Showing results by narrator "David Marantz" in All Categories

Michael Branch “earned his whiskers” in the Great Basin Desert of northwestern Nevada, where he lives off the grid with his wife and two curious little girls. Shifting between pastoral passages on beauty found in the desert and humorous tales of being a father, Raising Wild offers an intimate portrait of a landscape where mountain lions and ground squirrels can threaten in equal measure. With Branch’s distinct lyricism and wit, this barren landscape becomes a place resonant with the rattle of snakes, the plod of pronghorn antelope, and the rustle of juniper trees.

The stark and inhospitable high-elevation landscape of Nevada’s Great Basin Desert may not be an obvious (or easy) place to settle down, but for self-professed desert rat Michael Branch it’s home. Of course, living in such an unforgiving landscape gives one many things to rant about. Fortunately for us, Branch—humorist, environmentalist, and author of Raising Wild—is a prodigious ranter.

This well-researched and highly critical examination of the state of our mental health system by the industry's most relentless critic presents a new and controversial explanation as to why—in spite of spending $147 billion annually—140,000 seriously mentally ill are homeless, 390,000 are incarcerated, and even educated, tenacious, and caring people can't get treatment for their mentally ill loved ones.

In Abundance, Pablo J. Boczkowski builds upon what we know about the historical and contemporary scholarship to develop a novel framework on the experience of living in a society that has more information available to the public than ever before, focusing on the interpretations, emotions, and practices of dealing with this abundance in everyday life. 

How the police create an imaginary criminal gang to trick homicide suspects into a confession and a prison cell There are people in prison who got away with murder until they told the boss of a powerful criminal gang all about it. When the handcuffs were snapped on, the killers learned they'd...

Ever since the United States introduced depositions into civil litigation practice in 1938, they have been an invaluable tool of law. They are also a constantly evolving component of the American legal system. As Anthony J. Bocchino and David A. Sonenshein note in The Modern Deposition, the role of depositions may be changing, but lawyers and practices are still mired in the same staid techniques used in preparing them. Their new guide to depositions shows the need for a radical change in the way lawyers think about depositions.

William Humphrey’s acclaimed memoir is a richly detailed portrait of small-town Texas and a poignant account of the tragedy that shaped the author’s life. At three o’clock in the morning on July 5, 1937, William Humphrey awoke to his mother’s urgent cry: "Get dressed as quick as you can! Your daddy has been hurt." Rushing to the doctor’s office, mother and son arrived to find Clarence Humphrey battered beyond recognition: his chest crushed, his face bruised black and caked with blood, his teeth shattered. He soon drew his final breath.

Knowing the technical bases for objections is not so difficult. Law school covers that. What is much harder is recognizing a good objection very quickly when your opponent puts a question to a witness or starts using a document. Cues and Signals gives you details on every objection that has been recognized in federal courts and sorts out the high-payoff objections from those of lower priority for both oral testimony and exhibits. Everything you need on objections is in one audiobook.

This kind of exhibit can be qualified either as evidence or as a testimony aid. Generally, you will want to offer charts and graphs in evidence because that way of organizing the data can qualify as "substantive evidence", and it is valuable to have the organized data before the jury during its deliberations. The "numbers documents" may be qualified by either a lay witness or by an expert witness. This book gives you the methodologies for both.

This book covers important general requirements for the use of exhibits in pretrial motions. For example, summary judgment motions often have exhibits attached that support substantive arguments about issues in the case.

Physical objects and substances are the "real thing". They are the physical things that are at issue in the case, such as defective parts, pieces of fabric, preserved specimens, and contaminated substances. They can be highly effective exhibits, so the establishing the foundation and preparing to defend against objections needs to be done carefully. Avoid common mistakes in laying an adequate foundation and prepare to defend against objections.

Text document exhibits are subject to the largest number of specialized evidentiary rules. The easiest way to deal with these rules is to consider first the general category into which the exhibit falls: It is either: an original, an exact duplicate with no markings that are not on the original, a "nonconforming" copy that has some markings that are not on the original, a summary of voluminous documents, or an email or other digital file.

As a category of exhibits, replications are methods for recreating the "real thing". Unlike the recordings of the "real thing", like photographs, which show the real thing as it exists in real life, replications start from scratch and recreate or build a "copy" of the real thing. For example, animations are produced using very sophisticated computer software that can combine many forms of data with color and perspective to create a very lifelike reconstruction.

Illustrative documents may face challenges based on the requirements of the rules with respect to authentication. The key to admissibility of representational or illustrative documents is the degree of fairness and accuracy with which they represent the "real" thing - that is, the place, organization, object, or other thing being illustrated. This book shows how to establish the needed foundation and to protect against objections.

You can get almost any exhibit admitted in evidence by following a few straight forward guidelines that are explained here. The easiest way to explain how to qualify exhibits is to use excerpts from transcripts - the actual questions asked and answers given - in a proceeding in which an exhibit similar to yours was put into evidence successfully. Each point in this guidance is explained this way. By using these examples, you have the structure for your deposition or trial notes.

In evidentiary terms, the next best thing to seeing the object or the scene itself, or hearing a witness who was at the scene is a recording of some kind that accurately reproduces the "real thing". The authenticity or trustworthiness of many of these exhibits must be established under Federal Rule 901(b)(9) or the state equivalent that applies to processes or systems. The output from equipment can be qualified by testimony that the process or system produces an accurate result.

The use of the term "evil" has become controversial. Many are reluctant to apply it at all - even to Adolph Hitler (psychological adjustment problems, you see). And while it is true that the word has been recurrently misused, if we abandon the idea that it is possible to commit a knowingly evil act, we must abandon our belief in free will. Consider the case of "Psycho-Cabbie"....

Thirty-eight years ago Robert Brown launched an upstart magazine from his basement called Soldier of Fortune, which pushed the bounds of journalism to its limits with his untamed brand of reporting - - a camera in one hand, a gun in the other, and soon thereafter he discovered that he’d established a worldwide community. His wildly popular, notorious magazine became an icon for action-seekers in the U.S. and around the world. In this long-awaited book, Brown tells his own story.

Far to the north of the hot desert land of Telfar lies the frozen kingdom of Sorvinka. Prince Amir has traveled there, leaving his sultanate in the hands of his half-brother, Erik, as he seeks to ask the king, the father of the beautiful Princess Eva, for her hand in marriage. But Sorvinka has grown dangerous during Princess Eva's absence, as she and Amir discover to their terror, when their force of guards and eunuchs is cut down by ruthless brigands. And upon their arrival, their welcome to Eva's family stronghold is as bitterly cold as the land itself.

Cliff St. James returns along with his partner Honey to investigate a baffling series of ritualistic deaths that may be connected to a bizarre secret society, in Ed Kovacs' Burnt Black. New Orleans Homicide Detective Cliff St. James and his partner Honey are still trying to piece their lives together a year and a half after a killer storm decimated the city. They find themselves probing a succession of unusual deaths that may or may not be homicides. The investigation not only proves frustrating, but it strains at the very fabric of St. James and Honey’s relationship.