Blending accessible writing with fascinating science, Giles Whittell explores how snow dictates where we live, provides us with drinking water, and has influenced countless works of art and more. Whittell also uncovers compelling mysteries of this miraculous substance, such as why avalanches happen, how snow saved a British prime minister’s life, where the legend of the yeti comes from, and the terrifying truth behind the opening ceremony of the 1960 winter Olympics. Filled with in-depth research and whip-smart prose, Snow is an eye-opening and charming book that illuminates one of the most magnificent wonders of nature.

    These diverse authors challenge the common misconception that today's young people are apathetic, shallow, and materialistic. Aged ten to thirty-one, these atheist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, pagan, transgender, heterosexual, bisexual, metrosexual Americans are from every type of background and ethnicity, but are united by their struggle toward a common goal. They are the inheritors of their parents' legacy from the sixties, but also have the imagination and courage to embark on new paths and different directions. In letters addressed to their parents, to past generations, to each other, to the youth of tomorrow and to their future selves, each author articulates his or her vision for the world as they work towards racial, economic, gender, environmental and global justice. As the editors write in their introduction: "From globalization to the war on terrorism and beyond, our generation is compelled to action in the midst of a rapidly changing, and unique political moment Our challenge, and yours, is to live our lives in a way that does not make a mockery of our values."

    As a mother of seven, she knows we don't just need to be told what kind of women we should be. We need some help getting there.Drawing from her own experience of balancing marriage, motherhood, and work inside and outside the home, Lisa helps you uncover the key to living a busy life with inner calm. What's the secret? Identifying key priorities and doing first what matters most.With humor and wisdom, Lisa will help you:• Stop striving and rest in God's unconditional love.• Experience new hope in your marriage.• Reach your child's heart.• Create clarity in a cluttered home.• Find friendships that go below the surface and satisfy.• Discover your passion and purpose.Once in a while, things may seem as if they're under control, but we want to walk with purpose regardless of our circumstances. God wants us to daily experience the joy and contentment that comes from knowing we have given our all to what he considers most important. The abundant and purposeful life we were created to live is just around the corner.

    Over sixty men were murdered, including the leader of the Winter Hill Gang, James "Buddy" McLean. The leadership of one of the most influential non-Italian crime organizations in the United States was inherited by his childhood friend, Howard T. "Howie" Winter. In CITIZEN SOMERVILLE the events during his tenure offer a true picture of an era in Boston's pre-Whitey Bulger history when the streets were protected by a close-knit group of Irish-Italian "businessmen." The son of one of Winter's closest friends, BOBBY MARTINI has laid his own history bare to depict a life of survival in the rough streets of Somerville, stopping just short of entering the Mob life. The death of Martini's two brothers as well as the murders and suicides of scores of others reveal the darker personal side of a small New England town. CITIZEN SOMERVILLE slices a layer deeper than a crime memoir by allowing a usually ostracized faction to speak - the women. After decades of silence, three strong and very different females lift the Mob veil and voice their own struggle to survive in Somerville's criminal circle. Often painfully poignant and yet frequently hilarious, CITIZEN SOMERVILLE is a microscopic view of a generation struggling to walk the moral tightrope between societal decency and the loyalty of criminality.

    It not only provides an orientation to the world of the Old Testament but also builds a bridge between the original audience and modern readers, demonstrating why the ancient message is important for faith and life today.Old Testament Today goes beyond basic content to help students understand what the Scriptures mean and how to apply them personally. Similar to the acclaimed NIV Application Commentary, this text takes the reader section by section through the Old Testament using a progressive, three-step format:• Original Meaning presents the details of the content, focusing on the story line, historical background, and literary information that address the original setting and audience.• Bridging Contexts focuses on theological perspectives and on issues of the author’s purpose and the universal message of the text, building a bridge between the original audience and today’s audience.• Contemporary Significance develops an understanding of the relevance of the Old Testament writings to today’s Christian, showing how they can be applied in personal faith and practice.The image-rich full-color design gives Old Testament Today a strong visual appeal. A wide array of charts, sidebars, illustrations, photos, and supplemental materials complement the body of the text, helping students to easily comprehend the literature, theology, and history of the Old Testament.

    A clash and contrast between Greek philosophy and Hebrew wisdom and their role in shaping Western Christianity.

    Simple. Easy to read. Now in full color for its twenty-fifth edition, this world-renowned Bible handbook is treasured by generations of Bible readers for its clarity, insight, and usefulness. Halley’s Bible Handbook makes the Bible’s wisdom and message accessible. You will develop an appreciation for the cultural, religious, and geographic settings in which the story of the Bible unfolds. You will see how its different themes fit together in a remarkable way. And you will see the heart of God and the person of Jesus Christ revealed from Genesis to Revelation. Written for both mind and heart, this expanded edition of Halley’s Bible Handbook retains Dr. Halley’s highly personal style. It features brilliant maps, photographs, and illustrations; contemporary four-color design; Bible references in the easy-to-read, bestselling New International Version; practical Bible reading programs; helpful tips for Bible study; fascinating archaeological information; easy-to-understand sections on how we got the Bible and on church history; and improved indexes.

    A world of speakeasies and dancing girls where a gambler or bootlegger is perfectly normal and respectable in every way. Those familiar with "Guys and Dolls" know what to expect!

    Talent and inspiration can't be taught, but Frey does provide scores of helpful suggestions and sensible rules and principles.An international bestseller, How to Write a Damn Good Novel will enable all writers to face that intimidating first page, keep them on track when they falter, and help them recognize, analyze, and correct the problems in their own work.

    The book continues to help students make sense of a complex world in transition and explains how globalization became part of public discourse. Filled with case studies, this text makes the intricacies of globalization concrete, meaningful, and clear for students and moves them away from simple social evolutionary views, encouraging them to connect social change, development policies, global inequalities and social movements. The book challenges students to see themselves as global citizens whose consumption decisions have real social and ecological implications.

    But if you haven't seen the performance improvements you expected, or still don't feel confident enough to use Spark in production, this practical book is for you. Authors Holden Karau and Rachel Warren demonstrate performance optimizations to help your Spark queries run faster and handle larger data sizes, while using fewer resources.Ideal for software engineers, data engineers, developers, and system administrators working with large-scale data applications, this book describes techniques that can reduce data infrastructure costs and developer hours. Not only will you gain a more comprehensive understanding of Spark, you'll also learn how to make it sing.With this book, you'll explore:How Spark SQL's new interfaces improve performance over SQL's RDD data structureThe choice between data joins in Core Spark and Spark SQLTechniques for getting the most out of standard RDD transformationsHow to work around performance issues in Spark's key/value pair paradigmWriting high-performance Spark code without Scala or the JVMHow to test for functionality and performance when applying suggested improvementsUsing Spark MLlib and Spark ML machine learning librariesSpark's Streaming components and external community packages

    It is the mathematical method for the analysis of things that change, and since in the natural world we are surrounded by change, the development of calculus was a huge breakthrough in the history of mathematics. But it is also something of a mathematical adventure, largely because of the way infinity enters at virtually every twist and turn...In The Calculus Story David Acheson presents a wide-ranging picture of calculus and its applications, from ancient Greece right up to the present day. Drawing on their original writings, he introduces the people who helped to build our understanding of calculus. With a step by step treatment, he demonstrates how to start doing calculus, from the very beginning.

    Attaining feminine perfection meant conforming to a mythical standard, one that would come wrapped in an adorable pink package, if those cunning marketers were to be believed. With wise humor and a savvy eye for curious, absurd, and at times wildly funny period artifacts, Lynn Peril gathers here the memorabilia of the era — from kitschy board games and lunch boxes to outdated advice books and health pamphlets — and reminds us how media messages have long endeavored to shape women's behavior and self-image, with varying degrees of success.Vividly illustrated with photographs of vintage paraphernalia, this entertaining social history revisits the nostalgic past, but only to offer a refreshing message to women who lived through those years as well as those who are coming of age now.

    The book explores key concepts and illustrates them through numerous figures, photographs, and tables.Divided into four parts, the first part elaborates Western cuisine (cold section) and covers larder, charcuterie and pates, appetizers and garnishes, sandwiches, use of herbs and wines in cooking. The second part throws light on a variety of international cuisines such as Italian, Mediterranean, Mexican, French, British, Scandinavian, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai, and also discusses Western plated food and health food. The third part discusses advance confectionary and includes cakes and pastries, chocolates, desserts, sauces and coulis, cookies and biscuits. The final part discusses production management and research & new product development.The book would be very useful to hotel management students in understanding international food production and bakery. It will also serve as a handy tool for chefs with its coverage of topics and the various recipes.

    Told from the perspective of a young wife who’s become increasingly frustrated with her mild-mannered husband, “The Trespassers” begins as a quiet domestic drama and quickly escalates into a nightmare. When Evan refuses to confront men who are illegally hunting on the couple’s remote homestead, Chris takes matters into her own hands, with terrifying results. Written in 1958, when Leonard was working at a Detroit advertising agency and writing short stories on the side, “The Trespassers” shows the emerging talent of a man whose spare style and dark wit would redefine a literary genre. Filled with as much sexual menace as Sam Peckinpah’s classic thriller “Straw Dogs,” this timelessly relevant story delivers a sly surprise that could only come from the mind of Elmore Leonard. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elmore Leonard wrote forty-five novels across his six-decade career, including the bestsellers “Road Dogs,” “Up in Honey’s Room,” “The Hot Kid,” “Mr. Paradise,” “Tishomingo Blues,” and the critically acclaimed collection of short stories “When the Women Come Out to Dance.” Many of his books have been made into movies, including “Get Shorty,” “Out of Sight,” and “Jackie Brown.” “Justified,” the hit series from FX, is based on Leonard’s character Raylan Givens, who appears in “Riding the Rap,” “Pronto,” the short story “Fire in the Hole,” and the novel “Raylan.” Leonard received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN USA, and the Grand Master Award of the Mystery Writers of America. He was known to many as the “Dickens of Detroit” and had lived in the Detroit area since 1934. PRAISE FOR ELMORE LEONARD “Elmore Leonard can write circles around almost anybody active in the crime novel today.” —The New York Times Book Review “There is no greater writer of crime fiction than Elmore Leonard, and no one who has more resplendent energy.” —The Guardian (UK) “Elmore ‘Dutch’ Leonard is more than just one of the all-time greats of crime fiction. He’s … an authentic American icon.” —The Seattle Times “People look on writers that they like as an irreplaceable resource. I do. Elmore Leonard, every day I wake up and—not to be morbid or anything, although morbid is my life to a degree—don’t see his obituary in the paper, I think to myself, ‘Great! He’s probably working somewhere. He’s gonna produce another book, and I’ll have another book to read.’ Because when he’s gone, there’s nobody else.” — Stephen King “The King Daddy of crime novelists.” —The Seattle Times “As crime fiction goes, Leonard has few living equals. His characters leap from the page with a few short keystrokes, like a form of bloodstained haiku.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer “[Leonard’s] finely honed sentences can sound as flinty/poetic as Hemingway or as hard-boiled as Raymond Chandler. His ear for the way people talk—or should—is peerless.” —The Detroit News “A master of narrative … A poet of the vernacular … Leonard paints an intimate, precise, funny, frightening, and irresistible mural of the