The first murder during a bank robbery in American history occurred in Malden, Massachusetts on December 15, 1863. This is the story of the crime and the reluctant witness who fears for his own safety if he comes forward.

If I were to ask you where the first bank robbery murder took place in the United States, your mind would naturally travel to the Old West.But the first murder during a bank robbery actually occurred in Malden, Massachusetts on December 15, 1863. And the perpetrator was far from a famed gunslinger. However, he was someone just as dangerous - a desperate opportunist.Edward Green, the town's postmaster, through disease in his youth, limped through life, one leg shorter than the other. Edward lived far beyond his means, mismanaging the funds for which he was responsible. A newlywed with a child due in mere days, he sought out any solution he could find to solve his debt, retain his position and provide for his family.Frank Converse, the young bank teller across the street, was all alone, a pile of cash in plain view. The temptation to solve his problems all at once was too strong for the postmaster to resist. He shot Frank twice and stole the money.William Shiloh was born a free man in Delaware but by the end of the 1850's, he was not certain he would remain one much longer. He fled north with his growing family to Malden and opened a barbershop. William saw Edward as the last man to exit the bank before the murder and robbery was discovered,A righteous man, yet a reluctant witness. He fears the townsfolk won't believe him for the mere fact that he is not one of them. He is an outsider. The color of his skin also makes him worry that an accusation directed toward a white man as the criminal might instead fasten the guilt squarely upon himself.William's main priority, as it has always been, is to keep his family safe and the best way to accomplish that, he believes, is to not bring any undue attention on to himself. Yet his conscience struggles with the dilemma of what is safe for him - and what is just for the family of the murdered Converse boy and the frightened people of the town.

James Bond is possibly the most well known fictional character in history. What most people don’t know is that almost all of the characters, plots and gadgets come from the real life experiences of Bond’s creator - Commander Ian Fleming. In this book, we go through the plots of Fleming’s novels explaining the real life experiences that inspired them. The reader is taken on a journey through Fleming’s direct involvement in World War II intelligence and how this translated through his typewriter into James Bond’s world, as well as the many other factors of Fleming’s life which were also taken as inspiration. Most notably, the friends who Fleming kept, among whom were Noel Coward and Randolph Churchill and the influential people he would mingle with, British Prime Ministers and American Presidents. Bond is known for his exotic travel, most notably to the island of Jamaica, where Fleming spent much of his life. The desk in his Caribbean house, Goldeneye, was also where his life experiences would be put onto paper in the guise of James Bond. As the island was highly influential for Fleming, it features heavily in this book, offering an element of escapism to the reader, with tales of a clear blue sea, Caribbean climate and island socialising. Ian Fleming might have died prematurely aged 53, but so much of him lives on to this day through the most famous spy in the world, James Bond.

In this incisive study of the biological and cultural origins of the human self, the author challenges readers to re-think ideas about the self and consciousness as being exclusive to humans. In their place, he expounds a metatheoretical approach to the self as a purposeful system of extended cognition common to animal life: the invisible medium maintaining mind, body and environment as an integrated ‘field of being’. Supported by recent research in evolutionary and developmental studies together with related discoveries in animal behaviour and the neurosciences, the author examines the factors that have shaped the evolution of the animal self across widely different species and times, through to the modern, technologically enmeshed human self; the differences between which, he contends, are relations of degree rather than absolute differences. We are, he concludes, instinctive and ‘fuzzy individuals’ clinging to fragile identities in an artificial and volatile world of humanity’s own making, but which we now struggle to control. This book, which restores the self to its fundamental place in identity formation, will be of great interest for students and academics in the fields of social, developmental and environmental psychology, together with readers from other disciplines in the humanities, especially philosophy, cultural theory and architecture.

Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the public to answer difficult questions about their identity by looking to the genome. At a time of intensified interest in issues of race and racism, the burgeoning influence of corporations like AncestryDNA and 23andMe has sparked debates about the commodification of identity, the antiracist potential of genetic science, and the promises and pitfalls of using DNA as a source of "objective" knowledge about the past. This book&8239;engages these debates by looking at the ways genomic ancestry testing has been used in Brazil and the United States to address the histories and legacies of slavery, from personal genealogical projects to collective racial politics. Reckoning with the struggles of science versus capitalism, "race-blind" versus "race-positive" public policies, and identity fluidity versus embodied experiences of racism, Permanent Markers seeks to explain why societies that have broadly embraced the social construction of race continue to search for, and find, evidence that our bodies are indelibly marked by the past.