Martin D. Yaffe's Judaism and Environmental Ethics: A Reader is a well-conceived exploration of three interrelated questions: Does the Hebrew Bible, or subsequent Jewish tradition, teach environmental responsibility or not? What Jewish teachings, if any, appropriately address today's environmental crisis? Do ecology, Judaism, and philosophy work together, or are they at odds with each other in confronting the current crisis? Yaffe's extensive introduction analyzes and appraises the antholo...

This report examines Russia’s growing use of private military companies (PMCs) to increase its influence through irregular means. In recent years, Moscow has expanded its overseas use of PMCs to countries such as Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Madagascar, and Mozambique. Many of the PMCs operating in these countries, such as the Wagner Group, frequently cooperate with the Russian government—including the Kremlin, Ministry of Defense (particularly the Main Intel...

Felice Picano’s first collection of gay short stories span the period 1975-1982 as published by the pioneering Gay Presses of New York. Read again forty years later, they are a delicious time-capsule of gay life mostly before AIDS and set in iconic gay meccas such as New York and Fire Island. In "Spinning", we get inside the head of a DJ busy spinning for the customers, tricking in his mind and deftly conjuring up the disco sub-culture which has since faded away. In "The Interrupted Recita...

Part architectural guidebook and part critique, Sky-High documents the pencil-thin, supertall towers that are transforming New York City's skyline as well as its streets.New York City's penchant for building skyward has reached new heights with its crop of supertall towers—those that rise at least 984 feet above the sidewalk. The city that never sleeps is also the city that never stops building ever higher, from the Woolworth and Chrysler buildings of an e...

After an assassination attempt ruins his vacation, Agent Buck 98 is given a cryptic message by a dying drag queen: 3-1-4. The numbers match the date of Dr. Timothy Shoulwater’s death, the noted scientist rumored to have discovered a potential cure for the AIDS virus before his notes mysteriously disappeared. Buck is paired with his former best friend turned rival Agent 49, the lovely Miss Noxia von Tüssëll, to investigate Dr. Shoulwater’s ex-wife, the religious zealot and growing political...

Miguel Reyes is not only the first openly gay governor of Florida, he’s also the man behind Referendum 65. If passed, Florida will be the first Southern state in the U.S. to include marriage equality. When the governor’s fourteen-year-old son, Alejandro, is kidnapped, the message is clear: Kill the bill or we kill the boy!Agent Buck 98 is given only one week to find and rescue Alejandro. It’s a race against time, and his opposition includes: the boy’s tutor who has suddenly fled th...

Long ago , the Olympian Gods conquered and nearly destroyed an earlier race known as the Titans. Echidna , Mother of Monsters , was imprisoned in Tartarus. Centuries later , she has escaped. Entering the modern world , Echidna finds the old Gods are gone , and vows to destroy every descendant of the Olympians. In the contemporary Pacific Northwest , Adrian and Annelise have lived comfortably—unaware of their Olympian birthright and its significance. When Adrian is introduced to Zack , spar...

Environmental pragmatism is a new strategy in environmental thought. It argues that theoretical debates are hindering the ability of the environmental movement to forge agreement on basic policy imperatives. This new direction in environmental thought moves beyond theory, advocating a serious inquiry into the merits of moral pluralism. Environmental pragmatism, as a coherent philosophical position, connects the methodology of classical American pragmatic thought to the explanation, solutio...