Did you know that: Bats could be the key to preventing a worldwide chocolate shortage? That the U.S. military explored the possibility of using Mexican free-tailed bats during WWII? In China, bats are a simple of luck, fertility, a long life, prosperity, virtue, and good luck? That in Slavic folklore it was butterflies, not bats, that turned into vampires? That the markings on a bat's wings are as distinctive as fingerprints? Bats account for 20% of the world's mammal population? That one little brown bat consumes more than 600 mosquitos in a single hour? That in Germany, gamblers used to sew the heart of a bat onto their clothing for good luck? That bats are more effective seed distributers than birds, making bats a key factor in the reforestation of the rain forests? You'll have a difficult time finding a mammal that's more misunderstood than the bat. Since the dawn of time, bats and humans have shared an uneasy relationship. Humans have claimed that bats consort with the devil, were proof of witchcraft, and that they morphed into vampires, they've been used in medicines and viewed as harbingers of disasters. The reality is that bats are cute, harmless creatures that serve an important ecological purpose. They're clean, peaceful animals that simply want to be left alone to do their job. Now that researchers have started to take in interest in bats, we're learning that in addition to helping keep the mosquito population low, they're also an evolutionary wonder. Without bats, the world would be a very different, far less pleasant place to live. Whether you love bats, have always been curious about them, are a writer who wants to include a bat or bat related mythology in your plot, or simply wish to expand your Chiroptera knowledge, 60 Beautiful Bat Facts is for you. You'll enjoy this laid back and easy-to-read exploration of all things bat-like, including Batman Without bats, the world would be a very different, far less pleasant place to live. Reading this book lifts the lid on all the myths about the dangers of disease from bats, the mythology surrounding them, and how they live and survive in an increasingly hostile ecological environment. Whether you love bats, have always been curious about them, or simply wish to expand your Chiroptera knowledge, 60 Beautiful Bat Facts is for you. You'll enjoy this laid back and easy-to-read exploration of all things bat-like, including Batman
Decisions, decisions They often have to be made by various of our leaders. Sometimes they are right on but unfortunately some are way off the mark. Decisions that are not well thought out can be very troubling if not down right dangerous. About every generation, leaders of a country decide to enter an armed conflict such as the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and most recently the War on Terror. A conflict like "war" usually pits nation against nation or allies against allies. This implies that a nation's welfare is at stake and that the nation's population is concerned enough, so that they are willing to fight for their nation's sovereignty - to go to war. This classifies those that that are willing to fight for their country are "Warriors." Not every conflict that is termed "War" means that a nation's sovereignty is at stake. Take for example the most recent conflict that is termed "War on Terror". President H. W. Bush used this term following the aircraft attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D. C. The problem with a statement such as that implies that "Warriors" are inflicting terror on various sovereign entities. This kind of terminology is, unintentionally, giving a "Terrorist" too much credit ' Terrorist are not "Warriors." They are, for the most part, murderers. They are common "thugs" or "criminals" and should be treated as such. Rather than calling criminals "Warriors", as the term "War on Terror" implies, shouldn't we be treating the terrorist as criminals and refer to the conflict as to what it should really be, a "Police Action?" For practicle purposes in this book, the author focuses on "Islamic Terrorist" since they are recently the most active. That is not to say that we are willing to ignore the many, many organizations and individuals who use terror as a weapon to foster their ideas about politics, religion or crazy ideas.
Kids run away for many reasons; abusive parents, a bad environment, poverty, lack of love or respect at home. A few run away for adventure. Others hope to find a better life, but most discover that life on the street is cold, hungry and lonely. It's also a jungle of predators. The smarter - or luckier - kids usually find that no matter how bad things were at home, at least they had a bed to sleep in and a chance to really escape by going to school and preparing themselves to win life's battles. Most runaways are heard from again, days, weeks, even months later. But a few kids just disappear, and only their faces on milk cartons, or images on "missing" websites prove they once existed. Collin Thatcher, thirteen-years-old in Oakland, California, has a reason for running away: his self-righteous Aunt Bulah, a part-time social worker and full-time fool, wants to put him in a boot camp for being "lazy and obese," take him away from his "dreamer" father, who was wounded in the Army, given a wheelchair along with a medal, and survives by writing books for kids. With the help of his best friend Ralpa, whose family fled political oppression in Tibet, Collin hopes to defeat his aunt's schemes. He and Ralpa are unexpectedly aided by a homeless boy named Tyger who survives by fishing in a battered old boat. Tyger introduces Collin to the Asian inner-city, a vastly different 'hood from Collin's, yet also plagued by gangs and violence. Collin's plan seems to be working. But then, he and his friends are captured by men who use kids for actors in "films about kids, but not for kids." The boys are also forced to model for comic book covers and VR games. Physically helpless against the men, Collin, Ralpa and Tyger must use their minds and computer skills to escape this dirty cartoon prison and also free the other kids.
Tumbleweed Terrace Desert View Homes, somewhere south of Tucson, Arizona - "A nice place to raise your kids," as promised by a faded billboard usually used as a vulture perch - is broiling under a blazing brass sun. The land all around is empty except for cactus and sagebrush, mostly shades of rust and gray, and the only green for many miles are the squares of lawns in Tumbleweed Terrace, which, from a vulture's point of view, probably looks as alien as a place to raise your kids on Mars. Tumbleweed Terrace had burst upon the defenseless desert with snarling trucks and roaring bulldozers, screaming saws and thudding air hammers, during America's last housing boom, but then a bust had broken its back like a train running over a rattlesnake and the project has languished for over a decade with most of its houses unoccupied - those that have actually been built - while others are still only skeletons of slowly shriveling two-by-four bones. Dustin Rhodes and his mom and dad are not only one of the very few families who live in this nice suburban ghost town, but also the only black people. Dustin home-schools online, while his father, a Fed-Ex pilot, and his mother, a train dispatcher, are usually away; and Dustin has known mostly solitude for all his thirteen years, though he has, a computer, a love for reading, and a "not-dog" named Spot. Perhaps he thinks he's not really lonely, but after he shows kindness to an elderly Apache shaman, someone moves into the house next door. At first they appear to be only a middle-aged man-and-wife, friendly and seemingly nice, but Dustin soon discovers they seem to be hiding someone in their house. Dustin begins to investigate and comes to the conclusion that it must be a boy of around his own age... but why is he being hidden?
Alaska, one of the earth's final frontiers, still mostly unspoiled by human beings who've ravaged much of the rest of the planet. This is the voyage of Arctic Avenger - formerly the steam tug, Rhinoceros - and her rag-tag crew of "seal-savers," an unlikely mix of black, white, and Native-Americans, some dedicated to saving the planet at any cost to themselves, others at first reluctant until realizing that it's not a few bad people doing bad things who threaten the world but a lot of good people doing nothing to stop them. Rowley, black, from Oakland, California, has forged a new life in Alaska as an engineer on a corporate tugboat based in Prince William Sound and saved Russel, his 14-year-old son, who does a man's work as a deckhand, from the gangs, guns, drugs and violence polluting the lower-forty-eight. For a peaceful two years he's been living with Jana, an Aleut woman, in the mountains south of Anchorage. Jana, strong and educated, and an accomplished painter, is nevertheless haunted by ancient ancestral memories and spirits from her childhood. But, Jana's spiritualism and ever-increasing resolve to protect her land conflicts with Rowley's realism, which, though not wholly materialistic, seems a lot more earthly. And there is Russel's apparent mistrust of Jana as a mother-figure. Rowley often tries to tell Jana that children are also an endangered species, and until all human beings have safe, stable, and sustainable environments, there is little hope of saving the animals. Still, he and Jana love each other, and Russel seems to accept their relationship - though perhaps warily - and so far they have usually agreed to disagree on environmental issues. To Rowley, Jana's environmentalism seems more like a therapeutic hobby, though she has invested a lot of her money into a dubious research vessel owned by a young white scientist who, disillusioned by corporate junk-science funded only for profit, has run away to Alaska in hope doing something that matters. But all are brought together, along with two Aleut boys and a white teen refugee from "Outside," to stop a toxic waste dumping plot.
Jess Thornton, in his self-penned adventure set in La Crosse Wisconsin, his home town, is a weird tale indeed From his high rise office in the Hoeschler building, to Pettibone Island, and to his best friend's place on Indian Hill on the north side, Jess travels around the whole city of La Crosse, trying to save a man who he thinks may be drowned. But, as time goes on, and as his friend Alexander Blackdeer guides him and helps him in his detecting, he realizes that the plot is far more sinister than just a disappearing middle-aged man, and that there is a supernatural element involved- and an ancient evil that has somehow come to this small river city Only he and the warrior Alexander could possibly hope to cope with such ancient sorcery, unleashed on God's country in La Crosse, Wisconsin
A bold, incisive look at race and reparative writing in American fiction, by the author of Your Face in Mine White Flights is a meditation on whiteness in American fiction and culture from the end of the civil rights movement to the present. At the heart of the book, Jess Row ties "white flight"--the movement of white Americans into segregated communities, whether in suburbs or newly gentrified downtowns--to white writers setting their stories in isolated or emotionally insulated landscapes, from the mountains of Idaho in Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping to the claustrophobic households in Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. Row uses brilliant close readings of work from well-known writers such as Don DeLillo, Annie Dillard, Richard Ford, and David Foster Wallace to examine the ways these and other writers have sought imaginative space for themselves at the expense of engaging with race. White Flights aims to move fiction to a more inclusive place, and Row looks beyond criticism to consider writing as a reparative act. What would it mean, he asks, if writers used fiction "to approach each other again"? Row turns to the work of James Baldwin, Dorothy Allison, and James Alan McPherson to discuss interracial love in fiction, while also examining his own family heritage as a way to interrogate his position. A moving and provocative book that includes music, film, and literature in its arguments, White Flights is an essential work of cultural and literary criticism.
For every tragic story of a life unravelled by battle, there are a dozen tales of men and women who have managed to triumph over the harrowing experiences of war and ruin. The Price of Their Blood is a celebration of these triumphs, offered at a time when interest in patriotic heroes runs deep and passion for wartime remembrance runs high. This book, written in collaboration with New York Times best-selling author Daniel Paisner, offers compelling portraits of more than a dozen American men and women, including: Michael A. Naranjo, U.S. Army: a Santa Clara Pueblo Native American who was blinded and had only partial use of his right hand, but went on to become an acclaimed sculptor -- "the artist who sees with his hands" -- whose works are sought by museums and collectors around the world; Alfred Pugh, U.S. Army: at 107, believed to be the nation's oldest living combat veteran, suffered permanent laryngitis by the inhalation of mustard gas during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in France during the first World War, before going on to a long career with the U.S. Postal Service in his hometown of Westbrook, Maine; Felicia Weston, U.S.Army: partially blinded in a Scud missile attack on a warehouse in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, during the Persian Gulf War, she now works with DAV, fulfilling a promise she made to herself to help other injured veterans put their lives back on track; The profiles focus on the call to service, the will to live, and the power to carry on.
"A carnivore's bible." --EsquireHardcore Carnivore is a protein-packed cookbook for meat lovers everywhere. From slow-smoked barbecue ribs to perfect cowboy steaks, author Jess Pryles' recipes are meaty winners. In addition to dozens of recipes for chicken, game, pork, lamb, and beef, Pryles--touted as the "female Ron Swanson" by her loyal followers--covers all the basics, finishes, and tricks of the trade, ensuring you'll be cooking meat like a seasoned pro in no time.
