us both capacity and speed: but progressive change seems to be something perpetually in the air, rarely manifesting, even more rarely staying with us.

Bottled & Sold shows how water went from being a free natural resource to one of the most successful commercial products of the last 100 years - and why we are poorer for it. It's a big story and water is big business. Every second of every day in the United States, a thousand people buy a plastic bottle of water, and every second of every day a thousand more throw one of those bottles away. That adds up to more than 30 billion bottles a year and tens of billions of dollars of sales. Are there legitimate reasons to buy all those bottles?

Opium has played a dramatic and varied role in human history, inspiring religious veneration, scientific exploration, the bitterest rancor, and the most fanciful ecstasy. Now, authors Jeff Goldberg and Dean Latimer have provided a complete, insightful history of opium. Flowers in the Blood lifts the veil of mystery that has surrounded opium down through the ages.

A golden statue comes to life and, with the help of a reluctant swallow, gives away everything he has. A fierce giant forbids children to play in his garden -- then realizes that only through sharing will spring ever come again. In these rich fables by Oscar Wilde, author of The Importance of Being Earnest, characters learn that kindness and giving are the greatest powers of all.

The US Army entered World War II unprepared. Lacking Germany's blitzkrieg approach of coordinated armor and air power, the army was organized to fight two wars: one on the ground and one in the air. Previous commentators have blamed Congressional funding and public apathy for the army's unprepared state. David E. Johnson believes instead that the principal causes were internal: army culture and bureaucracy, and their combined impact on the development of weapons and doctrine.

France is in a rut, and so is French cuisine. Twenty-five years ago it was hard to have a bad meal in France; now, in some cities and towns, it is a challenge to find a good one. For the first time in the annals of modern cooking, the most influential chefs and the most talked-about restaurants in the world are not French. Within France, large segments of the wine industry are in crisis, cherished artisanal cheeses are threatened with extinction, and bistros and brasseries are disappearing at an alarming rate.

China’s meteoric rise to economic powerhouse might be charted with dams. Every river in the country has been tapped to power exploding cities and factories - every river but one. Running through one of the richest natural areas in the world, the Nujiang’s raging waters were on the verge of being dammed when a 2004 government moratorium halted construction. Might the Chinese dragon bow to the "Angry River"? Would Beijing put local people and their land ahead of power and profit? Could this remote region actually become a model for sustainable growth? Ed Grumbine traveled to the far corners of China’s Yunnan province to find out.

The unheralded story of how salvage helped the Allies win back North Africa. By the time America joined World War II, Edward Ellsberg had already earned his place as one of the world’s great marine salvage engineers, and his best-selling accounts of raising doomed submarines and histories of classic diving operations had made him a literary star.

In 2002, the town of Galesburg, a slowly declining Rustbelt city of 33,000 in western Illinois, learned that it would soon lose its largest factory, a Maytag refrigerator plant that had anchored Galesburg's social and economic life for decades. Workers at the plant earned $15.14 an hour, had good insurance, and were assured a solid retirement. In 2004, the plant was relocated to Reynosa, Mexico, where workers sometimes spent 13-hour days assembling refrigerators for $1.10 an hour.

With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson—the acclaimed author of The Lost Continent—brilliantly explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience and sheer fun of the English language. From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog...

Donald Honig crossed the country to meet and interview former big-league ball players. They shared their memories with him and the result is a book packed with nostalgia, statistics, action, revelations - an extraordinary oral history of baseball in the halcyon days beween the two world wars. Babe Ruth, Lefty Grove, Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Dizzy Dean, Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig, and many others are brought to life through the recollections of Wes Ferrell, Charlie Gehringer, Elbie Fletcher, Bucky Waters, Billy Herman, and more.

It may be America's game, but no one seems to know how or when baseball really started. Theories abound, myths proliferate, but reliable information has been in short supply - until now, when Baseball before We Knew It brings fresh new evidence of baseball's origins into play. David Block looks into the early history of the game and of the 150-year-old debate about its beginnings.

The 15 major-league managers interviewed in The Man in the Dugout represent six decades of baseball - men like Joe McCarthy of the New York Yankees and Walter Alston of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Each oral history, steeped in nostalgia and confidentiality, is a record of the triumphs and defeats of the man carrying the prime responsibility of a multimillion-dollar franchise. Here the manager is revealed as a strategist, tactician, peacemaker, politician, ego-soother, and builder of self-confidence.

What makes an American legend? Find out in these fascinating stories of three of our national treasures, including Johnny Appleseed, whose apple trees bore the fruit that fed a nation of pioneers; Sacagawea, the Native American woman who bravely guided Lewis and Clark on their westward journey; and John Muir, a valiant protector of the West's natural wonders and founder of the Sierra Club.

To survive a bleak winter, Hazard the coyote must find food for his pack, even if it puts him in grave danger. Finally on his own, a young raccoon named Lotor needs to find a new home before a predator finds him. Osa the brown bear builds the perfect winter den - with less-than-perfect results. These stories about fictional animal friends are rich with detail about real animal behaviors, so children learn as they enjoy the fun.

Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and Davy Crockett are some of the roughest, toughest characters to ever blaze the frontier. Clever as the crack of a whip and strong as a wildcat, these tall-tale heroes each left a legacy of larger-than-life deeds that has captured the American imagination for over a century. Three rib-tickling tracks tell the whole story -- believe it or not.

Imagine a time of fairies and giants, when good always triumphed over evil, and bravery and cunning saveed the day. That's the world inhabited by this collection of favorite fairy tales, retold in charming prose by Andrew Lang. Children will love hearing how Jack made his fortune; how a quick-thinking queen saved her baby from Rumpelstiltskin; how a clever cat turned his master into a marquis; and how even a spiteful fairy couldn't stop true love from waking a sleeping princess.

Why does the giraffe have spotty skin? Why do melons taste just so? An insatiably curious young elephant can't stop asking questions, until one in particular gets him into worse trouble than he could have ever imagined.

Our world is about to change. In Digital Destiny: How the New Age of Data Will Change the Way We Live, Work, and Communicate, Shawn DuBravac, chief economist and senior director of research at the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), argues that the groundswell of digital ownership unfolding in our lives signals the beginning of a new era for humanity.