Showing results by narrator "David De Vries" in All Categories

The Four Trials of Henry Ford chronicles Henry Ford’s forays into landmark litigation during the early years of the 20th century. Ford was a man of extraordinary genius in the intricacies and workings of mechanical objects and in the identification and hiring of talented engineers and administrative managers. But he was constitutionally unable to permit a light to shine on anyone other than himself and often employed humiliating tactics to terminate any employee who rose to prominence.

On September 1, 2004, three middle-aged buddies set out on one of the last geographic challenges never before attempted in North America: to hike the Comb Ridge in one continuous push. The Comb is an upthrust ridge of sandstone-virtually a mini-mountain range-that stretches almost unbroken for a hundred miles from just east of Kayenta, Arizona, to some ten miles west of Blanding, Utah. To hike the Comb is to run a gauntlet of up-and-down severities, with the precipice lurking on one hand, the fiendishly convoluted bedrock slab on the other-always at a sideways, ankle-wrenching pitch.

After the WWII, Germans began a generation-long debate about the status that should be accorded Wehrmacht deserters. The topic would be debated between the two Germanies and engaged survivors and perpetrators, playwrights, and judges, those who had stayed in the ranks and those who had not. Was the Wehrmacht a coward, a victim, or a role model? The book's discussion of this postwar debate explains how and why Germany finally decided to overturn military court-martial verdicts from the Second World War fifty years after its conclusion.

Tom Cliffe is who many young people in the 1960s want to be: not just a lover of music, a player of music. But more than an interest, more than a passion, music and a commitment to becoming an accomplished player and recognized for it will become the driving force in Tom’s life. He will give up everything, all the accommodations of the conventional life he was brought up in and educated for.

A story that kicked off a literacy campaign at the White House. Wells' sweet, rhyming text encourages parents to read to their children for twenty minutes every day and see the magic of reading begin.

Bennett was one of several journalists to fly a night raid over Berlin in November 1943. This is the vivid testimony of an American journalist shot down over Berlin. After he was captured in Berlin, he was taken on a tour of Germany and shown what the civilian population was being subjected to. Bennett spent the rest of the war in Stalag Luft I, where he started the newspaper POW WOW, secretly read by 9,000 prisoners. Bennett's experiences led him to condemn the Allied policy of systematically bombing civilian population centers.

Thirteen-year-old Dirk has been the man of the house since his papa disappeared while fighting against the Nazis with the Dutch Resistance. When the Gestapo arrests Dirk's older sister, who is also a Resistance fighter, Dirk fears that he and his little sister, Anna, might be next. With only pockets full of food and his sister asleep in his arms, Dirk runs away to find his father. As Dirk leads Anna across the war-torn Netherlands, from farmyards to work camps, he must rely on his wits and his father's teaching to find his way.

Just three days after he was born, Howard Shulman contracted an infection that attacked his face, devouring his nose, lips, lower right eyelid, tear ducts, and palate. Abandoned at the hospital by his parents, he became a ward of New Jersey under the care of a state-employed surgeon who experimentally rebuilt his face.

An ancient amulet. A family of warrior rats. And a looming attack from the feared Clan of Shadows. Heathermoor Valley is a peaceful place, until the sinister fox Ghost Eye attacks the ancient fortress of Thornkeep with the savage Clan of Shadows army. The only hope for the rats of Thornkeep is to get word to their allies, the ferocious Bear Clan in far-away Honey Cliff.

Oh hey, guess what? The Sun never stops working to keep things on Earth running smoothly. (That's why it's been Employee of the Month for 4.5 billion years.) So why does the Sun get to be the center of attention? Because it's our solar system's very own star! This funny and factual tale from Awkward Yeti creator Nick Seluk explains every part of the Sun's big job: keeping our solar system together, giving Earth day and night, keeping us warm, and more. In fact, the Sun does so much for us that we wouldn't be alive without it. That's kind of a big deal.

Is moral philosophy more foundational than political theory? It is often assumed to be. David Schmidtz argues that the reverse is true: the question of how to live in a community is more fundamental than questions about how to live. This book questions whether we are getting to the foundations of human morality when we ignore contingent features of communities in which political animals live.

On America's 100th birthday, the people of France built a giant gift! It was one of the largest statues the world had ever seen—and she weighed as much as 40 elephants! And when she arrived on our shores in 250 pieces, she needed a pedestal to hold her up. Few of America's millionaires were willing to foot the bill. Then, Joseph Pulitzer (a poor Hungarian immigrant-cum-newspaper mogul) appealed to his fellow citizens. He invited them to contribute whatever they could, no matter how small an amount, to raise funds to mount this statue.