Rickey Lee Kimball

A groundbreaking and endlessly surprising history of how artisans created America, from the nation’s origins to the present day. At the center of the United States’ economic and social development, according to conventional wisdom, are industry and technology - while craftspeople and handmade objects are relegated to a bygone past. Renowned historian Glenn Adamson turns that narrative on its head in this innovative account, revealing makers’ central role in shaping America’s identity.

Physically weak and afflicted with stuttering, Claudius is initially despised and dismissed as an idiot. Shunted to the background of imperial affairs by his embarrassed royal family, he becomes a scholar and historian, while palace intrigues and murders surround him. Observing these dramas from beyond the public eye, Claudius escapes the cruelties inflicted on the rest of the royal family by its own members and survives to become emperor of Rome in A.D. 41.

Trying to squeeze an entire history of Chinese civilization into a brief, one volume account is a formidable task, but one that has succeeded brilliantly here. Hilda Hookham has provided us with a concise story that, while not getting too entangled with personalities and cultural issues, manages to navigate the swirling passage of events that comprise over 3,000 years of Chinese political history.

From New York Times best-selling powerhouse Roxane Gay, Ayiti is a powerful collection exploring the Haitian diaspora experience. A married couple seeking boat passage to America prepares to leave their homeland. A young woman procures a voodoo love potion to ensnare a childhood classmate. A mother takes a foreign soldier into her home as a boarder, and into her bed. And a woman conceives a daughter on the bank of a river while fleeing a horrific massacre, a daughter who later moves to America for a new life but is perpetually haunted by the mysterious scent of blood.

On June 7, 2004, Dan Harris had a mental meltdown live on television while reading the news on Good Morning America. As Harris read the news, he began to have a panic attack and lost the ability to form coherent words. Four years earlier, Harris had interviewed for, and received, a job with ABC News after seven years at a television station in Bangor, Maine, and a short stint at a twenty-four hour cable news channel in Boston. Harris began at ABC News as the new co-anchor of the overnight newscast, World News Now.

In the 1960s Ram Dass was a Harvard professor who turned to Eastern religion to answer the questions troubling his generation. He shared his story in the landmark classic, Be Here Now, which instantly captured the spiritual longings of his contemporaries. In Still Here, Ram Dass once again brings understanding, common sense, and reassurance for those of us facing the final season of life.

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For more than two millennia, philosophers have grappled with life's most profound and "eternal" questions. It is easy to forget, however, that these questions about fundamental issues like justice, injustice, virtue, vice, or happiness were not always eternal. They once had to be asked for the first time. This was a step that could place the inquirer beyond the boundaries of the law. And the Athenian citizen and philosopher who took that courageous step in the 5th century B.C. was Socrates.

Learn about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with iMinds insightful audio knowledge series. In 1997, a Californian man named Charles Moore was sailing home from Hawaii after competing in a boat race. On a whim, he decided to change course and head through a part of the eastern Pacific Ocean known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Known to seafarers as "the doldrums", this is an area of light or no wind and little boat traffic.

Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoy's genius is clearly seen in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicle, all of them fully realized and equally memorable.