Showing results by narrator "Jack Chekijian" in All Categories

Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life - and death - in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence.

The “Law West of the Pecos", with a great appetite for publicity and a knack for achieving it, was something more than an amusing old scoundrel—for Roy Bean had in him the stuff of a folk hero of the sort which the Old West could hardly again produce.

Fairies, Banshees, Changelings, Brownies, Kelpies, enchanted livestock, and more are investigated by a renowned folklorist and minister in 19th-century Scotland. Superstitions regarding subjects like funerals, suicides, and murders are explored, as are tales of augury, premonitions, divination, dreams, prophecies, spells, and the Devil—all collected entirely from testimonials made directly to the author by residents of places like the isles of Mull and Skye, Islay, Kintyre, the Hebrides and the Highlands.

This Victorian farcical comedy was Oscar Wilde's final play, published from exile in Paris. Wilde has his characters adopt false identities to escape their social obligations. The witty dialogue throughout this production's dry approach to the material make for entertaining high farce.

Was Billy the Kid really shot to death by Sheriff Pat Garrett on a July night in 1881? At the midpoint of the last century, an old man comes forth seeking a pardon for crimes committed. He says that he wants to die a free man - and that he is Billy the Kid. The incident leads to this examination of new facts, new interpretations, and new contradictions. It is the story of "Brushy" Bill Roberts, a man who laid claim to a legend. Originally published in 1955 by University of New Mexico Press.

Magician and escape artist Harry Houdini profiles his onetime hero, French magician Robert-Houdin, whose name he used as inspiration for his own, and discovers that his former idol's claims and professional accomplishments conceal disturbing realities. Houdini's effort becomes an investigation through England and Europe that also serves as a general history of magic.

Whether intended as historical fiction or not, this tale of a California bandit in the early years of the Gold Rush by America's first Native American novelist was based on real occurrences. By early 1853, a certain "Joaquin" was being blamed for seemingly every murder and robbery in the young Golden State—a Robin Hood-like figure originally from Mexico said to be an inspiration a half a century later for the character of Zorro (who in turn was an influence on masked vigilante and avenger characters like Batman).

This infamous compendium of the strange and unexplained, including UFOs and strange weather, was the result of decades of research in libraries by its author, Charles Fort (the inspiration for the term "Fortean"). Worldwide occurrences of the supernatural and the paranormal are documented, with names and pages of sources provided.

The mysticism and fairy folklore of Celtic England, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Brittany, and Wales is explored in this production, which focuses on interviews conducted with everyday citizens about their beliefs, sightings, and encounters in the early 20th century, followed by an anthropological examination of evidence. It is an exploration of the spirit world, of the Sidhe, the "good people", who are claimed to interact mischievously with the populace - sometimes even abducting them and leaving only the victims' clothes behind, transporting them far distances, and killing livestock.

When James Forrestal resigned as secretary of defense in March 1949 before apparently committing suicide (arguably the highest ranking US government official to do so), he left in his office a large accumulation of files and papers. Among them was a private record. This was the "diary", as he called it, that he had maintained in one form or another since the middle of 1944, shortly after his appointment as secretary of the Navy.

The editor, Oklahoma school superintendent Stephen Melvil Barrett, first met Geronimo in the summer of 1904, and felt that the 76 year old Bedonkohe Apache leader and medicine man from New Mexico and Arizona, a prisoner of war for 20 years far from his home, who had never told his side of history before, should finally do so. President Theodore Roosevelt granted Barrett's request to interview Geronimo, and this is the result, without Barrett's clarifications or intrusions - "write what I have spoken," as Geronimo said.

A cavalcade of Spaniards, Indians, miners, prospectors, and adventurers have all madly searched since pioneer times for lost gold - hidden gold. To this day, the fabric of dreams blends over the wild Western mountain mysteries of many centuries, many people, and many traditions. Ill-fated Peraltas, the Dutchman, the Lost Wheelbarrow Mine, the Lost Dutch Oven, the Lost Cabin Mine, the Lost Padre, and more are investigated - a saga of incredible frontier fortunes and treasure trails. This work was the basis of the 1949 motion picture, Lust for Gold.

A four-star general pays tribute to a remarkable man in this biography. Believing that America owes a debt to a great character, a superb aviator, and a devoted citizen that was not paid, General Kenney tells the story of Paul Irvin "Pappy" Gunn with the hope that it will help discharge some of that debt. Gunn, who was known during World War II as an expert in daredevil low-level flying and as a hero and mechanical genius, modified light and medium bombers and transformed them into attack aircraft to hit Japanese targets in New Guinea, the Philippines, and Okinawa.

Eight years before he was elected the 26th president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt published these detailed recollections of hunting bison, bear, cougar, elk, moose, deer, and other game around the country. This production was undertaken on the 100th anniversary of Roosevelt's death.

The collected fables, short stories, and essays of writer, newspaper columnist, and playwright George Ade, who has been called the creator of modern American humor in the early 20th century. Introduced, edited, and revised by storyteller and radio personality Jean Shepherd. Originally published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1961.

Twenty years of settlement and growth of Denver and Colorado are detailed in this account, from the area's earliest years up to 1880. It is a history of Denver, of its growth and improvements in areas of business, industry, and society.

Though it may never be known if Mother Goose was based on an old French queen, a Boston housewife, or someone else entirely, these nursery rhymes will continue to entertain as they have in varying forms for hundreds of years. Though commonly thought of as children's literature, the alternatingly dry, sarcastic, and histrionically tinged humor with which this production is delivered appeals to a wide audience. Arguably.

This is the long first piece in the first edition of Walt Whitman's classic poetry collection. Among other things, it contains Whitman's philosophy of life and his opinion of the purpose of poets and poetry. Though created when he was in his mid-30s, Whitman spent much of the rest of his life rewriting Leaves of Grass.

A prose translation of the oldest surviving long poem in Old English, this production captures the mood of the original legend of a pagan hero defeating a monster, its mother, and a dragon in Scandinavia.

Wry, dry, and arch, this production of Lewis Carroll's classic tale of a fall through a rabbit hole to a fantasy world is otherwise just as familiar as ever. After a century and a half, Alice's adventure in Wonderland, one of the finest examples of literary nonsense, continues to attract listeners.