Berry Simpson stands at the summit of the Guadalupe Mountains and gazes out across the vast panorama of the Sonoran Desert. "It's breathtaking in its raw unconcern for the hiker," he writes. "Oddly enough, that indifference speaks to my heart."It's one of many perspectives that have, over the decades, shaped the author's life. Eloquently, with a penetrating but gentle eye and many a smile-because, as he learned from his dad, "there's always a joke"-Berry examines the things that ma...

Today's protracted asymmetrical conflicts confuse efforts to measure progress, often inviting politics and wishful thinking to replace objective evaluation.In Assessing War, military historians, social scientists, and military officers explore how observers have analyzed the trajectory of war in American conflicts from the Seven Years’ War through the war in Afghanistan. Drawing on decades of acquired expertise, the contributors examine wartime assessment in both theory and practic...

America stands at a crossroads - and D.D. Simpson isn't afraid to call it like he sees it.In this bold and unapologetic work, Simpson delivers a no-holds-barred critique of the radical left's grip on the United States. He exposes what he believes to be a calculated assault on Judeo-Christian values and the foundational principles that built the nation. Through sharp commentary and fearless observation, he reveals how morality, freedom, and national identity are bei...

Alfonzo Joseph learns a lesson in faith on his first day of school.

When a handsome, smooth-talking college student asked my sixteen-year-old mother to be his wife, she gave little consideration to the longterm consequences of accepting such a proposal. So, with little introspection given to whether or not she was ready, and even less toward her suitor, my mom blindly accepted. It didn't take long after the ceremony for her eyes to open, and realize she'd married an abusive drunk, aka my father.It was after a night of self-indulgence when my dad ca...

Much of that growing demand for coastal recreation and tourism has focused on countries in South and Southeast Asia in the tourism megaregion that this book refers to as Tropical Asia. As such, the recreational disturbance of shorebirds in Asia is a serious conservation issue, at a time when populations of both migratory and non-migratory species of shorebirds are threatened and declining because of the loss of coastal habitat and increased human disturbance. Despite global awareness about...

The aftermath of the Civil War comes to dramatic life in this sweeping new collection of firsthand writing from the Reconstruction era—featuring pieces by Frederick Douglass, Frances Harper, and more“Very, very good. . . . Reconstruction conveys the struggle for racial equality better than many other anthologies documenting the era.” —The Wall Street JournalFew periods in American history are more consequential but less un...

**The first volume in a four-volume series on the American Civil War—featuring first-hand writings from Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, and moreThis “mesmerizing and deeply troubling” glimpse into the Civil War era “will forever deepen the way you see this central chapter in our history . . . a masterpiece” (Newsweek).**After 150 years the Civil War is still our greatest national drama, at once heroic, tragic, and epic-our Iliad, but also our Bibl...

Never before in our country’s history had our first responders been more appreciated than during the tragic events surrounding 9/11. When many of these brave men and women were asked why they would risk their own lives to save strangers, their answers rang with a common theme:“It’s who I am.”“It’s in my core.”“It’s my calling.”Since that fateful, sunny day in September, the commitment by these

This book fills a gap in Civil War literature on the strategies employed by the Union and Confederacy in the East, offering a more integrated interpretation of military operations that shows how politics, public perception, geography, and logistics shaped the course of military operations in the East.For all the literature about Civil War military operations and leadership, precious little has been written about strategy, particularly in what has become known as th...

Few American Civil War operations matched the controversy, intensity, and bloodshed of Confederate general John Bell Hood’s ill-fated 1864 campaign against Union forces in Tennessee. In the first-ever anthology on the subject, The Tennessee Campaign of 1864, edited by Steven E. Woodworth and Charles D. Grear, fourteen prominent historians and emerging scholars examine the three-month operation, covering the battles of Allatoona, Spring Hill, and Franklin, as well as the decimation...

The human skull has many functions. The largest component of the skull, the neurocranium, protects and insulates the brain. It comprises the dome-shaped vault or calvaria, obviously a protective structure, and the more complex cranial base, which gives the vault a massive foundation and also houses the organs of hearing, balance, and smell. The facial skeleton, or splanchnocranium, encloses the upper airway and the mouth. Chewing, the cQ-ordinated action ofthe jaws and teeth, is a function...