Showing results by narrator "Kent Cassella" in All Categories

A spaceport in the Andes! A computer chart in Egyptian ruins! Primitive sculptures of figures wearing space suits! Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods stunned the world with the archaeological discovery that alien beings once colonized earth.

As Carl Sagan did for astronomy and Brian Green did for cosmology, Walter Lewin takes listeners on a marvelous journey in For the Love of Physics, opening our eyes as never before to the amazing beauty and power with which physics can reveal the hidden workings of the world all around us. "I introduce people to their own world," writes Lewin, "the world they live in and are familiar with but don't approach like a physicist - yet."

On the sun-scorched planet Bountiful, human colonists live peacefully alongside natives known as Dancers until an unspeakable disaster devastates the colony. Six children found dead, their bodies marked in a bizarre parody of a Dancer ritual. The crime's solution makes the situation worse, sending ripples throughout the sector, shattering lives. One man tries to heal those lives. But can he heal everyone involved, and still save himself?

This passionate, erudite, and groundbreaking book will appeal to readers of Steven Pinker and Thomas Frank. It is a fascinating read for anyone interested in how the mind works, how society works, and how they work together.

The Remedy is a compelling a business fable that shows how Lean quality improvement business practices - traditionally associated with manufacturing - can dramatically improve the service areas of your business - including design, engineering, sales, marketing and all processes in between. Written by Pascal Dennis, a leading Lean consultant, the story follows Tom Pappas and Rachel Armstrong, senior leaders at a desperate automotive company as they try to implement a Lean management system across an entire platform, the Chloe, a breakthrough "green" car.

E. J. Jernigan's memoir offers listeners a fascinating glimpse of life as an enlisted man aboard the USS Saufley, one of the most highly decorated destroyers of World War II. It is a rarely told story of the sailors who fought the war from boiler rooms, after-steering spaces, radio shacks, and other gritty places that keep a warship going. For the author, it was a world of strong emotions and quick reactions, where men had to adapt and grow if they were to survive.

Mianus Village is a vivid, entertaining collection of 36 free verse poems that sound more like short, short stories than abstract modern poetry. It tells the story of a blue-collar boy growing up in the rough and tumble atmosphere of a Veterans’ housing project in the years following World War II.

Raised as a Catholic in rural Vermont, I was infused with an awareness of sin and penitence, but also absolution and forgiveness. My late teenage encounter with Dostoevsky’s Legend of the Grand Inquisitor shattered my youthful allegiance to Catholic dogma, but it’s one thing to walk away from Catholic doctrine and quite another to lose the weight of its beauty, fear, and guilt.

Lila & Theron is set in rural America and relates a personal story of love and sacrifice. Lila and Theron do not imagine themselves poor, nor do they covet what they don’t have. They are whole in themselves and on their land - in marked contrast to today’s victim culture of safe spaces and narcissism. Bill Schubart grew up among farmers and loggers in Vermont’s rural Northeast Kingdom, where survival depended not on institutions but on family, neighbors, hand tools, and the bounty of wilderness.

Schubart brings to life the friends and characters of his native Lamoille County, where in the late 1950s and early 1960s, life was lived close to the earth and often against the grain. Schubart’s collection of 22 stories captures Vermont in its transition from an enclave of hill farms and small towns where everyone knew your grandfather to a place where vehicles bearing license plates from “away” mix with hippie vans filled with born-again Vermonters getting back to the land...until snowfall.

Judas Payne was the devil's spawn, a product of rape; a half-white, half-Indian outcast who was loved only by his pretty half-sister, Evangeline. When the Reverend Payne finds the two naked in the barn, he takes out one of Judas's eyes, and Judas chops off one of the Reverend's arms and then runs for his life. He meets up with a number of colorful characters out there in the weird wild west, from a white slave-trading ex-Confederate colonel to a gun-slinging assassin who quotes scripture as he slaughters his targets.

Warren Buffett is the most successful investor of all time. His ability to consistently find undervalued companies has made him one of the world’s richest men. Yet while his track record is hard to argue with, the Buffett way isn’t the only way, nor is it always the best way, to invest. Even Buffett Isn’t Perfect dispels many myths about Buffett and his ‘solid as a rock’ style. It explains how to learn from the master’s best moves while avoiding strategies that don’t apply to small investors.

What do you do when your reality slips away? If you're Sky Yardley and Jane Dwinell, you accept each new challenge, reshape your life, and write. When Sky was diagnosed with "probable early stage Alzheimer's" at age 66, he was determined to live as fully as possible. He researched dementia, talked about dementia, connected with other people with the disease, and wrote about it.