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Ancient Eugenics by Allen G. Roper


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Wild life in the Far West; Personal Adventures of a Border Mountain Man (1872)


James Hobbs - 1976
    He became a Texas Ranger, and fought as an American in the Mexican-American War, and roamed the Southwest with other mountain men such as Kit Carson. He belongs to that class of pioneers and trappers, now extinct, of which the famed Kit Carson, who was for many years the companion of the author, has been considered the most perfect type. In addition to his experiences as a hunter and trapper, we have an account of his life as a prisoner among the powerful and warlike Comanches, his adventures as a trader in Mexico, his services as interpreter and guide, under Doniphan, in our war with Mexico, and with the Liberals in the Franco-Mexican war as Captain of artillery, as well as his experience in mining in the days of the “ forty-niners” in California, and elsewhere. Probably no man then living passed through so varied and exciting a life as this one. Hobbs writes: "I was nearly full grown when I found an excellent chance to join a fur company that had just started out from St. Louis, under the lead of Charles Bent, and were going out to a fort and trading-post called Bent’s Fort, some three hundred miles south of Pike’s Peak on Big Arkansas river. The party consisted of about sixty men. The more prominent hunters were Charles Bent, Guesso Chauteau, William Savery, and two noted Indian trappers named Shawnee Spiebuck, and Shawnee Jake." On this expedition, he was captured by the Camanches, with whom he spent four years, marrying the daughter of "Old Wolf". Four years later, was ransomed by Charles Bent, who paid Old Wolf when the Indians had come to trade at Bent's Fort. It was during this time at Bent's Fort that Hobbs went out trapping with Kit Carson, and he became his lifelong friend. Hobbs became one the most famous mountain men, trappers, and fighter, partly due to his years of training in the ways of the wilderness with the Comanche. Hobbs writes: "IN the foregoing pages I have endeavored to give an account of a portion of my adventures in a life of more than usual peril and excitement. I was induced to publish this account by the earnest recommendation of many friends. It has been written out, as I have had time, entirely from memory, as I never kept a diary of events, never thinking that I should publish my experiences. For this reason, I have been unable to give exact dates in all cases; but as the object I had in view, was not to publish a history of the country where I have been, but to relate personal adventures, this will not prove, I hope, any drawback to the interest of the reader. As far as the narrative relates to my transactions, I have confined myself to the literal facts. "In looking back over my life, I find that although I have not, perhaps, always obeyed the Golden Rule, yet it is a great satisfaction to me to think of the numbers of my fellow beings I have been instrumental in saving from death and misery at the hands of savages, and from the horrors of starvation. "And now, that my labors in this direction are completed, I shall probably retire to my California home, and devote myself to stock raising. Hoping that this narrative may prove of interest to the reader, I will say -—GOOD-BYE." Originally published in 1872; reformatted for the Kindle; may contain an occasional imperfection; original spellings have been kept in place.

A Place for Violence


Kevin Wignall - 2008
    There's Luke Williams, a young American who's been left in a wheelchair by a drunk driver. Then there's Brian Tully, a wise-cracking bully with connections in Vegas, together with his sheepish family. And finally there's Dan Borowski, an Australian security analyst. Trouble is, Dan isn't there to relax, and though they don't yet know it, nor are any of the others... This short story first appeared in "Storyglossia" in May 2008. Dan Borowski first appeared as a character in "For the Dogs", and this is one of two short stories (the other is "Retrospective") to feature him.

MRF Shadow Troop: The untold true story of top secret British military intelligence undercover operations in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1972-1974


Simon Cursey - 2013
    They are 300 times more effective than an ordinary patrol... If we are going to have murderers and terrorists roaming the towns, then we have to have somebody who is able to go out and find them.” Contemporary press report Some think it stood for ‘Military Reconnaissance Force’, others ‘Mobile Reconnaissance Force’. Many people thought it didn’t exist at all and was made up, a figment of the press’s imagination. To the members of the group that was just fine. It added to the illusion, and the speculation about the unit’s name and mission only added to the uncertainty amongst their targets — terrorists — members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the IRA, the provos. For decades there has been argument in the media and amongst politicians about the possible existence and extent of a shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland. MRF Shadow Troop confirms there was such an agenda in the early, chaotic days of British military intervention across the Irish Sea. Amongst the mountain of speculation there is little of any accuracy or authority relating to this period. Simon Cursey was recruited into the Military Reaction Force — the unit’s true name — in 1972. This book is his personal account of his time with the group and in it he reveals the truth about their operations — the briefings, missions, political wrangling, and government-sanctioned law-bending. With documents and photographs to corroborate all his revelations, MRF Shadow Troop is a fascinating, exciting but above all accurate historical text about the pioneers of counter-terrorism.

The Comanche Captivity of Sarah Ann Horn


James A. Crutchfield - 2015
    After spending several months in New York City, the family signed up for a journey to the Republic of Texas where they could homestead and eventually acquire 137 free acres for their efforts. Soon growing discontented with, not only the land, but also the management of the colony in which they had settled, the Horns decided to return to England. But, it was not to be. Attacked and captured by a party of Comanche Indians, Sarah Ann was faced with challenges and realities the like of which she never could have dreamed. Over a period of fifteen months of Comanche captivity, she and her captors rode endlessly across the Texas plains until finally she was purchased out of bondage and befriended by traders in New Mexico. This is the true story of a remarkable woman who endured an unimaginable amount of suffering and pain in her short lifetime.

The Wisdom Of Secrets: The Templar Covenant


Ami Noone - 2014
    Although they have been mentioned in the bible and traces of their existence are scattered throughout the globe, Peter Madeloy had always presumed that the myths of the possible existence of an ancient brotherhood, living on Earth for milennia, was nothing more than that, a myth. Until one day his father is brutally murdered and his mother is kidnapped. In exchange for his mother’s safe return, Peter must enter his father’s secret world, uncover the truth about his mother’s kidnappers and find the ancient artefact his father had dedicated his life to protecting. Peter enlists the help of his uncle, Daniel O'Brien, a professor of Philology and avid researcher of veiled organisations and his wife, Emily, a geneticist, to unravel a series of clues his father has left him. Together they embark on a journey that thrusts them into the centre of an ancient battle for supremacy that uncovers a truth that for them, will change the history and future of humanity simultaneously. With the enemy watching their every move Peter, Daniel and Emily must figure out his father's clues in time to save his mother and ultimately protect the world from the true secret that was unearthed from beneath King Solomon's Temple all those centuries ago.

That is how I became A SANYASI


Khemlata Negi - 2020
    We all are connected. Are you a dreamer? Do you dream to be a successful person? Do you know sometimes the pursuit of monetary success could take you away from you? Have you felt the pain of separation from your loved ones? Have you felt lost some point in your life? This is a story about two people who lose the real treasures of their life in the pursuit of materialistic success and gratification. Gautam changes his life by following his dreams. But along the way, his life transforms into a living nightmare that he resolves to finish. Diksha is a young, brilliant, and headstrong person. Her dedication to be a perfect and sincere daughter, student, and employee turns her into an automaton. When both of them lose their last hope, something inexplicable happens in their life, which eventually sets them on the path of Sanyas. Can you give up your vain success to build an ever-lasting peace and tranquility within you? Can you stand tall and fight back your fears? Can you be a Sanyasi? Gear up to experience a mystical adventure! It’s a story about dreams, relationships, betrayal, courage, separation, and repentance. About the Author: Khemlata Negi is a novelist, poet, and educationist based in Chandigarh, India. Her first novel Hope: the journey to life was published in the year 2016. She has also written a collection of poetry Seasons of life and a book on yoga asana Stay Healthy. She loves reading, travelling, photography, yoga, and spending time in nature. She believes storytelling is one of the most effective methods to inspire and move the masses.

Driving the Birds


Russell Traughber - 2012
    However, being born deep in the African bush in 1948, her desires didn’t really matter. Cursed with an abusive father, Jabonkah was saddled with the plans he had for her. Instead of being a “stupid bush woman” like her mother, she was going to learn to obey. But after repeatedly disappointing and rebelling against her father, he sets forth on a rampage targeting her mother and nearly beats her to death. After stepping in to save her mother and scalding her father with boiling water in the skirmish, Jabonkah’s fate is unfortunately sealed. She is sent to the Society as punishment, where women from her own tribe perform the ritual of female circumcision. Six weeks later, Jabonkah returns home to the continued beatings until she is eventually disowned and sent away to live with a missionary by the name of Mother Stevens. Unfortunately, it’s with Mother Stevens that her real struggle begins. Will Jabonkah escape the oppression and misery that is ruling her life, or will she succumb to her depression? Set against the harsh setting of mid-century Africa, Driving the Birds takes readers on a journey from small villages in Liberia to African missions, and eventually the United States. With this particular backdrop, Jabonkah’s story brings many issues to light that affect countless women around the world. By documenting the horrible genital mutilation that she suffers in detail, Driving the Birds aims to bring about further awareness to an issue that is still prevalent today. Though the subject matter can be intense and discouraging at times, Jabonkah uses her faith and an uncommon personal resiliency to keep the story from setting into a despondent manner. With true personal freedom as her goal, Jabonkah is able to overcome numerous obstacles and a lifetime of hardships in route to achieving her dreams and ensuring her happiness. Driving the Birds by Russell Traughber is the uplifting true story of one woman’s courageous journey from a small village in Liberia to the freedom that America offers. With unmistakable charm, unwavering determination, and a truly unique worldview, Jabonkah enthralls readers with each passing chapter. Her personal journey and repeated injustices are equal parts heartbreaking and infuriating. From repeated abuses at the hands of others and the subjection to female genital mutilation, Jabonkah’s plight provides a window to the sufferings of less fortunate women around the world. However, where parts of her story enrage and discourage, it’s her spirit and determination that ultimately leave readers feeling like they have taken part in Jabonkah’s triumphs as well.

On the Rez


Ian Frazier - 2000
    Crazy Horse, perhaps the greatest Indian war leader of the 1800s, and Black Elk, the holy man whose teachings achieved worldwide renown, were Oglala; in these typically perceptive pages, Frazier seeks out their descendants on Pine Ridge--a/k/a the rez--which is one of the poorest places in America today.Along with his longtime friend Le War Lance (whom he first wrote about in his 1989 bestseller, Great Plains) and other Oglala companions, Frazier fully explores the rez as they visit friends and relatives, go to pow-wows and rodeos and package stores, and tinker with a variety of falling-apart cars. He takes us inside the world of the Sioux as few writers ever have, writing with much wit, compassion, and imagination. In the career of SuAnne Big Crow, for example, the most admired Oglala basketball player of all time, who died in a car accident in 1992, Frazier finds a contemporary reemergence of the death-defying, public-spirited Sioux hero who fights with grace and glory to save her followers.On the Rez vividly portrays the survival, through toughness and humor, of a great people whose culture has helped to shape the American identity.

The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation


Jon Gertner - 2012
    From the transistor to the laser, it s hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn t been touched by Bell Labs. Why did so many transformative ideas come from Bell Labs? In "The Idea Factory," Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century s most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of American history. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men Mervin Kelly, Bill Shockley, Claude Shannon, John Pierce, and Bill Baker who spent their careers at Bell Labs. Their job was to research and develop the future of communications. Small-town boys, childhood hobbyists, oddballs: they give the lie to the idea that Bell Labs was a grim cathedral of top-down command and control.Gertner brings to life the powerful alchemy of the forces at work behind Bell Labs inventions, teasing out the intersections between science, business, and society. He distills the lessons that abide: how to recruit and nurture young talent; how to organize and lead fractious employees; how to find solutions to the most stubbornly vexing problems; how to transform a scientific discovery into a marketable product, then make it even better, cheaper, or both. Today, when the drive to invent has become a mantra, Bell Labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and solutions to technological innovation. Here, after all, was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born. "The Idea Factory" is the story of the origins of modern communications and the beginnings of the information age a deeply human story of extraordinary men who were given extraordinary means time, space, funds, and access to one another and edged the world into a new dimension."

A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America


Shelby Steele - 1998
    In A Dream Deferred Shelby Steele argues that a second betrayal of black freedom in the United States--the first one being segregation--emerged from the civil rights era when the country was overtaken by a powerful impulse to redeem itself from racial shame. According to Steele, 1960s liberalism had as its first and all-consuming goal the expiation of America guilt rather than the careful development of true equality between the races. This "culture of preference" betrayed America's best principles in order to give whites and America institutions an iconography of racial virtue they could use against the stigma of racial shame. In four densely argued essays, Steele takes on the familiar questions of affirmative action, multiculturalism, diversity, Afro-centrism, group preferences, victimization--and what he deems to be the atavistic powers of race, ethnicity, and gender, the original causes of oppression. A Dream Deferred is an honest, courageous look at the perplexing dilemma of race and democracy in the United States--and what we might do to resolve it.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions


Thomas S. Kuhn - 1962
    The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book. When it was first published in 1962, it was a landmark event in the history and philosophy of science. Fifty years later, it still has many lessons to teach. With The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn challenged long-standing linear notions of scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don’t arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation but that the revolutions in science, those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas, occur outside of “normal science,” as he called it. Though Kuhn was writing when physics ruled the sciences, his ideas on how scientific revolutions bring order to the anomalies that amass over time in research experiments are still instructive in our biotech age. This new edition of Kuhn’s essential work in the history of science includes an insightful introduction by Ian Hacking, which clarifies terms popularized by Kuhn, including paradigm and incommensurability, and applies Kuhn’s ideas to the science of today. Usefully keyed to the separate sections of the book, Hacking’s introduction provides important background information as well as a contemporary context.  Newly designed, with an expanded index, this edition will be eagerly welcomed by the next generation of readers seeking to understand the history of our perspectives on science.

The Mothers of Sweet Cheyenne


Caroline Lee - 2016
    These stories are meant to be read after the rest of the Quartet. Christmas Wishes: Molly struggles with her toddler's feelings towards his new baby brother and her sister's decision to leave for St. Louis. Meanwhile, she's determined to create the perfect Christmas for all of them... but can Mothers really do everything?[Note: this story has appeared in publication in the Christmas Caring Anthology of 2015]Spring Fever: Wendy aches to become a mother, but their efforts have ended in heartbreak so far. Is there anything Nate can say to convince her that it isn't either of their faults, so that he can enjoy the spring with his wife?Summer Lovin': Tess knows she still has a month to go in this pregnancy, so when the contractions start, she doesn't want to alarm her precious family. But with Cam's love and support, she'll learn that to appreciate God's blessings she needs to first go through Hell. ***************************Heat Level: 0 out of 5 References to infertility and childbirth

Love Lost in Time


Cathie Dunn - 2019
    How did the woman end up buried, all alone, in that particular spot in the Cabardès hills?And why was her back broken?AD 777Septimania, on the coast of the Mediterranean SeaSeventeen-year-old Nanthild must marry Count Bellon of Carcassonne, a Visigoth, as part of his peace agreement with Charlemagne. As a wise-woman, she continues to visit those in need of her help during Bellon's frequent absences.But dangers lurk on her journeys...Readers of Kate Mosse and Barbara Erskine might enjoy the tale of Love Lost in Time.

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals


Charles Darwin - 1872
    This book engaged some of the hardest questions in the evolution debate, and it showed the ever-cautious Darwin at his boldest. If Darwin had one goal with Expression , it was to demonstrate the power of his theories for explaining the origin of our most cherished human qualities: morality and intellect. As Darwin explained, "He who admits, on general grounds, that the structure and habits of all animals have been gradually evolved, will look at the whole subject of Expression in a new and interesting light." Table Of Contents: Table of contents The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals Acknowledgements Chronology Introduction Further Reading Note on the Text The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals Appendix 1: Translation of French quotations Appendix 2: Darwin's 'Queries About Expression' Appendix 3: List of supplementary images Index

The Origins of Totalitarianism


Hannah Arendt - 1951
    Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.