Risultati letto da "Jeff Cummings" in Tutte le categorie

J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the iconic figures of the 20th century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb but later confronted the moral consequences of scientific progress. When he proposed international controls over atomic materials, opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb, and criticized plans for a nuclear war, his ideas were anathema to powerful advocates of a massive nuclear buildup during the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s.

In this groundbreaking book, New York Times bestselling author Steven Kotler decodes the mystery of ultimate human performance. Drawing on over a decade of research and first-hand reporting with dozens of top action and adventure sports athletes like big wave legend Laird Hamilton, big mountain snowboarder Jeremy Jones, and skateboarding pioneer Danny Way, Kotler explores the frontier science of “flow”, an optimal state of consciousness in which we perform and feel our best.

At once a pop culture icon, cult figure, and film industry outsider, master filmmaker David Lynch and his work defy easy definition. Dredged from his subconscious mind, Lynch's work is primed to act on our own subconscious, combining heightened, contradictory emotions into something familiar but inscrutable. No less than his art, Lynch's life also evades simple categorization, encompassing pursuits as a musician, painter, photographer, carpenter, entrepreneur, and vocal proponent of Transcendental Meditation.

Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine the Great, was one of the brightest yet briefest lights in the history of the Roman Empire. A military genius on the level of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, a graceful and persuasive essayist, and a philosopher devoted to worshipping the gods of Hellenism, he became embroiled in a fierce intellectual war with Christianity that provoked his murder at the age of thirty-two, only four years into his brilliantly humane and compassionate reign.

Berlin detective Jan Tommen expected to wake up with a hangover - not a murder charge. But a well-known judge has been brutally killed and hard evidence places Jan at the crime scene. When disturbing gaps in Jan’s memory make finding an alibi impossible, the case against him looks open and shut. Faced with life on the inside, Jan flees police custody to take refuge with an old friend deeply enmeshed in the capital’s seedy underworld.

Late one night, a man calls the local emergency line. He's in a cemetery, and he's just discovered a freshly dug grave marked with a wooden cross bearing his name. The dispatcher thinks it's the ravings of a drunk - until the police find the man's body the next day. What seemed like a morbid prank soon becomes a living nightmare for Berlin detective Jan Tommen. Recently reinstated to the force after a harrowing case's tragic conclusion, Jan enlists his friends.

Nate Lovejoy is a self-proclaimed nobody, a stay-at-home dad who doesn’t believe he’s important to anyone but his wife and their two daughters. So it’s a shock when members of a powerful secret society kidnap and spirit Nate away to a mansion at the behest of their leader, Vanslow DeGange, who claims to know the future. He’s foreseen that a billion people could die - unless Nate acts. It seems improbable, especially given what DeGange says will set this mass casualty incident in motion: a lawsuit against the biggest power company in Virginia, being brought by Nate’s wife.

In the eighteen years since her father went to prison for killing her mother and brother, Della Stallings has battled a crippling phobia. Her fear only grows when her father’s released. She still believes he killed her family, but the police don’t have enough evidence to arrest him again. When new grisly murders occur - each bearing the telltale signs that seem to implicate her father - Della begins to wonder if the real murderer is still out there. Could her father have been framed?

Two years after the end of World War II, a director sets out to mimic real life by creating a film without a script, where the actors learn the story and their part in it as they go. The tale unfolds of a young couple on the run during the Nazi occupation, but soon the characters they play begin to take on lives of their own. As the lines between fiction and reality blur, the Secret Police become convinced that the director holds information that could compromise the nation’s security, and they decide to interrogate him about his fictional plot.

A young man falls instantly for a woman he spots at a summer backyard party. He knows nothing about her except that she's wearing a T-shirt of his favorite band but his imagination runs wild with the life he hopes they might share. The young woman ends up changing the course of his life as dramatically as he thought she would upon first sight, but in none of the ways he had hoped.

Through strange metaphysical circumstances, failed screenwriter Brad Cohen finds himself caught in an infinite time loop, forced to relive the first forty years of his life again and again. Each "repeat," Brad wakes up in the womb on what was supposed to be his fortieth birthday, with full knowledge of what's come before. In various timelines, he becomes a successful political pundit, a game-show champion, a playboy, and a master manipulator of the stock market, but none of them seems to lead him out of his predicament.

Widely known as "master hairdresser of the seven seas," Sigismund Skrik is famous both as an artist of the scissors and comb, and as the soul of discretion. Not only will he give clients new, life-changing looks - he also gets to know all their secrets. But the days of transatlantic sailing are numbered. It's 1879, and Europeans immigrating to the United States are starting to prefer the huge new steamships that make the crossing ten times as fast.

Forty years ago, triplets Miriam, Louise, and Edward were swept up in a case of rural mass hysteria. Coerced into fabricating unspeakable lies about their first-grade teacher and her adult son, they were complicit in destroying two lives. Ever since, they have believed they are being followed by a presence still seeking retribution for their childhood sins. Unless their guilty consciences are conjuring as many monsters as their innocent minds once did.

It was supposed to be a simple proof of concept. The physics were sound. Over 100 teleportation experiments had already been successfully performed.... Debate raged over whether the Reidier Test's disastrous outcome resulted from human error, government conspiracy, or sabotage. No one had actual knowledge of the truth. But hidden from the public eye, there existed a government report commissioned from criminal psychologist Dr. Hilary Kahn, chronicling the events that took place.

Humanity put all its fading hopes in New Eden, a pristine star system 230 light-years from the ravaged Earth. But upon arrival, the would-be colonists encountered the Kresh - a diabolical alien race who quickly captured the human starship and tortured its inhabitants in hopes of learning the coordinates of Earth. Street-smart Cyrus Gant managed to escape, crashing to the surface of a nearby moon terraformed by the Kresh and inhabited by primitive humans.

John Lincoln needs a hot best seller, and finds his salvation in Amy O’Malley, a recent University of Chicago grad who’s worked on the school’s famous sex survey. With Lincoln’s prodding, Amy writes an erotic thriller that draws on her research experience. Her book indeed opens doors for Lincoln — but not in the way he imagined. Meanwhile, Tony Buford, a “professor of happiness studies” at a local college, gently blackmails him into publishing his fantastically mundane poetry.

Moments after venture capitalist Gloria Baradaran experiences what it's like to be a polar bear - really be a polar bear - she knows she's found something revolutionary. Farley Rutherford and his team - migraine-tortured neurologist "Chopper" Vittori and uber-geek engineer Ringo Hayes - have created sensory saturation, a virtual reality system that drops users into the psyches of endangered animals as they fight for survival, and they believe the profound experience could turn the indifferent masses into avid environmentalists.

Sent to live with a wealthy family on a West Indies plantation, Rachel carries with her a past shrouded in mystery. Drawn to her grit and fortitude, charming widower and fanciful inventor Henry is willing to overlook the vague explanations about her history. But after years of marriage, Rachel leaves Henry and their oldest son without explanation and sets off for New York City with their other four children. Is her flight the ultimate act of betrayal or one of extraordinary courage? Using real family letters, Laurel Saville reconstructs the secrets, tensions, and longings surrounding Rachel in this densely layered, poignant novel.

It’s summer in the Valley of the Sun; the temperature’s rising and so is the body count. One of the city’s most exclusive escorts has lost her little black book - and a brutal killer has turned it into a hit list. One after another, some of Phoenix’s richest and most respectable men are turning up dead. Troubled homicide detective Sean Richardson and his partner, Maggie McClinton, take lead on the hunt for a brutal, methodical killer stalking Phoenix’s elite and meting out a very personal brand of justice. But when so many people share a secret that just might get them killed, the next victim - and the killer - could be anyone.

As the sole members of LAPD's Special Cases Unit, Detective Michael Gideon and his German shepherd partner Sirius work investigations considered bizarre even by Los Angeles's standards. Yet their latest case is more than strange - it might be out of this world. Ronald "Wrong" Pauley is a homeless man long fallen from grace. When Pauley's late-night drinking is interrupted by a detonation of light, he sees what he describes as a "being of light" in the alley below.