In The Future Conditional**, Eric S. Henry brings twelve-years of expertise and research to offer a nuanced discussion of the globalization of the English language and the widespread effects it has had on Shenyang, the capital and largest city of China's northeast Liaoning Province.** Adopting an ethnographic and linguistic perspective, Henry considers the personal connotations that English, has for Chinese people, beyond its role in the education...

The Marines of Ghost Squadron are humanity's foremost black ops specialists who strike without warning and vanish without a trace. They will do whatever is necessary to protect humanity anywhere in the known galaxy. With the Commonwealth increasingly unstable thanks to venal politicians, greedy financiers, and power-hungry revolutionaries, they don't lack for missions.When an undercover Constabulary officer vanishes after uncovering a massive cartel-run human traff...

Covert missions are failing, Fleet officers are vanishing, and Naval Intelligence is losing its eyes, ears, and the ability to strike at its foes. After Zack Decker and Hera Talyn, the Special Operations Section's deadliest agents, narrowly escape betrayal for the third time in a row, the Marine suspects something more than bad luck is in play. For years, the Fleet has been fighting a shadowy cold war against factions in the Commonwealth determined to strangle democracy a...

Some people never learn that it’s a really bad idea to mess with a Marine Pathfinder, even one who has been forced into early retirement. Zack Decker just wanted to be left alone so he could live a quiet life with the woman he loved and make up for lost time, but his enemies simply couldn’t resist the temptation to pursue their vendetta. One moment, he was hauling cargo across the depths of interstellar space, the next he was in the hands of pirates and headed for the barb...

Someone was setting fire to the Commonwealth Rim, nurturing a storm to drag humanity through the horrors of colonial warfare and thereby hasten the rise of Empire. Their plan had just one fatal flaw: it didn't count on an ex-Marine pathfinder with a grudge, a dagger and a deadly partner. Zack Decker had seen enough of war to know this one had to be stopped before it turned into an all-out bloodbath, even if that meant ignoring orders and risking his mission as well as his ...

History has a habit of reaching out from the grave and reminding us of our species' greatest failings.Humanity's Migration Wars which birthed the Commonwealth of Sovereign Star Systems were the deadliest and most destructive in history. But not everyone draws the same lessons from past atrocities that were burned into the human psyche. For some, our species must do anything to avoid another murderous civil war, including the overthrow of the current political syste...

Every Marine has a story about someone he couldn't save, a face that would haunt him forever. When Command Sergeant Hal Tarra, one of Decker's oldest friends, vanishes on the Commonwealth frontier shortly after taking early retirement from the Corps, Zack knows what memories are driving the former Pathfinder, because he sees the same face in his worst nightmares. Naval intelligence isn't interested in resurrecting ancient history, especially the tale of a failed rescue aft...

Chaos, created by factions determined to end the centuries-old accord between human settled worlds and Earth, is spreading at an alarming rate.Centralists, aided and abetted by their corporate paymasters, are working hard to destabilize sovereign star systems and strip them of independence. Only the Fleet's hard-pressed Special Forces can stop those who would foment a series of violent revolutions and trigger a bloody civil conflict capable of destroying humanity's...

The dramatic, untold story of the discovery of the first wonder drug, the men who led the way, and how it changed the modern worldIn his wonderfully engaging book, acclaimed author Eric Lax tells the real story behind the discovery and why it took so long to develop the drug. He reveals the reasons why credit for penicillin was misplaced, and why this astonishing achievement garnered a Nobel Prize but no financial rewards for the doctor that discovered it and the te...

The Commonwealth is teetering on its last legs. But will it go down gently or dissolve into a civil war as brutal as any in human history? That is the dilemma Colonel Zack Decker and Ghost Squadron face as they're tapped to protect a last-ditch effort to salvage a possibility of peace. And that last ditch effort is being held on Decker's home planet, a place he left long ago to put as many light years as possible between himself and a family who disapproved of his becoming...

Zack Decker wanted only one thing in life: to fight as a Marine Pathfinder. But his temper and his loathing for careerist officers cost him dearly. Forced into early retirement, with a wife who left him long ago, no job, no friends and no future, the former sergeant crawled into a bottle and stayed there, moving from planet to planet, looking for some reason to keep on living. Until, that is, he wandered into a bar owned by an old Marine buddy who offered to help. On the r...

Language is not merely a set of words and grammatical rules; it is a deeply cultural phenomenon we use to navigate our social lives and craft our identities. Linguistic anthropology situates language in this essential context. A distinctively Canadian take on the field of linguistic anthropology, Keep Talking provides an up-to-date and detailed introduction to the discipline.Linguistic anthropologist Eric S. Henry draws on the significant research he has conducted on modern...