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"Compulsively page-turning. The true story of Jay Dobyns, all-American dad and undercover cop running and gunning with the most dangerous outlaws in the USA. A high-velocity trip into a frightening American underworld told in ... |
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"Compulsively page-turning. The true story of Jay Dobyns, all-American dad and undercover cop running and gunning with the most dangerous outlaws in the USA. A high-velocity trip into a frightening American underworld told in rapid-fire, hard-boiled prose." Evan Wright, author of the national bestseller Generation Kill
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Warning from publisher to reader: At HarperCollins, we are committed to customer satisfaction. Before proceeding with your purchase, please take the following questionnaire: 1. Which of the following do you appreciate? A Women wit... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 164.9 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, April 20, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 84.1 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, April 20, 2010
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From the Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Jonathan Weiner comes a fast-paced and astonishing scientific adventure story: has the long-sought secret of eternal youth at last been found?
In recent years, the dre... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 245.4 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, June 22, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 125.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, June 22, 2010
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To err is human. Yet most of us go through life assuming (and sometimes insisting) that we are right about nearly everything, from the origins of the universe to how to load the dishwasher. If being wrong is so natural, why are we all so bad at im... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 412.5 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, June 8, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 210.4 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, June 8, 2010
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Bill Clegg had a thriving business as a literary agent, a supportive partner, trusting colleagues, and loving friends when he walked away from his world and embarked on a two-month crack binge. He had been released from rehab nine months earlier, ... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 140.9 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, June 7, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 72.1 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, June 7, 2010
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Sometimes evil has a familiar face... Paul Artisan, P.I. is a new version of an old breed - a righter of wrongs, someone driven to get to the bottom of things. Too bad his usual cases are of the boring malpractice and fraud variety. Until now. ... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 221.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, May 2, 2006 Audio Book (WMA) [ 113.2 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, May 2, 2006
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gennonfic ebooks and Audio Books - by David Bach; Narrated by David BachDavid Bach has a plan to help you live and finish rich—no matter where you startSo you feel like you’ve started late?You are not alone.What if I told you that right now as you flip through... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 158.4 Mb ] Street Date: Thursday, November 8, 2007 Audio Book (WMA) [ 80.8 Mb ] Street Date: Thursday, November 8, 2007
"Here is one good source to help you realize that there are options and it is possible to create life the way you want it, financially speaking. . . . [Bach's] work looks at many fine details and provides research backed up with actionable ideas. " Times-Colonist
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book Chapter One
SO YOU STARTED LATE-- GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK ALREADY!
Of all the things people say to me after they've read my books, attended one of my seminars, stopped me in an airport, or called in to my radio show, there is one comment I hear more than all the others put together: "If only I had started saving when I was younger." SOMETIMES LIFE THROWS YOU A CURVEBALLWhile some of you may blame yourselves for not having started earlier, I also know that many of you are starting late not because you were shortsighted or lazy or irresponsible, but because life threw you a curveball. I hear from people all the time who are starting late because of divorce, death, illness, disability, bankruptcy, poor career choices, lack of education--and on and on. Either way, it's time to cut to the chase. What's done is done. You can't go back and fix the past. THE PAST IS OVEROh, you say, if only I knew then what I know now, my whole life would be different. Of course it would. But guess what--you didn't know. Or if you did, you didn't do what you knew you needed to be doing. So it's done. Finished. Settled. Sometimes life is unfair. But that's okay. You can move on. You can get over it. Stop asking yourself why you didn't do what you should have done. The real question is: What are you going to do about it now?NO MORE SAYING,"IF ONLY"!For a long time now, you've been beating yourself up about what you haven't done or should have done. Some of you have been beating yourselves up for your mistakes for decades. It's unreal how tough we can be on ourselves. We all do this. I'm no exception. I can't tell you how many times I've said to myself, "Oh, if only I hadn't sold that house in Danville, California." That house was the first house I ever owned. I bought it for $220,000 and sold it nearly five years later for $225,000. (Not exactly a Donald Trump real estate flip.) Today, that house is worth more than $700,000. If only. . . Or how about this one? If only I'd bought Dell stock when I bought my first Dell computer. A $10,000 investment in Dell back in 1994 would have been worth $963,000 at the end of 2003. If only. . . I could go on and on. But none of it matters. What matters is that with all the amazing mistakes I've made over the years, I still managed to become a multimillionaire. That's because rather than looking back, I focus on going forward. And here's the bottom line: If you are not yet as rich as you want to be, stop focusing on what you haven't done and start focusing on what you want to do. And if you're not yet who you want to be, get over that, too. You can become the person you really want to be. You start by letting go of all of the old stories you keep replaying in your head like a broken record or scratched CD. YOU CAN'T COULDA-WOULDA-SHOULDA YOURSELF TO WEALTH OR HAPPINESSYou know what I'm talking about. So stop "shoulda-ing" all over yourself. It's messy and makes you unhappy. I know. I've been there. Instead, decide today--right now--to let it go. We all make mistakes. I've made them....
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gennonfic ebooks and Audio Books - by Leil LowndesShyness is a curse. Shyness makes you feel like an unwanted guest in everyone else's world. Well-meaning friends and family say, "C'mon, just force yourself to go to the party... ask her for a date... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 105.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, August 1, 2006 Audio Book (WMA) [ 53.7 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, August 1, 2006
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gennonfic ebooks and Audio Books - by David Bach; Narrated by Gavin HammonHow does an ordinary person with an ordinary income reach their seven-figure dreams? First they must own their own home – and do it David Bach’s way. The financial coach who has helped millions... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 165.2 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 Audio Book (WMA) [ 84.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2006
"[Bach's] cheery, can-do message...cuts through the intimidating challenge of buying a house for the first-timer... for a newcomer, it's fundamental reading." USA Today
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
Chapter One
Meeting the Automatic Millionaire Homeowner 19 Chapter Two
Why Smart Homeowners Finish Rich 37 Chapter Three
The Automatic Down Payment Solution 59 Chapter Four
How to Find a Mortgage Advisor You Can Trust 85 Chapter Five
The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner Right-Fit Mortgage Plan 101 Chapter Six
How to Get the Best Deal on Your Mortgage 129 Chapter Seven
Find Yourself a Home the Smart Way 147 Chapter Eight
How to Hire a Great Real Estate Coach 177 Chapter Nine
Make Your Mortgage Automatic and Save $106,000 on Your Home 191 Chapter Ten
From Ordinary Homeowner to Automatic Millionaire Homeowner 201 Chapter Eleven
How to "Bubble-Proof" Your Real Estate Plan--and Survive a Downturn 221 Chapter Twelve
Make a Difference--Help Someone Else Become a Homeowner 233 A Final Word: Your Journey Home Begins Today! 243 Acknowledgements 245 Index 248
CHAPTER ONE
MEETING THE AUTOMATIC MILLIONAIRE HOMEOWNER
I'll never forget when I met my first Automatic Millionaire Homeowner. I was in my late twenties and was on one of my first book tours, giving a talk at a bookstore in San Jose, California. After a long down period, the real estate market in California was starting to take off, and many of the people who had come to see me had questions about whether now was a good time to buy property. In the middle of discussing the benefits of homeownership, I called on a young woman named Karen, who seemed particularly excited. "David," she asked, "what do you think about the idea of setting up an LLC for real estate? I'm trying to decide if I should put my property investments into an LLC or a Nevada corporation." An LLC, by the way, is a Limited Liability Corporation. Don't worry if you don't know what this is. Neither did Karen when she asked the question. I told Karen there was no simple answer to her question. "It depends," I said. "What type of real estate do you own?" Karen blushed a little, then said, "Actually, I don't own any yet, but I just read a book on real estate that said I should put my real estate in an LLC or Nevada corporation, because then my assets would be protected against frivolous lawsuits." She shrugged helplessly. "It all sounded so complicated. I'm not sure where to start." "Well, let me ask you something else," I replied. "Do you have a lot of assets right now?" Karen shook her head. "Not really." I smiled at her. "You just read a book on real estate," I said. "Why? Is it owning real estate that matters to you or the financial freedom you're hoping to get from it?" "The financial freedom," Karen said firmly. "I want to get out of debt, stop renting, and finally get ahead. I'm tired of living paycheck to paycheck." "That's great. Congratulations on knowing what...
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What if our beliefs were not what divided us, but what pulled us together? In Have a Little Faith, Mitch Albom offers a beautifully written story of a remarkable eight-year journey between two worldstwo men, two faiths, two communitiesthat w... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 139.1 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 Audio Book (WMA) [ 71.0 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, September 29, 2009
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| "A windmill means more than just power, it means freedom." William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, a country where magic ruled and modern science was mystery. It was also a land withered by drought... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 290.7 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, December 1, 2009 Audio Book (WMA) [ 148.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, December 1, 2009
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Long before gold and gemstones held allure, humans were drawn to the "jewels of the elephant" - its great tusks. Ivory is a supreme organic treasure, prized throughout the world for its pale, lustrous... |
Audio Book (WMA) [ 158.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, January 6, 2009
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This rich, timely and highly original portrait of the Buddha explores both the archetypal religious icon and Buddha the man. In lucid and compelling prose, Armstrong brings to life the Buddha's quest,... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 188.1 Mb ] Street Date: Thursday, December 6, 2007 Audio Book (WMA) [ 96.0 Mb ] Street Date: Thursday, December 6, 2007
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General Non-Fiction ebooks and Audio Books - by Maya Angelou; Narrated by Maya AngelouThree-time Grammy Award®-winning author Maya Angelou lends her distinctive voice to this special audiobook. Listen as Maya Angelou reads her highly publicized work, “Amazing Peace”, a poem she read at the lighting of the National Christmas T ... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 20.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 7, 2006 Audio Book (WMA) [ 10.5 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 7, 2006
Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH Dedicated to the hope for peace, which lies,
sometimes hidden, in every heart.
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet Traveling through casual space Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns To a destination where all signs tell us It is possible and imperative that we learn A brave and startling truth. And when we come to it To the day of peacemaking When we release our fingers From fists of hostility When we come to it When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean When battlefields and coliseum No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters Up with the bruised and bloody grass To lay them in identical plots in foreign soil When the rapacious storming of the churches The screaming racket in the temples have ceased When the pennants are waving gaily When the banners of the world tremble Stoutly in a good, clean breeze When we come to it When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders And our children can dress their dolls in flags of truce When land mines of death have been removed And the aged can walk into evenings of peace When religious ritual is not perfumed By the incense of burning flesh And childhood dreams are not kicked awake By nightmares of sexual abuse When we come to it Then we will confess that not the Pyramids With their stones set in mysterious perfection Nor the Gardens of Babylon Hanging as eternal beauty In our collective memory Not the Grand Canyon Kindled into delicious color By Western sunsets Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji Stretching to the Rising Sun Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor, Nurtures all creatures in their depths and on their shores These are not the only wonders of the world When we come to it We, this people, on this minuscule globe Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade, and the dagger Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace We, this people, on this mote of matter In whose mouths abide cankerous words Which challenge our very existence Yet out of those same mouths Can come songs of such exquisite sweetness That the heart falters in its labor And the body is quieted into awe We, this people, on this small and drifting planet Whose hands can strike with such abandon That, in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness, That the haughty neck is happy to bow And the proud back is glad to bend Out of such chaos, of such contradiction We learn that we are neither devils nor divines When we come to it We, this people, on this wayward, floating body Created on this earth, of this earth Have the power to fashion for this earth A climate where every man and every woman Can live freely...
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In 1905, President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Taft, his gun-toting daughter Alice and a gaggle of congressmen on a mission to Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. There,... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 262.2 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 Audio Book (WMA) [ 133.8 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 24, 2009
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gennonfic ebooks and Audio Books - by Joel OsteenDo you often dream of living a more rewarding life? Do you aspire to obtain a better job, a stronger marriage, a happier home? Do you wish for more gratifying relationships with your family and friends?... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 175.4 Mb ] Street Date: Friday, October 1, 2004 Audio Book (WMA) [ 89.5 Mb ] Street Date: Friday, October 1, 2004
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Having seen Europe with a rucksack 20 years earlier, Bill Bryson decides to make a sentimental return. An incisive, honest and funny portrait of modern Europe. ... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 264.9 Mb ] Street Date: Wednesday, November 30, 2005 Audio Book (WMA) [ 135.0 Mb ] Street Date: Wednesday, November 30, 2005
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In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question:... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 210.2 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 Audio Book (WMA) [ 107.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2008
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General Non-Fiction ebooks and Audio Books - by Michael Lewis; Narrated by Jesse Boggs
Featuring an Exclusive Audio Interview with Michael Lewis When the crash of the U.S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous y... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 272.5 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, March 15, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 139.1 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, March 15, 2010
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gennonfic ebooks and Audio Books - by Leil LowndesMore than 95% of guys don't pick up on a woman's sex signals. Here's how to make sure you're not one of them.You're in a crowded bar, and the hottie across the room breaks eye contact to put on... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 94.1 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, October 1, 2007 Audio Book (WMA) [ 48.0 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, October 1, 2007
Guys are completely oblivious to the myriad hints and subtle indications of women who are dying to sleep with them, says Lowndes, who gives the lowdown on how guys can better execute their game by recognizing 26 different signals that women use to indicate potential sexual desire. Lowndes's underlying premise is that all women are desperately trying to get men's attentions whenever in public, but she really sticks to bars and clubs for her examples. Lowndes's writing style and voice do not help this audiobook. Her raspy and deep voice brings images of an older, cigarettesmoking woman, which is not a bad thing, but not particularly convincing to the audience (men who need to be convinced attractive women want them). While cheesy punch lines and excessive hyperbole may work well within the printed text, on audio these lines fall short and evoke eye rolls. A professional narrator might have overcome these inhibitors, but Lowndes's tone evokes the faux enthusiasm often encountered with salespeople. Publishers Weekly.
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gennonfic ebooks and Audio Books - by Glenn Beck; Narrated by Glenn BeckOnly on Audio!One small step toward big government,one giant leap toward missile parades... "The Glenn Beck Program presents: More truth behind America's... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 31.9 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, April 20, 2009 Audio Book (WMA) [ 16.3 Mb ] Street Date: Monday, April 20, 2009
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gennonfic ebooks and Audio Books - by Mitch Albom; Narrated by Mitch Albom10-minute foreword recorded especially for the 10th Anniversary of the publication of TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE. Recorded by the Author. ... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 5.0 Mb ] Street Date: Wednesday, January 23, 2008 Audio Book (WMA) [ 2.5 Mb ] Street Date: Wednesday, January 23, 2008
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Mike Huckabee's run for the Republican presidential nomination was truly amazing. But beyond the headlines, few understand his transformation from a long-shot Evangelical candidate into a viable contender.Huckabee... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 155.7 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 Audio Book (WMA) [ 79.4 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2008
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After nearly two decades in England, the world’s best loved travel writer returned to live in the country he had left as a youth. Of course there were things Bryson missed about Blighty, but any... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 269.8 Mb ] Street Date: Thursday, May 14, 2009 Audio Book (WMA) [ 137.7 Mb ] Street Date: Thursday, May 14, 2009
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A gripping saga of race and retribution in the Deep South and a story whose haunting details echo the themes of To Kill a Mockingbird
In 1945, Willie McGee, a young African-American man from Laurel, Mississi... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 404.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 206.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, May 11, 2010
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gennonfic ebooks and Audio Books - by Alexandra HorowitzAlexandra Horowitz offers readers a fresh look at the world of dogs--from the dog's point of view. ... |
Audio Book (WMA) [ 153.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, September 29, 2009
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General Non-Fiction ebooks and Audio Books - by Azar Nafisi; Narrated by Azar NafisiI started making a list in my diary entitled “Things I Have Been Silent About.” Under it I wrote: “Falling in Love in Tehran. Going to Parties in Tehran. Watching the Marx Brothers in Tehran. Reading Lolita in Tehran.” I wrote about... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 187.0 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 Audio Book (WMA) [ 95.4 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, December 30, 2008
"Absorbing . . . a testament to the ways in which narrative truth-telling--from the greatest works of literature to the most intimate family stories--sustains and strengthens us." O: The Oprah Magazine
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book Chapter 1
Saifi
I have often asked myself how much of my mother's account of her meeting with her first husband was a figment of her imagination. If not for the photographs, I would have doubted that he had ever existed. A friend once talked of my mother's "admirable resistance to the unwanted," and since, for her, so much in life was unwanted, she invented stories about herself that she came to believe with such conviction that we started doubting our own certainties.
In her mind their courtship began with a dance. It seemed more likely to me that his parents would have asked her father for her hand, a marriage of convenience between two prominent families, as had been the convention in Tehran in the 1940s. But over the years she never changed this story, the way she did so many of her other accounts. She had met him at her uncle's wedding. She was careful to mention that in the morning she wore a flowery crêpe-de-chine dress and in the evening one made of duchess satin, and they danced all evening ("After my father had left," she would say, and then immediately add, "because no one dared dance with me in my father's presence"). The next day he asked for her hand in marriage.
Saifi! I cannot remember ever hearing his last name spoken in our house. We should have called him--with the echo of proper distance-- Mother's first husband, or perhaps by his full title, Saif ol Molk Bayat, but to me he was always Saifi, good-naturedly part of our routine. He insinuated himself into our lives with the same ease with which he stood behind her in their wedding pictures, appearing unexpectedly and slyly whirling her away from us. I have two photos from that day--more than we ever had of my own parents' wedding. Saifi appears relaxed and affable, with his light hair and hazel eyes, while my mother, who is in the middle of the group, stands frozen like a solitary centerpiece. He seems nonchalantly, confidently happy. But perhaps I am wrong and what I see on his face is not hope but utter hopelessness. Because he too has his secrets.
There was something about her story that always bothered me, even as a child. It seemed not so much untrue as wrong. Most people have a way of radiating their potential, not just what they are but what they could become. I wouldn't say my mother didn't have the potential to dance. It is worse than that. She wouldn't dance, even though, by all accounts, she was a good dancer. Dancing would have implied pleasure, and she took great pride in denying herself pleasure or any such indulgences.
All through my childhood and youth, and even now in this city so far removed from the Tehran that I remember, the shadow of that other ghostly woman who danced and smiled and loved disturbs the memories of the one I knew as my mother. I have a feeling that if somehow I could understand just when she stopped dancing--when she stopped wanting to dance--I would find the key to my mother's riddle and finally make my peace with her. For I resisted my mother--if you believe her stories--almost from the start.
I have three photographs of my mother and Saifi. Two are of their wedding, but I am interested in the third, a much smaller picture of them out on a picnic, sitting on a rock. They are both looking into the camera, smiling. She is holding onto him in the casual manner of people who are intimate and do not need to hold onto one another too tightly. Their bodies seem to naturally gravitate together. Looking at the photograph, I can see the possibility of this young, perhaps not yet frigid, woman letting go.
I find in...
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gennonfic ebooks and Audio Books - by Michael Lewis; Narrated by Stephen HoyeFrom the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Moneyball and Liars Poker comes the story of a young mans rise to football stardom. The young man at the center of this extraordinary... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 160.7 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 Audio Book (MP3) [ 340.5 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, October 3, 2006 Audio Book (WMA) [ 82.0 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 Audio Book (WMA) [ 173.9 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, October 3, 2006
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The roots of the mortgage bubble and the story of the Wall Street collapse-and the government's unprecedented response-from our most trusted business journalist. The End of Wall Street is a blow-by-blow account of America's biggest financial col... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 333.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, April 6, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 170.2 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, April 6, 2010
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General Non-Fiction ebooks and Audio Books - by Karen Armstrong; Narrated by Karen ArmstrongFrom one of the world’s leading writers on religion and the highly acclaimed author of the bestselling A History of God, The Battle for God and The Spiral Staircase, comes a major new work: a chronicle of one of the most important intellectual r ... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 348.4 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 Audio Book (MP3) [ 651.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 Audio Book (WMA) [ 177.8 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 Audio Book (WMA) [ 332.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, January 29, 2008
"Armstrong at her best--translating and distilling complex history into lucid prose that will delight scholars and armchair historians alike." Lauren F. Winner, The Washington Post Book World
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Listen to the Abridged MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the Unabridged MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the Abridged WMA excerpt of this title! Listen to the Unabridged WMA excerpt of this title! From the book ASRA
THE AXIAL PEOPLES
(c. 1600 to 900 BCE)
The first people to attempt an Axial Age spirituality were pastoralists living on the steppes of southern Russia, who called themselves the Aryans. The Aryans were not a distinct ethnic group, so this was not a racial term but an assertion of pride and meant something like "noble" or "honorable." The Aryans were a loose-knit network of tribes who shared a common culture. Because they spoke a language that would form the basis of several Asiatic and European tongues, they are also called Indo-Europeans. They had lived on the Caucasian steppes since about 4500, but by the middle of the third millennium some tribes began to roam farther and farther afield, until they reached what is now Greece, Italy, Scandinavia, and Germany. At the same time, those Aryans who had remained behind on the steppes gradually drifted apart and became two separate peoples, speaking different forms of the original Indo-European. One used the Avestan dialect, the other an early form of Sanskrit. They were able to maintain contact, however, because at this stage their languages were still very similar, and until about 1500 they continued to live peacefully together, sharing the same cultural and religious traditions.
It was a quiet, sedentary existence. The Aryans could not travel far, because the horse had not yet been domesticated, so their horizons were bounded by the steppes. They farmed their land, herded their sheep, goats, and pigs, and valued stability and continuity. They were not a warlike people, since, apart from a few skirmishes with one another or with rival groups, they had no enemies and no ambition to conquer new territory. Their religion was simple and peaceful. Like other ancient peoples, the Aryans experienced an invisible force within themselves and in everything that they saw, heard, and touched. Storms, winds, trees, and rivers were not impersonal, mindless phenomena. The Aryans felt an affinity with them, and revered them as divine. Humans, deities, animals, plants, and the forces of nature were all manifestations of the same divine "spirit," which the Avestans called mainyu and the Sanskrit-speakers manya. It animated, sustained, and bound them all together.
Over time the Aryans developed a more formal pantheon. At a very early stage, they had worshiped a Sky God called Dyaus Pitr, creator of the world. But like other High Gods, Dyaus was so remote that he was eventually replaced by more accessible gods, who were wholly identified with natural and cosmic forces. Varuna preserved the order of the universe; Mithra was the god of storm, thunder, and life-giving rain; Mazda, lord of justice and wisdom, was linked with the sun and stars; and Indra, a divine warrior, had fought a three-headed dragon called Vritra and brought order out of chaos. Fire, which was crucial to civilized society, was also a god and the Aryans called him Agni. Agni was not simply the divine patron of fire; he was the fire that burned in every single hearth. Even the hallucinogenic plant that inspired the Aryan poets was a god, called Haoma in Avestan and Soma in Sanskrit: he was a divine priest who protected the people from famine and looked after their cattle.
The Avestan Aryans called their gods daevas ("the shining ones") and amesha ("the immortals"). In Sanskrit these terms became devas and amrita. None of these divine beings,...
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Moving from the Paleolithic age to the present, Karen Armstrong details the great lengths to which humankind has gone in order to experience a sacred reality that it called by many names, such as God,... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 485.1 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, September 22, 2009 Audio Book (WMA) [ 247.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, September 22, 2009
"The time is ripe for a book like The Case for God, which wraps a rebuke to the more militant sort of atheism in an engaging survey of Western religious thought." Ross Douthat, The New York Times Book Review
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book Introduction
We are talking far too much about God these days, and what we say is often facile. In our democratic society, we think that the concept of God should be easy and that religion ought to be readily accessible to anybody. "That book was really hard!" readers have told me reproachfully, shaking their heads in faint reproof. "Of course it was!" I want to reply. "It was about
God." But many find this puzzling. Surely everybody knows what God is: the Supreme Being, a divine Personality, who created the world and everything in it. They look perplexed if you point out that it is inaccurate to call God the Supreme Being because God is not a being at all, and that we really don't understand what we mean when we say that he is "good," "wise," or "intelligent." People of faith admit in theory that God is utterly transcendent, but they seem sometimes to assume that they know exactly who "he" is and what he thinks, loves, and expects. We tend to tame and domesticate God's "otherness." We regularly ask God to bless our nation, save our queen, cure our sickness, or give us a fine day for the picnic. We remind God that he has created the world and that we are miserable sinners, as though this may have slipped his mind. Politicians quote God to justify their policies, teachers use him to keep order in the classroom, and terrorists
commit atrocities in his name. We beg God to support "our" side in an election or a war, even though our opponents are, presumably, also God's children and the object of his love and care.
There is also a tendency to assume that, even though we now live in a totally transformed world and have an entirely different worldview,people have always thought about God in exactly the same way as we do today. But despite our scientific and technological brilliance, our religious thinking is sometimes remarkably undeveloped, even primitive. In some ways the modern God resembles the High God of remote antiquity, a theology that was unanimously either jettisoned or radically reinterpreted because it was found to be inept. Many people in the premodern world went out of their way to show that it was very difficult indeed to speak about God.
Theology is, of course, a very wordy discipline. People have written reams and talked unstoppably about God. But some of the greatest Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians made it clear that while it was important to put our ideas about the divine into words, these doctrines were man- made, and therefore were bound to be inadequate. They devised spiritual exercises that deliberately subverted normal patterns of thought and speech to help the faithful understand that the words we use to describe mundane things were simply not suitable for God. "He" was not good, divine, powerful, or
intelligent in any way that we could understand. We could not even say that God "existed," because our concept of existence was too limited. Some of the sages preferred to say that God was "Nothing" because God was not another being. You certainly could not read your scriptures literally, as if they referred to divine facts. To these theologians some of our modern ideas about God would have seemed idolatrous.
It was not just a few radical theologians who took this line. Symbolism came more naturally to people in the premodern world than it does to us today. In medieval Europe, for example, Christians were taught to see the Mass as a symbolic reenactment of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection. The fact that they could not follow the Latin added to its mystique. Much of the Mass was recited by the...
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A real-life thriller about the most tumultuous period in America's financial history by an acclaimed New York Times Reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin delivers the first true behind-the-scenes, moment-by-moment account of how the greatest financial cri... |
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The year was 1957, the month September, and I had just turned eight years old. Dwight Eisenhower was President, but in my life it was the diminutive, intense Sister Mary Lurana who ruled, at least... |
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General Non-Fiction ebooks and Audio Books - by Frances Mayes; Narrated by Frances MayesIn this sequel to her New York Times bestsellers Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, the celebrated "bard of Tuscany" (New York Times) lyrically chronicles her continuing, two decades-long love affair with Tuscany's ... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 257.3 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, March 9, 2010 Audio Book (WMA) [ 131.2 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book Buongiorno, Luca
In winter-cold blue light, the bells of Cortona ring louder. The cold iron clapper hitting the frozen bell produces clear, shocked, hard gongs that reverberate in the heads of us frozen ones in the piazza, ringing in our skulls and down to our heels, strikingthe paving stones. In leafy summer, when softened air diffuses the bells, the clarion call accompanies but does not insist; the bells remind, punctuate, inspire. As a benison to the day, the reverberations settle on those nursing cappuccino in the piazza, thenfade, sending last vibrations out to the circling swallows. But in winter, the solitary sounds feel more personal, as though they ring especially for you. I even can feel the sound waves in my teeth as I smile my umpteenth greeting of the morning.
Returning in early March, I'm thrilled to see my friends in the piazza. We greet each other as though I have been gone for a year instead of four months. I love the first trip back into town after an absence. I walk every street, assessing the state ofthe union. What has changed, who has traveled to Brazil, what's on display at the vegetable market, who has married, died, moved to the country? What's on exhibit at the museum? Half of an enormous cow hangs by a hook in the butcher's, a square of paper towelon the floor to catch the last three splats of blood. Under neon, red meat in the cases reflects a lavender light on the faces of two venerable signoras leaning in to inspect today's veal cheeks and pork roasts. Orange lilies against the glass steam the flowershop window with their hothouse breath, and there's Mario, a blur among them, arranging a row of primroses.
Winter returns Cortona to its original self. The merchants along the main street complain that all winter long the town feels dead. Non c'e nessuno. There's no one. They wonder if the tourists will return this year. "The dollar is broken, the euro likea hot air balloon," Fabrizio says as he whooshes the imaginary balloon into the sky, then spirals his hands. I visualize a striped balloon heading toward Mars. In Italian, part of every conversation takes place without words. A woman on her cell phone in thepiazza paces, gestures, stops, slings back her head, paces again. She says grazie fifteen times, laughs. She's on stage, a monologue actor. When she hangs up, she snaps shut the phone, shoves it in her enormous borsa, and charges ahead toward her shopping.
I pause to look at shoes, then sweaters. "That war of yours. It's costing the whole world," Daria scolds, as though I personally have bombed Iraq. She's sweeping off her already clean threshold. They forget that when the lira converted to the euro, almosteveryone abruptly raised their prices; some simply started charging in euros the same amount they'd charged in lire, effectively doubling the cost of their pizza, shirts, coffee, albums, and pasta. Since Italian wages hardly have moved, most people today arefeeling more than a pinch. "Not to worry," our friend Arturo says. "There are two Italies. One economy in sight and another whole economy out of sight.
Everyone has their own ways never revealed to the statisticians. You get paid in cash--nobody knows." This,I think, applies more to independent work and less to the shop owners, who have to give receipts. If I walk out of the bar with no receipt for my panino, the Guardia di Finanzia could fine the owner and me. When I buy a chicken, I am astonished--14.65 euros--twenty-threedollars at the current exchange rate. I think of the reconstruction South prices after the Civil War. What is happening to our country? Our dollar is...
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General Non-Fiction ebooks and Audio Books - by Edmund MorrisOf all our great presidents, Theodore Roosevelt is the only one whose greatness increased out of office. When he toured Europe in 1910 as plain "Colonel Roosevelt," he was hailed as the most famous man in the world. Crowned heads vied to put him u... |
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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize "One of those rare works that is both definitive for the period it covers and fascinating to read for sheer entertainment." The New York Times Book Review
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Throughout history, rich and poor countries alike have been lending, borrowing, crashing–and recovering–their way through an extraordinary range of financial crises. Each time, the experts have... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 257.2 Mb ] Street Date: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 Audio Book (WMA) [ 131.3 Mb ] Street Date: Wednesday, October 28, 2009
"This is quite simply the best empirical investigation of financial crises ever published. Covering hundreds of years and bringing together a dizzying array of data, Reinhart and Rogoff have made a truly heroic contribution to financial history. This single marvelous volume is worth a thousand mathematical models." Niall Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
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General Non-Fiction ebooks and Audio Books - by Maya Angelou; Narrated by Maya AngelouSent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash." At eight years old and back at her mo... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 86.5 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, January 4, 2011 Audio Book (MP3) [ 86.7 Mb ] Street Date: Thursday, November 8, 2007 Audio Book (WMA) [ 44.2 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, January 4, 2011 Audio Book (WMA) [ 44.2 Mb ] Street Date: Thursday, November 8, 2007
"More than a tour de force of language or the story of childhood suffering . . . A summary of the incidents cannot do this book justice; one has to read it to appreciate its sensitivity and life." Newsweek
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Listen to the Unabridged MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the Abridged MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the Unabridged WMA excerpt of this title! Listen to the Abridged WMA excerpt of this title! From the book Prologue"What you looking at me for? I didn't come to stay . . ." I hadn't so much forgot as I couldn't bring myself to remember. Other things were more important. "What you looking at me for? I didn't come to stay . . ." Whether I could remember the rest of the poem or not was immaterial. The truth of the statement was like a wadded-up handkerchief, sopping wet in my fists, and the sooner they accepted it the quicker I could let my hands open and the air would cool my palms. "What you looking at me for . . . ?" The children's section of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church was wiggling and giggling over my well-known forgetfulness. The dress I wore was lavender taffeta, and each time I breathed it rustled, and now that I was sucking in air to breathe out shame it sounded like crepe paper on the back of hearses. As I'd watched Momma put ruffles on the hem and cute little tucks around the waist, I knew that once I put it on I'd look like a movie star. (It was silk and that made up for the awful color.) I was going to look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody's dream of what was right with the world. Hanging softly over the black Singer sewing machine, it looked like magic, and when people saw me wearing it they were going to run up to me and say, "Marguerite [sometimes it was 'dear Marguerite'], forgive us, please, we didn't know who you were," and I would answer generously, "No, you couldn't have known. Of course I forgive you." Just thinking about it made me go around with angel's dust sprinkled over my face for days. But Easter's early morning sun had shown the dress to be a plain ugly cut-down from a white woman's once-was-purple throwaway. It was old-lady-long too, but it didn't hide my skinny legs, which had been greased with Blue Seal Vaseline and powdered with the Arkansas red clay. The age-faded color made my skin look dirty like mud, and everyone in church was looking at my skinny legs. Wouldn't they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn't let me straighten? My light-blue eyes were going to hypnotize them, after all the things they said about "my daddy must of been a Chinaman" (I thought they meant made out of china, like a cup) because my eyes were so small and squinty. Then they would understand why I had never picked up a Southern accent, or spoke the common slang, and why I had to be forced to eat pigs' tails and snouts. Because I was really white and because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably jealous of my beauty, had turned me into a too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil. "What you looking ..." The minister's wife leaned toward me, her long yellow face full of sorry. She whispered, "I just come to tell you, it's Easter Day." I repeated, jamming the words together, "Ijustcometotellyouit'sEasterDay," as low as possible. The giggles hung in the air like melting clouds that were waiting to rain on me. I held up two fingers, close to my chest, which meant that I had to go to the toilet, and tiptoed toward the rear of the church. Dimly, somewhere over my head, I heard ladies saying, "Lord bless the child," and "Praise God." My head was up and my eyes were open, but I didn't see anything. Halfway down the aisle, the church exploded with "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" and I...
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What are myths? How have they evolved? And why do we still so desperately need them?The history of myth is the history of humanity; our stories and beliefs, our curiosity and attempts to understand... |
Audio Book (WMA) [ 51.7 Mb ] Street Date: Friday, October 21, 2005
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The author who unforgettably captured the experience of starting a new life in Tuscany in bestselling travel memoirs expands her horizons to immerse herself—and her readers—in the sights, aromas, and treasures of twelve new special places.... |
Audio Book (MP3) [ 500.9 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 Audio Book (WMA) [ 255.6 Mb ] Street Date: Tuesday, October 31, 2006
"Those who want to find parts of themselves they didn't know existed, take risks, have an adventure . . . and discover another culture altogether, with its different rhythms, tastes, smells, and ways of being human--those readers will find in Mayes a kindly, eager, tough-spirited guide." Houston Chronicle
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Listen to the MP3 excerpt of this title! Listen to the WMA excerpt of this title! From the book Blood Oranges
Andalucía
Who cut down the moon's
stem?
(Left us roots
Of water.)
How easy to pluck flowers from
This infinite acacia.
--Federico García Lorca
January, old Janus face looking left at the past year and right toward the new. I'm for the new--no mournful backward glance. Make tracks, I write one night on the steamed kitchen window.
The year began with a break-in at my house while my husband and I were finishing dinner. Ed had just tipped the last of a vino nobile into our glasses. Laughing, we were talking about the turn of the year, with Nina Simone crooning "The Twelfth of Never" to us. We'd cleared the plates, the candles were burning down, and outside the dining room window we saw only our potted lemon trees, swaying snapdragons, and yellow Carolina jasmine, for January in California is a blessed season.
In a flash, everything changed. A man crashed through the living room window, screaming that he wanted to die, then loomed on the middle of the rug, his bundled body in ski jacket, droopy pants, and homeboy hat pulled down around his moony face. Even as I write this, my heart starts to pound.
"Give me a knife," he shouted. "I've never done this before, but I'm doing it now." I thought, not does he have a gun will we die, but he's goofy. Then terror pumped through every vein in my body. This can't be happening! Somehow, we'd stood up. Run. My chair tipped over. He lunged into the dining room. I threw my glass of wine in his face, and as he wiped his eyes, we ran out the back door. "I want to die," he shouted to us as we fled into a street darkened by conscientious neighbors in the middle of the latest corruption-engineered energy crisis. Our house was blazing like the Titanic; lights flared in every window. Our intruder had been drawn to us like a fluttering moth toward the screen door on a soft southern night.
Ed grabbed a phone on the way out and somehow called 911 as he sprinted across the street. We ran to separate neighbors, hoping to find someone at home on Saturday night. Startled new Chinese neighbors brought me in and handed me the telephone, though they must have thought I was mad, while the intruder followed Ed across the street to our neighbors Arlene and Dan. Interrupted in the middle of a dinner party, they pulled Ed in and slammed the door. Then our intruder broke through their door--just as the police drove up.
That was the beginning. The drugged young man was on the street again in a month. I found his sunglasses in a flower bed. Expensive. I threw them in the trash. The year rolled on and doesn't bear thinking about. Suffice to say the words surgery, hospitals, deaths. As the sublime September weather arrived, we all experienced the mind-altering, world-shaking attack on America. Go, bad year. May the stars realign.
Now, Janus, my friend, I am going to Spain for a winter month in Andalucía. Andalucía, land of the orange and the olive tree. Land of passionate poets and flamenco dancers and late-night dinners with guitar music in jasmine-scented gardens.
Ed flew to Italy a week ago because, as always, we have some complicated building project in progress. En route to Spain, he has detoured to Bramasole, our house in Cortona, to see about the drilling of a well for...
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Renowned fake conservative pundit Stephen Colbert may have coined the word truthiness, but it's Greg Gutfeld, real conservative political pundit and host of the Fox News Channel's Red Eye, who has made a name for himself by unabashedly pronouncing... |
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