The Bellarmine Feint

The Bellarmine Feint
Author: Tom Czerwinski
Publisher: First Edition Design Pub.
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2014-08-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1622875117

The Bellarmine Feint is an intellectual thriller reminiscent of the late Michael Crichton’s wrapping an adventure around a scientific core. The underlying theme is that the pursuit of progress and prosperity through constant innovation and novelty is threatened by the limits discovered in the new science of complexity theory. It turns out that moderation is not just an ethical or pragmatic consideration, but a scientific necessity. The Vatican, bent on restoring the importance of tradition and order, devises a plan to use this discovery to both preserve its existence, and to curb the conduct of the modern secular state. In order to test this strategy, Dr. Alan Voldt, an unaware player, is sent to Turkey in 2018 to finalize an inter-university exchange agreement. Voldt is an unlikely candidate to be a lay numerary of the Vatican’s Order of Opus Dei. The former Youngstown State tight end and Marine platoon leader is a controversial authority on the rise and fall of civilizations. Although a committed Catholic, he follows in the footsteps of St. Augustine, who until well into his thirties had prayed, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” At 41, Voldt has still not turned that corner. Turkey’s controversial entry to the European Union gets tangled up with the Vatican strategy through Voldt’s furtive affair with Sila Gyor, a prominent Turkish TV anchor. Her views on Turkey’s future reflect a yearning for Ottoman past glory. This conflicts with a family tradition loyal to the Ataturk European-oriented vision. The ensuing contention over her son’s allegiance leads to tragic consequences. Inexorably, Turkey’s MiT and America’s CIA are drawn into the plot, because interpretations of the Vatican strategy assume conspiratorial dimensions. In parallel, a Canadian-based Russian oligarch, Maksim Ioshchenkov, also has an interest in Voldt for his access to human terrain analysis--the mapping of tribal, clan, family and clique dynamics underlying formal social structures. This knowledge is essential to his ambition to reopen oil and gas fields in the volatile northern Afghan province of Jozwan. The matter disturbs Voldt. Having been wounded in Afghanistan, the prospect of returning threatens to release his repressed PTSD nightmares. Despite his best efforts he is unable to avoid facing his demons. Keywords: Complexity, Moderation, Adventure, Chaos, Turkey, Opus Dei, Nonlinearity, Afghanistan, CIA, Danube

Pale Blue Dot

Pale Blue Dot
Author: Carl Sagan
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2011-07-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0307801012

“Fascinating . . . memorable . . . revealing . . . perhaps the best of Carl Sagan’s books.”—The Washington Post Book World (front page review) In Cosmos, the late astronomer Carl Sagan cast his gaze over the magnificent mystery of the Universe and made it accessible to millions of people around the world. Now in this stunning sequel, Carl Sagan completes his revolutionary journey through space and time. Future generations will look back on our epoch as the time when the human race finally broke into a radically new frontier—space. In Pale Blue Dot, Sagan traces the spellbinding history of our launch into the cosmos and assesses the future that looms before us as we move out into our own solar system and on to distant galaxies beyond. The exploration and eventual settlement of other worlds is neither a fantasy nor luxury, insists Sagan, but rather a necessary condition for the survival of the human race. “Takes readers far beyond Cosmos . . . Sagan sees humanity’s future in the stars.”—Chicago Tribune

The Bilingual Text

The Bilingual Text
Author: Jan Walsh Hokenson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317640365

Bilingual texts have been left outside the mainstream of both translation theory and literary history. Yet the tradition of the bilingual writer, moving between different sign systems and audiences to create a text in two languages, is a rich and venerable one, going back at least to the Middle Ages. The self-translated, bilingual text was commonplace in the mutlilingual world of medieval and early modern Europe, frequently bridging Latin and the vernaculars. While self-translation persisted among cultured elites, it diminished during the consolidation of the nation-states, in the long era of nationalistic monolingualism, only to resurge in the postcolonial era. The Bilingual Text makes a first step toward providing the fields of translation studies and comparative literature with a comprehensive account of literary self-translation in the West. It tracks the shifting paradigms of bilinguality across the centuries and addresses the urgent questions that the bilingual text raises for translation theorists today: Is each part of the bilingual text a separate, original creation or is each incomplete without the other? Is self-translation a unique genre? Can either version be split off into a single language or literary tradition? How can two linguistic versions of a text be fitted into standard models of foreign and domestic texts and cultures? Because such texts defeat standard categories of analysis, The Bilingual Text reverses the usual critical gaze, highlighting not dissimilarities but continuities across versions, allowing for dissimilarities within orders of correspondence, and englobing the literary as well as linguistic and cultural dimensions of the text. Emphasizing the arcs of historical change in concepts of language and translation that inform each case study, The Bilingual Text examines the perdurance of this phenomenon in Western societies and literatures.

Citizen Soldiers in the War of 1812

Citizen Soldiers in the War of 1812
Author: C. Edward Skeen
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2014-07-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 081314955X

Winner of the Army Historical Foundation Book Award During the War of 1812, state militias were intended to be the primary fighting force. Unfortunately, while militiamen showed willingness to fight, they were untrained, undisciplined, and ill-equipped. These raw volunteers had no muskets, and many did not know how to use the weapons once they had been issued. Though established by the Constitution, state militias found themselves wholly unprepared for war. The federal government was empowered to use these militias to "execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions;" but in a system of divided responsibility, it was the states' job to appoint officers and to train the soldiers. Edward Skeen reveals states' responses to federal requests for troops and provides in-depth descriptions of the conditions, morale, and experiences of the militia in camp and in battle. Skeen documents the failures and successes of the militias, concluding that the key lay in strong leadership. He also explores public perception of the force, both before and after the war, and examines how the militias changed in response to their performance in the War of 1812. After that time, the federal government increasingly neglected the militias in favor of a regular professional army.

Daria Rose and the Day She Chose

Daria Rose and the Day She Chose
Author: Yvonne Capitelli
Publisher: First Edition Design Pub.
Total Pages: 28
Release: 2012-04-18
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1937520951

Daria Rose teaches your child invaluable life tools in a child friendly way. This fun story of self-empowerment fosters: positive behavior, confidence, courage, strength, determination, friendship, good values, and the importance of being thoughtful and thankful. Whether your child is 4 or 14 they will be inspired to take control of their own happiness and realize the power they have within.

Ruminations of a Catholic School Girl

Ruminations of a Catholic School Girl
Author: Vicki Lindgren Rimasse
Publisher: First Edition Design Pub.
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2012-03
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 1937520676

Ruminations of a Catholic School Girl is a compendium of random thoughts on food, love, sex, shopping, marriage, divorce, death, rebirth, the existential vacuum and music through essays, notes passed in class, and diary entries. With vivid imagery and sardonic commentary, brings to life the story of a Boomer from Long Island, Gwen Patrick (the author's alter-ego), who loves shoes, Beaujolais, shopping, food and most of all - food, family and friends. Chronicling her life from her first experience with parochial school in the 60s through her son Zimmerman's high school years, it tells the story of a Long Island boomers experience and continuing journey.With references to Plutarch and Popeye, the Bible and Sex and the City, Jim Morrison, Joni Mitchell and Opera, Gwen's journey will resonate with women of any age - and men who understand the importance of having the right mustard for their pastrami.

Gleanings from Joshua

Gleanings from Joshua
Author: Arthur W. Pink
Publisher:
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2011-09-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781612033402

"In approaching the study of one of the books of Scripture it must be of considerable help to the student if he can ascertain what is its main design and what is its outstanding topic. As pointed out in the pages in our Introduction to Exodus each book in the Bible has a prominent and dominant theme which, as such, is peculiar to itself, around which everything is made to center and of which all the details are but the amplification. What that leading subject may be, we should make it our business to prayerfully and diligently ascertain. This can best be discovered by reading and re-reading the book under review, noting carefully any particular feature or expression which occurs frequently in it-such as "under the sun" in Ecclesiastes or "the righteousness of God" in Romans. "The book of Joshua records one of the most interesting and important portions of Israel's history. It treats of the period of their estatement as a nation, of which Genesis was prophetic and the rest of the Pentateuch immediately preparatory. The books of Moses would be imperfect without this one: as it is the capstone of them, so it is the foundation of those which follow. Omit Joshua and there is a gap left in the sacred history which nothing could supply. Without it what proceeds would be incomprehensible and what follows unexplained. The sacred writer was directed to fill that gap by narrating the conquest and apportionment of the Promised Land. Thus this book may be contemplated from two distinct but closely related standpoints: first as the end of Israel's trials and wanderings in the wilderness, and second as the beginning of their new life in the land. It is that twofold viewpoint which supplies the clue to its spiritual interpretation, as it alone solves the problem which so many have found puzzling in this book." Arthur Walkington Pink was an English Christian evangelist and Biblical scholar known for his staunchly Calvinist and Puritan-like teachings. Though born to Christian parents, prior to conversion he migrated into a Theosophical society (an occult gnostic group popular in England during that time), and quickly rose in prominence within their ranks. His conversion came from his father's patient admonitions from Scripture. It was the verse, Proverbs 14:12, 'there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death, ' which particularly struck his heart and compelled him to renounce Theosophy and follow Jesus.