Showing results by narrator "Jonathan Beville" in All Categories

In Ray Kurzweil's New York Times bestseller The Singularity is Near, the futurist and entrepreneur describes the Singularity, a likely future utterly different than anything we can imagine. The Singularity is triggered by the tremendous growth of human and computing intelligence that is an almost inevitable outcome of Moore's Law. Since the book's publication, the coming of the Singularity is now eagerly anticipated by many of the leading thinkers in Silicon Valley, from PayPal mastermind Peter Thiel to Google co-founder Larry Page.

This is the unbelievable, unforgettable, unparalleled story of an ordinary guy whose attempts to become famous doing the thing he wanted most—become a world class race car driver—devolved into a you-can’t-make-this-up tale of one of the biggest crime rings and drug scandals of the 1980s. Now, with the help of New York Times bestselling author A.J. Baime, Randy tells the whole truth for the first time ever, a gripping narrative unlike any other, a sports story for the ages, and shocking a true crime epic.

Brian Evenson's fifth story collection constructs a human landscape as unearthly as it is mundane. Replete with the brutality, primordial waste, and savage blankness familiar to listeners of his earlier works, Evenson's Kafkaesque allegories entice the mind while stubbornly disordering it.

Most scholars and analysts believe that the primary cause of our abysmal war record since Vietnam has been the US military’s overwhelmingly conventional approach to conflict, which favors kinetic operations, highly mobile precision firepower, and sophisticated systems of command and control. Here, James Warren argues that a much more formidable obstacle to success has been pervasive strategic ineptitude at the highest levels of decision-making, including the presidency, the national security council, and the foreign policy community in DC.

Vegetarians have argued at great length that meat-eating is wrong. Even so, the vast majority of people continue to eat meat, and even most vegetarians eventually give up on their diets. Does this prove these people must be morally corrupt? Dan C. Shahar argues the answer is no: It's entirely possible to be an ethical person while continuing to eat meat - and not just the "fancy" offerings from the farmers' market, but also the regular meat we find at most supermarkets and restaurants.

After several missing university students turn up dead in Iowa’s cornfields, the police turn to FBI Special Agent Sterling Gray, a rising star at the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit. After painstaking investigative work, Gray thought they had identified the killer. But when Interpol suddenly contacts him about a similar investigation in London, the case takes a shocking turn. Now Gray must follow the chilling trail of a killer known only as the Mirror Man. To catch him, Gray must get inside the killer’s twisted mind—without losing himself in the process.

It was once a utopian dream. But today’s internet, despite its conveniences and connectivity, is the primary cause of a pervasive unease that has taken hold in the U.S. and other democratic societies. The roots of this crisis, argue Frank McCourt and Michael Casey, lie in the prevailing order of the internet. In plain but forceful language, the authors—a civic entrepreneur and an acclaimed journalist—show how a centralized system controlled by a small group of for-profit entities has set this catastrophe in motion and eroded our personhood.

Years ago, police detective Kevin McClain was captured and tortured when he was an airborne ranger in Somalia. Now, years later, the mutilation murder of a homeless man brings back a flood of unpleasant memories. At the same time, FBI agent Felicia Knight is busy tracking down a terrorist cell purportedly set to strike in our nation’s capital on the eve of the presidential election. What neither McClain nor Knight realizes is the two cases are secretly connected by a sinister plot more diabolical and far-reaching than either of them can imagine.

Land a lighthouse deal to catapult your startup over the chasm of early adopters and into the land of new opportunities with trillion-dollar companies. Navigate to the Lighthouse explains how to do that, using strategic business development as a competitive advantage. When you approach the chasm and look at lighthouses shining on potential trajectory-changing deals, two questions likely cross your mind: Should I invest the time and resources to pursue what seem like impossible deals? If so, what’s the path to get there—strategically and tactically? Kurt Davis has the answers.

In the aftermath of disaster, China and America vie for control over North Africa and the world, while a band of engineers and mercenaries risk everything to save millions from starvation and forge a better future for all mankind.

When the deadly duo witnesses a catastrophic terrorist attack, they don't stand idly by. They run into the fray, engaging the enemy, and stumble upon a message the killers leave behind. Graypoole has been resurrected. It's an impossible development. Dane knows Graypoole, a terrorist who targeted capitalists, is dead - killed by a black ops team. But as he and Nina follow the evidence, they learn Graypoole's son has taken over. And Junior wants revenge. One incident of mass murder, and killing the men who murdered his father, isn't enough. He's planning a bigger attack for an encore.

A desperate SOS from an old friend sends Steve Dane to the rescue - only to find that he's too late. Tom Wexler is dead, and the stolen Iraqi antiquities he was trying to recover are gone again. With Nina Talikova by his side, Dane is determined to find out who killed his friend and restore a nation's history. But the chessboard is not in his favor, and when checkmate comes, Dane discovers his enemies were once allies who know every move he'll make.

Steve Dane faces a day of reckoning long overdue when he learns the truth about his father. But the truth is a bitter pill when he discovers his father's death ties to rogue agents within US intelligence who use Agency assets to further their own agenda. With battle lines drawn, Steve Dane and Nina Talikova do what they do best: Attack! From the shores of Maryland to the blistering heat of a South American jungle, Dane and Nina destroy each tentacle of the enemy before finally coming face-to-face with the top dog himself and a final crippling betrayal.

International adventurer Steve Dane never should have set foot in Italy. Witnessing a young woman’s kidnapping, he is drawn into a decades-old vendetta. Racing against time, Dane battles the mafia who want him dead and the police and who want him out of the way.

Monaco was a nice vacation - until Steve Dane and Nina Talikova witness a secret agent’s murder. Now loose ends in a Russian conspiracy to steal a direct-energy weapon from the U.S., the assassins pursuing them have made a grave miscalculation. Dane and Nina are former spies who know all the tricks. Their trail of vengeance leads from Monaco to Texas, to a showdown in the Gulf of Mexico, where Dane is taken prisoner by an opponent who intends to settle old hatreds long thought buried. Outgunned and alone, Steve Dane negotiates the only terms the enemy understands: certain death.

Historian Bennett Parten provides a groundbreaking account of Sherman’s March to the Sea—the critical Civil War campaign that destroyed the Confederacy—told for the first time from the perspective of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who fled to the Union lines and transformed Sherman’s march into the biggest liberation event in American history.

Jim Hampton arrived in New Orleans, eager to escape the stress of quitting a lucrative law practice. Instead, he finds a city on edge as a tropical depression brews in the Gulf. The storm appears to be dredging up the odd and unusual like shells from the ocean floor. Shadowy figures appear in alleyways; mysterious voices seem to come from nowhere. Jim is skeptical of the locals' claims that these are warnings from victims of past storms. He had all but given up on belief in the supernatural. That is until he meets Myriam, who begins to restore the faith of his childhood.

On Earth, Grover Baines (a NASA scientist) is murdered in 1979 when he stumbles upon a secret third Voyager flight. Unlike the two other probes, Voyager 3 was a small manned craft loaded with reproductive material in hopes of finding a suitable planet for habitation on Alpha Centauri. Years later, in 2001, a fourth Voyager is sent on the same mission. Though technology has advanced dramatically in the 24 years since the first three Voyagers were launched, this mission manages to remain secret amid the attacks on the Twin Towers.

Ulysses Walker, Sheriff of Taos County, is facing a tough re-election campaign against a well-funded opponent when a respected historian and acequiero. The murder looks like a dispute over shared irrigation water at first. But after two more murders the sheriff uncovers a web of corruption born out of New Mexico's troubled history.