Showing results by narrator "Peter Lerman" in All Categories

Steffens was the towering figure in journalism of the early 20th century. This is a series of articles he wrote uncovering the graft and corruption at the highest levels of municipal governments across the country: the "Boodlers" stealing money from public piggy banks through a wide variety of schemes and plans made in smoke-filled rooms; trading power for profit; selling rights and property that belonged to the public and putting the money in their own pockets. This is the birth of investigative journalism. It made a difference.

The Five is an captivating novel of the decadent fin-de-siècle written by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940), a controversial leader in the Zionist movement whose literary talents, until now, have largely gone unrecognized by Western readers/listeners. The author deftly paints a picture of Russia's decay and decline—a world permeated with sexuality, mystery, and intrigue. Michael R. Katz has crafted the first English-language translation of this important novel, which was written in Russian in 1935 and published a year later in Paris under the title Pyatero.

The second leading cause of cancer death for men, prostate cancer affects more than a quarter of a million individuals in the United States each year. Most men with prostate cancer will go through the journey from diagnosis through treatment and beyond with a partner and family members by their side. But there are few resources available that address the needs of both those with cancer and their loved ones who want to help.

H. G. Wells, one of the 20th Century’s greatest writers—author of The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man—wrote The Open Conspiracy to express his ideas about how a peaceful and cooperative world community could bring happiness and prosperity to all the inhabitants of the earth. Wars would no longer be fought and hunger would not rear its ugly head. Writing shortly after World War One, he writes of the horrible waste of life and immense suffering that extreme nationalism brought to Europe.

Early Americans were suspicious of centralized authority and executive power. Casting away the yoke of England and its king, the founding fathers shared in this distrust as they set out to pen the Constitution. Weighing a need for consolidated leadership with a demand for states' rights, they established a large federal republic with limited dominion over the states. This Very Short Introduction audiobook provides a concise overview of federalism, from its origins and evolution to the key events and constitutional decisions that have defined its framework.

The stories are all set in New York City and concern themselves with various facets of life in Gilded Age New York City—from the highest of high society to the commonest pensioner in less fashionable neighborhoods in boarding houses. The stories are about manners and mores; about the people of various strata of society relating to each other and the world around them.

Originally entitled Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (1905) is a classic of American political literature that records the candid, “plain talks” of George Washington Plunkitt, a powerful leader within New York City’s Tammany Hall political machine. Compiled by journalist William L. Riordon, the...

Today’s battles over Christianity in U.S. public schools have deep roots. In the nineteenth century it was an intramural struggle between Protestants and later-arriving Catholics. But at Christmastime in 1905, when Frank Harding, the Presbyterian principal of a Brooklyn elementary school, urged his Jewish students to be more like Jesus, the Jewish community entered the fray in a big way. It was just the trigger Orthodox Jewish activist Albert Lucas had been waiting for.

In this practical guidebook, Dr. Dan Morhaim and Shelley Morhaim offer listeners hope, empowerment, and inspiration. What we choose for our end-of-life care, they assert, depends on accurate information and on our personal values. We need these not only to understand new medical advances, but also to appreciate the wisdom of humanity's past and present.

Jack London—author of The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Sea Wolf—was among the most highly regarded and most successful writers of the early 20th century. This is a collection of eight of his best short stories.

The Curse of Demagogues: Lessons Learned from the Presidency of Donald J. Trump is a collection of 32 essays by 22 writers that make the case that the pathway back to a healthy American democracy is for citizens to understand demagogues and defend against them.

From ancient battlefields to the modern business landscape, competitors have tried innumerable approaches to conquering adversaries. Success for the victors has taken many forms and traveled many paths, but at its heart, winning strategy can be boiled down to ten universal principles. When...

Apollo 15 command module pilot Al Worden was one of the highest-profile personalities among the Apollo astronauts, renowned for his outspokenness and potent views but also recognized as a warm and well-liked person who devoted much of his life after retiring from NASA to sharing his spaceflight experiences.

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, the book that changed the course of the nation. It changed American history. Some say it was the most important book in the history of the United States.

Another pandemic is coming. We need to identify the lessons learned from our successes and failures during the COVID-19 pandemic to plan better for our future response.

This insightful and unsparing biography of Sinclair was written by Dell when Sinclair was 48 years old and in mid career. The spectacular success of The Jungle was behind him, and he had already become a world famous celebrity writer. Still, he had much left to say in his passionate pursuit of social justice.

For 25 years, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has defined Cleveland’s image as the “Rock and Roll Capital of the World.” But while the Rock Hall has become an iconic landmark for the city of Cleveland and for fans of rock and roll around the world, it was just one missed phone call away from never being built in Cleveland. If the prominent singer and actress Lesley Gore hadn’t contacted radio personality Norm N. Nite in August 1983, the Hall of Fame would not be in Cleveland—period.

A host of technologies—including digital cameras, drones, facial recognition devices, night-vision binoculars, automated license plate readers, GPS, geofencing, DNA matching, datamining, and artificial intelligence—have enabled police to carry out much of their work without leaving the office or squad car, in ways that do not easily fit the traditional physical search and seizure model envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. Virtual Searches develops a useful typology for sorting through this bewildering array of old, new, and soon-to-arrive policing techniques.

Phonopoetics tells the neglected story of early "talking records" and their significance for literature, from the 1877 invention of the phonograph to some of the first recorded performances of modernist works. The book challenges assumptions of much contemporary criticism by taking the recorded oral performance as its primary object of analysis and by exploring the historically specific convergences between audio recording technologies, media formats, generic forms, and the institutions and practices surrounding the literary.

Had Upton Sinclair not written a single book after The Jungle, he would still be famous. But Sinclair was a mere 25 years old when he wrote The Jungle, and over the next 65 years, he wrote nearly 80 more books and won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He was also a filmmaker, labor activist, women’s rights advocate, and health pioneer on a grand scale. This new biography of Sinclair underscores his place in the American story as a social, political, and cultural force, a man who more than any other disrupted and documented his era in the name of social justice.