Showing results by narrator "Michael Butler" in All Categories

Welcome to the Universe is a personal guided tour of the cosmos by three of today's leading astrophysicists. Inspired by the enormously popular introductory astronomy course that Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott taught together at Princeton, this book covers it all - from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes, wormholes, and time travel.

What is the nature of unidentified aerial phenomena? Forty years ago a small cadre of dedicated researchers began actively investigating cases, interviewing witnesses, and exchanging data through a small, informal network of international contacts. Today this low-profile network, or "invisible college", has grown into a larger, multination volunteer research effort joined by many individuals. But the questions first raised 40 years ago remain current - and unanswered.

Updated with new and revised material to reflect the current market, this new edition of Stock Investing for Dummies gives you proven strategies for selecting and managing profitable investments, no matter what the conditions. You'll find out how to navigate the new economic landscape and choose the right stock for different situations - with real-world examples that show you how to maximize your portfolio.

In the heart of Blake County, an unprecedented legal storm is brewing. A long-time US senator, Bill Collins, is at the epicenter of this maelstrom. A man of power and influence, he now stands indicted, accused of an unthinkable crime—conspiring in the region's most recent unsolved murders. Enter Maggie Reynolds: a top-notch trial lawyer, famous for handling high-profile criminal defense cases. In a surprise twist, she crosses the aisle to stand on an unfamiliar side of the courtroom. Tapped as a special prosecutor, Maggie finds herself leading the State's case against the senator.

Most of us are aware of the hive mind—the power of bees as an amazing collective. But do we know how uniquely intelligent bees are as individuals? In The Mind of a Bee, Lars Chittka draws from decades of research, including his own pioneering work, to argue that bees have remarkable cognitive abilities. He shows that they are profoundly smart, have distinct personalities, can recognize flowers and human faces, exhibit basic emotions, count, use simple tools, solve problems, and learn by observing others. They may even possess consciousness.

Laursen's book relates the event-filled life of a brilliant and complex figure, including his victory over a possibly career-ending disability, his tumultuous second marriage, his struggles with the scientific establishment, and the fascinating story of the making of The Joy of Sex.

Most start-up origin stories are very different from the famous "unicorns" that have achieved valuations of greater than one billion dollars, from Facebook to Google to Uber. In The Unicorn's Shadow Ethan Mollick takes us to the forefront of an empirical revolution in entrepreneurship.

What is great leadership? What separates the merely competent leaders from those rare individuals who leave a lasting impression on everyone around them? As one of the world's most in-demand CEO coaches and top leadership gurus, John Mattone has worked with some of our brightest business minds - Apple's Steve Jobs, Pepsi's Roger Enrico, and Nielsen's Armando Uriegas - and he's identified the key qualities that, together, make up the mindset of great leadership.

Multi-Family Millions offers expert advice for investors who want to make the transition from single-family homes to more profitable multi-family units. Successful real estate investor David Lindahl shows you how to find troubled properties that are ripe for quick profits, how to fix or flip those properties, and how to resell at maximum value. With a proven step-by-step system for managing each stage of the process, this book shows you how to get started in moneymaking multi-family units - even while you work your day job.

The first vice president to become president on the death of the incumbent, John Tyler (1790-1862) was derided by critics as "His Accidency." In this biography of the 10th president, Edward P. Crapol challenges depictions of Tyler as a die-hard advocate of states' rights, limited government, and a strict interpretation of the Constitution. Instead, he argues, Tyler manipulated the Constitution to increase the executive power of the presidency. Crapol also highlights Tyler's faith in America's national destiny and his belief in boundless territorial expansion.

In his song "You Can't Stop Rock and Roll" Ozzy Osbourne sings, "Rock and roll is my religion and my law". And that's why Raising Hell is a must-have for anyone who wants to hear about the iconoclastic culture of headbangers and the wild lives they lead. The book contains the crazy, funny, and sometimes horrifying anecdotes musicians have told about a lifestyle both invigorating and at times self-destructive.

When it was finally released, Heaven's Gate failed so completely with reviewers and at the box office that it put legendary studio United Artists out of business and marked the end of Hollywood's auteur era. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. Charles Elton delves deeply into the making and aftermath of the movie and presents a surprisingly different view to that of Steven Bach, one of the executives responsible for Heaven's Gate, who wrote a scathing book about the film and solidified the widely held view that Cimino wounded the movie industry beyond repair.

The Cosmic Game discusses the broadest philosophical, metaphysical, and spiritual insights gleaned in Grof's research concerning human nature and reality, addressing the most fundamental questions human beings have asked about the nature of existence since time immemorial. Insights from research into unordinary states of consciousness portray existence as an astonishing play of the cosmic creative principle that transcends time, space, linear causality, and polarities of every kind and suggest an identity of the individual psyche.

Carl Gustav Jung was the 20th century's greatest articulator of the primacy of mind in nature, a view whose origins vanish behind the mists of time. The present book scrutinizes Jung's work to distil and reveal that extraordinary, hidden metaphysical treasure: For Jung, mind and world are one and the same entity; reality is fundamentally experiential, not material; the psyche builds and maintains its body, not the other way around; and the ultimate meaning of our sacrificial lives is to serve God by providing a reflecting mirror to God's own instinctive mentation.

In 1974, director/producer Harold Prince released his first book, Contradictions: Notes on Twenty-Six Years in the Theatre. Although Contradictions has since attained cult status among producers, directors, and actors alike, Prince, in hindsight, believes he wasn't ready to publish such a tome at that point in his career. Although he doesn't regret that effort, he is at last prepared to conclude it. In Sense of Occasion, Prince returns to this seminal text, invigorating it with fresh insights cultivated through four decades of additional practice.

The final novel by John Gardner, Mickelsson's Ghosts, originally published in 1982 just months before his untimely death in a motorcycle accident, is a tour de force. The protagonist Peter Mickelsson, a former star philosophy professor at Brown, relocates to Binghamton University. On the verge of bankruptcy, separated from his wife, in questionable mental health, and drinking heavily, Mickelsson decides to buy a country house in northeastern Pennsylvania.

When beloved host Johnny Carson announced his retirement after 30 years on The Tonight Show, millions of Americans mourned. But inside the television industry, the news ignited a battle between two amazing talents - Jay Leno and David Letterman - who both yearned to occupy the departing legend's chair. For NBC, it would be a decision with millions of dollars at stake. Soon these two comedians with strikingly different styles, who had once shared a friendship as they worked the clubs together, would be engaged in a fierce competition for the prize.

Laird Hamilton has been hailed as the world's greatest big-wave surfer. His first book, Force of Nature, allows listeners a rare glimpse inside the unique philosophy that has created his circumstances, and not the other way around. After all, this is a man whose biological father abandoned him shortly after he was born; whose first job was working on a pig farm; who dropped out of school in 11th grade. And then the career decision: surfer.

How has the United States, with more resources than any nation, developed a healthcare system that delivers much poorer results, at near double the cost of any other developed country - such that legendary seer Warren Buffett calls the Medical Industrial Complex "the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness"?

Since exploding on the scene in the late 1970s, Journey has inspired generations of fans with hit after hit. But hidden under this rock 'n' roll glory is a complex story of ambition, larger-than-life personalities, and clashes. David Hamilton Golland unearths the band's true and complete biography, based on over a decade of interviews and thousands of sources.