Showing results by narrator "Gary Roelofs" in All Categories

In this historically accurate work of fiction, listeners follow the journey of Afrika, an African man descended from an emperor who is first enslaved and then given his freedom by white men.Captured in Africa and transported across the ocean to the Americas, Afrika's captors sell him to a German-born plantation owner in Georgia who becomes a father figure to him. A learned man, he teaches Afrika the value and power of an education, instilling in him a love of learning and starting him on a path toward intellectual freedom even before he gains his physical freedom.

This eye-opening personal history tells the story of an American college professor's 20-year engagement with a thriving Africa rarely encountered by Western visitors, including an extraordinary connection to poets across the continent. At once adventurous, spiritual, political, dreamlike, and humorous, Joining Africa is a unique documentary of a journey through the continent, including an intense five-year encounter with economically struggling but culturally fertile Eritrea. The Africa presented here is neither a postcolonial study nor an exotic tourist destination.

As the first decade of the 21st century has made brutally clear, the very definitions of war and the enemy have changed almost beyond recognition. Threats to security are now as likely to come from armed propagandists, popular militias, or mercenary organizations as they are from conventional armies backed by nation-states. In this timely book, national security expert Max G. Manwaring explores a little-understood actor on the stage of irregular warfare - the gang.

The Gateauxs' and the Wileys' feud didn't match the ferocity of the Hatfields' and the McCoys' but they didn't like each other. The other members of the warring families could not stop the marriage of Jacque and Mellissa Jane. Boo was the product of that union.

Jacque taught a reluctant Boo to fight at the tender age of four.

His elementary school days were highlighted in a battle with the 2nd grade class bully. Boo's training in fisticuffs paid off and he wiped the bully for pushing the little girl he had a crush on and making her cry.

How will the lives of the next few American generations change? Are we at a turning point in the political history of the United States - one in which people overall, be they “ordinary” or “extraordinarily empowered”, will make fewer and fewer decisions? To what extent are political and social processes objective, and to what extent can we govern them? What depends on us?

In the wake of the coronavirus and George Floyd killing, many of the issues dividing us as a nation - race, politics, class, gender, climate change, globalism, and religion - have only been magnified, and although the US surgeon general has called for an end to bickering and partisanship, it is unclear to what extent this will take effect. What is clear, however, is that safe, mindfully structured dialogues are imperative if we are to salvage our republic and the democratic principles on which it is built.

Tarot cards have been around since the Renaissance, and have become increasingly popular in recent years, often due to their prevalence in popular culture. This audiobook is an extensive history of the development and evolution of Tarot, and its place in culture. It begins with an extensive review from its roots as a game, to its supposed connection to ancient Egyptian magic; through its place in secret societies, and to its current use in meditation and psychology.

In Shadow and Shelter: The Swamp in Southern Culture, Anthony Wilson examines the relationship between the ecological history of the southern swamp and the evolution of southern culture from the colonial era to the present. To early European colonists, the swamp was a place linked with sin and impurity. To the plantation elite, it was a practical obstacle to agricultural development.

After all the years of secrecy, government cover-ups, and lies, the time has finally come for the truth to be told! This book goes into great depths and details into the history of when and why the UFO cover-up began, up until the present day. Contained in this audiobook is information never seen or heard of before, even by the world's leading ufologist! I've spent the past 20 plus years of my life doing the research and studying every government document and speaking to every government and military official to put this book together and get it out to the public.

Many Americans believe that foreign military intervention is central to protecting our domestic freedoms. But Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall urge engaged citizens to think again. Overseas, our government takes actions in the name of defense that would not be permissible within national borders. Emboldened by the relative weakness of governance abroad, the US government is able to experiment with a broader range of social controls.

Longtime fly fisherman Quinn Grover had contemplated the “why” of his fishing identity before, more recently, becoming focused on the “how” of it. He realized he was a dedicated fly fisherman, in large part, because public lands and public waterways in the West made it possible. In Wilderness of Hope Grover recounts his fly-fishing experiences with a strong evocation of place, connecting those experiences to the ongoing national debate over public lands.

Navy Lieutenant G. Palmatier has a small problem: A polar bear. But he's not going to let a little thing like that come between him and the crazy redhead he loves. Especially since he's so drunk he won't feel a thing til after it is all over. Don't try what he tries at home.

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.

What do you get when you mix a cranky God, a bunch of emotionally fragile prophets, 613 commandments, and a whole lot of carbs? A sacred mess called Judaism—and this hilariously dysfunctional guide is here to make sense of it all. In Oy Vey Almighty, we dive headfirst into the wonders and weirdness of Jewish faith, history, rituals, and culture—from Abraham’s awkward parenting to Moses' divine burnout, from Shabbat naps to Passover plagues.

Public Gardens and Livable Cities uses a prescriptive approach to synthesize a range of public, private, and nonprofit initiatives from municipalities throughout the country. In doing so, the authors examine the initiatives from a practical perspective to identify how they were implemented, their sustainability, the obstacles they encountered, the impact of the initiatives on their populations, and how they dealt with the communities' underlying social problems.

Leading analysts have predicted for decades that nuclear weapons would help pacify international politics. But why do international relations in the nuclear age remain so competitive? Indeed, why are today's major geopolitical rivalries intensifying? In The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution, Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press tackle the central puzzle of the nuclear age: The persistence of intense geopolitical competition in the shadow of nuclear weapons.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with US and Russia relations approaching a breaking point, this book provides a key to understanding how we got here. Specifically, Stephen P. Friot asks, how do Russians and Americans think about each other, and why do they see the world so differently? The answers, Friot suggests, lie in the historical events surrounding the Cold War and their divergent influence on politics and popular consciousness.

"The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions", said the existentialist thinker Albert Camus. And no less a philosopher than Woody Allen has wondered: "How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?" The essays in Movies and the Meaning of Life look at popular and cult movies, examining their assumptions and insights on meaning-of-life questions....

While much recent ecocriticism has questioned the value of nature as a concept, Thought's Wilderness insists that it is analytically and politically indispensable, and that romanticism shows us why. Without a concept of nature, Greg Ellermann argues, our thinking is limited to the world that capitalism has made. Defamiliarizing the tradition of romantic nature writing, Ellermann contends that the romantics tried to circumvent the domination of nature that is essential to modern capitalism.

This serves as an entry level approach to popular topics such as amnesia, artificial intelligence, and language use. The audiobook is created in simple language. It uses examples from the media and pop culture that the listener can easily relate and understand the concepts and topics.