Chris Voss's Blog, page 165
October 25, 2021
The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Mark Villareal, Business Coach & Consultant, Leadership Trainer, Speaker, 3x International Best-Selling Author
Mark Villareal, Business Coach & Consultant, Leadership Trainer, Speaker, 3x International Best-Selling Author
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October 24, 2021
The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather by Mark Seal
Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather by Mark Seal
The behind-the-scenes story of the making of The Godfather, fifty years after the classic film’s original release.
The story of how The Godfather was made is as dramatic, operatic, and entertaining as the film itself. Over the years, many versions of various aspects of the movie’s fiery creation have been told—sometimes conflicting, but always compelling. Mark Seal sifts through the evidence, has extensive new conversations with director Francis Ford Coppola and several heretofore silent sources, and complements them with colorful interviews with key players including actors Al Pacino, James Caan, Talia Shire, and others for irresistible insights into how the movie whose success some initially doubted roared to glory.
On top of the usual complications of filmmaking, the creators of The Godfather had to contend with the real-life members of its subject matter: the Mob. During production of the movie, location permits were inexplicably revoked, author Mario Puzo got into a public brawl with an irate Frank Sinatra, producer Al Ruddy’s car was found riddled with bullets, men with “connections” vied to be in the cast, and some were given film roles.
As Seal notes, this is the tale of “a classic movie that revolutionized filmmaking, saved Paramount Pictures, minted a new generation of movie stars, made its struggling author Mario Puzo rich and famous, and sparked a war between two of the mightiest powers in America: the sharks of Hollywood and the highest echelons of the Mob.”
Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli is the lively and complete story of how a masterpiece was made, perfect for anyone who loves the movies.
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The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Geckos & Guns: The Pakistan Years by Sharon Bazant
Geckos & Guns: The Pakistan Years by Sharon Bazant
Geckos & Guns: The Pakistan Years is the latest installment of Sharon Bazant’s riveting travel memoirs. Following on the heels of her 2019, Nine Years in Bangkok: Lessons Learned, this new title Geckos & Guns tells of the time before Bangkok. It is a prequel that follows the first impulses of the Bazant family to break out of the mold, to leave their comfortable Canada home. With two teens in tow, they took a “hardship” posting for the United Nations in Islamabad. The book opens with Sharon and the kids joining Wayne in January 1991 and chronicles their five year stay there. Bazant brings her gift for detail to the story and paints a beautiful backdrop with her words.
Where Nine Years in Bangkok is a tale of Bazant’s personal soul journey, the focus of Geckos & Guns is the Bazant family’s time in Pakistan-a time of adjusting to new and different surroundings, of embracing cultural differences, and of recognizing imminent danger. In the five years the Bazant family spent in Pakistan, they learned to love the temperate climate and the stark beauty of the countryside, the spicy curries and the exotic weddings, but they also learned to negotiate constant power cuts, flash floods, trips into opium country, bombings, a family emergency and more.
Bazant says, “I see each one of us clearly-our ‘selves’ of the past. I think about our experiences, some awe-inspiring, some traumatic, and the decisions we made that forged our future paths. We were younger more optimistic versions of ourselves. Did we make mistakes? Yes. Did we take some wrong turns? Yes. Did some of this form our future selves? Yes. The big question is: Would I do things differently if given the chance? I don’t know. We all did the best we could at the time.”
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October 22, 2021
The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Superpowers for Good: The Skills You Can Master to Leave Your Mark on the World by Devin Thorpe
Superpowers for Good: The Skills You Can Master to Leave Your Mark on the World by Devin Thorpe
Over the past decade, author Devin Thorpe interviewed more than 1,200 people-including Bill Gates-for his podcast. Hundreds of times, he asked, “what is your superpower?” The answers have been so inspiring, he’s written this book.
He continues his podcast, seeking inspiration from changemakers. (Visit http: //superpowers4good.com.) The focus will be the lessons you can learn from them. Are they superheroes? They are no more superheroes than patience or optimism are literal superpowers.
For the past decade, Devin worked to align his journalistic writing-much of it for Forbes-with the principles of solutions-oriented journalism, which focuses on repeatable efforts that provide measurable relief to social and environmental problems. This dogma holds that there are no heroes, examining the processes and tools rather than the people wielding them.
Repeatedly, however, Devin found the people were essential to the processes. How do you remove Bill Gates from a story about the Gates Foundation? He isn’t a savior. He isn’t a Marvel superhero. But there are things you can learn from him.
You can also learn powerful and vital lessons from the BIPOC women featured in the book who have been-and will be-guests on the podcast. With this book, the exploration of superpowers you can use to change the world is just beginning.
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The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Those We Throw Away Are Diamonds: A Refugee’s Search for Home by Mondiant Dogon
Those We Throw Away Are Diamonds: A Refugee’s Search for Home by Mondiant Dogon
A stunning and heartbreaking lens on the global refugee crisis, from a man who faced the very worst of humanity and survived to advocate for displaced people around the world
One day when Mondiant Dogon, a Bagogwe Tutsi born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was only three years old, his father’s lifelong friend, a Hutu man, came to their home with a machete in his hand and warned the family they were to be killed within hours. Dogon’s family fled into the forest, initiating a long and dangerous journey into Rwanda. They made their way to the first of several UN tent cities in which they would spend decades. But their search for a safe haven had just begun.
Hideous violence stalked them in the camps. Even though Rwanda famously has a former refugee for a president in Paul Kagame, refugees in that country face enormous prejudice and acute want. For much of his life, Dogon and his family ate barely enough to keep themselves from starving. He fled back to Congo in search of the better life that had been lost, but there he was imprisoned and left without any option but to become a child soldier.
For most refugees, the camp starts as an oasis but soon becomes quicksand, impossible to leave. Yet Dogon managed to be one of the few refugees he knew to go to college. Though he hid his status from his fellow students out of shame, eventually he would emerge as an advocate for his people.
Rarely do refugees get to tell their own stories. We see them only for a moment, if at all, in flight: Syrians winding through the desert; children searching a Greek shore for their parents; families gathered at the southern border of the United States. But through his writing, Dogon took control of his own narrative and spoke up for forever refugees everywhere.
As Dogon once wrote in a poem, “Those we throw away are diamonds.”
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October 21, 2021
The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The First Shots: The Epic Rivalries and Heroic Science Behind the Race to the Coronavirus Vaccine by Brendan Borrell
The First Shots: The Epic Rivalries and Heroic Science Behind the Race to the Coronavirus Vaccine by Brendan Borrell
The full inside story of the high-stakes, global race for the lifesaving vaccine to end the pandemic
Heroic science. Chaotic politics. Billionaire entrepreneurs. Award-winning journalist Brendan Borrell brings the defining story of our times alive through compulsively readable, first-time reporting on the players leading the fight against a vicious virus. The First Shots, soon to be the subject of an HBO limited series with superstar director and producer Adam McKay (Succession, Vice, The Big Short), draws on exclusive, high-level access to weave together the intense vaccine-race conflicts among hard-driving, heroic scientists and the epic rivalries among Washington power players that shaped 18 months of fear, resolve, and triumph.
From infectious disease expert Michael Callahan, an American doctor secretly on the ground in Wuhan in January 2020 to gauge the terrifying ravages of Disease X; to Robert (Dr. Bob) Kadlec, one of Operation Warp Speed’s architects, whose audacious plans for the American people run straight into the buzz saw of the Trump White House factions; to Stéphane Bancel of upstart Moderna Therapeutics going toe-to-toe with pharma behemoth Pfizer, The First Shots lays bare, in a way we have not seen, the full stunning story behind the medical science “moon shot” of our lifetimes.
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October 19, 2021
The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Gated Prey (Eve Ronin, 3) by Lee Goldberg
Gated Prey (Eve Ronin, 3) by Lee Goldberg
A simple sting operation takes a violent and unexpected turn for Detective Eve Ronin in a gripping thriller by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Goldberg.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s detective Eve Ronin and her soon-to-retire partner, Duncan Pavone, are running a 24-7 sting in a guard-gated enclave of palatial homes in Calabasas. Their luxury McMansion is a honey trap, set to lure in the violent home invaders terrorizing the community. The trap works, leaving three intruders dead, a body count that nearly includes Eve and Duncan.
Eve’s bosses are eager to declare the case closed, but there are too many unanswered questions for her to let go. Was the trap actually for her, bloody payback for Eve’s very public takedown of a clique of corrupt deputies? Or is there an even deadlier secret lurking behind those opulent gates? Eve’s refusal to back down and her relentless quest for the truth make her both the hunter…and the prey.
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October 18, 2021
The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Desperate: An Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia by Kris Maher
Desperate: An Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia by Kris Maher
Erin Brockovich meets Dark Waters in this propulsive and heart-wrenching legal drama set in Appalachian coal country, as one determined lawyer confronts a coal industry giant in a battle over clean drinking water for a West Virginia community—from Wall Street Journal reporter Kris Maher.
For two decades, the water in the taps and wells of Mingo County didn’t look, smell, or taste right. Could it be the root of the health problems—from kidney stones to cancer—in this Appalachian community? Environmental lawyer Kevin Thompson certainly thought so.
For seven years, he waged an epic legal battle against Massey Energy, West Virginia’s most powerful coal company, helmed by CEO Don Blankenship. While Massey’s lawyers worked out of a gray glass office tower in Charleston known as “the Death Star,” Thompson set up shop in a ramshackle hotel in the fading coal town of Williamson. Working with fellow lawyers and a crew of young activists, Thompson would eventually uncover the ruthless shortcuts that put the community’s drinking water at risk.
A respected preacher and his brother, retired coal miners, and women whose families had lived in the area’s coal camps for generations, all put their trust in Thompson when they had nowhere else to turn. As he dug deeper into the mystery of the water along a stretch of road where the violence from the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud still echoes, he was pulled into the darkest corners of Mingo County, risking his finances, his marriage, his career, and even his safety.
Bringing to life a rich cast of characters and the legacy of coal mining in an essential yet often misunderstood part of America, Desperate is a masterful work of investigative reporting about greed and denial, a revealing portrait of a town besieged by hardship and heartbreak, and an inspiring account of one tenacious environmental lawyer’s mission to expose the truth and demand justice.
The post The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Desperate: An Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia by Kris Maher appeared first on The Chris Voss Show.
The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Digital Silk Road: China’s Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future by Jonathan E. Hillman
The Digital Silk Road: China’s Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future by Jonathan E. Hillman
Erin Brockovich meets Dark Waters in this propulsive and heart-wrenching legal drama set in Appalachian coal country, as one determined lawyer confronts a coal industry giant in a battle over clean drinking water for a West Virginia community—from Wall Street Journal reporter Kris Maher.
For two decades, the water in the taps and wells of Mingo County didn’t look, smell, or taste right. Could it be the root of the health problems—from kidney stones to cancer—in this Appalachian community? Environmental lawyer Kevin Thompson certainly thought so.
For seven years, he waged an epic legal battle against Massey Energy, West Virginia’s most powerful coal company, helmed by CEO Don Blankenship. While Massey’s lawyers worked out of a gray glass office tower in Charleston known as “the Death Star,” Thompson set up shop in a ramshackle hotel in the fading coal town of Williamson. Working with fellow lawyers and a crew of young activists, Thompson would eventually uncover the ruthless shortcuts that put the community’s drinking water at risk.
A respected preacher and his brother, retired coal miners, and women whose families had lived in the area’s coal camps for generations, all put their trust in Thompson when they had nowhere else to turn. As he dug deeper into the mystery of the water along a stretch of road where the violence from the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud still echoes, he was pulled into the darkest corners of Mingo County, risking his finances, his marriage, his career, and even his safety.
Bringing to life a rich cast of characters and the legacy of coal mining in an essential yet often misunderstood part of America, Desperate is a masterful work of investigative reporting about greed and denial, a revealing portrait of a town besieged by hardship and heartbreak, and an inspiring account of one tenacious environmental lawyer’s mission to expose the truth and demand justice.
The post The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Digital Silk Road: China’s Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future by Jonathan E. Hillman appeared first on The Chris Voss Show.
October 16, 2021
The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark
Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography • “One of the most beautiful biographies I’ve ever read.” —Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times Bestseller, Untamed
The highly anticipated biography of Sylvia Plath that focuses on her remarkable literary and intellectual achievements, while restoring the woman behind the long-held myths about her life and art.
With a wealth of never-before-accessed materials–including unpublished letters and manuscripts; court, police, and psychiatric records; and new interviews–Heather Clark brings to life the brilliant daughter of Wellesley, Massachusetts who had poetic ambition from a very young age and was an accomplished, published writer of poems and stories even before she became a star English student at Smith College in the early 1950s.
Determined not to read Plath’s work as if her every act, from childhood on, was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark evokes a culture in transition, in the shadow of the atom bomb and the Holocaust, as she explores Plath’s world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her conflicted ties to her well-meaning, widowed mother; her troubles at the hands of an unenlightened mental-health industry; her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes, a marriage of true minds that would change the course of poetry in English; and much more.
Clark’s clear-eyed portraits of Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath’s suicide promotes a deeper understanding of her final days, with their outpouring of first-rate poems. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark’s meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over
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