Showing results by narrator "Jonathan Yen" in All Categories

As Covid has receded, companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Salesforce, and Twitter have severely restricted, or even eliminated remote work. Ditto for countless, less iconic firms and small businesses. At a high level, executives and managers at these organizations are trying to turn back the clock to 2019. There's just one problem. For a bevy of reasons, they won’t succeed.

In 1965, Col. Thomas "Jerry" Curtis's helicopter was shot down over North Vietnam. He was immediately captured and spent seven and a half years confined in a filthy cell at the notorious Hanoi prison camp. Thousands of miles from home and unable to communicate with his wife and children, Jerry endured months of solitary confinement, suffocating heat, freezing cold, grueling physical and psychological torture, constant hunger, and unimaginable mental duress.

Bursting with humorous stories about local characters and vivid description of French landscapes and customs gleaned from thirty-five years in the country, Raising Olives in Provence tells the story of how the author improbably came to renovate a run-down house and raise olive trees in the hills above Saint-Tropez.

A stand-alone novella in the Dale Kinsall mystery series (Nose for Trouble; Scent of Danger): Who really has the nose for trouble…Flagstaff veterinarian Dale Kinsall or his young Beagle Sully? A trip to New Mexico for a tracking dog test leaves Dale with as many questions as answers…especially when Sully, true to form, tracks his way to more than the final glove.

In Maier's hands, the Declaration of Independence is brought close to us. She lets us hear the voice of the people as revealed in the other "declarations" of 1776: the local resolutions - most of which have gone unnoticed over the past two centuries - that explained, advocated, and justified Independence and undergirded Congress' work. Detective-like, she discloses the origins of key ideas and phrases in the Declaration and unravels the complex story of its drafting and of the group-editing job which angered Thomas Jefferson.

In this "penetrating new analysis" ( New York Times Book Review), Ira Katznelson fundamentally recasts our understanding of 20th century American history and demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created in a deeply discriminatory manner. Through mechanisms designed by southern democrats that specifically excluded maids and farm workers, the gap between blacks and whites actually widened despite postwar prosperity.

Gunflint Burning is a comprehensive account of the dramatic events around the Ham Lake fire of 2007, one of the largest wildfires in Minnesota history. In sharp detail, Cary J. Griffith describes the key events of the fire as they unfold, transporting listeners to the front lines of an epic struggle that was at times heroic, tragic, and sublime.

In Obsessed: The Compulsions and Creations of Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, author Steve Volk ventures deep into the mind of Jeffrey Schwartz, a controversial, often combative psychiatrist and expert on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Considered a pariah among his academic peers, Schwartz’s unconventional treatment methods draw on his fascination with the Holocaust, his experience with Buddhist meditation and his pioneering work documenting the neural circuitry of OCD.

The book is a twenty-first century reworking of the approach to unionism. The United States has a dramatic history of workers organizing on the job. In the last seventy odd years, labor organizations have made peace with owners, and wages, various protections, and safety has diminished. All during an era that, despite its ups and downs, has been extremely profitable for the ownership class. Tom Wetzel provides a solution to that failure by showing how a democratic outcome can be built into the method of struggle for social change.

It's no secret that continuous innovation is the key to seizing and maintaining the competitive edge in today's increasingly challenging business environment. Unfortunately, the process for achieving this holy grail of business has been a mystery - until now. Built to Innovate delivers a proven system for building relentless innovation into your company's DNA.

Building Beehives for Dummies is the follow-up book to the best-selling Beekeeping for Dummies. It provides everything you need to learn how to build some of the world's most popular hives and beekeeping accessories. For each design the book includes a detailed materials list (what lumber, hardware, and fasteners you'll need) and step-by-step building instructions.

Another US presidential election is underway, and Americans are engaged in the time-honored tradition of judging candidates by their personalities. It may sound unwise to pick the future leader of the free world based on personality traits rather than platforms, policies, and ideology, but that is exactly what Americans do. In fact, personality explains the results of the last 22 US elections - and can predict who will win in 2020. Personality expert Merrick Rosenberg and coauthor Richard Ellis have developed a system that reveals the pattern of who takes the White House and why.

George Bernard Shaw once famously said, "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." Although he died in 1950, Shaw's words live on, especially in the business world. Far too many executives, salespeople, consultants, and even rank-and-file employees suck at communicating. Some think that they're speaking and writing effectively when they drop ostensibly sophisticated terms like paradigm shift, synergy, net-net, form factor, and optics. Others think that they're being clever.

All life on Earth is about to be terminated by an entity as old as the galaxy itself. To make matters worse, Simon has broken everything already. In a future world that is run by computer systems and that is without want, how can a man find his role? Then, if the very computers he works on to try to make them more human suddenly try to kill him, revealing a secret so vast that it affects every living soul on the planet, can that man be a hero?

His life's work and ambition fulfilled, Francis Brimm believes the only metamorphosis left him is a slow, affable decline toward death. So he returns to the town of his youth and to his sister, Muriel, whose life has been as uneventful as Francis's has been exciting.But life is not about to let Francis go. Faces from the past haunt him, surprises in the present unsettle him. And suddenly, two people who thought their lives were over find themselves struggling not to be overwhelmed by new knowledge, hidden truths, and unexpected danger.

Frustrated 35-year-old plumber Isaac Sullivan believes he has both the intellect and skill to be a surgeon. Forced to take over his father's plumbing business straight out of high school, Isaac's dreams of attending the University of Michigan fell by the wayside. However, the unfortunate setback didn't stop him entirely. For the past decade, he has absorbed every medical textbook and journal available to him. For practical experience, Isaac performs surgeries on the wildlife around his house, preparing for the day he attends Michigan.

The 21st century has been an era of hardening borders-increased borderland patrols, surveillance, and militarization are widening the chasm between those who can vacation (or do business) where they please, and others whose movements are restricted by armed guards. But as journalist Todd Miller finds in Empire of Borders, the US border is also becoming increasingly fluid, expanding thousands of miles outside of US territory often to protect Washington's interests.

On September 17, 1787, at the State House in Philadelphia, 39 men from 12 states, after months of often bitter debate, signed America's Constitution. Yet very few of the delegates, at the start, had had any intention of creating a nation that would last. Most were driven more by pragmatic, regional interests than by idealistic vision. Lawrence Goldstone chronicles the forging of the Constitution through the prism of the crucial compromises made by men consumed with the needs of the slave economy.

In the workplace, the most common approach to what we believe will be a difficult or emotionally charged conversation can be summed up in one word: avoidance. Most of us will do anything to skirt conflict, but not only does that fail to resolve important issues, it typically harms our relationships and undermines productivity. In Let's Talk About It, best-selling author and top consultant Dr. Paul Marciano presents a powerful collection of proven communication and relationship strategies that will transform your difficult conversations into healthy conversations.

Today's parents are all but completely disconnected from the commonsense parenting wisdom of their parents and grandparents. The self-esteem parenting revolution has erased the practical insights gathered by generations of parents about the best way to raise kids. In this book, family psychologist John Rosemond seeks to recover this wisdom by resurrecting what parents of yesteryear tended to say.