Showing results by narrator "Peter Berkrot" in All Categories

In Let Them Eat Tweets, best-selling political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson offer a definitive answer: the Republican Party serves its plutocratic masters to a degree without precedent in modern global history. Conservative parties, by their nature, almost always side with the rich. But when faced with popular resistance, they usually make concessions, allowing some policies that benefit the working and middle classes. After all, how can a political party maintain power in a democracy if it serves only the interests of a narrow and wealthy slice of society?

Mark Twain's lifetime spans America's era of greatest economic growth. And Twain was an active, even giddy, participant in all the great booms and busts of his time, launching himself into one harebrained get-rich-quick scheme after another. But far from striking it rich, the man who coined the term "Gilded Age" failed with comical regularity to join the ranks of plutocrats who made this period in America notorious for its wealth and excess.

A mysterious sniper is killing random New York City citizens at the same time every day. Detective Joe Bannon and his partner Hannah Trimble follow the breadcrumb trail of clues down repeated blind alleys. With citizens fearing to venture outside, the streets of Manhattan have become nearly deserted. When the sniper begins escalating the profile of his targets, higher level government agencies are pulled in.

The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban Blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. David Ansell has spent nearly four decades as a doctor at hospitals serving some of the poorest communities in Chicago, and has witnessed firsthand the lives behind these devastating statistics. In

The Death Gap, he gives a grim survey of these realities, drawn from observations and stories of his patients.

Three years ago, a deranged murderer dubbed the Halloween Killer butchered half a dozen people in New Orleans. He was caught and sentenced to die. Just before his execution, the Halloween Killer vowed to take revenge on the district attorney who put him behind bars. Less than a week after the lethal injection, Sebastian Gichaud, a wealthy playboy grieving over the death of his mother, throws on a black cloak and hacks the prosecutor to death with a giant scythe.

When the body of Jacob Kieler Junior is discovered in a stately old house in Reykjavik on a cold January morning in 1973, Jóhann Pálsson, an expert in the emerging field of forensics, is called to the scene. He soon discovers something even more unsettling than the killing itself: The victim’s father, Jacob Senior, was shot to death in the same living room nearly 30 years earlier. Through diaries Jacob Senior kept throughout his lifetime Pálsson and his colleagues try to link Jacob Junior’s shooting and the death of Jacob Senior, an ambitious man dedicated to bringing the railroad to Iceland at any cost.

Forced out of the work-hard, play-hard world of Wall Street following the Crash of ’87, financial analyst Cary Cimino was determined to maintain his lifestyle of luxury and ease. Under the guidance of dubious businessman Jeffrey Pokross, Cimino embarked on an illegitimate underground career as a “financial adviser” to naïve investors. Cimino’s small-time operation soon spiraled into a large-scale crime ring when he and Pokross were reunited and met with Mafia wiseguy Robert Lino.

After the murder of a high-flying executive in one of Tokyo’s wealth management firms, Detective Hiroshi finds himself investigating the financial schemes that secure the money of Tokyo’s elite investors. His forensic accounting gets sidetracked, though, by a second murder and the abduction of two girls from the home of a hotshot wealth manager.

Bigly is an hilarious compilation of memorable quotes from President Donald Trump, arranged as poetry and divided into sections on Life, Love, Beauty, and Death. It will have the president's fiercest supporters and harshest critics asking the same question: Can a president appoint himself Poet Laureate?

When struggling painter Nicholas Gray first sees Margaretha Zelle, it is in a poor photograph. But something draws him to her. All men are drawn to Margaretha - her mysterious eyes, her effortless sensuality. In another life she will become known as Mata Hari. As a dancer she becomes famous. As a seductress she becomes legendary. Soon Mata Hari is crisscrossing Europe, collecting generals, aristocrats, and businessmen as her lovers.

Former Wall Street whiz and current convict Mickey Steinberg is nearing the end of his three-year sentence at Yankton - the cushy country club prison where he's enjoyed celebrity status - and he's ready to get out and get back on top. He doesn't have the resources he once did, but he's already hatched a new plan to sell a forgery of a stolen Van Gogh painting through the shady underground art market. He and his new partner, the smooth-talking Paul Reece, have a mark in mind: The sleazy con-man art dealer who swooped in on Mickey's beloved ex-wife after he was locked up. But with his old partner, Jack Grass, hell-bent on revenge and his pre-prison life closed to him, it won't be easy.

The world was desperate. Since the empire had fallen a hundred years ago, Gwin and her people had nearly given up hope that the Renewer would come. Gwin had lost everything. Her husband was killed in one of the wars. Her children died of Star Sickness. Even her work at the hostel was in jeopardy because the politicians had it out for her. The cursed Gwin, therefore, had nothing to lose. When she took in the girl, a survivor of the Star Sickness, it was a dreadful crime.

This humorous travel book, based on Twain's stagecoach journey through the American West and his adventures in the Pacific islands, is full of colorful caricatures of outlandish locals and detailed sketches of frontier life. Roughing It describes how the narrator, a polite greenhorn from the East, is initiated into the rough-and-tumble society of the frontier.

The enclosed was transcribed from 10 mini-cassette tapes that were recovered from the offices of Boston attorney William J. Latch following his disappearance on June 19, 2014. These tapes are part of the evidentiary record in the civil case of Latch V. Weymouth Life & Casualty. William J. Latch was declared dead by the State of Massachusetts in April 2015 after Magistrate Gavin FitzGerald reviewed these tapes, privately, in his chambers. Weymouth Life & Casualty was therein ordered to release Latch's survivor's benefits to his children. Latch's body has never been found.

One year into Donald Trump's presidency, the US 2016 presidential election is still being fought by both parties. As the case of Russian hacking and collusion is investigated, and Hillary Clinton desperately attempts to explain what happened to her and why she lost, a more important question, one haunted by shadowy tactics and campaign double-dealing, rings out: what happened to Bernie Sanders?

David Sparrow is an awesome stay-at-home dad. He gets his kids ready for school while his wife, Amy, commutes to New York City, where she was recently promoted to deputy district attorney. In fact she just inherited a major case: prosecuting crime lord Dante Payne. Meanwhile David is content chatting with the moms at school drop-off, making dinner at night, and doing housework.

What started as a military coup in Pakistan has ignited South Asia and threatens to spread to the world's largest democracy in India. American and British allies struggle to rescue Western civilians who have been cut off in Islamabad. What starts as a desperate race turns into a grim siege. But the fate of a few innocents pales in comparison to one inescapable fact: Pakistan is a nuclear power and some of those weapons are unaccounted for.

Bestselling author Loren W. Christensen served as a Military Policeman in Saigon, Vietnam, "the most dangerous city in the world," as it was called at the time. Shortly after returning home, he joined the Portland Police Bureau in Oregon, serving for twenty-five years. As a street cop, there were times he was dispatched to dead body calls so frequently that other officers teasingly called him the "Death Car."

Being a University of Michigan football fan should be joyful. Michigan is an elite academic institution whose football team boasts 43 Big Ten championships. But these days, college football is complicated. The NCAA is corrupt and exploitative, and Michigan keeps losing to Ohio State. It’s hard not to wonder, as Ben Mathis-Lilley does in this book: why are we doing this? The Hot Seat is a chronicle of one of the wildest years in Michigan football history, but also a search for the truth about fandom, from the pages of history books to the wilderness of online forums.

Benjamin Wilder grew up with sparse shelter, infested provisions, and constant abuse dealt to him by his stepfather: Jessup — a.k.a. the Rabid Dog. Without a sober mother to defend him from the Rabid Dog’s wrath, Ben finds reprieve and adventure in a club of misfit boys called the Black Machetes. But the world as Ben knows it comes to an end when he witnesses an act so psychologically appalling that it forces him to run for his life.