Signing Illustrated (Revised Edition): The Complete Learning Guide


Mickey Flodin - 2004
    This easy-to-use guide is updated and expanded to include new computer and technology signs and offers a fast and simple approach to learning. Includes:- Vocabulary reviews- Fingerspelling exercises- Sign matching and memory aids- A complete glossary and a comprehensive index- Clear instructive drawings

Self-Discipline for Writers: Writing Is Hard, But You Too Can Write and Publish Books Regularly


Martin Meadows - 2019
    To join the elite ranks of those who write consistently, you need to learn how to stay prolific over the long term. And for that, the number one ingredient is self-discipline. In Self-Discipline for Writers, bestselling author Martin Meadows shares his philosophy and strategies on how to build self-discipline as a writer and how to keep writing over the long term. Here are some of the most important ideas you’ll discover: - 3 foundations of self-discipline for writers (avoid a common mistake that almost always leads to failure), - 3 steps to a strong work ethic as a writer (learn how to develop a strategy for consistently hitting your word counts), - 5 types of self-doubt common among writers and how to overcome them (if you don’t believe in yourself as a writer, how are your readers supposed to believe in you?), - 7 tips on how to manage your energy as a writer—including not only the most fundamental advice, but also intricacies like discussing your projects with other people, capturing fleeting ideas, and reading your reviews (learn why optimizing your energy is key to consistent results), - why control is essential for any writer (and how to claim it), - 5 good business practices for more self-discipline (this includes some surprising thoughts on how to run your writing business to reduce frustration and increase productivity). Writing doesn’t have to be burdensome. You too can write with more ease, and most importantly, write and publish consistently so that you can enjoy a flourishing writing career. Let’s learn together how to accomplish this exciting goal.

Make It Fizz: A Guide to Making Bathtub Treats


Holly Port - 2014
    Chock full of easy to understand instructions and full color pictures for the 24 recipes included, you are sure to succeed with this book, regardless of your skill level. With a few simple ingredients, and a little bit of time, you’ll be making bath bombs in an afternoon. You’re in good hands with this quick and easy guide to showing you not only the basics, but also more fun and challenging recipes like the Fizzy Pops, designed to look like tasty cake pop treats. Taking it a step further she has also included cupcake bath bombs with a sugar scrub topping. Who wouldn't love to make these? This book can be a project for yourself, a gift for a friend, or an enhancement to your knowledge in the world of bath and body crafts. Whatever the purpose, the reader will enjoy!

Clevenger Gold: The True Story of Murder and Unfound Treasure


S.E. Swapp - 2016
    Once the old, cantankerous Sam Clevenger and his wife, Charlotte, hired Frank Willson and John Johnson to help with the move, their fate took a dark turn. These true events were documented by journalists through the 1887 trial and well into the 1900s, and stories have been told of Sam’s unfound treasure for nearly 130 years. But, this is the first detailed, documented, and vetted account of their bizarre and fascinating tale.

As The Days of Noah Were: The Sons of God and The Coming Apocalypse


Dante Fortson - 2010
    During our journey we will explore stories from Babylon, Greece, Ireland, Ethiopia, and various other cultures to fill in the missing pieces to one of the biggest mysteries on our planet. This 2nd Edition includes 40+ hours of additional audio and video content for your enjoyment. Make sure you download a free QR code scanner for your smart phone or tablet so you can take full advantage of the features in this book.

Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West


Hampton Sides - 2006
    He had come to see if the rumors were true—if an army of blue-suited soldiers had swept in from the East and utterly defeated his ancestral enemies. As Narbona gazed down on the battlements and cannons of a mighty fort the invaders had built, he realized his foes had been vanquished—but what did the arrival of these “New Men” portend for the Navajo?Narbona could not have known that “The Army of the West,” in the midst of the longest march in American military history, was merely the vanguard of an inexorable tide fueled by a self-righteous ideology now known as “Manifest Destiny.” For twenty years the Navajo, elusive lords of a huge swath of mountainous desert and pasturelands, would ferociously resist the flood of soldiers and settlers who wished to change their ancient way of life or destroy them.

Pioneer Women: The Lives of Women on the Frontier


Linda Peavy - 1996
    Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith vividly describe the hardships such women endured journeying west and making homes and communities on the frontier. Their hopes and fears and, most of all, their courage in the face of adversity are revealed in excerpts from journals, letters, and oral histories. Illustrated with a fascinating collection of seldom-seen photographs, Pioneer Women reveals the faces as well as the voices of women who lived on the frontier.The authors portray a wide variety of women, from those who found liberty and confidence in undertaking "men’s work" to those who felt burdened by the wind, the weather, and the struggle of frontier life.

The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821-1900


Mike Cox - 2008
    Starting in 1821 with just a handful of men, the Rangers' first purpose was to keep settlers safe from the feared and gruesome Karankawa Indians, a cannibalistic tribe that wandered the Texas territory. As the influx of settlers grew, the attacks increased and it became clear that a much larger, better trained force was necessary. From their tumultuous beginning to their decades of fighting outlaws, Comanche, Mexican soldados and banditos, as well as Union soldiers, the Texas Rangers became one of the fiercest law enforcement groups in America.  In a land as spread-out and sparsely populated as the west itself, the Rangers had unique law-enforcement responsibilities and challenges. The story of the Texas Rangers is as controversial as it is heroic. Often accused of vigilante-style racism and murder, they enforced the law with a heavy hand. But above all they were perhaps the defining force for the stabilization and the creation of Texas. From Stephen Austin in the early days through the Civil War, the first eighty years of the Texas Rangers is nothing less then phenomenal, and the efforts put forth in those days set the foundation for the Texas Rangers that keep Texas safe today.

Breakfast with Sharks: A Screenwriter's Guide to Getting the Meeting, Nailing the Pitch, Signing the Deal, and Navigating the Murky Waters of Hollywood


Michael Lent - 2004
    This is a book about the business of managing your screenwriting career, from advice on choosing an agent to tips on juggling three deal-making breakfasts a day. Prescriptive and useful, Breakfast with Sharks is a real guide to navigating the murky waters of the Hollywood system.Unlike most of the screenwriting books available, here’s one that tells you what to do after you’ve finished your surefire-hit screenplay. Written from the perspective of Michael Lent, an in-the-trenches working screenwriter in Hollywood, this is a real-world look into the script-to-screen business as it is practiced today.Breakfast with Sharks is filled with useful advice on everything from the ins and outs of moving to Los Angeles to understanding terms like “spec,” “option,” and “assignment.” Here you’ll learn what to expect from agents and managers and who does what in the studio hierarchy. And most important, Breakfast with Sharks will help you nail your pitch so the studio exec can’t say no.Rounded out with a Q&A section and resource lists of script competitions, film festivals, trade associations, industry publications, and more, Breakfast with Sharks is chock-full of “take this and use it right now” information for screenwriters at any stage of their careers.

Facts the Historians Leave Out


John S. Tilley - 1951
    Lee and Jefferson Davis, and much more.

Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the Wild West's Greatest Escape


Mark Lee Gardner - 2013
    Mark Lee Gardner, author of the critically acclaimed To Hell on a Fast Horse, takes us inside Northfield's First National Bank and outside to the streets as Jesse James and his band of outlaws square off against the heroic citizens who risked their lives to defeat America's most daring criminals. With vivid detail and novelistic verve, Gardner follows the James brothers as they elude both the authorities and the furious citizen posses hell-bent on capturing them in one of the largest manhunts in the history of the United States. He reveals the serendipitous endings of the Younger brothers—Cole, Jim, and Bob—and explores the James brothers' fates after the dust settled, solving mysteries about the raid that have been hotly debated for more than 130 years.A galloping true tale of frontier justice featuring audacious outlaws and intrepid heroes, Shot All to Hell is a riveting slice of Wild West history that continues to fascinate today.

Billy the Kid: An Autobiography


Daniel A. Edwards - 2014
    Jesse walked out of prison a free man and disappeared, never to be heard from again. Never, that is, until 1949 when he came out of hiding after almost 60 years to claim his inheritance. In the course of proving his identity to a court Jesse told some amazing stories of his time when he was an outlaw but his biggest revelation of all was that his good friend Billy the Kid was still alive. Jesse led a young lawyer to an old man named not William H. Bonney but William H. Roberts who after some consideration finally agreed to come forward and reveal himself as Billy the Kid only if he would help him obtain a pardon from the Governor before his death so he could die a free man. You see, Billy the Kid was still wanted for murder and was condemned to hang. To come forward and reveal himself was to risk being arrested and put to death. This was a risk that William H. Roberts was willing to take. He sat down with the young lawyer and told his story. That story is the one true autobiography of Billy the Kid and told only one time, to one man. This is his story.

Fights on the Little Horn: Unveiling the Myths of Custer's Last Stand


Gordon Harper - 2013
    Joseph Sills Jr. Book AwardThis remarkable book synthesizes a lifetime of in-depth research into one of America’s most storied disasters, the defeat of Custer’s 7th Cavalry at the hands of the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, as well as the complete annihilation of that part of the cavalry led by Custer himself.The author, Gordon Harper, spent countless hours on the battlefield itself as well as researching every iota of evidence of the fight from both sides, white and Indian. He was thus able to recreate every step of the battle as authoritatively as anyone could, dispelling myths and falsehoods along the way. Harper himself passed away in 2009, leaving behind nearly two million words of original research and writing. In this book his work has been condensed for the general public to observe his key findings and the crux of his narrative on the exact course of the battle.One of his first observations is that the fight took place along the Little Horn River—its junction with the Big Horn was several miles away so that the term for the battle, “Little Big Horn” has always been a misnomer. He precisely traces the mysterious activities of Benteen’s battalion on that fateful day, and why it could never come to Custer’s reinforcement. He describes Reno’s desperate fight in unprecedented depth, as well as how that unnerved officer benefited from the unexpected heroism of many of his men.Indian accounts, ever-present throughout this book, come to the fore especially during Custer’s part of the fight, because no white soldier survived it. However, analysis of the forensic evidence—tracking cartridges, bullets, etc., discovered on the battlefield—plus the locations of bodies assist in drawing an accurate scenario of how the final scene unfolded. It may indeed be clearer now than it was to the doomed 7th Cavalrymen at the time, who through the dust and smoke and Indians seeming to rise by hundreds from the ground, only gradually realized the extent of the disaster.Of additional interest is the narrative of the battlefield after the fight, when successive burial teams had to be dispatched for the gruesome task, because prior ones invariably did a poor job. Though author Gordon Harper is no longer with us, his daughter Tori Harper, along with author/historians Gordon Richard and Monte Akers, have done yeoman’s work in preserving his valuable research for the public.

Two Years on the Alabama


Arthur Sinclair - 1989
    Alabama was the terror of the Atlantic Ocean. Built in secrecy in Liverpool, England, through the arrangement of Confederate agent Commander James Bulloch, it was built for the fledgling Confederate States Navy which was sorely in need of ships. Under the command of Raphael Semmes it would spend the next two years terrorising and attacking Union shipping to help the Confederacy break the stranglehold which it found itself in. Through these two years it completed seven highly successful expeditionary raids, and it had been at sea for 534 days out of 657, never visiting a single Confederate port. They boarded nearly 450 vessels, captured or burned 65 Union merchant ships, and took more than 2,000 prisoners without a single loss of life from either prisoners or their own crew. Fifth Lieutenant Arthur Sinclair, who served under Semmes on the Alabama for the entirety of its existence, documents a fascinating first-person account of life on board this Confederate raider. As they crisscrossed over the oceans Sinclair notes the ships they attacked, prisoners they took and various places they visited, from Brazil to South Africa. Powered by both sail and steam, the Alabama was one of the quickest ships of its era, reaching speeds of over 13 knots. But in the quest for speed there had been sacrifices, notably the lack of heavy armor-cladding and larger guns, which were to prove fatal during the Battle of Cherbourg in 1864 against the U.S.S. Kearsage. Two Years on the Alabama is an excellent account of naval operations of the confederacy during the American Civil War. It provides brilliant details into the revolutionary changes that were occurring in late-nineteenth century maritime developments. After the Alabama was sunk Sinclair was rescued by the English yacht Deerhound and taken to Southampton. He later served as an officer of the inactive cruiser CSS Rappahannock at Calais, France. Following the Civil War, he primarily lived in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was a merchant. In 1896 he published Two Years on the Alabama. Arthur Sinclair died in Baltimore in November 1925.

The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral--And How It Changed The American West


Jeff Guinn - 2011
    The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral would shape how future generations came to view the Old West. Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the Clantons became the stuff of legends, symbolic of a frontier populated by good guys in white hats and villains in black ones. It's a colorful story--but the truth is even better. Drawing on new material from private collections--including diaries, letters, and Wyatt Earp's own hand-drawn sketch of the shootout's conclusion--as well as archival research, Jeff Guinn gives us a startlingly different and far more fascinating picture of what actually happened that day in Tombstone and why.