Showing results by narrator "Shawn Compton" in All Categories

Paul D'Anieri explores the dynamics within Ukraine, between Ukraine and Russia, and between Russia and the West, that emerged with the collapse of the Soviet Union and eventually led to war in 2014. Proceeding chronologically, this book shows how Ukraine's separation from Russia in 1991, at the time called a "civilized divorce", led to what many are now calling "a new Cold War". 

The celebrated author of The Making of Second Life and Game Design Secrets Wagner, James Au, delivers an engrossing exploration of how nascent metaverse platforms have already captured the imagination of millions. Featuring powerful stories and dozens of incisive interviews with insiders including Metaverse creator Neal Stephenson himself, the author uses his unique, grassroots-level perspective as the first reporter embedded in a metaverse platform.

Josh Stuart, undercover agent for the FBI, is in L.A.'s inner city targeting medical clinics that exploit the poor and cheat the government. But when Josh discovers his homeless friend has been murdered, he learns almost too late terrorism is at the core of the investigation.

In September 1943, as America began advancing from its foothold on Guadalcanal, a young American airman was lost in heavy weather over the South Pacific on what was expected to be a routine flight. In examining that loss and the events leading up to a rescue attempt on an island in the South Pacific, and bringing together societies utterly alien to each other, Survival in the South Pacific brings together the big themes of the Pacific War.

With a new century and a new enemy came a new kind of war: low intensity and civilian-dominated, blending austere rural and dense urban environments alike. Into this new kind of war, the American military launched two invasions against terrorist networks and military rivals, relying on airpower—close air support (CAS)—at a scale never before seen.

A homeland security agent is found dead. Shocking evidence reveals the cause of death is the simultaneous collapse of the man's blood vessels. When a second body sharing the same gruesome symptoms is found, the hunt is on for a frightening new kind of killer. A vicious assault on his leading genetics researcher puts Dr. Ronni Saar, the CEO of Double N, and his friend Gadi, a former military police investigator, on the trail of a sophisticated killer. The deeper Gadi digs, and the more he learns, the more dangerous the terrain becomes.

At more than 100 million user accounts created and over $10 billion made, it is not only the most-subscribed MMORPG in the world, but the highest-grossing video game of all time. Ten years after its launch, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft is less a game and more a world unto itself, and it's a world Daniel Lisi knows well. More time in his high school years was spent in Azeroth than in his hometown of Irvine, California—a home he happened to share with Blizzard itself.

After Julian qualifies for the Selection, he soon discovers the dark underbelly of professional Overdrive. The company CEO is an egotistical bully who eagerly encourages an atmosphere of backbiting and constant surveillance. The Heaven's Boxer resurfaces, but the noble Mech is used to sabotage the player-created training system, driving countless beginners out of the community. The game administration does nothing. The only way Julian can reclaim the Heaven's Boxer is hacking the server and disguising himself as a beginner.

From the dawn of history onward, commanding the most powerful ship around has been a dream of admirals, sultans, emperors, kings, generalissimos, and sea captains everywhere. For what the intimidation factor alone doesn't achieve, a massive barrage from super-weapons probably will.

Life's gotten better for hard-edged security guard Sean Coleman. With personal affairs in order and relationships rekindled, he travels to Las Vegas to help celebrate his buddy's last days as a bachelor. Soon after he arrives, however, a twist of fate spawns a reunion with an old flame. Curiosity and a desire to make amends unexpectedly lead Sean down a dark path into the Vegas underground, where another face from the past emerges---a federal fugitive whose family, years earlier, altered the course of Sean's life.

Murder - week after week, month after month, across the country. Pushed beyond his limits, one man takes on the establishment, the gun lobby, and corruption at the highest levels. To break the power of entrenched elites, he leads the nation on a grisly hunt. He's hunting them. And they're hunting him. One side will have to blink. In the meantime, people are dying. Term Limits is a thriller from the front pages of our newspapers. It couldn't be more topical.

John Dalton's life is an inspirational American success story. At the Helm traces his journey from modest beginnings in Louisiana to traveling the world and working across private and public sectors and four presidential appointments all culminating in his appointment as the 70th Secretary of the Navy. As CEO of the Department of the Navy, including both Navy and Marine Corps, Dalton had to weather the storm of the Tailhook controversy, navigate through the Naval Academy cheating scandal, manage the new policies of Don't Ask, Don't Tell and women serving in combat.

When I returned home from my latest deployment in the U.S. Army, my life began to fall apart. One night, after heavy drinking, I placed my 1911 pistol in my mouth and thought a prayer—silence. I deactivated the safety and began to slowly squeeze the trigger. BAGG! I dropped the pistol, and I...

After repelling invaders in the south, President Latham and the newly formed government direct attention toward enemies in the north. As war-torn survivors cling to life, Will and Isabella are assigned to an Army cavalry unit tasked with a special mission. With the aid of new friends from Evening Shade, Missouri, they battle to save the country from Dempsey and his sinister forces bent on total control. Torn between protecting family and defending the nation, Will makes agonizing choices that place him in the center of the war and the fight of his life.

A trio of vicious World War One veterans descend on the farm in the Adirondack mountains where one of them grew up and his father now lives alone. They embark on, happily wreaking drunken havoc at the old man's place and in the nearby town. But when a naïve, mail-order bride arrives, she ignites a tinderbox of resentment, lust, and betrayal among the men that explodes in brutal depravity, bloody violence, and shocking death. This hard-boiled, literary masterpiece includes a new introduction by Jack Mearns, author of John Sanford: An Annotated Bibliography.

In 2065, corporate sponsored governments jockey for supremacy in the biotechnical arena. Bullets and missiles take a back seat to cyber-enhanced soldiers and pulse weapons. In this extreme environment, only the most hardened body and mind can survive. Calder McKenna was a failed experiment in the military's push for power. Now a special agent for the metro task force, he lives day by day trying to forget the ones that were lost, the ones that he could have saved.

In the midst of the Blizzard of 1978, the tanker Global Hope floundered on the shoals in Salem Sound off the Massachusetts coast. When the Coast Guard heard the Mayday calls, they immediately dispatched a patrol rescue boat. But within an hour, the Coast Guard rescue boat was in as much trouble as the tanker - both paralyzed in unrelenting seas. Enter Captain Frank Quirk, who was compelled to act. Gathering his crew of four, Quirk plunged his 49-foot steel boat, the Can Do, into the blizzard.

Big Tech Tyrants boast riches beyond emperors of old but act like juveniles who don't want to grow up. They are modern-day robber barons. Big Tech Tyrants don't know the meaning of privacy, when it comes to you. They try to make you believe they will give their products away for free as a service to society, when really, they are vacuuming your personal data. They use this data to discover your deepest secrets. Big Tech Tyrants is an eye-opening, must-listen book for anyone living in the 21st century. 

Aaron Platt has spent every day of his life breaking his back to scrape a living from the rocky, played-out fields of the Adirondack farm he inherited from his sadistic father. One winter morning, he follows footprints in the snow to his barn and discovers a man freezing to death in a horse stall. What unfolds between the two men, past and present, is a brisk, gritty depiction of crime and punishment. But their harrowing story is more than that, exposing the shocking hypocrisy of the people who live in the nearby bucolic town.

During an interrogation in Afghanistan, when asked how long the jihadists intended to fight, a Taliban commander uttered the words, "If it takes a thousand years." This chilling statement illustrates both how terrorists of this level operate and the generational approach they take when it comes to bringing destruction to the world.