Showing results by narrator "Michael Murray" in All Categories

There has never been a show business book quite like The Show Won't Go On, the first comprehensive study of a bizarre phenomenon: performers who died onstage. From the comedy magician who dropped dead on live television to the amateur thespian who expired during a play called The Art of Murder, the book is a celebration of lives both famous and obscure, as well as a dramatic and accurate recounting of events leading to the moments they died "doing what they loved."

The wealth management industry has undergone a major transformation over the last decade, including increased concerns and skepticism from investors, the growth of robo-advisors, product evolution, and an evolving value proposition - in addition to geopolitical risks, increased correlation across asset classes, changing demographics, and social tensions. Concepts like "Modern Portfolio Theory" aren't modern anymore, and even Post-Modern Portfolio Theory has become passe.

American democracy has become coin operated. Special interest groups increasingly control every level of government. The necessity of raising huge sums of campaign cash has completely changed the character of politics and policymaking, determining what elected representatives stand for and how they spend their time.

John Schulian, a much-honored sportswriter for nearly forty years, takes us back to a time when our greatest athletes stood before us as human beings, not remote gods. In this compelling collection, Schulian paints prose portraits to remind fans of what today's cloistered stars won't share with them. The result is an audiobook guaranteed to stir memories for the generation that was - and to leave subsequent generations wishing they had it so good.

Early in his career, Dan Beaver discovered that people were never taught how to develop an intimate relationship. We are taught how to read, how to write, drive, play sports, and use a computer. But nowhere in our society are we taught how to develop or maintain an intimate relationship. Most of us learned from TV shows. Some generations were taught by Ozzie and Harriet Nelson or Ward and June Cleaver. Other generations learned from their favorite soap operas, or maybe The Waltons, Cliff and Clair Huxtable, Roseanne, Friends, or 7th Heaven.

The national exposure of the Lee Acker case put the trial skills of Maggie Reynolds on full display. Now she is intent on pursuing more profitable victories in the courtroom. Leaving behind her work as a criminal defense lawyer, Maggie is hot on the tail of her highest-profile job yet. Maggie hopes that a win will give her the recognition that she deserves. But when Blake County native Charlotte Acker is accused of murdering Lucy Kelley Collins, the wife of a Georgia senator, Maggie is pulled back into the world of criminal defense.

After twenty years at the LAPD Homicide Bureau, Mike Travis is finally retiring and starting over on Santa Catalina Island. In the small town of Avalon, he lives and works on his yacht, sailing and chartering scuba diving trips. There, among tourists and quirky locals, he tries to banish the residual darkness from his mind. It's not that easy, especially when the one case he never solved comes back to haunt him . . .

The presidential election of 1968 forever changed American politics. In this character-driven narrative history, Aram Goudsouzian portrays the key transformations that played out over that dramatic year. It was the last "Old Politics" campaign, where political machines and party bosses determined the major nominees, even as the "New Politics" of grassroots participation powered primary elections. It was an election that showed how candidates from both the Left and Right could seize on "hot-button" issues to alter the larger political dynamic.

In this groundbreaking ethnographic analysis of crypto economies and their global markets and communities, Koray Caliskan offers an inside view of how cryptocurrencies are made and traded. He argues that cryptocurrency should be understood as "data money," a historically novel money type, created as the right to send data privately over an accounting infrastructure called blockchain.

Captured in the last year of the Civil War, Lucas Cain becomes a POW in the infamous Andersonville prison. There he learns how to survive the cruelty of the Confederate guards, and the perfidy of a few who are prisoners themselves. When the war ends, Lucas and almost 1,500 others crowd aboard the riverboat Sultana, which has a capacity of just under 400 passengers. After an unforeseen event occurs, Lucas finds himself further adrift.

In The Good Sport, Kevin White takes an unflinching look at the current state of intercollegiate sports, including the tumultuous changes brought on by the Supreme Court's landmark decision on name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights. Drawing on his decades of leadership, White examines the chaos, challenges, and opportunities of this new era—and why he believes the future of college sports hangs in the balance.

Ten-year-old Angus is unique. He quotes Shakespeare and wants to stage a Werewolf Hamlet play for his fifth grade legacy project. Angus's seventeen-year-old brother, Liam, is like a werewolf now—Angus never knows if he'll be nice or mean or when he'll sneak out to get drunk or worse. Meanwhile, tension continues to build for Liam's family in Los Angeles. Mom and Dad are going to default on the mortgage. Older sister Hannah is fed up and ready to move herself to Maine, and little sister Sidney doesn't really get what's happening. Then Liam goes missing, and Angus decides he has to find him.

We are surrounded by emoji. They appear in politics, movies, drug deals, our sex lives, and more. But emoji's impact has never been explored in full. In this rollicking tech and pop culture history, Keith Houston follows emoji from its birth in 1990s Japan, traces its Western explosion in the 2000s, and considers emoji's ever-expanding lexicon. Named for the world's most popular pictogram, Face with Tears of Joy tells the whole story of emoji for the first time.

Written by former Tax Foundation CEO Scott Hodge, Taxocracy: What You Don't Know About Taxes and How They Rule Your Daily Life uses amusing lessons from past tax policies gone wrong to explore how the US tax code caused serious consequences, affecting how we get our health insurance, the price of a college education, what car we buy, where we bank, and, in some cases, even when we die. Taxocracy outlines economic principles for designing a tax code that doesn't rule our daily lives—a tax code that promotes economic growth, free-enterprise, and takes the politics out of tax policy.

Through extensive research and interviews with those closest to Iverson, acclaimed Washington Post sportswriter Kent Babb gets behind the familiar, sanitized, and heroic version of the hard-changing, hard-partying athlete who played every game as if it were his last.

The Parable of the Knocker is a nonfiction book about the investigation, prosecution, and trial of a notorious serial killer, Charles Severance. Severance committed his crimes in the City of Alexandria, Virginia, an affluent, historic community just miles south of Washington, DC. Over the course of a decade, Severance ambushed three outstanding Alexandria residents in their middle-class neighborhood by knocking on their front doors in broad daylight and shooting them unexpectedly when they answered the knock.

Max Donovan, a man who uses his knowledge of far-flung corners of the earth and a fair bit of muscle to "fix things," is relaxing by the sea in Senegal. But his much-needed holiday after a botched operation in Malaysia, where he broke more than he fixed, is abruptly interrupted when a man is knifed on the beach.

Vietnam veteran Max Donovan is in Bangkok, and very hungover, when his friend “Fat” Freddie Fields is arrested in San Francisco for the murder of an Australian diplomat. He knows his old buddy would never hurt a fly, so he rushes back to the Bay Area to help. There he locks horns with the District Attorney who seems intent on pursuing the case. Suspecting Freddie is being framed, Donovan tries to rustle up some cash to bail him out, but only succeeds in getting into trouble with the local mob. He’ll have to solve the case on his own.

Since a bomb blew him through a hotel window in Colombo, international fixer Max Donovan's life has become more complicated. He's in possession of a manuscript which is proof of a revolutionary insurgency encircling Sri Lanka. He is not, however, in possession of its author, Osbert—just his beguiling niece, who wants Donovan's help.

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, millions of young American men were eager to join up and defend their country. William Swanson was among them. The View from My Foxhole tells William Swanson's story of fighting in the jungles of Bougainville and Guam and the ash heap of Iwo Jima. Through it he maintains his sense of humor and thanks his lucky stars for every day he survives.