AUDIO BOOKS | Stoney Creek Publishing
The Barber, the Astronaut, and the Golf Ball
In 1971, famed astronaut Alan Shepard returned from the moon and went to get a haircut. While sitting the barber’s chair in Webster, Texas, near NASA’s Mission Control, Shepard gave his longtime barber and friend, Carlos Villagomez, an autographed golf ball.During his Apollo 14 moonwalk, Shepard had conducted a world-famous demonstration of gravity by hitting a golf ball in an out-of-this-world sand trap.
Had Shepard taken a third ball to the moon? And did he give it to his barber as a token of their long friendship?The debate provides a backdrop for The Barber, The Astronaut, and the Golf Ball, a story of two extraordinary men and their lasting friendship. The book offers a rare glimpse behind the scenes of America’s space program at its pinnacle and shows the ordinary people who supported one of the nation’s most monumental scientific endeavors.
Second Lives: The Journey of Brain-Injury Survivors and Their Healers
Second Lives: The Journey of Brain Injury Survivors and Their Healers is written by Dr. Lilly and Diane F. Kramer. After his death in 2021, Kramer completed the book with the assistance of Lilly’s wife Joyce Stamp Lilly. This memoir weaves together Ralph Lilly’s experience with a collage of stories about his patients and their healers. After his recovery, Lilly retrained in the emerging field of behavioral neurology, which focuses on behavior, memory, cognition, and emotion after brain injury.
George P. Mitchell
Mitchell will forever be known as “the father of fracking,” but he didn’t invent the drilling process; he perfected it and made it profitable, one of many varied ventures he pursued for years.
Long before his company ever fracked a well, he pioneered sustainable development by creating The Woodlands, near Houston, one of the first and most successful master-planned communities. Its focus on environmental protection and livability redefined the American suburb. This apparent contradiction between his energy interests and environmental pursuits, which his son Todd dubbed “the Mitchell Paradox”, was just one of many that defined Mitchell’s life.
Grinders
Mike Capps and Chuck Hartenstein tell the stories of players who took the hard knocks road, spending their careers bouncing between the show and obscurity, never quite achieving their dreams, all for a chance to play the game they love.
Drowning in Oil
"Drowning in Oil, by award-winning business writer Loren Steffy - considered by many to be the writer with the best access to the story - is an unprecedented and gripping narrative of this catastrophe and how BP’s winner-take-all business culture made it all but inevitable. Through never-before-published interviews with BP executives and employees, environmental experts, and oil industry insiders, Steffy takes us behind the scenes of 100 years of BP corporate history."
DeConstructed
Illegal immigration is among the most challenging and divisive issues facing America. With few changes in immigration laws since 1986, the undocumented population has swelled to an estimated 11 million.
Deconstructed unravels these economic issues and their human toll through the eyes of Houston businessman Stan Marek, who’s watched the immigration crisis unfold over 40 years. A descendant of Czech immigrants himself, Marek runs one of the largest specialty subcontracting firms in the U.S. He has seen construction work devolve from offering middle-class careers to trapping illegal immigrants in the shadows of the economy— paid in cash, without overtime or access to health care. Marek sees a burgeoning crisis for his industry, the national economy and the undocumented immigrants themselves - a crisis he has vowed to prevent.
In Deconstructed, award-winning business journalist Loren Steffy traces Marek’s own family history, intertwined with changes in immigration law for more than a century. Steffy examines the economic forces driving illegal immigration and outlines solutions that could enhance our economy, the construction business, and the lives of immigrants.