AND TO KILL All his life Greg McPartlin wanted to be a Marine corpsman, a medic skilled at saving lives. Three months of bagging-and-tagging bodies during Vietnam s Tet Offensive took the luster off of being a Marine but not off McPartlin’s desire to serve his country. After assisting in the sea recovery of Apollo 11 the first ship to bring men to the moon the twenty-year-old McPartlin was redeployed to Vietnam as an elite Navy SEAL. Barred as a medic from the make-or-break training of BUD/S considered vital to service as a Navy SEAL, McPartlin had to show he had what it took. But McPartlin had been in country before. In a war where you partied with your buddies in Saigon one day and crawled through an enemy-infested jungle hell the next, he proved that he was not only an outstanding medic but a real Navy SEAL the toughest of the tough. Combat Corpsman is McPartlin’s often humorous—and terrifying—account of his year of combat in what had been a Viet Cong stronghold until the SEALs took control and Charlie placed bounties on the men with green faces. It is the first inside story of a Navy SEAL medic, a man who wanted to heal, not to kill, but did both to save lives. This edition is heavily illustrated with 100 historical and personal photographs from Greg McPartlin’s tour of duty in Vietnam. Editorial Reviews: I wish I could make up anything as riotously wonderful yet starkly realistic as this book. —H. Jay Riker, author of The Silent Service: Virginia Class An accurate and humorous account of an early Navy SEAL platoon in Vietnam. —Frank Thornton, the most decorated SEAL from Vietnam era You would be hard-pressed to find a more gritty, realistic, tale of the rigors of combat and the actions of a SEAL Corpsman. The action on these pages is so real you can smell the mud, feel the sweetish taste of the powder smoke in the back of your mouth, hear the fragments whiz by and the bullets snap past - and know in a small way just what it is like to be one of the best. —Kevin Dockery, author of Hunters and Shooters and The Complete History of the Navy SEALs

    The chilling words are followed by a confession to a murder committed nearly 13 years earlier. The chance discovery of the letter on 31 March 2012 reawakens a case long considered to have run cold, and a hunt begins for the men who kidnapped and killed Betty Ketani – and were convinced they had gotten away with it. The investigation spans five countries, with a world-renowned DNA laboratory called in to help solve the forensic puzzle. The author of the confession letter might have feared death, but he is very much alive, as are others implicated in the crime.Betty Ketani, a mother of three, came to Johannesburg in search of better prospects for her family. She found work cooking at one of the city’s most popular restaurants, and then one day she mysteriously disappeared. Those out to avenge her death want to bring closure to Betty’s family, still agonising over her fate all these years later.The storyline would not be out of place as a Hollywood movie – and it’s all completely true. Written by the reporter who broke the story, Cold Case Confession goes behind the headlines to share exclusive material gathered in four years of investigations, including the most elusive piece of the puzzle: who would want Betty Ketani dead, and why?‘Wonderful, evocative and vivid writing. Eliseev is a very exciting new talent.’ – Peter James‘This case is like an Agatha Christie whodunnit: abduction, murder and a confession.’ – Carte Blanche‘A relentless search for truth and justice. Cold Case Confession is a story that inspires confidence in the system and affirms that, indeed, we are all equal before the law.’ – Thuli Madonsela

    Symptoms of decline are all around us today, it seems: slowing growth, crushing debts, aging populations, anti-social behaviour. But what exactly is amiss with Western civilization? The answer, Niall Ferguson argues, is that our institutions - the intricate frameworks within which a society can flourish or fail - are degenerating. Representative government, the free market, the rule of law and civil society: these were once the four pillars of West European and North American societies. It was these institutions, rather than any geographical or climatic advantages, that set the West on the path to global dominance after around 1500. In our time, however, these institutions have deteriorated in disturbing ways. Our democracies have broken the contract between the generations by heaping IOUs on our children and grandchildren. Our markets are increasingly distorted by over-complex regulations that are in fact the disease of which they purport to be the cure. The rule of law has metamorphosed into the rule of lawyers. And civil society has degenerated into uncivil society, where we lazily expect all our problems to be solved by the state.The Great Degeneration is a powerful - and in places polemical - indictment of an era of negligence and complacency. While the Arab world struggles to adopt democracy, and while China struggles to move from economic liberalization to the rule of law, Europeans and Americans alike are frittering away the institutional inheritance of centuries. To arrest the degeneration of the West's once dominant civilization, Ferguson warns, will take heroic leadership and radical reform. This book is based on Niall Ferguson's 2012 BBC Reith Lectures, which were broadcast under the title 'The Rule of Law and Its Enemies'.

    As a result, East Asian thought is “holistic”—drawn to the perceptual field as a whole and to relations among objects and events within that field. By contrast, Westerners focus on salient objects or people, use attributes to assign them to categories, and apply rules of formal logic to understand their behavior. From feng shui to metaphysics, from comparative linguistics to economic history, a gulf separates the children of Aristotle from the descendants of Confucius. At a moment in history when the need for cross-cultural understanding and collaboration have never been more important, The Geography of Thought offers both a map to that gulf and a blueprint for a bridge that will span it.

    Torn between two races, he is propelled across the vast, unexplored Northwest wilderness of the early 1800s in a desperate mission to defend his adopted people from invasion by ruthless white fur traders.

    Macionis', "Society: The Basics, 10th edition "is designed to help students see the relevance of the sociological theories and ideas that inform their own lives. Four main themes are found throughout the text: Seeing Sociology in Everyday LifeSocial DiversityGlobal ComparisonsCritical Thinking The new edition has an innovate new design, contemporary and compelling student applications, plus a wealth of author-written and author-managed supplemental material. This revision elevates "Society's "high standard of excellence, ensuring that it remains one of the foremost introductory sociology resources for students and instructors alike.

    Some film footage of his corpse was later shown on television. Why did these onlookers not hold the dying man's hand and comfort him? The answer appalls Joe Simpson, who was himself left for dead in a crevasse at the foot of Siula Grande in Peru in 1985. It is an uncomfortable ethical question that he is forced to confront as he attempts a difficult new route on Pumori, with a clear view of the whole South Col from close to the vantage point where Eric Shipton first spotted the way up the south side of Everest taken by Hillary and Tenzing in 1953. Now that Everest has become the playground of the rich, where commercial operators offer guided tours to the top up fixed ropes, camping amidst the detritus and unburied corpses of previous less fortunate climbers, Simpson wonders if the noble, caring instincts that once characterized mountaineering have been irrevocably displaced as in other facets of today's society. On investigation, he finds it a less black and white issue that at first it seemed. "I shall never forget the horror of dying alone, the awful empty loneliness of it," he says. Yet his empathy for the victims of storms, altitude sickness, or misjudgments, is tested time and again as he explores anecdotally and in conversations with his companions on Pumori, the moral climate of mountaineering in the 1990s.

    This extraordinary book is the account of how he pulled it off. By turns thrilling and slapstick, sublime and outrageous, A Viking Voyage is an unforgettable adventure story that will take you to the heart of some of the most magnificent, unspoiled territory on earth, and even deeper, to the heart of a journey like no other. A celebration of the people and places Carter visits and a treasure-trove of fascinating Viking lore, here is an unforgettable story of friendship and teamwork–and the thrill of accomplishing a goal that once seemed impossible.

    But the heart of the matter is that, as the crisis unfolds, the basic rules of European democracy are being subverted or turned into their opposite, bypassing parliaments, governments and EU institutions. Multilateralism is turning into unilateralism, equality into hegemony, sovereignty into the dependency and recognition into disrespect for the dignity of other nations. Even France, which long dominated European integration, must submit to Berlin's strictures now that it must fear for its international credit rating.How did this happen? The anticipation of the European catastrophe has already fundamentally changed the European landscape of power. It is giving birth to a political monster: a German Europe. Germany did not seek this leadership position - rather, it is a perfect illustration of the law of unintended consequences. The invention and implementation of the euro was the price demanded by France in order to pin Germany down to a European Monetary Union in the context of German unification. It was a quid pro quo for binding a united Germany into a more integrated Europe in which France would continue to play the leading role. But the precise opposite has happened. Economically the euro turned out to be very good for Germany, and with the euro crisis Chancellor Angela Merkel became the informal Queen of Europe.The new grammar of power reflects the difference between creditor and debtor countries; it is not a military but an economic logic. Its ideological foundation is 'German euro nationalism' - that is, an extended European version of the Deutschmark nationalism that underpinned German identity after the Second World War. In this way the German model of stability is being surreptitiously elevated into the guiding idea for Europe. The Europe we have now will not be able to survive in the risk-laden storms of the globalized world. The EU has to be more than a grim marriage sustained by the fear of the chaos that would be caused by its breakdown. It has to be built on something more positive: a vision of rebuilding Europe bottom-up, creating a Europe of the citizen. There is no better way to reinvigorate Europe than through the coming together of ordinary Europeans acting on their own behalf.

    We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . .Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.” But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day.Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,” revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish” everywhere.

    Now he turns to the most important subject of all - understanding people's drives and motivations, even when they are unconscious of them themselves.We are social animals. Our very lives depend on our relationships with people. Knowing why people do what they do is the most important tool we can possess, without which our other talents can only take us so far. Drawing from the ideas and examples of Pericles, Queen Elizabeth I, Martin Luther King Jr, and many others, Greene teaches us how to detach ourselves from our own emotions and master self-control, how to develop the empathy that leads to insight, how to look behind people's masks, and how to resist conformity to develop your singular sense of purpose. Whether at work, in relationships, or in shaping the world around you, The Laws of Human Nature offers brilliant tactics for success, self-improvement, and self-defense.

    Of their rights. Of their freedom. Of their dignity. Of their futures. The culprits? My generation and our predecessors, who either created or failed to stop the world straddling engine of theft, degradation, manipulation, and social control we call the welfare state.

    Newton's 3 laws of motion? The 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse? The 5 pillars of Islam? The 6 wives of Henry VIII? The 7 kinds of plane triangles? The 8 Beatitudes? If you're not sure about the answers to the above, this is the book for you. A compendium of 101 culturally significant particulars from the fields of mythology, religion, literature, history, science, mathematics, art, and music, What Are the 7 Wonders of the World? is a stimulating fusion of facts and fun that makes for an invaluable reference and an entertaining diversion.Questions are grouped in sections according to the number of items in their answer (all the 3s, all the 4s, all the 5s, etc.), so that the answers are in the form of easily memorized lists. You won't find Luther's 95 theses, or the 264 Popes, for example, but you will find everything from the 3 sons of Adam and Eve all the way up to the 24 letters of the ancient Greek alphabet.This clever format lends itself well to quizzing and guessing, which gives it a deliciously sophisticated parlor-game quality. But for those who wish to delve a little deeper, there are thoughtful essays to go with each answer that include fascinating details and place the list in its larger cultural or historical context. Much more than a book of trivia, What Are the 7 Wonders of the World? offers a grand overview of the knowledge needed to appreciate many of the finest things in our cultural and intellectual life.

    Accessing a cultural archive built over 400 years of Dutch colonial rule, Wekker fundamentally challenges Dutch racial exceptionalism by undermining the dominant narrative of the Netherlands as a "gentle" and "ethical" nation. Wekker analyzes the Dutch media's portrayal of black women and men, the failure to grasp race in the Dutch academy, contemporary conservative politics (including gay politicians espousing anti-immigrant rhetoric), and the controversy surrounding the folkloric character Black Pete, showing how the denial of racism and the expression of innocence safeguards white privilege. Wekker uncovers the postcolonial legacy of race and its role in shaping the white Dutch self, presenting the contested, persistent legacy of racism in the country.

    This is the view of Ayn Rand, a view so radically opposed to prevailing attitudes that it constitutes a major philosophic revolution. In this series of essays, she presents her stand on the persecution of big business, the causes of war, the default of conservatism, and the evils of altruism. Here is a challenging new look at modern society by one of the most provocative intellectuals on the American scene.   This edition includes two articles by Ayn Rand that did not appear in the hardcover edition: “The Wreckage of the Consensus,” which presents the Objectivists’ views on Vietnam and the draft; and “Requiem for Man,” an answer to the Papal encyclical Progresso Populorum.