Showing results by narrator "Gary Roelofs" in All Categories

G. Ward Hubbs uses a stark and iconic political cartoon to illuminate postwar conflicts over the meaning of freedom in the American South. The cartoon first appeared in the Tuskaloosa Independent Monitor, published by local Ku Klux Klan boss Ryland Randolph, as a swaggering threat aimed at three individuals. The four men associated with the cartoon were archetypes of those who were seeking to rebuild a South shattered by war. Their lives, but especially their four very different understandings of freedom, help to explain many of the conflicts of the 1860s.

Life-Enhancing Anxiety makes a bold proposal: It is not less anxiety that we need today, but more, at least of a certain kind. The book comprises a collection of original and previously published essays that converge on what Schneider calls life-enhancing anxiety. Life-enhancing anxiety is the invigorating degree of anxiety needed to become passionately engaged, ethically attuned, and creatively enriched. Set against our anxiety-avoidant times, life-enhancing anxiety enables us to "live with and make the best of the depth and mystery of existence."

This engaging work by legal scholar Arnold Rochvarg presents a narrative history of the mid-1960s civil rights movement centered around the experiences of a white woman from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who quit college to join the movement and became involved with many of the important events and persons of the day.

There were, Peter Thompson notes, some 150 synonyms for inebriation in common use in colonial Philadelphia and, on the eve of the Revolution, just as many licensed drinking establishments. Clearly, 18th-century Philadelphians were drawn to the tavern. In addition to the obvious lure of the liquor, taverns offered overnight accommodations, meals, and stabling for visitors. They also served as places to gossip, gamble, find work, make trades, and gather news.

With more than 50 years of professional experience, Mark C. Zweig has seen it all—from the fear and excitement of starting a new business to the joys and challenges of life as an entrepreneur. In Confessions of an Entrepreneur: Simple Wisdom for Starting, Building, and Running a Business, Zweig draws upon this wealth of experience to offer practical, easy-to-understand guidance for bringing a business to life and cultivating success at every stage of its development.

This book focuses on the constant tension between democracy and conspiratorial behavior in the new global order. It addresses the prevalence of conspiracy theories in the phenomenon of Donald Trump and Trumpism, and the paranoid style of American politics that existed long before, first identified with Richard Hofstadter. Hellinger looks critically at both those who hold conspiracy theory beliefs and those who rush to dismiss them.

Curtis J. Austin chronicles how violence brought about the founding of the Black Panther Party in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, dominated its policies, and finally destroyed the party as one member after another - Eldridge Cleaver, Fred Hampton, Alex Rackley - left the party, was killed, or was imprisoned.

Leading analysts have predicted for decades that nuclear weapons would help pacify international politics. But why do international relations in the nuclear age remain so competitive? Indeed, why are today's major geopolitical rivalries intensifying? In The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution, Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press tackle the central puzzle of the nuclear age: The persistence of intense geopolitical competition in the shadow of nuclear weapons.

In Words of War, Eric Min pulls back the curtain on when, why, and how belligerents negotiate while fighting. Of all interstate conflicts across the last two centuries, two-thirds have ended through negotiated agreement. Wartime diplomacy is thus commonly seen as a costless and mechanical process solely designed to end fighting. But as Min argues, wartime negotiations are not just peacemaking tools. They are in fact a highly strategic activity that can also help states manage, fight, and potentially win wars.

The good weather has finally arrived, and the empires of Europe are ready to hurl their armies and fleets at each other in a fight of titanic proportions. The stakes are high, with Austria-Hungary and France reeling on the brink of disaster.

Hunting squirrels on an autumn morning, probing the woods, rifle in hand, Jackson reveals an attention to nature too often neglected. Following a bird dog into the damp and mysterious places where woodcock settle on their southbound migrations; chasing hounds on the trail of raccoons on a frosty winter night; stalking deer in a quiet corner of a small farm; fishing for carp in a creek, bass and bluegill in ponds, catfish in a murky river, and reef fish in the Gulf, Jackson reminds that we are stewards of not only resources but also a past that defines us as hunters and fishers.

In the fall of 1969, Gary Bray landed in South Vietnam as a recently married, freshly minted second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. His assignment was not enviable: leading the platoon whose former members had committed the My Lai massacre--the murder of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians--18 months earlier. In this compelling memoir, he shares his experiences of Vietnam in the direct wake of that terrible event.

In The Nature of the Religious Right, Neall W. Pogue examines how white conservative evangelical Christians became a political force known for hostility toward environmental legislation. Before the 1990s, this group used ideas of nature to help construct the religious right movement while developing theologically based, eco-friendly philosophies that can be described as Christian environmental stewardship. On the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, members of this conservative evangelical community tried to turn their eco-friendly philosophies into action.

Do you have a person in your life that is just a little off and by a little off, I mean that they're full blown strange? Are they living like an emperor in their world and using everyone around them like pawns? Are they quite possibly the smartest person you know but not living a life that is actually fulfilling by normal standards? Are they nice to you, but only when they really want something from you? You may have found yourself a sociopath.

Longtime fly fisherman Quinn Grover had contemplated the “why” of his fishing identity before, more recently, becoming focused on the “how” of it. He realized he was a dedicated fly fisherman, in large part, because public lands and public waterways in the West made it possible. In Wilderness of Hope Grover recounts his fly-fishing experiences with a strong evocation of place, connecting those experiences to the ongoing national debate over public lands.

Epic wildfire. Devastating drought. Cataclysmic flooding. Extreme weather in the wake of climate change threatens to turn the American West into a region hostile to human habitation—a “Great American Desert,” as early US explorers once mislabeled it. As Bruce E. Cain suggests in this timely book, the unique complex of politics, technology, and logistics that once won the West must be rethought and reconfigured to win it anew in the face of a widespread accelerating threat.

Long before the indigenous people of southeastern North America first encountered Europeans and Africans, they established communities with clear social and political hierarchies and rich cultural traditions. Award-winning historian Gregory D. Smithers brings this world to life in Native Southerners, a sweeping narrative of American Indian history in the Southeast from the time before European colonialism to the Trail of Tears and beyond.

How do public employees win and lose their collective bargaining rights? And how can public sector labor unions protect those rights? These are the questions answered in From Collective Bargaining to Collective Begging. Dominic Wells takes a mixed-methods approach and uses more than five decades of state-level data to analyze the expansion and restriction of rights.

Mention Woody Guthrie, and people who know the name are likely to think of the “Okie Bard,” dust storms behind him, riding a boxcar or walking a red-dirt road, a battered guitar strapped to his back. But unlock Guthrie from the confines of rural folk and Hollywood mythology, as Will Kaufman does here, and you’ll find a folk singer who was deeply engaged with the art, ideas, and issues of his time.

Tarot cards have been around since the Renaissance, and have become increasingly popular in recent years, often due to their prevalence in popular culture. This audiobook is an extensive history of the development and evolution of Tarot, and its place in culture. It begins with an extensive review from its roots as a game, to its supposed connection to ancient Egyptian magic; through its place in secret societies, and to its current use in meditation and psychology.