Showing results by narrator "Gary Roelofs" in All Categories

THE TIDES OF FREEDOM In the vibrant Caribbean democracy of Puerto Libertad, constitutional scholar Sofia Dominguez dismisses her activist brother's warnings when charismatic businessman Miguel Vega wins the presidency. After all, their island nation's democratic institutions have weathered political storms for over two centuries. But as President Vega's nationalist rhetoric gives way to action—targeting immigrants, environmental protections, and the free press—Sofia witnesses the systematic dismantling of the democracy she's dedicated her life to understanding.

The World explode into war as Austro-Hungary declares war on Serbia following the assassination of the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Russia follows suit and mobilizes, while Germany supports its ally and declares war on Russia. France then joins the war as it is Russia’s ally.

The Immortals Among Us is a fresh exploration of Greek mythology through a modern lens. Instead of treating Zeus, Athena, Hades, and the rest as distant relics, Vera Darax reveals how these ancient figures remain archetypes that shape our world today. Power, wisdom, rebellion, desire, redemption—these are not just mythical themes; they are human realities that continue to guide the way we tell stories, create culture, and understand ourselves.

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.

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.

Our society is constantly made to serve the needs of two systems: technology and capitalism. Neither exists outside humans, but both are treated as above and beyond us. The Mechanic and the Luddite offers the critical tools needed to deconstruct these systems—how they work, whom they work for, and what work they do in our lives. With signature style and energy, Jathan Sadowski presents a provocative one-stop shop for understanding the political economy of technology and capitalism.

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.

In Buffoon Men: Classic Hollywood Comedians and Queered Masculinity, Scott Balcerzak reads the performances of notable comedians such as W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello through humor and queer theory to expose a problematic history of maleness in their personas.

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 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.

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.

As American interests assumed global proportions after 1945, policy makers were faced with the challenge of prioritizing various regions and determining the extent to which the United States was prepared to defend and support them. Superpowers and developing nations soon became inextricably linked and decolonizing states such as Vietnam, India, and Egypt assumed a central role in the ideological struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The sequel to the acclaimed Devil's Guard - The Real Story, the former soldiers of the Waffen-SS find themselves embroiled in a new war. Out of the death and destruction of the French war in Indochina, a new country is born, and a new war begins. Vietnam. The survivors of Hitler's war in Russia who took up arms for the French in the bloody conflict that ended with the debacle at Dien Bien Phu have laid down their arms to start afresh in the fledgling democracy.

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."

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.

The robotic revolution is here and there's no going back. From the way we raise our children, to our work settings, to our governments, and even our wars, the quick-fix, instant result society is roiling our world. This audiobook dwells on the miracle of the unknown. It is an intimate trek into the evolving spirituality of awe - the humility and wonder and sense of adventure toward life. Can we preserve awe - the arguable "heart" of humanity - in spite of and even in light of our technologies? There is no more critical problem for our age.

G. Ward Hubbs uses a stark and iconic political cartoon to illuminate postwar conflicts over the meaning of freedom in the American South. The cartoon first appeared in the Tuskaloosa Independent Monitor, published by local Ku Klux Klan boss Ryland Randolph, as a swaggering threat aimed at three individuals. The four men associated with the cartoon were archetypes of those who were seeking to rebuild a South shattered by war. Their lives, but especially their four very different understandings of freedom, help to explain many of the conflicts of the 1860s.

From Benjamin Franklin's newspaper hoax that faked the death of his rival to Abbie Hoffman's attempt to levitate the Pentagon - pranksters, hoaxers, and con artists have caused confusion, disorder, and laughter in Western society for centuries. Profiling the most notorious mischief-makers from the 1600s to the present day, Pranksters explores how "pranks" are part of a long tradition of speaking truth to power and social critique.

UFOs. Aliens. Strange crop circles. Giant figures scratched in the desert surface along the coast of Peru. The amazing alignment of the pyramids. Strange lines of clouds in the sky. The paranormal is alive and well in the American cultural landscape.

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.