Showing results by narrator "Gary Roelofs" in All Categories

Following the myths and legends about Nazis recruited by the French Foreign Legion to fight in Indochina, Eric Meyer's new book is based on the real story of one such former Waffen-SS man who lived to tell the tale.

In Republican Jesus, Tony Keddie explains not only where this right-wing Christ came from and what he stands for, but also why this version of Jesus is a fraud. By restoring Republicans’ cherry-picked gospel texts to their original literary and historical contexts, Keddie dismantles the biblical basis for Republican positions on hot-button issues like Big Government, taxation, abortion, immigration, and climate change.

Are aliens among us? Take a trip straight into the heart of one of humanity’s biggest mysteries: the alien presence on Earth! Here are more than 40 true eyewitness accounts, many never-before published, that describe in detail personal encounters with alien beings and their craft. The stories come from all over the world and from witnesses in all walks of life - people just like you. Every story is analyzed by a commentary that explores our involvement with alien beings - and why.

There were, Peter Thompson notes, some 150 synonyms for inebriation in common use in colonial Philadelphia and, on the eve of the Revolution, just as many licensed drinking establishments. Clearly, 18th-century Philadelphians were drawn to the tavern. In addition to the obvious lure of the liquor, taverns offered overnight accommodations, meals, and stabling for visitors. They also served as places to gossip, gamble, find work, make trades, and gather news.

Most of us give little thought to the hidden systems that bring us water and take it away when we’re done. But these underappreciated marvels of engineering face an array of challenges that cannot be solved without a fundamental change to our relationship with water.

The Gender Knot, Allan Johnson's response to the pain and confusion that men and women experience by living with gender inequality, explains what patriarchy is and isn't, how it works, and what gets in the way of understanding and doing something about it. Johnson's simple yet powerful approach avoids the paralyzing trap of guilt, blame, anger, and defensive denial that often results from conversations about gender.

In Far-Right Vanguard, John Huntington shows how, for almost a century, the far right has forced so-called "respectable" conservatives to grapple with their concerns, thereby intensifying right-wing thought and forecasting the trajectory of American politics. Ultraconservatives of the 20th century were the vanguard of modern conservatism as it exists in the Republican Party of today.

For nearly a century, Kellogg, Idaho, was home to America's richest silver mine, Sunshine Mine. Mining there, as everywhere, was not an easy life, but regardless of the risk, there was something about being underground, the lure of hitting a deep vein of silver. The promise of good money and the intense bonds of friendship brought men back year after year. Mining is about being a man and a fighter in a job where tomorrow always brings the hope of a big score.

In Covert Regime Change, Lindsey A. O’Rourke shows us how states really act when trying to overthrow another state. She argues that conventional focus on covert cases misses the basic causes of regime change. O’Rourke provides substantive evidence of types of security interests that drive states to intervene. Covert Regime Change assembles an original dataset of all American regime change operations during the Cold War. This fund of information shows the United States was 10 times more likely to try covert rather than overt regime change during the Cold War.

Surigao Strait in the Philippine Islands was the scene of a major battleship duel during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Because the battle was fought at night and had few survivors on the Japanese side, the events of that naval engagement have been passed down in garbled accounts. Anthony P. Tully pulls together all of the existing documentary material, including newly discovered accounts and a careful analysis of U.S. Navy action reports, to create a new and more detailed description of the action.

Life-Enhancing Anxiety makes a bold proposal: It is not less anxiety that we need today, but more, at least of a certain kind. The book comprises a collection of original and previously published essays that converge on what Schneider calls life-enhancing anxiety. Life-enhancing anxiety is the invigorating degree of anxiety needed to become passionately engaged, ethically attuned, and creatively enriched. Set against our anxiety-avoidant times, life-enhancing anxiety enables us to "live with and make the best of the depth and mystery of existence."

During World War II, the Waffen-SS officer who set Vietnam on fire in Devil's Guard - The Real Story began his startling military career in the Russian slaughterhouse of the Eastern Front. It is February 1943 in the snowy wastes around Kharkov. Stalingrad has fallen and a resurgent Soviet army is pushing the German forces back. The newly commissioned officer takes up his posting with Deutschland Regiment, SS Division Das Reich, part of von Manstein's Army Group South.

Tennesseans at War, 1812 - 1815 by Tom Kanon tells the often-forgotten story of the central role citizens and soldiers from Tennessee played in the Creek War in Alabama and War of 1812. In Tennesseans at War, 1812 - 1815, Tom Kanon explains the role Tennesseans played in these changes, and how they remade the South.

On the night of April 8, 1956, Marine drill instructor Matthew McKeon led Platoon 71 on a forced march through the backwaters of Parris Island in an effort to restore flagging discipline. Unexpectedly strong currents in Ribbon Creek and an ensuing panic led to the drowning of six recruits. The tragedy of Ribbon Creek and the court-martial of Staff Sergeant McKeon became the subject of sensational national media coverage and put the future of the US Marine Corps in jeopardy.

Travel opens the door to the unknown. When you pack your bags for travel and adventure, you might get more than you expected - a side trip into a phantom world where mysterious things happen. This collection of original true stories tells of travelers around the world who are suddenly faced with ghosts, paranormal phenomena, unusual synchronicities, time slips, magic, visions, past-life connections, premonitions, mystical experiences, mysterious figures, and more.

With more than 50 years of professional experience, Mark C. Zweig has seen it all—from the fear and excitement of starting a new business to the joys and challenges of life as an entrepreneur. In Confessions of an Entrepreneur: Simple Wisdom for Starting, Building, and Running a Business, Zweig draws upon this wealth of experience to offer practical, easy-to-understand guidance for bringing a business to life and cultivating success at every stage of its development.

Among the darkest corners of Kentucky's past are the grisly feuds that tore apart the hills of Eastern Kentucky from the late 19th century until well into the 20th. Now, from the tangled threads of conflicting testimony, John Ed Pearce, Kentucky's best-known journalist, weaves engrossing accounts of six of the most notorious accounts to uncover what really happened and why. His story of those days of darkness brings to light new evidence, questions commonly held beliefs about the feuds.

In this illuminating audiobook, Thomas Kidd draws on his expertise in American religious history to retrace the arc of this spiritual movement, illustrating just how historically peculiar that political and ethnic definition (white Republican) of evangelicals is. He examines distortions in the public understanding of evangelicals and shows how a group of “Republican insider evangelicals” aided the politicization of the movement. This book will be a must-listen for those trying to better understand the shifting religious and political landscape of America today.

The war in Vietnam is over. Yet the descendants of those who fought there are pulled into a new war - a war in a country whose name has come to mean unending conflict, unending brutality, and unending killing: Afghanistan. Into this tortured land flies the civilian pilot Max Hoffman. Out of luck and out of money, he is easy prey to the CIA, who recruits him to join its hidden war. Hoffman soon discovers the American intelligence officers have a hidden agenda - personal gain and profit at any cost.

Never before has so much been known about so many. CCTV cameras, TSA scanners, NSA databases, big data marketers, predator drones, "stop and frisk" tactics, Facebook algorithms, hidden spyware, and even old-fashioned nosy neighbors - surveillance has become so ubiquitous that we take its presence for granted. While many types of surveillance are pitched as ways to make us safer, almost no one has examined the unintended consequences of living under constant scrutiny and how it changes the way we think and feel about the world.