A wizard king battles to keep his growing powers and his kingdom safe in this epic fantasy novel."I saw the dream. I saw your face."The words of a lone shipwrecked survivor chill the blood of Gerin Atreyano, Crown Prince of Khedesh, for they warn of an approaching armada. The savage, unconquered and unconquerable Havalqa are coming, driven by visions of a power beyond comprehension. Whosoever controls the Words of Making can own the world—and the brutal, si...

Mindfulness, a way to alleviate suffering by realizing the impermanence of the self and our interdependence with others, has been severed from its Buddhist roots. In the late-stage-capitalist, neoliberal, solipsistic West, it becomes McMindfulness, a practice that instead shores up the privatized self, and is corporatized and repackaged as a strategy to cope with our stressful society through an emphasis on self-responsibility and self-promotion. Rather than a way to promote human developm...

Broken Land Dreams, with its fragments of dreams, poems, lyrics, reflections, and social commentary, defies a conventional linear narrative. Part I is the background in which Jacob Traum, a grumpy, Brooklyn, retired high school social worker and meditating lefty boomer, first tells us his wife Maya has left him and warns him he needs to recover from himself. He describes the puzzling and socially unjust things he broods and dreams about that contribute to his grumpiness and emotio...

John Simmons is pretty happy with his life. He runs a successful company doing work for a secret branch of Homeland Security that deals with unwanted incursions from Celestial beings—demons, spirits, ghosts, and the like. John has powers of his own that he builds into his systems using complex spells and math-based magic.Those abilities are the one positive result of being the son of a fallen angel. John's happy life is threatened when he's injected with a poison designed to allow ...

The book is about leadership tips based on biblical principles and the difference between a leader and a manager and it include strategic management and marketing. It talks about servant leaders.

America’s Favorite Holidays explores how five of America’s culturally important holidays—Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, and Thanksgiving—came to be what they are today, seasonal and religious celebrations heavily influenced by modern popular culture. Deftly distilling information from a wide range of sources, Bruce David Forbes reveals often-surprising answers to questions about each holiday’s traditions. Was Christmas always as commercialized as it is today? Is Th...

Written for everyone who loves and is simultaneously driven crazy by the holiday season, Christmas: A Candid History provides an enlightening, entertaining perspective on how the annual Yuletide celebration got to be what it is today. In a fascinating, concise tour through history, the book tells the story of Christmas—from its pre-Christian roots, through the birth of Jesus, to the holiday's spread across Europe into the Americas and beyond, and to its mind-boggling transformatio...

In 2003, Methodists celebrated the 300th anniversary of the birth of their founder, John Wesley. Today, there are more than 300 Methodist denominations in 140 nations. Covering the activities of this group that plays an important role in the ecumenical movement through its many social and charitable activities in world affairs, this book offers more than 400 entries that describe important events, doctrines, and the church founders, leaders, and other prominent figures who have made notabl...

The story of the 47 Ronin is perhaps the most popular and best known legend of traditional Japan. Set in the early 18th century, it tells a tale of honour and bloody revenge as the brotherhood of 47 masterless Samurai pursue the ruthless killing of Lord Kira, the official who brought about the downfall and suicide of their master, Lord Asano.This edition of the story is illustrated by the full set of masterful woodblock prints created by celebrated artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi in 1838-...

The antique Silk Road that connected the Chinese and Mediterranean Worlds for more than a millennium, facilitating the exchange of both goods and cultures, is widely known and celebrated. Less familiar is its more southerly equivalent, the ‘Ancient Tea-Horse Road’ that once linked the lush gardens of southwest China with the frigid wastelands of Tibet and – beyond – the torrid plains of northern India. The latter is also sometimes called the ‘Southern Silk Road’, though this is something o...

For much of the second half of the 20th century Cambodia was racked by war and famine. Considered a sideshow in the Vietnam War, the country was nevertheless invaded by both North and South Vietnam, bombed to smithereens by the United States, and—worst of all—ruled, between 1975 and 1979, by Pol Pot’s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. Things were so bad that the very name Cambodia became synonymous with pain and suffering. Yet it was not always so. Before its rice fields were stained...

Sun Tzu’s Art of War has been read and appreciated by a host of military men and philosophers down through the ages. More recently, it has become popular as a manual for business success and guide to boardroom battles, seen by many as a lodestar in achieving success in the ruthless world of competitive capitalism – a text so currently fashionable that even Paris Hilton has been photographed reading it.Yet what makes the present study so valuable is not just...