検索キーワード： ナレーター "Michael Gilboe" すべてのカテゴリー

When Bertram Wiggly leaves his job as an appliance actuary - calculating the life expectancy of major appliances so their warranties expire precisely one day before they implode - he thinks he's found the perfect place to retire in Medville, with its town square, circled by brick-cobbled streets and quaint shops with bright red and white awnings. But then the town rezones itself for musicals. At any moment an invisible orchestra is apt to strike up a melody and the otherwise sane townsfolk of Medville burst into song.

Many ancient civilizations have influenced and inspired people in the 21st century, like the Greeks and the Romans, but of all the world's civilizations, none have intrigued people more than the Mayans, whose culture, astronomy, language, and mysterious disappearance all continue to captivate people. At the heart of the fascination is Chichén Itzá, the most visited Mayan site, but Chichén Itzá's prominence lasted for less than 200 years and was eventually succeeded by Mayapán.

The Olmec people are widely recognized as the first major civilization of Mexico and are thus generally regarded as the mother civilization of Mesoamerica, making them the people from which all subsequent Mesoamerican cultures derived.

Possibly the most important man of antiquity, and even all of history, was Julius Caesar. Alexander Hamilton, the famous American patriot, once remarked that "the greatest man who ever lived was Julius Caesar." Such a tribute, coming from one of the Founding Fathers of the quintessential modern democracy in reference to a man who destroyed the Roman Republic, is testament to the enduring mark that Caesar left upon the world.

Magical industry knowledge is precious and hard to find. Even the most minor spells require enormous nondisclosure waivers. Most of the experts claim the knowledge under patents to ensure they could make the most money possible. The harder that knowledge is to discover, the less competition you have. Magic factories are known to be high risk because of the stigma of sharing information. Unfortunately for the workers at this factory, that includes information on how to be safe.

Mexico City is not a new place. Mexico City instead has much in common with cities like London, Delhi or Cairo in the East in that it is an ancient city dating back centuries before the arrival of Colombus in Hispañola. For, while much (including the name) has changed, Mexico City is the mighty Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire and the great American metropolis of the Spanish Empire. There has been no break in occupation, and despite much devastation, the city was never fully destroyed.

The Greek god Hades is something of an enigma. On the one hand, people can view him through a lens that was a byproduct of the Christian tradition: as a terrifying lord of death seated upon his ebony throne, an unseen force of power moving through the world. Certainly, many of the ancient Greeks themselves saw the god in this light.

Hollywood has never had a shortage of actors who thrived in one genre, whether it was John Wayne in Westerns or James Cagney in gangster films, but few had success across the entire spectrum like Gary Cooper, who managed to earn five Academy Award nominations despite an untimely death that cut short his career. Those nominations came for comedies, Westerns, and dramas, with wins for High Noon and the World War I film Sergeant York.

In many ways it is fitting that Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) is one of the best known figures of the French Revolution. The early years of the Revolution were fueled by Enlightenment ideals, seeking the social overthrow of the caste system that gave the royalty and aristocracy decisive advantages over the lower classes. Few were as vocal in their support of Enlightenment ideals as Robespierre. But the Reign of Terror became the most memorable aspect of the Revolution, and Robespierre's position made him the Reign of Terror's instrumental figure.

A certain inevitability characterizes the rise to fame of Aretha Franklin. Indeed, while it is true that neither of her parents were pop singers, they were each talented vocalists - Aretha's father, C.L., was a particularly famous preacher, with a voice so melodic that his sermons effectively doubled as musical performances. Moreover, in an age in which economic opportunities were particularly limited for African-Americans, Aretha was fortunate enough to grow up in a household of relative comfort.

Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793) gave the French Revolution a voice. One of the most memorable and notorious revolutionaries, Marat became one of the Revolution's best-known figures through his speeches, writings, and scathing attacks on everyone he perceived as, "[E]nemies of the revolution". No revolutionary was more passionate, determined, and willing to die for the cause.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that it is much easier to overthrow a government than form a new one, and that in turn it is easier to form a government than to govern. The men who founded America knew these facts in theory, but in the last decade of the 18th century, they learned them by experience when, just a few years after the new Constitution had been ratified, a rebellion arose over taxes.

Ferdinand Magellan was unquestionably one of the more remarkable figures of the Age of Exploration, and given his fateful expedition, he has the era's most unique legacy. Today he is remembered as the first man to circumnavigate the globe, despite the fact he died thousands of miles away from Spain in the Philippines. It is also commonly overlooked that among the famous and historic expeditions in the early 16th century, Magellan's was by far the most dangerous, unique, and adventurous.

Among all the various figures in 19th century America who left controversial legacies, it is hard to find one as influential as Joseph Smith (1805-1844), the founder of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Mormonism, and the Latter Day Saint movement. Revered as a prophet on the level of Moses by some, reviled as a perpetrator of large-scale fraud by others, what everyone can agree on is that Joseph Smith founded a religious movement that played a crucial role in the settlement of the West, especially in Utah.

The Toltec are one of the most famous Mesoamerican groups in South America, but they are also the most controversial and mysterious. The Toltec have been identified as the group that established a strong state centered in Tula (in present-day Mexico), and the Aztec claimed the Toltec as their cultural predecessors, so much so that the word Toltec comes from the Aztec's word Tōltēcatl, translated as artisan.

He listened attentively when Grandpa talked. Curiosity is a terrible curse, he decided. And curious Zander was. He knew that they were considered outsiders on their street even when he was in the second grade. He just knew it even though people were nice to him and to his mother.

A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' British Legends series, listeners can get caught up to speed on the lives of Great Britain's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known.

By the middle of the 19th century, New York City's population surpassed the unfathomable number of one million people.This was mostly due to the fact that so many immigrants heading to America naturally landed in New York Harbor, well before the federal government set up an official immigration system on Ellis Island. Many of these immigrants, who were arriving with little more than the clothes on their back, didn't travel far and thus remained in New York.

Blind since early childhood, Marie-Laure is only 12 years old when she is forced to flee her home as the Nazis occupy France. Werner, a German orphan, has a talent for fixing radios - a talent that the Nazi government is all too eager to embrace. As Anthony Doerr masterfully sweeps us forward, backward, and forward again in time, the lives of these two individuals weave together, intersecting at the bombing of Saint-Malo.

Nobody spent more time in the thick of early American political debates than Thomas Jefferson, one of the most famous and revered Americans. Jefferson was instrumental in all of the aforementioned debates, authoring the Declaration of Independence, laying out the ideological groundwork of the notion of states' rights, leading one of the first political parties, and overseeing the expansion of the United States during his presidency.