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Jack Of Spies By David Downing chats with Dr. Alvin

David Downing Click Here To Listen Live From The U.K. It is 1913, and those who follow the news closely can see the world is teetering on the brink of war. Jack McColl, a Scottish car salesman with an uncanny ear for languages, has always hoped to make a job for himself as a spy. As his sales calls take him from city to great city—Hong Kong to Shanghai to San Francisco to New York—he moonlights collecting intelligence for His Majesty's Navy, but British espionage is in its infancy and Jack has nothing but a shoestring budget and the very tenuous protection of a boss in far-away London. He knows, though, that a geopolitical catastrophe [...]

By |May 19th, 2014|Fiction, History, Military, War|Comments Off on Jack Of Spies By David Downing chats with Dr. Alvin
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The Third Horseman: Climate Change And The Great Famine Of The 14th Century By William Rosen chats with Dr. Alvin

William Rosen Click Here To Listen In May 1315, it started to rain. It didn’t stop anywhere in north Europe until August. Next came the four coldest winters in a millennium. Two separate animal epidemics killed nearly 80 percent of northern Europe’s livestock. Wars between Scotland and England, France and Flanders, and two rival claimants to the Holy Roman Empire destroyed all remaining farmland. After seven years, the combination of lost harvests, warfare, and pestilence would claim six million lives—one eighth of Europe’s total population. William Rosen draws on a wide array of disciplines, from military history to feudal law to agricultural economics and climatology, to trace the succession of traumas that caused the Great [...]

By |May 19th, 2014|Agriculture, Environment, History, Military, War|Comments Off on The Third Horseman: Climate Change And The Great Famine Of The 14th Century By William Rosen chats with Dr. Alvin
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Last Stand At Khe Sanh By Gregg Jones chats with Dr. Alvin

Gregg Jones Click Here To Listen In a remote mountain stronghold in 1968, six thousand US Marines awoke one January morning to find themselves surrounded by 20,000 enemy troops. Their only road to the coast was cut, and bad weather and enemy fire threatened their fragile air lifeline. The siege of Khe Sanh—the Vietnam War's epic confrontation—was under way. For seventy-seven days, the Marines and a contingent of US Army Special Forces endured artillery barrages, sniper fire, ground assaults, and ambushes. Air Force, Marine, and Navy pilots braved perilous flying conditions to deliver supplies, evacuate casualties, and stem the North Vietnamese Army's onslaught. As President Lyndon B. Johnson weighed the use of tactical nuclear weapons, [...]

By |May 16th, 2014|History, Military, War|Comments Off on Last Stand At Khe Sanh By Gregg Jones chats with Dr. Alvin
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The Cover-Up At Omaha Beach By Gary Sterne chats with Dr. Alvin

Gary Sterne Click Here To Listen Live From Normandy, France The Rangers’ mission was clear. They were to lead the assault on Omaha Beach and break out inland. Simultaneously, other Ranger units would scale the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc to destroy the ostensibly huge gun battery there and thus protect the invasion fleet from being targeted. But was the Pointe du Hoc mission actually necessary? Why did the Allies plan and execute an attack on a gun battery that they knew in advance contained no field guns? And more importantly, why did they ignore the position at Maisy that did? Using personal interviews with the surviving Rangers who fought on the beach and at [...]

By |May 14th, 2014|History, Military, War|Comments Off on The Cover-Up At Omaha Beach By Gary Sterne chats with Dr. Alvin
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The Kraken Project By Douglas Preston chats with Dr. Alvin

Douglas Preston-Kraken Project Click Here To Listen Wyman Ford is back again in The Kraken Project, the thrilling new novel from New York Times bestselling author Douglas Preston. NASA is building a probe to be splashed down in the Kraken Mare, the largest sea on Saturn’s great moon, Titan. It is one of the most promising habitats for extraterrestrial life in the solar system, but the surface is unpredictable and dangerous, requiring the probe to contain artificial intelligence software. To this end, Melissa Shepherd, a brilliant programmer, has developed "Dorothy," a powerful, self-modifying AI whose true potential is both revolutionary and terrifying. When miscalculations lead to a catastrophe during testing, Dorothy flees into the internet. [...]

By |May 13th, 2014|Fiction, Military, Technology, War|Comments Off on The Kraken Project By Douglas Preston chats with Dr. Alvin
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The Kill Switch By James Rollins chats with Dr. Alvin

James Rollins Kill Switch Click Here To Listen From the two bestselling masters of action and political intrigue, James Rollins and Grant Blackwood, comes the first in a groundbreaking new series, featuring Captain Tucker Wayne and his stalwart military dog, Kane, both ripped from the pages of Sigma Force for their first solo adventure. It will take this uniquely talented pairing of man and beast to discover the earth-shattering truth behind The Kill Switch.

By |May 12th, 2014|Animals, Fiction, Military, War|Comments Off on The Kill Switch By James Rollins chats with Dr. Alvin
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Starfire By Dale Brown chats with Dr. Alvin

Dale Brown-Starfire Click Here To Listen With the death of his heroic father, bomber and space warfare veteran Patrick McLanahan, Bradley McLanahan must now fly solo, leading a team of young engineers designing Starfire, the world's first orbiting solar power plant. Starfire will not only deliver unlimited and inexpensive electricity to anywhere on planet Earth, it can also transmit power to the moon, and even to spacecraft and asteroids. It's a crucial first step in the exploration of the solar system, and Bradley and his team are on the cutting edge. But U.S. president Kenneth Phoenix's plans to militarize and industrialize Earth's orbit sparks an arms race in space that eclipses the darkest and most [...]

By |May 10th, 2014|Fiction, Military, Technology, War|Comments Off on Starfire By Dale Brown chats with Dr. Alvin
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The Ghost Of Hero Street By Carlos Harrison chats with Dr. Alvin

Carlos Harrison Click Here To Listen All came from a single street in a railroad town called Silvis, Illinois, a tiny stretch of dirt barely a block-and-a-half long, with an unparalleled history. The twenty-two Mexican-American families who lived on that one street sent fifty-seven of their children to fight in World War II and Korea—more than any other place that size anywhere in the country. Eight of those children died. It’s a distinction recognized by the Department of Defense, and it earned that rutted, unpaved strip a distinguished name. Today it’s known as Hero Street.

By |May 8th, 2014|Biography, Hispanic, Military, War|Comments Off on The Ghost Of Hero Street By Carlos Harrison chats with Dr. Alvin
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The Accidental Jihad By Krista Bremer chats with Dr. Alvin

Krista Bremer Click Here To Listen Fifteen years ago, Krista Bremer would not have been able to imagine her life today: married to a Libyan-born Muslim, raising two children with Arabic names in the American South. Nor could she have imagined the prejudice she would encounter or the profound ways her marriage would change her perception of the world. But on a running trail in North Carolina, she met Ismail. He was passionate and sincere—and he loved adventure as much as she did. From acquaintances to lovers to a couple facing an unexpected pregnancy, this is the story of two people—a middle-class American raised in California and a Muslim raised by illiterate parents in an [...]

By |May 7th, 2014|Biography, Middle East, Relationships, War|Comments Off on The Accidental Jihad By Krista Bremer chats with Dr. Alvin
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A Higher Call By Adam Makos chats with Dr. Alvin

Adam Makos Click Here To Listen December, 1943: A badly damaged American bomber struggles to fly over wartime Germany. At the controls is twenty-one-year-old Second Lieutenant Charlie Brown. Half his crew lay wounded or dead on this, their first mission. Suddenly, a Messerschmitt fighter pulls up on the bomber’s tail. The pilot is German ace Franz Stigler—and he can destroy the young American crew with the squeeze of a trigger... What happened next would defy imagination and later be called “the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II.” The U.S. 8th Air Force would later classify what happened between them as “top secret.” It was an act that Franz could never mention for [...]

By |May 6th, 2014|Biography, Military, War|Comments Off on A Higher Call By Adam Makos chats with Dr. Alvin
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