Narrator

Donald Corren

Donald Corren
  • Is there an alternative to capitalism?

    In this landmark text Chomsky and Waterstone chart a critical map for a more just and sustainable society.

    “Covid-19 has revealed glaring failures and monstrous brutalities in the current capitalist system. It represents both a crisis and an opportunity…Everything depends on the actions that people take into their own hands.” —From the afterword

    How do politics shape our world, our lives, and our perceptions? How much of “common sense” is actually driven by the ruling class’ needs and interests? And how are we to challenge the capitalist structures that now threaten all life on the planet?

    Consequences of Capitalism exposes the deep, often unseen connections between neoliberal “common sense” and structural power. In making these linkages, we see how the current hegemony keeps social justice movements divided and marginalized. And, most importantly, we see how we can fight to overcome these divisions.

  • Father Paul, a gay priest, reflects on his life while his sister and niece grapple with the life choices they’ve made.

    Set in Rome, Cape Cod, and Wisconsin over the course of the summer of 2009 and in Rome during the spring of 1970, The Wanting Life tells the intertwined story of three members of the Novak family: Father Paul, a closeted gay Catholic priest who’s dying of cancer and has secrets he desperately wants to share; Britta, his self-destructive sister and caretaker, who’s struggling to find meaning in a world without her beloved husband; and Maura, Britta’s daughter—a thirty-nine-year-old artist who’s facing a choice between her husband and two children or the man she believes is her one, true love.

    Featuring one of most unconventional love stories you’ll read this year, The Wanting Life is both a compulsively readable family drama about the toll that secrets and loyalty can take on us and a gorgeous meditation on the comforts (and limits) of faith and intimacy that calls to mind novels like Marilynne Robinson’s Home, Alice McDermott’s Charming Billy, and Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending.

  • A collection of treasured stories by the unchallenged master of American fiction

    Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow has deservedly been celebrated as one of America’s greatest writers. For more than sixty years he stretched our minds, our imaginations, and our hearts with his exhilarating perceptions of life. Here, collected in one volume and chosen by the author himself, are favorites such as “What Kind of Day Did You Have?” “Leaving the Yellow House,” and a previously uncollected piece, “By the St. Lawrence.” With his larger-than-life characters, irony, wisdom, and unique humor, Bellow presents a sharp, rich, and funny world that is infinitely surprising. With a preface by Janice Bellow and an introduction by James Wood, this is a collection to treasure for longtime Saul Bellow fans and an excellent introduction for new readers.

  • The Triumph of the Egg is a fictional panorama of a great region of our country, unfolded by a writer who—to quote the New York Times—“depicts life in the Midwest as Dostoevsky pictured the many colored life of Russia, with almost as wonderful a touch of genius, with a more concentrated and daring skill.”

    This coveted 1921 collection is an example of what a book of stories can be when a writer of vision deals with the materials of American life.

  • Hope and History is both a memoir and a call-to-action for the renewal of faith in democracy and America.

    US Ambassador William J. vanden Heuvel presents his most important public speeches and writings, compiled and presented over eight decades of adventure and public service, woven together with anecdotes of his colorful life as a second-generation American, a soldier, a lawyer, a political activist, and a diplomat. He touches upon themes that resonate as much today as they did when he first encountered them: the impact of heroes and mentors, the tragedy of the Vietnam War, the problems of racism and desegregation in America, tackling the crisis in America’s prisons, America and the Holocaust, and the plight and promise of the United Nations. Along the way, he allows us to share his journey with some of the great characters of American history: Eleanor Roosevelt, William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, President John F. Kennedy and RFK, Harry S. Truman, and Jimmy Carter.

    Throughout, vanden Heuvel persuades us that there is still room for optimism in public life. He shows how individuals, himself among them, have tackled some of America’s most intractable domestic and foreign policy issues with ingenuity and goodwill, particularly under the leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and those who sought and still seek to follow in his footsteps. He is not afraid to challenge the hatred and bigotry that are an unfortunate but undeniable part of the American fabric. He exhorts us to embrace all the challenges and opportunities that life in the United States can offer.

  • Someone is looking to wreck the nation’s economy, and they’re spending plenty to do it. With every lead going nowhere, Flynn’s most dizzying logic is put to the test.

  • Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn, also known as international superspy N. N. 13, returns in this final book of the intelligently written, scintillating series by bestselling author Gregory Mcdonald.

    Severely lacking in sleep from a recent bout of marathon investigative work, all Flynn wants is a proper night’s rest. Unfortunately, at the early morning summons of his frantic daughter, he’s off to the cemetery to rescue her young friend who’s in quite a peculiar bind. And as the day progresses, a curious collection of puzzling cases fall into Flynn’s lap, each one stranger and more urgent than the last.

    As Flynn plunges into harm’s way in pursuit of the truth, buried secrets and dark motives come to light as he races to solve each crime and bring these seemingly disconnected matters to a full and complete case closed.

  • Infusing elements of dark reality into this richly detailed, comical series, Mcdonald’s first volume, Flynn, delves deeper into the curious character first introduced in the bestselling Fletch seriesFrancis Xavier Flynn.

    Early one morning as Boston’s only investigator is returning home from solving another peculiar case, he has the displeasure of witnessing a spectacularly horrible show outside his front door: a massive aircraft, carrying over one hundred souls, exploding in midair over the harbor. Almost immediately, the Human Surplus League takes credit for the heinous act of terrorism. But “Reluctant Flynn” isn’t so easily convinced, unlike his partner and governmental counterparts.

    Now finding himself at the whim of the tedious and ill-mannered FBI agents as they follow bunk leads and question all the wrong suspects, he decides to do his own digging, employing family and encountering new friends and old acquaintances along the way. As the truth begins to trickle forth, Flynn finds himself staring down a much bigger—and much deadlier—problem.

  • “All Jews must die.”

    Robert Bowers screamed these words as he walked into a Temple and murdered eleven people.

    Where does this hate come from? Why is it rising again in America? What do we need to do to stop it?

    Prepare to be stunned, shocked, and illuminated as Rabbi Evan Moffic answers these questions. He reveals why the world’s oldest hatred—once thought to be over after the Holocaust—keeps coming back to life. This book gives the clearest and most concise explanation of where antisemitism comes from, why it continues, and how to stop its resurgence today.

    Interwoven is Moffic’s personal story as a rabbi who led his community in responding to antisemitic attacks and working with Christian leaders to stand up to them. He answers the age-old charge that Jews killed Jesus and that Jews still dominate the media and Hollywood. In the end, you will discover the path to moving beyond old ways of thinking. You will enter into the redemptive story of overcoming the extremism and hatred spreading across our world today.

  • This first-person narrative about an archaeological discovery is rewriting the story of human evolution. A story of defiance and determination by a controversial scientist, this is Lee Berger’s own take on finding Homo naledi, an all-new species on the human family tree and one of the greatest discoveries of the twenty-first century.

    In 2013, Lee Berger, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, caught wind of a cache of bones in a hard-to-reach underground cave in South Africa. He put out a call around the world for petite collaborators—men and women small and adventurous enough to be able to squeeze through eight-inch tunnels to reach a sunless cave forty feet underground. With this team of “underground astronauts,” Berger made the discovery of a lifetime: hundreds of prehistoric bones, including entire skeletons of at least fifteen individuals, all perhaps two million years old. Their features combined those of known prehominids like Lucy, the famous Australopithecus, with those more human than anything ever before seen in prehistoric remains. Berger’s team had discovered an all new species, and they called it Homo naledi.

    The cave quickly proved to be the richest prehominid site ever discovered, full of implications that shake the very foundation of how we define what makes us human. Did this species come before, during, or after the emergence of Homo sapiens on our evolutionary tree? How did the cave come to contain nothing but the remains of these individuals? Did they bury their dead? If so, they must have had a level of self-knowledge, including an awareness of death. And yet those are the very characteristics used to define what makes us human. Did an equally advanced species inhabit Earth with us, or before us? Berger does not hesitate to address all these questions.

    Berger is a charming and controversial figure, and some colleagues question his interpretation of this and other finds. But in these pages, this charismatic and visionary paleontologist counters their arguments and tells his personal story: a rich and readable narrative about science, exploration, and what it means to be human.

  • Retired Chicago homicide detective Jack Starkey is living what he calls every cop’s retirement dream by owning a successful bar, the Drunken Parrot, and residing on a houseboat in Fort Myers Beach on Florida’s Southwest Gulf Coast.

    Mostly, it’s been working out just fine. Starkey’s drink of choice these days is diet root beer and not the hard stuff that ended his marriage and sent him into rehab. He’s dating the lovely Marisa Fernandez, who owns a real estate agency and supplements his usual diet of Pop-Tarts and diner food with gourmet Cuban cooking.

    But long-term serenity has never been Jack Starkey’s destiny. One evening, Starkey’s pal Cubby Cullen, the Fort Myers Beach police chief, comes into the Drunken Parrot to ask a favor. The Coast Guard found a sailboat drifting in Pine Island Sound with two dead bodies aboard, a bank president and his wife, both shot once in the forehead execution style. Murders are rare in town; Cubby asks Jack, who has more homicide experience than anyone in the local police department, to take a look at the crime scene just to offer an opinion.

    Starkey agrees, not realizing that this will draw him into an investigation involving offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, corrupt state politicians, a Russian oligarch, and the angry father of a boy who’s not getting much playing time on his Little League team. Even in his prime, Starkey would be hard-pressed to find a connection, and his prime is in his rearview mirror. This mystery follows in the tradition of John D. MacDonald, Carl Hiaasen, Lawrence Sanders, and other masters of crime fiction marked by compelling characters, stories with completely unexpected twists and turns, and a strong comic element that will keep a reader thoroughly amused while wondering what could possibly happen next.

  • Texas Flat

    In this duo’s title story, twenty-eight-year-old Dave Bradford is close to achieving his dreams. In an effort to expand his cattle ranch and marry Sirral Drury, Bradford plans to sell four hundred of his cattle in Wichita. But JJ Farman, owner of the biggest ranch in the basin, calls a meeting and warns Bradford he best not try to take the cattle across Texas Flat, even though it’s open range. Going around Texas Flat would add two hundred miles to the cattle drive, another ten to twelve days to the journey. Bradford knows that if he caves to Farman, who is backed by his hired gunmen, Farman will not only control Texas Flat, but all the ranchers in the basin. Can Bradford make it to Wichita without being caught? And what will happen if the drive is stopped?

    Rinnegar

    Although Cole Rinnegar can little afford to leave his ranch in Black Cañon, New Mexico, he decides to make the ten-day trip to Rock Springs after receiving a summons from his brother Harvey, who he hasn’t seen in five years. Cole is supposed to look up a woman by the name of Mattie Foster, who he figures to be a saloon girl. Instead he meets a respectable businesswoman who runs a local bakery. Mattie has been hiding Harvey, who robbed the local bank and was shot. His dying wish is to return the money to the bank, but Cole discovers there are plenty in Rock Springs who do not want that to happen.

  • Not all the folks who roamed the Old West were cowhands, rustlers, or cardsharps. And they certainly weren’t all heroes.

    Give-a-Damn Jones, a free-spirited itinerant typographer, hates his nickname almost as much as the rumors spread about him. He’s a kind soul who keeps finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    That’s what happened in Box Elder, a small Montana town. Tensions are running high, and anything—or anyone—could be the fuse to ignite them: a recently released convict trying to prove his innocence, a prominent cattleman who craves respect at any cost, a wily traveling dentist at odds with a violent local blacksmith, or a firebrand of an editor who is determined to unlock the town’s secrets.

    Jones walks into the middle of it all, and this time, he may be the hero that this town needs.

  • Shawn Harrington returned to Marshall High School as an assistant coach years after appearing as a player in the iconic basketball documentary film Hoop Dreams. In January of 2014, Marshall’s struggling team was about to improve after the addition of a charismatic but troubled player. Everything changed, however, when two young men opened fired on Harrington’s car as he drove his daughter to school. Using his body to shield her, Harrington was struck and paralyzed.

    The mistaken-identity shooting was followed by a series of events that had a devastating impact on Harrington and Marshall’s basketball family. Over the next three years, as a shocking number of players were murdered, it became obvious that the dream of the game providing a better life had nearly dissolved.

    All the Dreams We’ve Dreamed is a true story of courage, endurance, and friendship in one of America’s most violent neighborhoods. Author Rus Bradburd, who has an intimate forty-year relationship to Chicago basketball, tells Shawn’s story with empathy and care, exploring the intertwined tragedies of gun violence, health-care failure, racial assumptions, struggling educational systems, corruption in athletics—and the hope that can survive them all.

  • Alexander the Great is a towering figure in ancient history because of his legendary conquests throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. He was born in 356 BC to the noble family of Macedon. As such, he was afforded with great luxuries growing up including having Aristotle as his private tutor. After his father was assassinated, he took over the throne and inherited a formidable army which he would put to tremendous use.

    Alexander was just in his early twenties when he embarked on an ambitious expansion of his territories. Despite his youth, he proved to be a capable military strategist and captured nearly all the kingdoms in his path, often leading the battles himself. Even the mighty Persians who had terrorized the Greek states for centuries had been defeated by his army. He also conquered Egypt, took the title of Pharaoh, and founded the city of Alexandria.

    His campaigns reached as far as India and could have gone farther if not for his men’s refusal to march on due to homesickness. Despite this premature turnaround back to Macedon, he was able to consolidate most of the known world under his rule—a feat never before achieved.

    He caught a vicious illness on the way back and died at the age of thirty-two far away from his home.

    This book is part of a biography series by brothers Jacob and John Abbott first published in 1876 with a few updates and revisions. It continues to be one of the best books written on Alexander the Great, his incredible conquests, his eventual downfall, and the aftermath of his death.

    It is filled with fascinating details and deep insights into that period in history. Alexander’s military tactics are still taught the world over and his influence lingers even after thousands of years.

  • Johnny D. Boggs turns the battlefield itself into a character in this historical retelling of Custer’s Last Stand, when George Custer led most of his command to annihilation at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in southern Montana in 1876.

    More than forty first-person narratives are used—Indian and white, military and civilian, men and women—to paint a panorama of the battle itself.

    Boggs brings the events and personalities of the Battle of the Little Bighorn to life in a series of first-hand accounts.

  • In March 1977, ballistics link murders going back six months to the same Charter Arms Bulldog .44. A serial killer, Son of Sam, is on the loose. But Coleridge Taylor can’t compete with the armies of reporters fighting New York’s tabloid war—only rewrite what they get. Constantly on the lookout for victims who need their stories told, he uncovers other killings being ignored because of the media circus. He goes after one, the story of a young Black woman gunned down in her apartment building the same night Son of Sam struck elsewhere in Queens.

    The story entangles Taylor with a wealthy Park Avenue family at war with itself. Just as he’s closing in on the killer and his scoop, the July 13–14 blackout sends New York into a 24-hour orgy of looting and destruction. Taylor and his PI girlfriend Samantha Callahan head out into the darkness, where a steamy night of mob violence awaits them.

    In the midst of the chaos, a suspect in Taylor’s story goes missing. Desperate, he races to a confrontation that will either break the story—or Taylor.

  • The first of a series of high-octane spy thrillers, Into the Shadows: The Fever is the story of Michael Brennan, a career CIA non–official-cover intelligence officer and his quest to identify and disrupt a plot crafted by the Islamic State terror group. After Michael travels to Israel and meets with Israeli intelligence, he partners with Elif Turan, a Mossad agent working in Turkey as a “false flag” along the Syrian border. Together they must use their skills and tradecraft to stop Islamic State’s scheme of introducing the deadly Ebola virus into New York City.

  • The Los Angeles Times affectionately referred to Freddy Powers as the “Ol’ Blue Eyes of Country Music,” and wrote that if you were to “ask country superstars Willie Nelson, George Jones, or Merle Haggard (they’ll) … tell you that he’s one of country music’s best-kept secrets.”

    The Texas Country Music Hall of Fame inductee has been to the top of the charts as both a producer for Willie Nelson’s Grammy-winning LP Over the Rainbow, and as a songwriter for many of country music legend Merle Haggard’s number one hits.

    Now, for the first time, Freddy recounts the entertaining and emotional stories behind his decades-long roller coaster ride through the music business; his voyage to the top of the charts, and his inspiring battle against Parkinson’s disease. Helping Freddy tell his story are exclusive interviews from fellow country music legends Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, John Rich, Tanya Tucker, The Voice finalist and Powers’ protégé Mary Sarah, along with a host of other Nashville luminaries.

  • The tight-knit residents of Blue Moon Mountain, nestled high in the Colorado Mountains, form an interconnected community of those living off the land, stunned by the beauty and isolation all around them. So when, at the onset of winter, the town veterinarian commits a violent act, the repercussions of that tragedy will be felt all across the mountainside, upending their lives and causing their paths to twist and collide in unexpected ways.

    The housecleaner rediscovering her sexual appetite, the farrier who must take in his traumatized niece, the grocer and her daughter, the therapist and the teacher, reaching out to the world in new and surprising ways, and the ragged couple trapped in a cycle of addiction and violence. They will all rise and converge upon the blue hour—the l’heure bleu—the hour of twilight, a time of desire, lust, honesty. The strong, spirited people of Blue Moon Mountain must learn to navigate the line between violence and sex, tenderness and the hard edge of yearning, and the often confusing paths of mourning and lust.

    Writing with passion for rural lives and the natural world, Laura Pritchett, who has been called “one of the most accomplished writers of the American West,” graces the land of desire in vivid prose, exploring the lengths these moving, deeply felt characters—some of whom we’ve met in Pritchett’s previous work—will traverse to protect their own.

  • Gothic master Edgar Allan Poe’s complete works are collected in this multivolume set by Blackstone Audio. Here are his short stories, detective fiction, and poems in all their mysterious and macabre glory. Also included are Poe’s literary reviews and editorial musings, comprising an often caustic analysis of the poetry, drama, and fiction of the period.

    This collection includes Poe’s famous stories “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poe’s poetry features prominently in this collection, with well-known classics such as “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and “Lenore” presented alongside lesser-known works like “Eulalie” and “The Conqueror Worm.” Poe fans will be treated to his fearless and acerbic analysis of then-modern works, a practice earning him the reputation as a “tomahawk man” in artistic circles.

  • Victory and defeat, love and loss are the prevalent realities of Letters from the Greatest Generation, a remarkable and frank collection of World War II letters penned by American men and women serving overseas.

    Here, the hopes and dreams of the greatest generation fill each page, and their voices ring loud and clear. “It’s all part of the game but it’s bloody and rough,” wrote one soldier to his wife. “Wearing two stripes now and as proud as an old cat with five kittens,” marked another. Yet, as many countries rejoiced on V-E Day, soldiers were “too tired and sad to celebrate.” While visiting a German concentration camp, one man wrote, “I don’t like Army life but I’m glad we are here to stop these atrocities.” True to the everyday thoughts of these fighters, this collection of letters can be as amusing as it is worrying. As one soldier noted, “I know lice don’t crawl so I figured they were fleas.”

    A fitting tribute to all veterans, this book is one every American should own.

  • Coleridge Taylor is searching for his next scoop on the police beat. The Messenger-Telegram reporter has a lot to choose from on the crime-ridden streets of New York City in 1975. One story outside his beat is grabbing all the front page glory: New York teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, and President Ford just told the city, as the Daily News so aptly puts it, “drop dead.”

    Taylor’s situation is nearly as desperate. His home is a borrowed dry-docked houseboat, his newspaper may also be on the way out, and his drunk father keeps getting arrested. A source sends Taylor down to Alphabet City, where he finds two dead bodies: a punk named Johnny Mort and a cop named Robert Dodd. Each looks too messed up to have killed the other, so Taylor starts asking around. The punk was a good kid, the peace-loving guardian angel of the neighborhood’s stray dogs. What led him to mug a woman at gunpoint? And why is officer Samantha Callahan being accused of leaving her partner to die, even though she insists the police radio misled her?

    It’s hard enough being a female in the NYPD only five years after women were assigned to patrol, and now the department wants to throw her to the wolves. That’s not going to happen—not if Taylor can help it. As he falls for Samantha—a beautiful, dedicated second-generation cop—he realizes he’s too close to his story. Officer Callahan is a target, and Taylor is standing between her and some mighty big guns.

  • A brand-new anthology of stories inspired by the Arthur Conan Doyle canon

    In this follow-up to the acclaimed In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, expert Sherlockians Laurie King and Leslie Klinger put forth the question: What happens when great writers/creators who are not known as Sherlock Holmes devotees admit to being inspired by Conan Doyle stories? While some are highly regarded mystery writers, others are best known for their work in the fields of fantasy or science fiction. All of these talented authors, however, share a great admiration for Arthur Conan Doyle and his greatest creations, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

    To the editors’ great delight, these stories go in many directions. Some explore the spirit of Holmes himself; others tell of detectives inspired by Holmes’ adventures or methods. A young boy becomes a detective; a young woman sharpens her investigative skills; an aging actress and a housemaid each find that they have unexpected talents. Other characters from the Holmes stories are explored, and even non-Holmesian tales by Conan Doyle are echoed. The variations are endless!

    Although not a formal collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories, some entries do fit that mold while others were inspired by the Conan Doyle canon. The results are breathtaking, for fans of Holmes and Watson as well as listeners new to Doyle’s writing.

  • In March of 1975, as New York City hurtles toward bankruptcy and the Bronx burns, newsman Coleridge Taylor roams police precincts and ERs. He is looking for the story that will deliver him from obits, his place of exile at the Messenger-Telegram. Ever since he was demoted from the police beat for inventing sources, the thirty-four-year-old has been a lost soul.

    A break comes at Bellevue, where Taylor views the body of a homeless teen picked up in the Meatpacking District. Taylor smells a rat: the dead boy looks too clean, and he’s wearing a distinctive army field jacket. A little digging reveals that the jacket belonged to a hobo named Mark Voichek and that the teen was a spoiled society kid up to no good, the son of a city official.

    Taylor’s efforts to protect Voichek put him on the hit list of three goons who are willing to kill any number of street people to cover tracks that just might lead to City Hall. Taylor has only one ally in the newsroom, young and lovely reporter Laura Wheeler. But time is not on his side, and if he doesn’t wrap this story up soon, he’ll be back on the obits page—as a headline, not a byline.

  • On the eve of the US Bicentennial, newsman Coleridge Taylor is covering Operation Sail. New York Harbor is teeming with tall ships from all over the world. While enjoying the spectacle, Taylor is still a police reporter. He wants to cover real stories, and gritty New York City still has plenty of those in July of 1976. One surfaces right in front of him when a housewife is fished out of the harbor wearing bricks of heroin, inferior stuff users have been rejecting for China White.

    Convinced he’s stumbled on a drug war between the Italian Mafia and a Chinese tong, Taylor is on fire once more. But as he blazes forward, flanked by his new girlfriend, ex-cop Samantha Callahan, his precious story grows ever more twisted and deadly. In his reckless search for the truth, he rattles New York’s major drug cartels. If he solves the mystery, he may end up like the victim—in a watery grave.

  • Paris was practically perfect—although for Craig Carlson one thing was still missing: the good ol’ American breakfast he loved so much.

    Craig was the last person anyone would have expected to open an American diner in Paris. He came from humble beginnings in a working-class town in Connecticut, had never worked in a restaurant, and didn’t know anything about starting a brand-new business. But from his first visit to Paris, Craig knew he had found the city of his dreams.

    Pancakes in Paris is the story of Craig tackling the impossible—from raising the money to fund his dream to tracking down international suppliers for “exotic” American ingredients, and even finding love along the way. His diner, Breakfast in America, is now a renowned tourist destination, and the story of how it came to be is just as delicious and satisfying as the classic breakfast that tops its menu.

  • Edited by the bestselling author of The Ice Harvest, St. Louis Noir thickens the Midwest quotient for the Akashic Noir series.

    Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

    In the wake of Chicago Noir, Twin Cities Noir, and Kansas City Noir—all popular volumes in the Akashic Noir Series—comes the latest Midwest installment, St. Louis Noir. Masterfully curated by Scott Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest (adapted for film, starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton), this volume will chill the listener with heartland menace.

    Featuring brand new stories by Calvin Wilson, LaVelle Wilkins-Chinn, John Lutz, Paul D. Marks, Colleen J. McElroy, Jason Makansi, S. L. Coney, Michael Castro, Laura Benedict, Jedidiah Ayres, Umar Lee, Chris Barsanti, L. J. Smith, and Scott Phillips.

  • The incredible story of Iridium—the most complex satellite system ever built, the cell phone of the future, and one of the largest corporate bankruptcies in American history—and one man’s desperate race to save it.

    In the early 1990s, Motorola, the legendary American technology company, developed a revolutionary satellite system called Iridium that promised to be its crowning achievement. Light years ahead of anything previously put into space, and built on technology developed for Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars,” Iridium’s constellation of sixty-six satellites in polar orbit meant that no matter where you were on Earth, at least one satellite was always overhead, and you could call Tibet from Fiji without a delay and without your call ever touching a wire.

    Iridium the satellite system was a mind-boggling technical accomplishment, surely the future of communication. The only problem was that Iridium the company was a commercial disaster. Only months after launching service, it was $11 billion in debt, burning through $100 million a month, and crippled by baroque rate plans and agreements that forced calls through Moscow, Beijing, Fucino, Italy, and elsewhere. Bankruptcy was inevitable—the largest to that point in American history. And when no real buyers seemed to materialize, it looked like Iridium would go down as just a “science experiment.”

    That is, until Dan Colussy got a wild idea. Colussy, a former head of Pan-Am now retired and working on his golf game in Palm Beach, heard about Motorola’s plans to “de-orbit” the system and decided he would buy Iridium and somehow turn around one of the biggest blunders in the history of business.

    In Eccentric Orbits, John Bloom masterfully traces the conception, development, and launching of Iridium and Colussy’s tireless efforts to stop it from being destroyed, from meetings with his motley investor group, to the Clinton White House, the Pentagon, and the hunt for customers in special ops, shipping, aviation, mining, search and rescue—anyone who would need a durable phone at the end of the Earth. Impeccably researched and wonderfully told, Eccentric Orbits is a rollicking, unforgettable tale of technological achievement, business failure, the military-industrial complex, and one of the greatest deals of all time.

  • Arthur Cathcart and Natsumi Fitzgerald wanted to believe they were free of the nearly invisible, malignant forces they had pursued, and been pursued by, across continents and oceans. The slightly brain-damaged tech-freak researcher and the blackjack-dealing psychologist had convinced themselves that life aboard a sailboat in the Caribbean, incognito and in love, could be a lasting refuge.

    The death of that illusion was as brutal as it was abrupt. Even people who knew how to dodge ruthless outlaws and relentless law enforcement learned there were powers from which no one could ever hide—not in the twenty-first century, not if you wanted more than to simply exist. To truly live in the world, you had to have a world that allows you to live. Soldiers fighting in Vietnam had a saying when pinned down under enemy fire: The only way out is through. And so it is that Arthur and Natsumi take to the fight, where the full expanse of both the virtual and material worlds is the field of engagement, nearly blind to the threats that surround them yet searching for that impossible path back to the ordinary lives they'd been forced to abandon.

    Wiser, stronger, and more experienced in the art of clandestine combat than they ever imagined they'd be, Arthur and Natsumi understand what makes you strong can also get you killed in a hurry—that the reserves of resilience and determination aren't limitless, that the power of intellect and craft dwindles in the face of a pitiless and resolute foe, that there are a billion ways to die but only one way to live.