Showing results by narrator "Bill Johnson" in All Categories

The essays gathered in The Early Imperial Republic move beyond the question of whether the new republic was an empire, investigating instead where, how, and why it was one. They use the category of empire to situate the early United States in the global context its contemporaries understood, drawing important connections between territorial conquests on the continent and American incursions.

If the Watergate scandal was a national nightmare, then maybe the Bill Clinton scandal was a national wet dream, and who better to narrate it than Joe Eszterhas, screenwriter of such lurid films as Basic Instinct and Showgirls? In American Rhapsody, Eszterhas takes us through the events that threatened to topple a president and left most of the nation's citizens with, at the very least, a bad taste in their mouths. Here, Washington and Hollywood do more than just flirt with each other—they share the same bed.

From the grand old man of comedy, George Burns, to the up-to-the minute observations of today's everyman, Dave Barry, these great humorists share one thing in common: their very individual, often raucously funny perceptions of the world around them.