Monday, June 20, 2011

Life Sentences: Memoirs of an Incorrigible Canadian (Hardcover)

Life Sentences: Memoirs of an Incorrigible Canadian
Life Sentences: Memoirs of an Incorrigible Canadian (Hardcover)
By Keith Spicer

Review & Description

Keith Spicer, well-known defender of national unity from the 1960s to the 1990s, has had an extraordinary career. He was Canada’s first commissioner of official languages, CRTC chairman, and chairman of the Citizens’ Forum on Canada's Future – the 1990-91 odyssey during which 700,000 Canadians were consulted on our country’s shape, values, and priorities. He also figured prominently as French and English TV host, syndicated columnist, and editor of the Ottawa Citizen.

As Pierre Trudeau’s languages commissioner, he played a central role in implementing the 1969 Official Languages Act, and in rallying Canadians to pursue language equality. As broadcast regulator, he stood up for Canadian programming, consumers’ rights, artists, multiculturalism, and non-violent children’s TV. On telecom, he backed competition, innovation, and lower rates, helping steer regulation towards the then-embryonic Internet.

How did a working-class boy from a unilingual, English-Canadian Toronto family end up becoming a celebrated champion of French from Quebec to Paris – where he is now a member of the elite Haut Conseil de la Francophonie, which advises French president Jacques Chirac on the promotion of French?

Spirited, frank, and self-mocking, packed with insider tales and vivid anecdotes, this book, in telling Keith Spicer’s story, also helps tell how Canada grew up, and kept itself together, in the last half of the twentieth century, and includes timely, provocative ideas for the twenty-first. Read more


Find out More for the best price at Amazon

Killing the Cranes: A Reporter's Journey Through Three Decades of War in Afghanistan (Hardcover)

Killing the Cranes: A Reporter's Journey Through Three Decades of War in Afghanistan
Killing the Cranes: A Reporter's Journey Through Three Decades of War in Afghanistan (Hardcover)
By Edward Girardet

Review & Description

For all too many Americans, knowledge of Afghanistan's history begins only with the events of 9/11 and the subsequent US-led invasion. Yet this ancient and troubled country has endured decades of occupation and strife, as well as centuries of interest by outside nations. At the crossroads of trade between East and West, North and South, Afghanistan holds the key to peace and security in the region, and its control is hotly contested by warring factions, each eager to dominate the discussion.

Leading international journalist Edward Girardet has been a witness to more than three decades of upheaval in Afghanistan. In Killing the Cranes, he recollects the events he has seen unfold in Afghanistan-beginning with the Red Army occupation in 1979, the collapse of the communist regime, the bitter Battle for Kabul in the mid-1990s, the Taliban takeover, and the post-9/11 US invasion.

With tremendous insight and courage, he examines not only the leaders and their visions, the resulting internal struggles for power and the deep divisions within the population, but also the invaders and their tactics, and the attending destruction and death visited on the Afghan people.

By relating his insights, Girardet hopes to bring those who face the conundrum that is Afghanistan to the final understanding why any attempt by the US (or any outside nation) to govern there is ultimately doomed to fail. Read more


Find out More for the best price at Amazon

The Media in Your Life: An Introduction to Mass Communication (4th Edition) (Paperback)

The Media in Your Life: An Introduction to Mass Communication (4th Edition)
The Media in Your Life: An Introduction to Mass Communication (4th Edition) (Paperback)
By Jean Folkerts

Review & Description

The Media in Your Life explores the social, historical, economic, and technological implications of the media in our culture and how to use the media effectively in our lives.

 

Written by three highly regarded scholars and teachers, this book explores a system-wide view of the interacting social, historical, economic, and technological forces at work in today's rapidly evolving mass media. Too often, mass communication books rely only on popular publications or on academic research. Folkerts, Lacy, and Larabee believe that all forms of scholarship provide insight into mass communication. In The Media in Your Life, the authors have combined the concrete practice of journalism with empirical research, enabling the reader to comprehend the impact of the dynamic media that are an integral part of our lives today.

 

The Media in Your Life guides the reader through today's whirlwind of mass communication by providing the information and critical thinking skills necessary to consider objectively the media and its roles in their lives. Readers are challenged to look at their own use of the media and to observe patterns they see in media industries, personalities, structures, and market trends in order to become more informed media consumers.

Read more


Find out More for the best price at Amazon

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Starvation Lake: A Mystery (Paperback)

Starvation Lake: A Mystery
Starvation Lake: A Mystery (Paperback)
By Bryan Gruley

Buy new: $10.19
170 used and new from $0.01
Customer Rating: 4.4

Customer tags: mystery(41), hockey(26), suspense(23), michigan(21), debut novel(19), journalism(17), amateur sleuth(10), thriller(9), adventure(4), crime drama(3), bryan gruley, april

Review & Description

In the dead of a Michigan winter, pieces of a snowmobile wash up near the crumbling, small town of Starvation Lake -- the same snowmobile that went down with Starvation's legendary hockey coach years earlier. But everybody knows Coach Blackburn's accident happened five miles away on a different lake. As rumors buzz about mysterious underground tunnels, the evidence from the snowmobile says one thing: murder.

Gus Carpenter, editor of the local newspaper, has recently returned to Starvation after a failed attempt to make it big at the Detroit Times. In his youth, Gus was the goalie who let a state championship get away, crushing Coach's dreams and earning the town's enmity. Now he's investigating the murder of his former coach. But even more unsettling to Gus are the holes in the town's past and the gnawing suspicion that those holes may conceal some dark and disturbing secrets secrets that some of the people closest to him may have killed to keep. Read more


Find out More for the best price at Amazon

Crime After Crime (Kindle Edition)

Crime After Crime
Crime After Crime (Kindle Edition)
By Richard Vasquez

Buy new: $4.99
Customer Rating: 4.7

Customer tags: the giant killer(3), suspense(3), richard vasquez(3), latin american literature(3), another land(3), jr rain(3), thriller(3), knighthorse(3), mystery(3), omnibus(3), chicano(3), journalism(3)

Review & Description

Two bestselling mystery novels, together in this unique and exciting omnibus:

THE GIANT KILLER
by Richard Vasquez

Ramon Garcia, a Chicano reporter in Los Angeles during the 1970's, is tossed into a political conspiracy while covering boxing events for the world acclaimed and soon to be champion, Bucky Thompson. As he digs deeper into this mystery, danger follows his every step.

In "The Giant Killer," written in a completely different genre than Vasquez' "Chicano," Ramon (Ray) also finds himself falling for the love of his life, Sidney, with whom he must grow into the man he was meant to be. Funny yet stunningly real, Ray, our Giant Killer brings us into a world of exceptionally real characters, with whom we can laugh and cry, as we get to know them. We venture with him as he struggles to know who he really is.


THE MUMMY CASE
by J.R. Rain

Private investigator Jim Knighthorse (from DARK HORSE) takes on a very, very cold case. When historian Willie Clarke dies of mysteriously of dehydration in the California deserts, ex-football hero Jim Knighthorse is hired to dig a little deeper—and discovers a shocking connection to one of the West's oldest mysteries.

Over a hundred years ago, an unnamed cowboy was murdered in the California desert and, due to freak weather conditions, would become mummified within twenty-four hours. Now known to the world as Sylvester the Mummy and displayed in a creepy curiosity shop, Sylvester and historian Willie Clarke will be forever linked in mystery. That is, unless private investigator Jim Knighthorse can survive long enough to untangle one of the West's greatest unsolved murders.



**Acclaim for the novels of Richard Vasquez and J.R. Rain**

“Finally—an authentic and exciting Mexican American character. More importantly, Richard Vasquez portrays him with truth. I hope to meet RAMON GARCIA again and again.”
—RICARDO MONTALBAN, actor

"I read 'Dark Horse' by J.R. Rain. He's the author of 'Moon Dance,' that I reviewed last column. The author is a private investigator, and it shows; this is another fast moving and entertaining detective story. It is the first of a series, published by Lulu.com. Rain is surely destined for larger success, if he can get the right break; his fiction is fun reading."
—PIERS ANTHONY, New York Times bestselling author of A Spell for Chameleon and On A Pale Horse

“In RAMON GARCIA, novelist Richard Vasquez has created a fascinating, bigger-than-life Chicano hero. While Garcia is a hard-hitting, skilled reporter, he is at once tough, sensitive, and humorous. He made me laugh and cry...”
—FRANK SIFUENTES, Latin American Perspective Magazine

"I finished 'Dark Horse' late last night. I enjoyed it immensely—very good story, J.R.! I really liked your dialogue, which kept me chuckling each time I sat down to read the book. Add great character and scene descriptions and a well-paced plot, and you've got a gripping story indeed. I can honestly say your book was as entertaining as anything I've ever read from Patricia Cornwell. I can easily see 'Dark Horse' moving to the big screen!"
—AIDEN JAMES, author of Cades Cove and Deadly Night

“Written with passion and authority, unsparing in its naturalism...Vasquez is a writer of power and honesty, his novel is a chapter in our own history.”
—ROBERT KIRSCH, The Los Angeles Times on Richard Vasquez’s Chicano

"'Dark Horse' is one of the best books I've read in a long time! A great classic detective story with a modern twist. Unique and interesting characters (I think I'm half in love with Jim Knighthorse now!), a great plot that kept me guessing until the end, and some of the funniest lines I've read anywhere. Rain does an amazing job of blending suspense, mystery and humor in this fantastic debut novel destined for the keeper shelf."
—GEMMA HALLIDAY, author of Deadly Cool and Play Dead Read more


Find out More for the best price at Amazon

Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind (Hardcover)

Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind
Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind (Hardcover)
By Timothy Groseclose

Review & Description

Dr. Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, has spent years constructing precise, quantitative measures of the slant of media outlets. He does this by measuring the political content of news, as a way to measure the PQ, or “political quotient” of voters and politicians.

Among his conclusions are: (i) all mainstream media outlets have a liberal bias; and (ii) while some supposedly conservative outlets—such the Washington Times or Fox News’ Special Report—do lean right, their conservative bias is less than the liberal bias of most mainstream outlets.

Groseclose contends that the general leftward bias of the media has shifted the PQ of the average American by about 20 points, on a scale of 100, the difference between the current political views of the average American, and the political views of the average resident of Orange County, California or Salt Lake County, Utah. With Left Turn readers can easily calculate their own PQ—to decide for themselves if the bias exists. This timely, much-needed study brings fact to this often overheated debate.

Read more


Find out More for the best price at Amazon

Saturday, June 18, 2011

News Flash (Kindle Edition)

News Flash
News Flash (Kindle Edition)
By Michael Bracken

Review & Description

When a local television news anchor hires Waco, Texas private eye Morris Ronald Boyette to follow her husband, he thinks he's taking on a run-of-the-mill cheating-spouse case. Instead, he gets a harsh lesson in how aging unfairly impacts working women.

A work of short crime from our Fingerprints line. Read more


Find out More for the best price at Amazon