Few Americans living today have experienced and survived the ravages of the Great Depression, World War II, and all the "isms" in between: anti-Semitism, fascism, McCarthyism. Bill Blau, who found his secure middle class life abruptly coming to an end at age 12 during the Great Depression in 1937, did. He then faced life without a father, and was sent to an orphan home, far from his roots in Gary, Indiana. This is a chronicle of a young boy's struggle to make sense of his world and deal with the challenges of those chaotic times. Circumstances taught him that the unexamined life was not worth living. Following his Air Corps service in WW II he pursued a variety of educational, political, and work experiences. His politics, his loves, losses, and learning processes are all part of this story. What led him from the orphan home to a University of Chicago graduate degree; and to pursue classic great books at an early age? From the giant Carnegie-Illinois steel mills of Gary to the boardrooms of America's prestigious corporations, and the United Nations as a marketing consultant, Bill has experienced a life of diverse experience, whilst never forgetting whence he came.

After the tumultuous events of last winter, Kate, Michael, and Emma long to continue the hunt for their missing parents. But they themselves are now in great danger, and so the wizard Stanislaus Pym hides the children at the Edgar Allan Poe Home for Hopeless and Incorrigible Orphans. There, he says, they will be safe. How wrong he is. The children are soon discovered by their enemies, and a frantic chase sends Kate a hundred years into the past, to a perilous, enchanted New York City. Searching for a way back to her brother and sister, she meets a mysterious boy whose fate is intricately—and dangerously—tied to her own. Meanwhile, Michael and Emma have set off to find the second of the Books of Beginning. A series of clues leads them into a hidden world where they must brave harsh polar storms, track down an ancient order of warriors, and confront terrible monsters. Will Michael and Emma find the legendary book of fire—and master its powers—before Kate is lost to them forever? Exciting, suspenseful, and brimming with humor and heart, the next installment of the bestselling Books of Beginning trilogy will lead Kate, Michael, and Emma closer to their family—and to the magic that could save, or destroy, them all.

John C. Wright burst onto the SF scene with the Golden Age trilogy. His next project was the ambitious fantasy sequence, The Last Guardians of Everness. Wright's new fantasy is a tale about five orphans raised in a strict British boarding school who begin to discover that they may not be human beings. The students at the school do not age, while the world around them does. The children begin to make sinister discoveries about themselves. Amelia is apparently a fourth-dimensional being; Victor is a synthetic man who can control the molecular arrangement of matter around him; Vanity can find secret passageways through solid walls where none had previously been; Colin is a psychic; Quentin is a warlock. Each power comes from a different paradigm or view of the inexplicable universe: and they should not be able to co-exist under the same laws of nature. Why is it that they can? The orphans have been kidnapped from their true parents, robbed of their powers, and raised in ignorance by super-beings no more human than they are: pagan gods or fairy-queens, Cyclopes, sea-monsters, witches, or things even stranger than this. The children must experiment with, and learn to control, their strange abilities in order to escape their captors. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Every generation has a Songkeeper--one chosen to keep the memory of the Song alive. And in every generation, there are those who seek to destroy the chosen one.

What is the role of the museum in contemporary society? Using the Oakland Museum of California as a case study, artist Mark Dion examines how museum practices have shifted over time, what these changes mean for objects in museum collections, and what we can learn about our culture from what's included and what's abandoned. Enclosed in a clamshell case and featuring fourteen specimen cards, this deluxe volume brings the reader into Dion's process and reveals how the order of images can change one's perception of objects. Contributions from celebrated writers, including Lawrence Weschler and D. Graham Burnett, articulate Dion's unique power of examination.

Josephine Cravitz, the new girl in Awkward Falls, and her neighbor Thaddeus Hibble, a reclusive and orphaned boy inventor, become the targets of a mad cannibal from the local asylum for the criminally insane.

Elon's life had seemed like it was brightening until she learns of the Darkness looming over her.