Showing results by narrator "Tom Weiner" in All Categories

Conflicts of interest, misrepresentation of clinical trials, hospital price-fixing, and massive expenditures for procedures of dubious efficacy - these and other critical flaws leave little doubt that the current US health-care system is in need of an overhaul. In this essential guide, preeminent physician Nortin Hadler urges American health-care consumers to take time to understand the existing system and to visualize what the outcome of successful reform might look like.

No one really notices that a certain horse race might have been fixed until Matt O’Connor, a Chicago-based columnist for a national racing newspaper, gets a call from Moe Kellman, a horse-owning acquaintance. Kellman’s question for Matt: Was the death of 92-year-old Bernard Glockner, Chicago’s oldest active bookie, suicide or murder? Glockner was Kellman’s late uncle, and Kellman, a man familiar with the Chicago mob, wants Matt to check it out.

Communist China is lying, cheating, and stealing its way into becoming a global superpower. And what’s worse, President Obama is not only letting this happen but helping China do so. So argues best-selling author William Triplett II and Washington Times editor Brett M. Decker in their shocking book, Bowing to Beijing.

The threat of terrorism in America, the Obama administration assures us, is contained and controlled. Attempted attacks like the Times Square bombing, the “underwear bombing” on a flight over Detroit, and the attack on a Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Oregon were all isolated plots that failed. In the words of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano, “The system worked.” Don't believe it.

Eric Klinenberg's Fighting for Air takes us into the world of preprogrammed radio shows, empty television news stations, and copycat newspapers to show how corporate ownership and control of local media has remade American political and cultural life. Klinenberg argues that the demise of truly local media stems from the federal government's malign neglect.

In 1862, Ulysses S. Grant achieved what President Lincoln had sought since the start of the War: the first decisive Union victory. Fought on the western edge of the theater, the Forts Henry and Donelson campaign was a gruesome omen of what was to come.

Al Silverman, a noted figure in American publishing, has written a wonderful chronicle of book publishing for all who cherish books. The Time of Their Lives is not only a love song to the industry's golden age, an era that began after World War II and lasted for three-plus decades, but it is also a reflection of the tastes and cultural appetites of the American public.

Deepwater Horizon was supposed to be the cutting edge of energy exploration: drilling 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, the $560 million rig would be indispensable in helping to solve the ongoing energy crisis. Then, on April 20, 2010, BP’s dismal safety record came home to roost.

Louis L’Amour said that the West was no place for the frightened or the mean. It was a “big country needing big men and women to live in it.” This volume presents five more of L’Amour’s fine short stories about the West.

Jargan is a summer gambler wintering in the western town of Big Horn when he saves the life of Don José Cordoba and unwittingly acquires a new job. Soon he finds himself on a boat to Buenos Aires, having gained passage as the horse handler of two extraordinary horses: one called El Pantera, and a killer named Asesinato. He must use his innate wisdom and survival skills to protect himself and his charge against malignant men with a brutal love of cruelty.

When the most hated landlord in San Francisco takes an unexpected jump off the roof of his own building, it isn't too hard to find suspects. But the police want to call it a suicide, since both the mayor and the press are complaining about the dismal closure rate for homicide investigations. But ex-cop Sam McGowan knows it was murder. He also knows that anyone living on the top floor of the building should be a suspect, including himself. So Sam decides to get to know his neighbors.

CIA sleuth Roger Wagner has retired and moved to Florida with his smart, pretty wife. But his leisure is disrupted when the body of a fellow secret agent washes ashore near his beach-front house. The incident launches him on a frantic, hazardous race against time to neutralize a doomsday bomb hidden by a group of terrorists, who are holding his wife—and the entire state of Florida—hostage.

In its first appearance with a text based on the author's holographic manuscript, three cowhands working for the Springer Ranch have tried, through forging letters, to discourage a schoolteacher in the East from coming West to teach school. Their strategy has failed because of a mysterious Frank Owens whose love letters have convinced her that she must come. No one knows who he is.

Roger Wagner, CIA sleuth with a gift for wry jokes, is given 10 days to uncover an assassination plot against the President of the United States, who is scheduled to give a crucial speech in Munich. Wagner's frantic search leads him through the German underworld, neo-Nazi dens, glossy jet-set salons, and the highest levels of government.

Growing numbers of Americans are doing work that they care about and enjoy. But they're frustrated by stagnant wages, shrinking health coverage, shaky pension plans, and company polices that make it more difficult for them to do their jobs well. Corporate executives may be becoming less loyal to their employees, but those same employees still want to be loyal to their company.

Hootenville, Pennsylvania: It looks like any conventional company town, but beneath its placid surface throbs a network of violence, blackmail, and murder. It takes an ex-Army spy to coolly fit together the puzzle and expose the game of terror, intrigue, and cunning known as industrial espionage. Someone at Hooten Plastics Corporation has been selling its manufacturing secrets.

This entertaining collection features 13 short mystery stories from some of our finest writers, all based on a piece of music. Editors Claudia Bishop and Don Bruns present the stories with two essays, discussing the short mystery and the musical mystery.

In this deceptively simple yet powerful book, noted author and media expert Michael Levine lays out hundreds of simple admonitions that, when followed, add up to an excellent guide for a happy and successful life. Instead of telling us what to do, Never tells us what not to do in many aspects of life.

The Tea Party movement is the most dynamic and powerful grassroots political movement witnessed by modern-day America. It arose spontaneously—and in the nick of time—to save this country from an advancing, fatal drift away from self-government, liberty, and the promise of greater prosperity for future generations.

When undercover FBI agent Matt Hogan totals three vehicles in an out-of-policy Beverly Hills pursuit of a fleeing Arab drug-runner, he incurs the wrath of the Bureau hierarchy. To avoid an almost certain suspension, he accepts a new assignment tracking terrorist-cell groups while posing as a volunteer at a nonprofit charity. What he doesn’t know is that the ripples of danger from this case will threaten not only his life but the safety and security of the entire nation.