Showing results by narrator "David Colacci" in All Categories

World-renowned novelist Mark Helprin offers a ringing Jeffersonian defense of private property in the age of digital culture, with its degradation of thought and language, and collectivist bias against the rights of individual creators.

Charlie is a sportswriter whose father's unexpected heart attack sets his own biological clock ticking. He decides he wants a family, but he doesn't even have a girlfriend. He enlists the help of Lacy, a single mom who works on the advice desk of their newspaper. The two develop a fast friendship that threatens to become very romantic indeed.

During the years of the Early Republic, prominent Native leaders regularly traveled to American cities primarily on diplomatic or trade business, but also from curiosity. They were frequently referred to as "the Chiefs now in this city" during their visits. Colin Calloway has gathered together the accounts of these visits and created a new narrative of the country's formative years, redefining what has been understood as the "frontier." Calloway captures what Native peoples observed as they walked the streets, sat in pews, attended plays, drank in taverns, and slept in hotels.

In an elite college in a once-decaying New England city, Steven Brookman has come to a decision. A brilliant but careless professor, he has determined that for the sake of his marriage, and his soul, he must extract himself from his relationship with Maud Stack, his electrifying student, whose papers are always late and too long yet always incandescent. But Maud is a young woman whose passions are not easily contained or curtailed, and their union will quickly yield tragic and far-reaching consequences.

The German occupation of the Eternal City has ended, the war in Europe is over, the atomic bomb has yet to fall on Japan, and Rome is under the jurisdiction of the victors. An American Vatican prelate and lawyer, Brendan Doherty, is involved in two crusades. Abhorring capital punishment, he means to avert the execution of the Nazi collaborator Pietro Koch. In addition, as devil’s advocate, Doherty intends to prove the hypocrisy of Alessandro Serenelli, the man who 40 years before murdered Maria Goretti. Converted by a vision, Serenelli has spent his life, in prison and out, promoting the beatification of his victim.

The culmination of years of work on Abraham Lincoln's political thought, Michael Zuckert's A Nation So Conceived argues for a coherent center to Lincoln's political ideology. Zuckert provides invaluable guidance to understanding both Lincoln and the politics of the United States between 1845 and Lincoln's death in 1865 by focusing on roughly a dozen speeches that Lincoln made during his career. This listener-friendly chronological organization is motivated by Zuckert's emphasis on Lincoln as a practical politician who was always fully aware of the political context of the moment.

Echo Among Warriors is a story of close combat between two opposing, equally committed adversaries. The powerful narrative immerses the listener in both sides of the battle, playing and replaying the same battle sequence from alternating viewpoints—through the eyes of the Marines and through the eyes of the North Vietnamese. The bullet fired from a Marine's M-16 at a silhouetted enemy solider will in the next chapter tear into the flesh of that crouched NVA trooper. The story represents just one of perhaps thousands of deadly encounters that reflect the reality of battle.

Among the more than 34,000 species of fish, few have the walleye's following—among anglers and diners, states conferring official status on the fish, and towns battling for recognition as the Walleye Capital of the World. And among those passionate fans, few know the walleye as well as Paul J. Radomski does—a fisheries biologist, lake ecology scientist, and old fisherman. In Walleye: A Beautiful Fish of the Dark he unspools the mysteries of this fascinating fish.

American Traitor examines the career of the notorious Gen. James Wilkinson, whose corruption and espionage exposed the United States to grave dangers during the early years of the republic. Wilkinson is largely forgotten today, which is unfortunate because his sordid story is a cautionary tale about unscrupulous actors who would take advantage of gaps in the law, oversight, and accountability for self-dealing.

The death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and the ensuing trial of Derek Chauvin for murder a year later has rubbed raw the bloodiest stain on the United States’ history and its world reputation. The nine minutes and 29 seconds during which Chauvin’s knee crushed the spark of life out of Floyd was not unusual in the history of the United States. In roughly two centuries, Blacks have achieved nominal freedom. But, as this book’s opening chapter and expert essays that follow indicate, freedom has been conditional based on inequity of wealth, social, and legal discrimination.