Showing results by narrator "Paul Michael Garcia" in All Categories

"Is Google making us stupid?" When Nicholas Carr posed that question in an Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: as we enjoy the Internet’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration yet published of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences.

Welcome to Wayward Pines, population 461. Nestled amid picture-perfect mountains, the idyllic town is a modern-day Eden - except for the electrified fence and razor wire, snipers scoping everything 24/7, and the relentless surveillance tracking each word and gesture. None of the residents know how they got here. They are told where to work, how to live, and who to marry. Some believe they are dead. Others think they're trapped in an unfathomable experiment. Everyone secretly dreams of leaving, but those who dare face a terrifying surprise.

Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrived in Wayward Pines, Idaho, three weeks ago. In this town, people are told who to marry, where to live, where to work. Their children are taught that David Pilcher, the town's creator, is god. No one is allowed to leave; even asking questions can get you killed. But Ethan has discovered the astonishing secret of what lies beyond the electrified fence that surrounds Wayward Pines and protects it from the terrifying world beyond.

Secret service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a clear mission: locate and recover two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase. The medical staff seems friendly enough, but something feels...off. As the days pass, Ethan’s investigation into the disappearance of his colleagues turns up more questions than answers.

Jude Wanniski's masterpiece defined the policies at the heart of the Reagan economic boom that continues today and promises a coming century of global peace and prosperity. Writing with a simplicity and liveliness uncommon to his subject, Wanniski offers a fresh general theory of the world's political evolution that explains how and why economies fail and succeed, now and as far as we can imagine.

It was the biggest leak in history. WikiLeaks infuriated the world's greatest superpower, embarrassed the British royal family and helped cause a revolution in Africa. The man behind it was Julian Assange, one of the strangest figures ever to become a worldwide celebrity. Was he an internet messiah or a cyber-terrorist? Information freedom fighter or sex criminal? The debate would echo around the globe as US politicians called for his assassination.

The brain's superpowers have been discovered by neuroscience. Your genius mind knows how to make your brain dissolve worry and stay in your best internal states longer. The result is a life full of possibility. The Worry-Free Mind shows you how to decipher the architecture of your model of reality, shift it to a newer version, and overcome your tendency to worry every day.

If you buy a book at the bookstore, you own it. You can take it home, scribble in the margins, put it on the shelf, lend it to a friend, or sell it at a garage sale. But is the same thing true for the eBooks or other digital goods you buy? Retailers and copyright holders argue that you don't own those purchases, you merely license them. That means your eBook vendor can delete the book from your device without warning or explanation - as Amazon deleted Orwell's 1984 from the Kindles of surprised readers.

Seven years have passed since Driver ended his campaign against those who double-crossed him. He has left the old life, become Paul West, and founded a successful business. But walking down the street one day, he and his fiancée are attacked by two men, and his fiancée is killed. Sinking back into anonymity, Driver realises that his past stalks him - and will not stop. He has to turn and face it.

While many investors fear a rapid rise in inflation, author Gary Shilling, an award-winning economic forecaster, argues that the global economy is going through a long period of deleveraging and weak growth, which makes deflation far more likely and a far greater threat to investors than inflation. Shilling explains with clear language and compelling logic why the world economy will struggle for several more years and what investors can do to protect and grow their wealth in the difficult times ahead.

Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age 11. In the years that followed, he would regularly smoke pot, do cocaine and ecstasy, and develop addictions to crystal meth and heroin. Even so, he felt like he would always be able to quit and put his life together whenever he needed to. It took a violent relapse one summer in California to convince him otherwise.

A stylish piece of noir fiction; now a major film starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan. Drive is about a man who does stunt driving for movies by day and drives for criminals at night. Sallis combines murder, treachery, and payback in a sinister plot with resonances of 1940s pulp fiction and film noir. Told through a cinematic narrative that weaves back and forth through time and place, the story explores Driver's near-existential moral foundations, intercut with moments of bloody violence.

The ringed planet and its moons remain the Wild West as the crew delves into the meaning of what makes us human, what is freedom anyway, and exploring these truths - space is hard, relationships are complicated, s--t happens, and just as art is subjective, evil is often defined by the eye of the beholder.

Nathan Nelson is the average son of a genius. His father, a physicist of small renown, has prodded him toward greatness from an early age, but despite Samuel Nelson's efforts Nathan remains ordinary. Then, in the summer of 1987, everything changes. Nathan is involved in a terrible accident and falls into a coma. When he awakens, he finds that everyday life is radically different. His perceptions of sight, sound and memory have been irrevocably changed.

Hayley Jo Zimmerman is gone. Taken. And the people of the small town of Twisted Tree must come to terms with this terrible loss and their place in it. In this brilliantly written novel, one girl's story unfolds through the stories of those who knew her.

ShadowStrike poisoned the water of Trinity Falls two months ago. Now the Trinity Four, the teens most affected by the poison, have been isolated in a remote mansion under 24-hour medical care while scientists on four continents rush to discover a cure. Meanwhile, US operatives scour the world for the bioterrorists responsible for this heinous crime as two teen virtual spies, also infected, hunt for the criminals on the Internet.

When Cora Holman’s mother dies, she assumes the inevitable: that her mother overdosed on the painkillers she’d been taking for years. So she’s shocked to learn that her mother and a neighbor both died of a brain aneurysm the same night. When Cora and other neighborhood teens become ill with a mysterious flu, and government-type strangers arrive in her small town, they all fear the unthinkable - a terrorist attack. Meanwhile, a world away in Pakistan, a 16-year-old computer genius named Shahzad is working as a virtual spy....

Each soul's journey through life on planet Earth is an adventure. The greater picture of the billions of lives and their stories is a cosmic phenomenon we can never fully comprehend. But with our God-given intuition and creative power, we can imagine. And in our lives, we learn that there is inner guidance available to us if we merely tune in.

It's 1959. Sixteen-year-old Alex Housman has just stolen his 14th car and frankly doesn't know why. His divorced, working-class father grinds out the night shift at the local Chevy plant in Detroit and looks forward to the flask in his glove compartment and the open bottles of booze in his Flint, Michigan, home. Broke and fighting to survive, Alex and his father face the realities of estrangement, incarceration, and even violence as their lives unfold toward the climactic episode that a New York Times reviewer called "one of the most profoundly powerful in American fiction."

Eight-year-old Horty Bluett has never known love. His adoptive parents are violent; his classmates are cruel. So he runs away from home and joins a carnival. Performing alongside the fireaters, snakemen and "little people," Horty is finally accepted. But he is not safe. For when he loses three fingers in an accident and they grow back, it becomes clear that Horty is not like other boys - and this "difference" is something that some people might want to use.