Showing results by narrator "Malcolm Hillgartner" in All Categories

The Sun and the Moon tells the delightful and surprisingly true story of how a series of articles in the Sun newspaper in 1835 convinced the citizens of New York that the moon was inhabited. Purporting to reveal discoveries of a famous British astronomer, the series described such moon life as unicorns, beavers that walked upright, and four-foot-tall flying man-bats. It quickly became the most widely circulated newspaper story of the era.

February 1942: Terrifying reports of the Wehrmacht’s advance across the Soviet Union spread like wildfire, striking new fear into the already oppressed German families living there. Harri Pfeiffer, now sixteen, is summoned to the forced labour camp in Chelyabinsk. Three years later, with the war finally over, Yvo Scholz arrives in Chelyabinsk, desperate for news of her brother. Still uncertain of the fate of her father, it takes all Yvo’s unshakeable courage to build a new life for herself. When their paths intersect, Harri and Yvo find a connection they never thought possible.

In the 1970s, Frank Lucas was the king of the Harlem drug trade, bringing in over a million dollars a day. He lived a glamorous life, hobnobbing with athletes, musicians, and politicians, but Lucas was a ruthless gangster. He was notorious for using the coffins of dead GIs to smuggle heroin into the United States, and, before being sentenced to 70 years in prison, he played a major role in the near death of New York City.

In quest of the unpublished manuscript of a martyred Yiddish writer, the American novelist Nathan Zuckerman travels to Soviet-occupied Prague in the mid-1970s. There, in a nation straightjacketed by totalitarian Communism, he discovers a literary predicament, marked by institutionalized oppression, that is rather different from his own. He also discovers, among the oppressed writers with whom he quickly becomes embroiled in a series of bizarre and poignant adventures, a perverse kind of heroism.

In The Reagan I Knew, the late William F. Buckley Jr. offers a reminiscence of 30 years of friendship with the man who brought the American conservative movement out of the political wilderness and into the White House. Reagan and Buckley were political allies and close friends throughout Reagan's political career. They went on vacations together and shared inside jokes.

The 2015 Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks heralded the beginning of a new wave of terrorism - one rooted in the ongoing conflict in Syria and Iraq that shows the possibility of foreign attackers working with citizens of the country. As ISIS seeks to expand its reach in the Middle East, its territory serves as a training and operations base for a new generation of jihadis.

For more than a decade, French journalist Nicolas Hénin has reported from the front lines of conflict in the Middle East, much of his time spent in Iraq and Syria. He witnessed the events leading to the rise of Islamic State, and, in June 2013, he was captured by IS and spent 10 months in captivity with James Foley and others who were beheaded soon after Hénin was released.

Angel in the Whirlwind is the epic tale of the American Revolution, from its roots among tax-weary colonists to the triumphant Declaration of Independence and eventual victory and liberty, recounted by Benson Bobrick, lauded by the New York Times as "perhaps the most interesting historian writing in America today".

Perceptive, funny, and nostalgic, E. B. White's stroll around Manhattan remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America's foremost literary figures. The New York Times named Here Is New York one of the 10 best books ever written about the metropolis, and The New Yorker called it "the wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city".

America is in serious trouble, and our days as a superpower are numbered, argues businessman and entrepreneur Donald J. Trump in his blockbuster new book. With his trademark candor and charisma, Trump reveals his hardline, commonsense solutions to the problems plaguing us today and shows how we can put our country back on the path to greatness. Nobody is better at achieving spectacular success than Donald Trump. Here, Trump shows how America can do the same.

In this stirring, reflective collection of short stories, Joyce Carol Oates ponders alternate destinies: the other lives we might have led if we’d made different choices. An accomplished writer returns to her childhood home of Yewville, but the homecoming stirs troubled thoughts about the person she might have been if she’d never left. A man in prison contemplates the gravity of his irreversible act. A student’s affair with a professor results in a pregnancy that alters the course of her life forever. Even the experience of reading is investigated.

It is the dawn of the 21st century, and America is in trouble. Public schools breed apathy and ignorance, and politics has become the art of the quick fix. There is one woman, though, who has both the vision and the money to leverage change. Mariesa Gorley van Huyten, heiress to one of the great American fortunes, is determined to bring America, and the rest of the world, back on track. She founds an educational subsidiary in hopes of raising a new, less cynical generation.

The final work of fiction from Norman Mailer, a defining voice of the postwar era, is also one of his most ambitious, taking as its subject the evil of Adolf Hitler. The narrator, a mysterious SS man in possession of extraordinary secrets, follows Adolf from birth through adolescence and offers revealing portraits of Hitler's parents and siblings. A crucial reflection on the shadows that eclipsed the 20th century, Mailer's novel delivers myriad twists and surprises along with characteristically astonishing insights into the struggle between good and evil that exists in us all.

No one knows whether Homer was a real person, but there is no doubt that the epic poems assembled under his name are foundations of Western literature. The Iliad and the Odyssey—with their tales of the Trojan War, Achilles, Odysseus and Penelope, the Cyclops, the beautiful Helen of Troy, and the petulant gods—have inspired us for over two and a half millennia and influenced writers from Plato to Virgil, Pope to Joyce, and Dante to Margaret Atwood.

It's a scandal that began in a place called Happy Valley. But it's not as happy as it once was, as the child-sex-abuse charges against a longtime coach and the conspiracy of silence surrounding the allegations have rocked America and Division 1 college sports. In Game Over, journalists Bill Moushey and Bob Dvorchak investigate claims of a startling cover-up within the Penn State hierarchy that attempted to protect its football legacy, quite possibly at the expense of disenfranchised children.

In this collection of more than 30 essays, published in the New York Times, Esquire, and the New Republic, the vast range of Saul Bellow’s nonfiction is made abundantly clear. In Bellow’s capable hands, a single essay can range fluidly across topics as various as the talents of President Roosevelt, the economic narrative of Jay Gatsby, and childhood adventures in Chicago.

Patrick Henry Hughes was born with a rare genetic disorder that left him without eyes and physically disabled. But he was also blessed with exceptional musical talent, able to play the piano at the age of two. Now, at age 19, he is a nationally known pianist, singer, and trumpeter who has performed at the Kennedy Center. But he's best known for playing in the University of Louisville marching band, while his devoted father pushes him in formation in his wheelchair.

In the tradition of 'Agent Zigzag' comes a breath-taking biography of WWII's 'Scarlet Pimpernel' as fast-paced and emotionally intuitive as the best spy thrillers. This celebrates unsung hero Robert de La Rochefoucauld, an aristocrat turned anti-Nazi saboteur, and his exploits as a British Special Operations Executive-trained resistance fighter.

Almir Narayamoga Surui, the Amazonian tribal chieftain of the indigenous Surui people, is a leader in the fight to save the rainforest not only for the preservation of his land and people, but for the Earth's and humanity's survival as well. Joining forces with such high-tech corporations as Apple and Google Earth, Surui has become a guardian of his people and a global activist, despite death threats and million-dollar bounties on his head.

Reincarnation has been a popular belief in cultures throughout the world for many millennia. The possibility that we lived before and may be born again, whether as a human or in some other form of existence, continues to fascinate us and features heavily in popular novels and movies, and also as a subject of recent scholarly studies. Although Buddhism is one of the religious traditions best known for asserting rebirth, the history and scope of Buddhist approaches to the idea has not received comprehensive treatment—until now.