When the Branch Davidian compound in Waco caught fire, when a terrorist-flown plane crashed into the Pentagon, and when mass graves were uncovered in Croatia, the authorities called Owsley. Through cutting-edge science, instinctive artistry, and dogged tenacity, Owsley painstakingly rebuilds the skeleton, and helps identify it and determine the cause of death.A curator for the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History, Doug Owsley has handled over ten thousand human skeletons, more than anyone else in America. He has worked with America's historic skeletons, from, colonial Jamestown burials to Plains Indians to Civil War soldiers to skeletons tens of thousands of years old.That includes the Kennewick Man, a 9,600-year-old human skeleton found in shallow water along the banks of Washington State's Columbia River. It was a skeleton that would turn Owsley's life upside down.Days before Owsley was scheduled to begin studying the skeleton, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers seized it and announced they would repatriate Kennewick Man, burying his bones on the land of the Native American tribes who claimed him. Along with seven of America's leading scientists, Owsley sued the U.S. government over custody. At stake was a wide body of knowledge about our past and our history that would be lost forever if the bones were reburied. For six years, Owsley fought a legal and political battle that put everything at risk, jeopardizing his career and his reputation.

    In his groundbreaking Before the Dawn, Wade reveals humanity's origins as never before--a journey made possible only recently by genetic science, whose incredible findings have answered such questions as: What was the first human language like? How large were the first societies, and how warlike were they? When did our ancestors first leave Africa, and by what route did they leave? By eloquently solving these and numerous other mysteries, Wade offers nothing less than a uniquely complete retelling of a story that began 500 centuries ago.

    It's designed to give you a solid idea of what Wicca is about & an excellent base from which to practice spells, meditation, chakra balancing and much more.

    Hayner examines twenty major truth commissions established around the world paying special attention to South Africa, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala.

    5 Books. No Cliffhangers. Enjoy! Not your average knight in shining armor. The muscled, rugged, rule-breaking Shifters of Anubis are secret for a reason... Book One No one would ever guess that Kai Weslark, a surfer boy living in paradise, could have a dark secret. Yet behind those crooked smiles, Kai has been trying to forget everything he left behind in California, especially his family and the Shifters of Anubis. Until he has no choice but to face it when a pretty brunette named Isla DeLuca needs his protection from the same organization that sent him into hiding. Isla awakes on a tropical island, baffled as to how she got there and even more baffled by her apparent kidnapper, who seems far too cavalier and full of jokes about it. And indifferent. Shouldn’t a kidnapper be a little more vested in the girl he brought across the ocean? But as Isla learns more about Kai and tries to find out what he’s keeping form her, she realizes she’s in danger from more than one quarter. And that there’s more to this surfer boy than meets the eye. Book Two Baltsaros Kazan was shipped away as a child from Greece to America. All of the lost hopes of his family were laid on him – to escape their cursed line, restore the family’s honor, and become a Shifter of Anubis. While Balt has proven his worth as a Lion Shifter, time is running out. The curse is not broken. A dark fate awaits him and he must leave. However, he keeps putting it off for Piper Weslark. As he pulls away, she fights to fix everything, but Balt knows there is no going back. Piper knows Balt has been keeping dark secrets from her. Yet she never thought anything could tear them apart. Book Three Roy Zima-Weslark cannot win. He’s been recruited to his cousin Piper Weslark’s team to lead an investigation into a warehouse in Sierra Mountains of Northern California. Oh yeah, and pull double-duty as a bodyguard and fake boyfriend for KesariIyer. The pretty, bubbly Doctor who hates his guts. Roy has long resigned himself to keeping up the dual legacy of his rival families. Not doing or getting what he wants. Ever. But now he has to live with the pretty, bubble doctor who hates his guts? To work with her as co-lead? All while keeping up appearances under cover? Book Four Desmond Devoy can’t quite place his finger on why the co-ed with the long braids and sparkling gray eyes intrigues him. She’s beautiful, yes, but there’s more. Something is shattered and wanting underneath her poise. Something that beckons at him. Something he can never indulge in yet is starting to crave. But he has secrets of his own, dangerous ones he has to keep under lock and key. Something happened when he helped the Shifters of Anubis in the Sierra Mountains. And he’s come too far and sacrificed too much to stop now. Book Five She’s not supposed to be alive. Andrei Zima is a perfect soldier in the ranks of the Shifters of Anubis. Takes orders without question. Always gets the job done. And he’s supposed to kill Faye Knight. He didn’t question it. Didn’t hesitate. Not until he laid eyes on her. Not until his gut told him she was innocent. She was the woman he’d once tried to save and believed until now that he’d failed her.

    We see the relentless propaganda, the cut-throat politics, the brutality and repression that lay behind the appearance of unchanging monarchy.

    Bursting with all the suspense and intrigue of a fast paced adventure novel, here is Johanson’s lively account of the extraordinary discovery of “Lucy.” By expounding the controversial change Lucy makes in our view of human origins, Johanson provides a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of the history of pealeoanthropology and the colorful, eccentric characters who were and are a part of it. Never before have the mystery and intricacy of our origins been so clearly and compellingly explained as in this astonighing and dramatic book.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    As always, she is a poet of dark hilarity and telling social comment. Shifting between poetic and vulgar registers, the surreal imagery of her early work is re-deployed to venture into the badlands of the human psyche. Her poems hold their subjects in an unflinching grip, addressing faces behind the veneer, asking what it is that keeps us alive. These days of prohibition are days of intoxication and inebriation, rehab in a desert and adultery for atheists, until finally Bird edges us out of danger, ‘revving on a wish’.

    The new edition maintains the authors' innovative solutions to two central problems of the course: first, the text continues to focus on about 80 sites, giving students less encyclopedic detail but essential coverage of the discoveries that have produced the major insights into prehistory; second, it continues to be organized into essays on sites and concepts, allowing professors complete flexibility in organizing their courses.

    Cline uses the tools of his trade to examine some of the most puzzling mysteries from the Hebrew Bible and, in the process, to narrate the history of ancient Israel. Combining the academic rigor that has won the respect of his peers with an accessible style that has made him a favorite with readers and students alike, he lays out each mystery, evaluates all available evidence-from established fact to arguable assumption to far-fetched leap of faith-and proposes an explanation that reconciles Scripture, science, and history.Numerous amateur archaeologists have sought some trace of Noah's Ark to meet only with failure. But, though no serious scholar would undertake such a literal search, many agree that the Flood was no myth but the cultural memory of a real, catastrophic inundation, retold and reshaped over countless generations. Likewise, some experts suggest that Joshua's storied victory at Jericho is the distant echo of an earthquake instead of Israel's sacred trumpets-a fascinating, geologically plausible theory that remains unproven despite the best efforts of scientific research.Cline places these and other Biblical stories in solid archaeological and historical context, debunks more than a few lunatic-fringe fantasies, and reserves judgment on ideas that cannot yet be confirmed or denied. Along the way, our most informed understanding of ancient Israel comes alive with dramatic but accurate detail in this groundbreaking, engrossing, entertaining book by one of the rising stars in the field.

    Goldstein challenges much of what we think we know about the "culture of poverty." Drawing on more than a decade of experience in Brazil, Goldstein provides an intimate portrait of everyday life among the women of the favelas, or urban shantytowns. These women have created absurdist and black-humor storytelling practices in the face of trauma and tragedy. Goldstein helps us to understand that such joking and laughter is part of an emotional aesthetic that defines the sense of frustration and anomie endemic to the political and economic desperation of the shantytown.

    Hamilton “Hamfist” Hancock has been shot down over Laos, and must use all his skill, and luck, to avoid capture and certain, violent death. To facilitate his rescue, he must become a ground FAC and direct airstrikes against North Vietnamese targets on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And, to survive, he must engage in hand-to-hand combat.But Hamfist may face his greatest battle after his rescue. Back in Vietnam, while recuperating at the hospital at Cam Ranh Bay, he experiences a sapper attack. And, following his return to the air, Hamfist is tormented by a flying error, an error which may have cost a comrade his life.Only time will tell if Hamfist can regain his self-respect and passion. On his final flight, Hamfist faces a brutal enemy in a life-or-death duel that will determine if he will be shot down once again or return home to his soul-mate. The rescue, the airborne mistake and the final battle force Hamfist to reevaluate his priorities in his career, in his flying, and in his life.

    Yet something about our species distinguished it from the pack, and ultimately led to its survival while the rest became extinct. Just what was it that allowed Homo sapiens to become masters of the planet? Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, takes us deep into the fossil record to uncover what made humans so special. Surveying a vast field from initial bipedality to language and intelligence, Tattersall argues that Homo sapiens acquired a winning combination of traits that was not the result of long-term evolutionary refinement. Instead, the final result emerged quickly, shocking our world and changing it forever.

    Indeed, as Tom Standage reveals in his scintillating new book, social media is anything but a new phenomenon.From the papyrus letters that Roman statesmen used to exchange news across the Empire to the advent of hand-printed tracts of the Reformation to the pamphlets that spread propaganda during the American and French revolutions, Standage chronicles the increasingly sophisticated ways people shared information with each other, spontaneously and organically, down the centuries. With the rise of newspapers in the nineteenth century, then radio and television, “mass media” consolidated control of information in the hands of a few moguls. However, the Internet has brought information sharing full circle, and the spreading of news along social networks has reemerged in powerful new ways.A fresh, provocative exploration of social media over two millennia, Writing on the Wall reminds us how modern behavior echoes that of prior centuries-the Catholic Church, for example, faced similar dilemmas in deciding whether or how to respond to Martin Luther's attacks in the early sixteenth century to those that large institutions confront today in responding to public criticism on the Internet. Invoking the likes of Thomas Paine and Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet, Standage explores themes that have long been debated: the tension between freedom of expression and censorship; whether social media trivializes, coarsens or enhances public discourse; and its role in spurring innovation, enabling self-promotion, and fomenting revolution. As engaging as it is visionary, Writing on the Wall draws on history to cast new light on today's social media and encourages debate and discussion about how we'll communicate in the future.