Results narrated by "Steven Jay" in All categories

When Robert Howard is assigned James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in his Catholic high school, his teacher, a Jesuit priest, announces, "Other people may read about it, but you are LIVING it!" As promised, the young Howard, growing up in 1970s Detroit, feels an intense identification with the protagonist of Joyce's first novel, Stephen Dedalus.

The Civil War was among the bloodiest conflicts in American History. For Henry Fleming, a teenaged romantic filled with idealistic notions, the reality of the battlefield shakes him to his core. Over the course of a four-day battle, Henry comes to see himself, and the world at large, in a completely new light.

What's a private detective to do in a future where nothing is private? That's Ted Lomax's problem. In the new California, a corporation runs the government, electric cars have drive tones, and a new technology keeps everyone constantly connected to the Internet. Almost everyone.

When the rabbis composed the Mishnah in the late second or early third century C.E., the Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed for more than a century. Why, then, do the Temple and its ritual feature so prominently in the Mishnah? Against the view that the rabbis were reacting directly to the destruction and asserting that nothing had changed, Naftali S. Cohn argues that the memory of the Temple served a political function for the rabbis in their own time.

When a veteran cop tries to arrest baseball's home run king, one of them ends up on trial and the other one ends up dead. A routine stakeout is almost over when Dave Mackno decides to pursue a speeding Porsche. It's a decision that will have deadly consequences. That's because the Porsche is being driven by Remo Centrella, baseball's home run king, who is half-drunk and at the tail-end of a steroid cycle that makes him think he's bulletproof.

Young Giovanni arrives in Padua to discover a lush and mysterious garden on the estate of the mysterious Doctor Rappaccini. Amidst the verdant and exotic foliage, Giovanni finds love in the form of Beatrice - the Doctor's daughter. What deadly secret does the young girl and her father keep hidden?

What if Hitler and Churchill were actually playing out an age-old battle between two rivals that had been incarnating together over and over across time? Exploring roles from evil to good to lazy and decadent in an attempt to understand the human experience, one of these beings seems destined to destroy the other, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how much the world changes over time.

Could you use another life? This is the story of a woman who has the courage to reinvent herself. Heirs to the Jackson textile mill, designer Dani and her singer/songwriter twin Dylan feel free to follow the siren call of the music world - until they’re interrupted by a car accident. With Dani behind the wheel, her father ends up on a stretcher. Youthful free spirits cut short, Dani swaps her fringed jacket for a business suit, the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the Brandenburg concertos.

An avid member of the Hitler Youth in 1940s Vienna, Johannes Betzler discovers his parents are hiding a Jewish girl named Elsa behind a false wall in their home. His initial horror turns to interest - then love and obsession. After his parents disappear, Johannes is the only one aware of Elsa's existence in the house and the only one responsible for her fate. By turns disturbing and blackly comic, Christine Leunens' captivating and masterful novel examines this world of truth and lies, laying bare the darkest corners of the human soul.

On June 14, 1962, twenty-five-year-old Juris Slesers arrived at his mother's apartment to drive her to church. But there was no answer at the door. When he pushed his way inside, Juris found Anna Slesers dead on the kitchen floor, the cord of her housecoat knotted tightly around her neck. Drawn from hundreds of hours of personal interviews, as well as police, medical, and court documentation, this is a grisly, horrifying, and meticulously researched account of Albert DeSalvo - an American serial killer on par with Jack the Ripper. 

Most of us use the term sense of place often and rather carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature. Our senses of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences but also from our cultures. Wisdom Sits in Places, the first sustained study of places and place explores place, places, and what they mean to a particular group of people, the Western Apache in Arizona. For more than 30 years, Keith Basso has been doing fieldwork among the Western Apache, and now he shares with us what he has learned of Apache place-names.

The struggle against deadly microbes is endless. Diseases that have plagued human beings since ancient times still exist, new maladies make their way into the headlines, we are faced with vaccine shortages, and the threat of germ warfare has reemerged as a worldwide threat. In this riveting account, medical historian Howard Markel takes an eye-opening look at the fragility of the American public health system. 

In June 1941, a pair of British scientists boarded a plane for America with World War II raging all around them. They carried a precious commodity - penicillin - and the knowledge that it would change history. Author Marc Landas uncovers the dark history behind the discovery, production, and distribution of penicillin and other antibiotics.

From the vast emigration of Jews out of Eastern Europe to the Holocaust to the creation of Israel, the 20th century transformed Jewish life. The same was true of Jewish writing: the novels, plays, poems, and memoirs of Jewish writers provided intimate access to new worlds of experience. 

This practical guide gives you easy-to-follow and customizable plans for building the backyard chicken coop that works best for you. You'll get the basic construction know-how and key information you need to design and build a coop tailored to your flock, whether you live in a small city loft, a suburban backyard, or a small rural farm.  

Hot drinks, cold drinks, and everything in-between - this is the history of beverages through the ages. This book aims to describe the development of beverages and drinking habits, as well as their connection with other facets of life. This information will be of universal interest, no matter the listener's occupation or background. What Will You Drink? is a rather uncommon history book, as books on history generally tend to disregard the topic of food and drink. However, this book is all about quenching thirst. 

Is it possible to conceive of the American diet without bagels? Or Star Trek without Mr. Spock? Are the creatures in Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are based on Holocaust survivors? And how has Yiddish influenced Hollywood? These and other questions are explored in this stunning and rich anthology of the interplay of Yiddish and American culture, edited by award-winning authors and scholars Ilan Stavans and Josh Lambert. It starts with the arrival of Ashkenazi immigrants to NYC's Lower East Side and follows Yiddish as it moves into Hollywood.

Thirty-one years after workers first broke ground, the magnificent Hotel Neversink in the Catskills finally opens to the public. Then a young boy disappears. This mysterious vanishing - and the ones that follow - will brand the lives of three generations. At the root of it all is Asher Sikorsky, the ambitious and ruthless patriarch whose purchase of the hotel in 1931 set a haunting legacy into motion. 

A medieval slave-turned-sultan, an alien who declines to visit Earth, a prophet who dares to ask "is God funny?" and a ghost who fears the living - these are among the terrifying, tragic, passionate, and comic characters who animate Michael Oren's stories. Crisscrossing genres, they explore the outer bounds of imagination and artistic freedom, exposing the listener to a kaleidoscope of human emotions and experience. In The Night Archer, the acclaimed historian, political commentator, and statesman Michael Oren is revealed as a writer of bold versatility. 

Tech Generation: Raising Balanced Kids in a Hyper-Connected World guides parents in teaching their children how to reap the benefits of living in a digital world while also preventing its negative effects. Dr. Mike Brooks and Dr. Jon Lasser, psychologists with extensive experience working with kids, parents, and teachers, combine cutting-edge research and expertise to create an engaging and helpful guide that emphasizes the importance of the parent-child relationship.