Showing results by narrator "David Crommett" in All Categories

It is astonishing that Simón Bolívar, the great Liberator of South America, is not better known in the United States. He freed six countries from Spanish rule, traveled more than 75,000 miles on horseback to do so, and became the greatest figure in Latin American history. His life is epic, heroic, straight out of Hollywood: he fought battle after battle in punishing terrain, forged uncertain coalitions of competing forces and races, lost his beautiful wife soon after they married and died relatively young, uncertain whether his achievements would endure.

One of Carlos Fuentes’s greatest works, The Old Gringo tells the story of Ambrose Bierce, the American writer, soldier, and journalist, and of his last mysterious days in Mexico living among Pancho Villa’s soldiers, particularly his encounter with General Tomas Arroyo. In the end, the incompatibility of the two countries (or, paradoxically, their intimacy) claims both men, in a novel that is, most of all, about the tragic history of two cultures in conflict.

The San Francisco 49ers shaped the NFL throughout the 1980s with their unique blend of precision, panache, and preparation. Three decades later, NFL teams are still copying the system and the methods that made the 49ers unlike any other organization in professional sports. Now fans of this dynamic franchise will relive all the action and thrills of 49ers football through the eyes of one of the greatest San Francisco legends of all time: Roger Craig.

“Extraordinarily beautiful . . . [Like] a dream from which we awake inspired to look more attentively at the world.” —Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review A journey to Acapulco gradually becomes a descent into the underworld. An elderly South American writer instructs a protégé...

A phenomenally unusual three-way murder mystery. With a murder at its heart, Roberto Bolano’s The Skating Rink is, among other things, a crime novel. Murder seems to have exerted a fascination for the endlessly talented Bolano, who in his last interview, according to The Observer, "declared, in all apparent seriousness, that what he would most like to have been was a homicide detective." Set in the seaside town of Z, north of Barcelona, The Skating Rink is told in short, suspenseful chapters by three male narrators, and revolves around a beautiful figure skating champion, Nuria Mart.

From Mexico’s preeminent man of letters, "a Balzacian novel in nine masterly stories" (Vanity Fair) that explores the "uneven and painful meshing of two North American cultures" (Washington Post Book World). A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. Translated by Alfred Mac Adam.

Award-winning civil rights historian Ray Arsenault describes the dramatic story behind Marian Anderson’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial - an early milestone in civil rights history - on the 70th anniversary of her performance. On Easter Sunday 1939, the brilliant vocalist Marian Anderson sang before a throng of 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington - an electrifying moment and an underappreciated milestone in civil rights history.

“Legendary . . . Bolaño has proven [that literature] can do anything.” —Jonathan Lethem, The New York Times Book Review “A supernova of creativity whose light is still arriving at our shores.” —Giles Harvey, The New Yorker Often called the “big bang” of Roberto Bolaño’s...

Julius Erving, aka Dr. J, was a wizard with the basketball, performing feats the world had never seen before: midair spins and whirls punctuated by powerful slam dunks, which he was the first to glamorize. In a career that lasted from the 1970s well into the 1980s, he was one of the first players to make extemporaneous individual expression an integral part of the game, setting the style of play that has prevailed ever since. He's also long been respected as a gracious, dignified, and disciplined man. As there are great men of history, there are great men of sports, and Dr. J is just such a man.

Written when he was only 27, Antwerp can be viewed as the Big Bang of Roberto Bolaño’s fictional universe. This novel presents the genesis of Bolano’s enterprise in prose; all the elements are here, highly compressed, at the moment when his talent explodes. From this springboard—which Bolaño chose to publish in 2002, twenty years after he’d written it (“and even that I can’t be certain of”)—as if testing out a high dive, he would plunge into the unexplored depths of the modern novel.

Between Parentheses collects most of the newspaper columns and articles Bolano wrote during the last five years of his life, as well as the texts of some of his speeches and talks and a few scattered prologues. "Taken together," as the editor Ignacio Echevarra remarks in his introduction, they provide “a personal cartography of the writer: The closest thing, among all his writings, to a kind of fragmented 'autobiography.'"

In Game of My Life: Florida Gators, listeners will step onto the field and re-live the greatest football moments through the eyes of 30 of the most famous Gators players. In this enthralling collection, Pat Dooley brings together Florida football players of the past and present to share their fondest single game experience and memories - some involve championship games, while others seem ordinary save for the extraordinary personal meaning.

Making allusions to Don Quixote's wanderings on his trusty steed Rosinante, American novelist John Dos Passos creates a story of two travelers making their way by foot from Madrid to Toledo in post-World War I Spain. Along the way, they encounter simple, earthy folk on the trail and in taverns, thus providing a convenient backdrop for Dos Passos's observations on the tension between old agrarian ways and new industrial imperatives.

“One of the greatest and most influential modern writers.” —James Wood, The New York Times Book Review “Bolaño is the real thing.” —n+1 In the quiet Spanish seaside town of Z, a horrific crime has been committed: a coldblooded murder on a secret ice rink in the abandoned Palacio...

Brought to you by Penguin. ‘This is where the story should end, but life is not as kind as literature...’ A journey to Acapulco gradually becomes a descent into the underworld. An elderly South American writer instructs a protégé in the subterfuges of entering work for provincial literary...

Reading Abilio Estevez's Thine Is the Kingdom is a little like attending a cocktail party blindfolded: a million conversations are all happening at the same time and you have to work to figure out just who's talking. But this remarkable novel out of Cuba is worth the extra effort. Set in a run-down enclave of pre-Castro Havana known as the Island, the story follows the fortunes of its residents through a magical realist dreamscape of fantasy, history, life, death, love, and the weather.

This newly revised edition of Tales from the Wisconsin Badgers Sideline weaves together a series of anecdotes, personal recollections, and research to bring listeners a taste of the stories that make Badgers football so interesting. There are the Heisman Trophies hard-earned by running backs Alan Ameche and Ron Dayne, the tumult of a 23-game winless streak broken with a victory over archrival Iowa in 1969, the bizarre tale of "Kangaroo Kicker" Pat O’Dea, and so much more. Without a doubt, Tales from the Wisconsin Badgers Sideline is a must-have for any Wisconsin fan!

In this wonderfully provocative novel, gambling is both a powerfully erotic and a spiritual experience for one man, Jorge: a gambler addicted to the godlike sensation of mastering games of chance. Jorge's addiction leads him to a mysteriously seductive analyst, Lucia, who attempts to cure his problem. Their dialogues form the core of this "enchanting literary delight" (Oscar Hijuelos).

Brought to you by Penguin. Amidst the seedy hotels and deserted campsites of the Costa Brava, someone has gone missing. A detective sets out to find them. They search among the hapless girls, failed poets, and shifty policemen that populate this dream world – but every door opens onto a...

Brought to you by Penguin. ‘If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear...’ A rat policeman comes to the startling realisation that each rat is out for themselves. An elderly judge gives up his job in the city for an improbable return to the...