Showing results by narrator "Paul Bellantoni" in All Categories

In 1992, at the dawn of the age of technology, disgraced ex-game show host Manny di Martini schemes for a comeback with a deep-sea television special in the South Pacific. He quickly finds himself in over his head, attracting the attention of a cosmic being who will lead Manny to a television broadcast event much bigger than the entire planet bargained for: evidence of a slumbering alien in a ruined city at the bottom of the ocean. One look at the monster on TV, and humans collectively freak out.

Most ambitiously, Best Copy Available lends voice to an alternative version of American boyhood, manhood, and fatherhood. One where the sons of deadbeat dads can grow up to be stay-at-home dads, and where our boys and men may realize that the most courageous show of strength is not the determined use of force. It's knowing when and how to ask for help.

Vincent Van Gogh arrived in the French capital on the last day of February 1886, a month short of his thirty-third birthday. He was a man beaten down by life, half-starved, and nearly broken psychologically. He was saved by his brother Theo, who provided him with room, board, and, most crucially, emotional support while he attempted to master the difficult craft of painting. Thus far, Vincent's crude scenes of peasant life rendered in murky shades of brown and gray were both hackneyed and amateurish.

For more than thirty years, On Being a Therapist has inspired generations of mental health professionals (and their clients) to explore the most private, confusing, and sacred aspects of helping others. In this thoroughly revised and updated sixth edition, Jeffrey Kottler explores many of the challenges that therapists face in their practices today, including pressures from increased technology, economic realities, and advances in theory and technique.

This extraordinary Strega Prize-winning novel confirms Domenico Starnone's reputation as one of Italy's greatest living writers. Told against the backdrop of Naples in the 1960s, a city that itself becomes a vivid character in this lush, atmospheric novel, The House on Via Gemito is a masterpiece of Italian fiction.

Chronicler Tsai Yini monitors the tachyon communication system, which transmits data faster than the speed of light. When classified results from an astrobiologist's research are leaked to her, she cannot believe what she reads. The report reveals that intelligent life forms exist on a tropical planet in the Gliese system. Their civilization is still in its infancy but revolves around an artifact of unknown origin that seems to influence their body chemistry.

Batman is one of the most compelling and enduring characters to come from the Golden Age of Comics, and interest in his story has only increased through countless incarnations since his first appearance in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. Why does this superhero without superpowers fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us? Batman and Psychology explores these and other intriguing questions about the masked vigilante.

In this book, Mark Polizzotti examines just what makes the songs on Highway 61 Revisited so affecting, how they work together as a suite, and how lyrics, melody, and arrangements combine to create an unusually potent mix. He blends musical and literary analysis of the songs themselves, biography (where appropriate) and recording information (where helpful).

There may never be another era of science like the first half of the twentieth century, when many of the most important physicists ever to live—Marie Curie, Max Planck, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Ernst Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, and others—came together to uncover the quantum world: a concept so outrageous and shocking, so contrary to traditional physics, that its own founders rebelled against it until the equations held up and fundamentally changed our understanding of reality. Tobias Hürter takes us back to this uniquely momentous and harrowing time.

In this beautifully crafted book, Freddy Cristobal Dominguez makes a provocative case for Dylan as a historian, offering a deep consideration of the musician's historical influences and practices. Utilizing interviews, speeches, and the close analysis of lyrics and live performances, Bob Dylan in the Attic is the first book to consider Dylan's work from the point of view of historiography.

Legendary writing coach Jack Hart spent 26 years at The Oregonian and has taught students and professionals of all stripes, including bloggers, podcasters, and more than one Pulitzer Prize winner. Good writing, he says, has the same basic attributes regardless of genre or medium. Wordcraft shares Hart’s techniques for achieving those attributes in one of the most broadly useful writing books ever written. Originally published in 2006 as A Writer’s Coach, the book has been updated to address the needs of writers well beyond print journalists.

Cécile, a stylish 47-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents in a provincial town southeast of Paris. By early Monday morning, she's exhausted. These trips back home are always stressful, and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it's soon occupied by a man she instantly recognizes: Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation 30 years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, their express train hurtles toward the French capital.

With over eighty-five years of comics published since their founding, the Marvel Comics archive is a vast universe of iconic stories and legendary characters. Marvel Comics for Dummies is your shortcut to navigating this immense collection of heroes and their adventures.

George Michael was an extravagantly gifted, openhearted soul singer whose work was both pained and smolderingly erotic. He was a songwriter of true craft and substance, and his music swept the world, starting in the mid-1980s. His fabricated image—that of a hypermacho sex god—loomed large in the pop culture of his day. It also hid—for a time—the secret he fought against revealing: Michael was gay. George Michael: A Life explores the compelling story of a superstar whose struggles, as well as his songs, continue to touch fans all over the world.

When the enemy strikes on the eve of her wedding, Wren has no choice but to fight. Captured, she's dragged before the elvish king and given an ultimatum: death or marriage. She submits, biding her time as she plots and spies, determined to strike at the heart of the elvish royalty and take back her family's throne once more. But the more time she spends with her dangerous and achingly handsome husband, the more she finds herself wavering.

In 1958, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita was published in the United States to immediate controversy and best-sellerdom. More than 60 years later, this phenomenal novel generates as much buzz as it did when originally published. Central to countless issues at the forefront of our national discourse - art and politics, race and whiteness, gender and power, sexual trauma - Lolita lives on, in an afterlife as blinding as a supernova.

Time Rider follows Bowie, an agent from a post-democracy future state known as the Design—where humanity is stratified into genetic castes, and emotional connections have been engineered away. Sent to 1963 on a mission to preserve a lynchpin moment of history from temporal terrorists: the assassination of the American President. Baffled by what he finds in Dallas, Bowie soon discovers that something far more strange and sinister is at work.

On Board: The Modern Playbook for Corporate Governance is the ultimate guide for corporate directors, executives, governance professionals, and students navigating today's fast-evolving business landscape. Written by a seasoned corporate director, investment banker, and expert witness in corporate litigation, this essential resource delivers a historical perspective, data-driven insights and stories from inside boardrooms on board leadership, fiduciary duties, CEO issues, regulatory compliance, and governance best practices.

A military operation unlike any other on American soil, Morgan's Raid was characterized by incredible speed, superhuman endurance, and innovative tactics. One of the nation's most colorful leaders, Confederate general John Hunt Morgan, took his cavalry through enemy-occupied territory in three states in one of the longest offensives of the Civil War. The effort produced the only battles fought north of the Ohio River and reached farther north than any other regular Confederate force.

Jack Kerouac was one of America's great writers of the latter half of the twentieth century, yet he endured a life characterized by persistent hardship and disillusion. Leading Kerouac scholar Paul Maher Jr. targets the writer's embattled insight of self as central to his life and work. He reveals how Kerouac's troubled interactions with alcohol, drugs, and spirituality stamped its importance on his autobiographical prose and poetry and created a singular language that united thoughts on the human condition and spiritual liberation.