Audiobooks narrated by Lisa S. Ware

Fundamentals of Enterprise Architecture: Proven Frameworks for Effective Architecture Decisions

With the increasing complexity of modern cloud-based systems, an effective enterprise architecture program is more critical than ever. In this practical book, author Tanu McCabe from Capital One provides proven frameworks and practices to define an effective enterprise architecture strategy—one that will enable software and enterprise architects to create and implement great architecture strategies. You'll learn how to create shared alignment across business and technology, embed architecture practices into processes and tooling, incorporate technology and business trends, and instill contextual understanding over siloed decision-making. Complete with examples of patterns and antipatterns, this book provides reusable templates, assessment tools, and practical advice. With this book, you will understand exactly what enterprise architecture is, and why it's important to build an effective enterprise architecture practice; learn who needs to be involved to define and implement architecture strategies; examine common pitfalls that inhibit effective architecture strategies; assess the current state of your organization's architecture practice to identify opportunities for improvement; define your own architecture strategy at both an organizational and personal level by applying the book's frameworks; and more.

Tanu McCabe (Author), Lisa S. Ware (Narrator)

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The Witch of Delray: Rose Veres & Detroit’s Infamous 1930s Murder Mystery

An immigrant woman and her son are accused of murder and witchcraft in this powerful true crime story of corruption in 1930s Detroit. In 1931, the tensions of the Great Depression took hold of Detroit at every level—even spilling over into the investigation of a mysterious murder at the Delray boardinghouse. Amid accusations of witchcraft, Hungarian immigrant Rose Veres and her son Bill were convicted of the brutal killing and suspected in a dozen more. Their cries of innocence went unheeded—until one lawyer, determined to seek justice, took on the case. Following the twists and turns of this shocking story, The Witch of Delray explores the tumultuous 1930s in a city notorious for corruption and reveals the truth of Detroit's own Hex Woman.

Karen Dybis (Author), Lisa S. Ware (Narrator)

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Deliberative Policymaking: Redesigning How We Make Education Policy

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year In Deliberative Policymaking, Elizabeth Grant advances a fresh framework for making collective decisions about US schools. Grant argues that education policy can be made better by improving education policymaking methods. Informed by accounts of policymaking actions as well as her own experience, she offers a keen assessment of which components of existing education policy and policymaking have been effective and which have not. Grant presents new approaches to the craft of policymaking. She endorses policy design thinking, including user-centered design; greater attention to education statecraft, such as reinforcing federal-state relations; and partnering with intermediaries who can help policymakers determine where the public interest lies. She underscores how these practices support democratized policymaking and implementation, which can lead to more inclusive, equitable policy. Grant notes that the success of policy work depends on civic capacity to initiate and sustain improvement efforts, and on policy's ability to meet the demands of the time. This book is essential for anyone who makes policy or is interested in education reform.

Elizabeth Grant (Author), Lisa S. Ware (Narrator)

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Continuous Deployment: Enable Faster Feedback, Safer Releases, and More Reliable Software

Methods of delivering software are constantly evolving in order to increase speed to market without sacrificing reliability and stability. Mastering development end to end, from version control to production, and building production-ready code is now more important than ever. Continuous deployment takes it one step further. This method for delivering software automates the final step to production and enables faster feedback and safer releases. Based on years of work with medium to large organizations at Thoughtworks, Valentina Servile explains how to perform safe and reliable deployments with no manual gate to production. You'll learn a framework to perform incremental, safe releases during everyday development work, structured exclusively around the challenges of continuous deployment in nontrivial, distributed systems. Complete with interviews and case studies from fellow industry professionals. Close the feedback loop and leverage the production environment to manage your end-to-end development lifecycle efficiently. This book helps you take observability, performance, test automation, and security into account when splitting work into increments; create a daily development plan that takes immediate deployments to production into account; deploy work in progress to production incrementally without causing regressions; and more.

Valentina Servile (Author), Lisa S. Ware (Narrator)

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Blighted: A Story of People, Politics, and an American Housing Miracle

Blighted is a powerful narrative about the decades-long decay and remarkable two-year reinvention of Summerdale, an aging apartment community located in one of Atlanta's grittiest corridors. Blighted unfolds in the voices of ruthless drug dealers, phantom tenants, fearless landlords, the working poor, educators, and visionary local leaders. After purchasing the property from an absentee overseas owner, Marjy Stagmeier and her partners methodically tackled the crisis festering inside the gated 244-unit apartment property. Two years of relentless work later, Stagmeier reveals how the team that she led built community from chaos. Stagmeier demonstrates how marginalized housing perpetuates intergenerational poverty and the collapse of nearby public schools while showing the multifaceted challenges of improving dire living conditions. Blighted offers a unique insider perspective of the political, human, and economic challenges of delivering equitable housing in a market fueled by inflationary prices, insatiable demand, and competing and often dubious agendas. Summerdale's success is a bright model of how affordable housing, education, healthcare, and social capital can interconnect to build vibrant, sustainable communities. From there, kids, families, working people, and neighborhoods can thrive.

Margaret Stagmeier (Author), Lisa S. Ware (Narrator)

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Children of the Storm: The True Story of the Pleasant Hill School Bus Tragedy

The story of twenty schoolchildren on the southeastern plains of Colorado, fighting for lives that had just begun . . . Imagine being one of twenty children, ages seven to fourteen, stranded in a makeshift school bus for thirty-three hours, during the worst blizzard to hit Colorado in over fifty years. The gripping narrative of Children of the Storm leads you through this haunting experience. The morning of March 26, 1931, began with sixty-degree weather and students excitedly running to board Carl Miller's bus for their routine ride to the Pleasant Hill School. By the time they arrived at the pair of forlorn one-room schoolhouses, it was dark, windy, and cold—obvious signs of a spring snowstorm. Soon after, following the teachers' orders to drive the children to a nearby home for safety, Miller lost his sense of direction in the ensuing whiteout and lodged the bus in a ditch. When rescuers found the survivors a day and a half later, the blizzard had taken its deadly toll.

Ariana Harner, Clark Secrest (Author), Lisa S. Ware (Narrator)

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Shadows into Light: A Generation of Former Child Soldiers Comes of Age

During the civil war that ravaged Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002, an estimated 20,000 children were forced to join the fighting. As villages were raided and youths rounded up, it was not uncommon for a child to be ordered to kill a friend, relative, or neighbor. The goal was to make it impossible for the captives to return home and be accepted back into their communities. But when the conflict ended, many of the children did find their way home. Theresa Betancourt and her collaborators in Sierra Leone launched a study of more than 500 boys and girls who had been pulled into the war, tracking them for over two decades. The results were surprising: despite everything they had suffered, this was not a lost generation. In fact, the most dominant trend was one of healing and increasing acceptance. The lives of the former child soldiers were shaped not just by their personal ordeals but also by the responses of their families, peers, and communities. Shadows into Light describes heartbreak and despair but also remarkable triumphs. Betancourt's study provides insight into the long-term psychological and developmental effects of family separation, war, and exposure to violence. The lessons go beyond Sierra Leone's tragedy, suggesting that we should think of children's risk and resilience more as products of the post-trauma environment than as individual traits.

Theresa S. Betancourt (Author), Lisa S. Ware (Narrator)

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Florida Lore: The Barefoot Mailman, Cowboy Bone Mizell, the Tallahassee Witch and Other Tales

This fascinating collection of myths, legends, and folktales celebrates the diversity of characters and cultures across the Sunshine State. Florida boasts mysterious tales that stretch back more than twelve thousand years. Dive into the lives of the proud Wakulla Pocahontas and the Ghost of Bellamy Bridge. Meet local lawbreakers like John Ashley, as well as transplants like Ma Barker and Al Capone. Stalk stumpy gators or Hogzilla as they prowl Florida's swamps and suburbs. Discover the quintessential Cracker cowboy and the Barefoot Mailman, plus the origin of names like Boca Raton and Orlando. Storyteller Caren Neile, PhD, shares myths, legends, and folktales that reflect the diversity of characters and cultures that make Florida such a fascinating place.

Caren Schnur Neile (Author), Lisa S. Ware (Narrator)

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Psycholinguistics: A Very Short Introduction

This Very Short Introduction to psycholinguistics is an accessible and engaging description of how people use language. Talking and understanding language probably seem like simple and straightforward skills, but research in psycholinguistics has shown that complex computations take place behind the scenes when you communicate with others. Recent debates concerning how AI tools such as ChatGPT work highlight some of these core questions about the language faculty and how it is that humans comprehend, produce, and learn language. The book begins with an overview of the fields of linguistics and psychology and how they have cooperated from the earliest days of psycholinguistics. Issues that are considered include: (1) How successfully do people adapt what they say to the needs of their audience when they design their phrases and sentences? (2) How do people read languages such as Chinese, which do not use an alphabetic writing system? (3) Do the size and efficiency of a person's memory affect how effectively people use language? (4) Is bilingualism cognitively advantageous, and if so, what are the mechanisms that lead to this so-called bilingual advantage? And (5) Do users of sign language gesture when they communicate? These questions and more are answered using insights from the latest research based on methods from the cognitive and neurosciences.

Fernanda Ferreira (Author), Lisa S. Ware (Narrator)

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The Alice Crimmins Case

New York, Summer of 1965. One hot summer, two young children disappeared from their first-floor apartment in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens, New York. Their mother, Alice Crimmins, reported them missing to the police. Later that day, the body of four-year-old Missy was found in a vacant lot, showing signs of having been strangled. The body of five-year-old Eddie, Jr., was found several days later. Police were immediately suspicious of the mother. Recently divorced, with teased red hair and heavy makeup, Alice Crimmins did not fit the maternal ideal held by the predominantly Catholic police detectives on the case. Her every action was scrutinized: Was she behaving like a grief-stricken mother or like a coldhearted killer? After three years of police surveillance, Alice was charged with the murder of her children in 1968 in a highly publicized trial. Ultimately found guilty of manslaughter, Alice spent a decade in prison before being released on parole in 1977. But was she truly guilty, or just the victim of police bias and misogynistic judgment? Journalist Anaïs Renevier revisits the case, exploring one of the most famous and divisive trials in recent American history.

Anais Renevier (Author), Lisa S. Ware (Narrator)

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Understanding Nature: Ecology for a New Generation

Understanding Nature is a new kind of ecology textbook: a straightforward resource that teaches natural history and ecological content, and a way to instruct students that will nurture both Earth and self. While meeting the textbook guidelines set forth by the Ecological Society of America, Understanding Nature has a unique ecotherapy theme, using a historical framework to teach ecological theory to undergraduates. This textbook presents all the core information without being unnecessarily wordy or lengthy, using simple, relatable language and discussing ecology in ways that any student can apply in real life. Uniquely, it is also a manual on how to improve one's relationship with the Earth. The book includes traditional ecological knowledge as well as the history of scientific ecological knowledge. Understanding Nature teaches theory and applications that will heal the Earth. It also teaches long-term sustainability practices for one's psyche. Professor Louise Weber is both an ecologist and a certified ecopsychologist, challenging ecology instructors to rethink what and how they teach about nature. Her book bridges the gap between students taking ecology to become ecologists and those taking ecology as a requirement, who will use the knowledge to become informed citizens.

Louise M. Weber (Author), Lisa S. Ware (Narrator)

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The Plunder of Black America: How the Racial Wealth Gap Was Made

Wealth is central to the American pursuit of happiness and is an overriding measure of well-being. Yet wealth is conspicuously absent from African American households. Why do some 3.5 million Black American families have zero or negative wealth? Historian Calvin Schermerhorn traces four hundred years of Black dispossession and decapitalization—what Frederick Douglass called plunder—through the stories of families who have strived to earn and keep the fruits of their toils. Their struggles reveal that the ever-evolving strategies to strip Black income and wealth have been critical to sustaining a structure of racialized disadvantage. These accounts also tell of the quiet heroism of those who worked to overcome obstacles and defy the plunder. From the story of Anthony and Mary Johnson, abducted from Angola and brought to Virginia in 1619, to the enslaved Black workers dispossessed by the Custis-Washington family, to Venture Smith (born Broteer Furro), who purchased his freedom, to three generations of a family enslaved in the South who moved north after Emancipation, to the Tulsa massacre and the subprime lending crisis, Schermerhorn shows that we cannot reckon with today's racial wealth inequality without understanding its unrelenting role in American history.

Calvin Schermerhorn (Author), Lisa S. Ware (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Lisa S. Ware