Branigan is a love story. Not a romance, but the story of one mans love for his wife and for the family he lost and for many years did not find. It is set against the hard, unforgiving life of the West Australian goldfields, where few men could be trusted and many paid the ultimate penalty for their betrayal. In time it runs from the days when you traveled either in or behind a horse to the days of comfortable and fast motorcars. Through it all Steve Branigan fights, not only for survival but often literally, until he finally reaches fulfillment. This is a novel of broad scope, of characters both engaging and unsavory, a tough novel with an underlying tenderness. Born into the hard and thankless world of a pioneer gold-mining town where suffering was unspeakable, Filton Hebbard has always yearned to write. Now, grateful for those painful years that had so much to offer, his head is full of books! Branigan, his first novel, is one of the most vivid tales to come out of his pioneering life in the Australian outback. Tipsy March: The Story of a Woman is his second novel to come out of his early Kalgoorlie experience.

The core of your training and your ultimate performance rests on engagement - on having a dog that wants - demands to work with you. This book is about building that relationship through reinforcement, motivation, and clear criteria.

Branigan's son, who had improperly blamed his father for the early death of his mother, had left home as a youth and never returned. At the close of World War II, he is in Italy, seconded by the British, as the sergeant in charge of a demolition squad of Australians. He survives a near-fatal accident, and, unconscious is hauled from turbulent waters by two humble Italian fishermen who secrete him into one of their homes where he is nursed to recovery by a beautiful, though volatile young woman. Without money, he plans to repay those who cared for him, though discovers two significant issues of concern. Firstly, he has lost his memory. Secondly, a small group of Italian youth, dissatisfied with their country's defeat in the war, plan catastrophic action against the Americans who, before departing, are effusing kindness and generosity in their efforts to repair the pain and devastation that they have been forced to afflict. Working alone, and caught in a frightening situation where he cannot proceed owing to his physical size, he hears, at his side, the voice of the girl who has nursed him back to good health in her father's home.

Garda and guardian. Protector and punisher. This is 'Lugs' Branigan: the man, the legend. The story of 'Lugs' Branigan is a tale that is long overdue. It is a story of extraordinary courage and compassion, a story of heroism and altruism, a story of crime, punishment and redemption. The legend of 'Lugs''s career as Ireland's most famous garda (police officer), founded on his physical strength and the manner in which he faced up to the criminal gangs of Dublin over the course of fifty years, is part of Dublin's folk history. In The Legendary 'Lugs' Branigan, bestselling historian Kevin C. Kearns presents a revealing and unvarnished portrait of the man and his life, authenticated by the oral testimony of family members, friends and Garda mates who stood with him through the most harrowing and poignant experiences. Born in the Liberties of Dublin in 1910, Jim Branigan was, by his own admission, a shy, scrawny 'sissy' as a lad. Cruelly beaten by bullies in the railway yard where he worked during his teens, he refused to fight back. Yet he went on to become a heavyweight boxing champion and to earn the 'undisputed reputation as the country's toughest and bravest garda'. Chief Superintendent Edmund Doherty proclaimed him 'one of those people who become a legend in his own time'. As a garda he refused to carry a baton, relying upon his fists. He took on the vicious 'animal gangs' of the 1930s and 40s and in the 'Battle of Baldoyle' broke their reign of terror. In the 1950s he quelled the wild 'rock-and-roll riots' and tamed the ruffian Teddy boys with their flick-knives. All the while, he was dealing with Dublin's full array of gurriers and criminals. As a devotee of American Western films and books, Branigan emulated the sheriffs by doling out his unique 'showdown' brand of summary justice to hooligans and thugs on the street. In the 1960s his riot squad with its Garda 'posse' patrolled Dublin's roughest districts in their 'black Maria'. They contended with the most dangerous rows and riots in the streets, dancehalls and pubs. The cry 'Lugs is here!' could instantly scatter a disorderly crowd. Ironically, for all his fame as a tough, fearless garda, he was most beloved for his humanity and compassion. His role as guardian of the battered women of the tenements and as protector and father figure of the city's piteous prostitutes—or 'pavement hostesses', as he called them—was unrecorded in the press and hushed up by the Garda brass. Yet, Garda John Collins vouches, 'Women ... oh, he was God to them!' Upon retirement he entered his 'old gunfighter' years; ageing and vulnerable, he became a target for old foes bent on revenge and for 'young guns' seeking a quick reputation. A man with a reputation powerful enough to echo through generations of Dubliners, the legendary 'Lugs' Branigan finally has a book worthy of his story.

Branigan's New York City upbringing by middle class, immigrant parents starkly contrasts with Arsalan Fattal's Lebanese childhood. The son of an Israeli mother and Irish father, Branigan was raised to honor and protect American freedom and security; raised in Lebanon by his radicalized Muslim uncle who became his adoptive father, Arsalan's mission threatened everything Branigan revered. Enter A'dab Alam a-Din. Her life was horrifically altered when she lost her twin brother during an Israeli attack on her Lebanese village. Her adoptive Jewish parents helped mold her life as she grew up in The City. A chance encounter with Branigan at the World Trade Center during the 1993 bombing greatly influenced their paths in life. Branigan was too humble to consider himself a hero, but his dedication to fight terrorism, help people, and certainly save lives, made him one. He didn't have a job. He had a mission. That dedication was the impetus for him to delve deeply and tirelessly into a terrorist plot for which he had no factual evidence, all the while haunted by the memory of the beautiful, dark-haired woman with eyes that penetrated his soul. Branigan must make a critical choice once he is face-to-face with the terrorist.

VOLUME 2: "Movies and Methods," Volume II, captures the developments that have given history and genre studies imaginative new models and indicates how feminist, structuralist, and psychoanalytic approaches to film have achieved fresh, valuable insights. In his thoughtful introduction, Nichols provides a context for the paradoxes that confront film studies today. He shows how shared methods and approaches continue to stimulate much of the best writing about film, points to common problems most critics and theorists have tried to resolve, and describes the internal contraditions that have restricted the usefulness of post-structuralism. Mini-introductions place each essay in a larger context and suggest its linkages with other essays in the volume. A great variety of approaches and methods characterize film writing today, and the final part conveys their diversity--from statistical style analysis to phenomenology and from gay criticisms to neoformalism. This concluding part also shows how the rigorous use of a broad range of approaches has helped remove post-structuralist criticism from its position of dominance through most of the seventies and early eighties. -- Publisher description.

The rescue of the last diving horse in America and the inspiring story of how horse and animal rescuer were each profoundly transformed by the other—from the award-winning animal rescuer of retired racing greyhounds and author of the best-selling Adopting the Racing Greyhound It was the signature of Atlantic City’s Steel Pier in the golden age of “America’s Favorite Playground”: Doc Carver’s High Diving Horses. Beginning in 1929, four times a day, seven days a week, a trained horse wearing only a harness ran up a ramp, a diving girl in a bathing suit and helmet jumped onto its mighty bare back, and together they sailed forty feet through the air, plung­ing, to thunderous applause, into a ten-foot-deep tank of water. Decades later, after cries of animal abuse and chang­ing times, the act was shuttered, and in May 1980, the last Atlantic City Steel Pier diving horse was placed on the auction block in Indian Mills, New Jersey. The au­thor, who had seen the act as a child and had been haunted by it, was now working with Cleveland Amory, the founding father of the modern animal protection movement, and she was, at the last minute, sent on a rescue mission: bidding for the horse everyone had come to buy, some for the slaughterhouse (they dropped out when the bidding exceeded his weight). The author’s winning bid: $2,600—and Gamal, gleaming-coated, majestic, commanding, was hers; she who knew almost nothing about horses was now the owner of the last div­ing horse in America. Cynthia Branigan tells the magical, transformative story of how horse and new owner (who is trying to sort out her own life, feeling somewhat lost herself and in need of rescuing) come to know each other, educate each other, and teach each other important lessons of living and loving. She writes of providing a new home for Gamal, a farm with plentiful fields of rich, grazing pasture; of how Gamal, at age twenty-six, blossoms in his new circumstances; and of the special bond that slowly grows and deepens between them, as Gamal tests the author and grows to trust her, and as she grows to rely upon him as friend, confidant, teacher. She writes of her search for Gamal’s past: moved from barn to barn, from barrel racer to rodeo horse, and ending up on the Steel Pier; how his resilience and dig­nity throughout those years give deep meaning to his life; and how in understanding this, the author is freed from her own past, which had been filled with doubts and fears and darkness. Branigan writes of the history of diving horses and of how rescuing and caring for Gamal led to her saving other animals—burros, llamas, and goats—first as company for Gamal and then finding homes for them all; and, finally, saving a ten-year-old retired greyhound called King—despondent, nearly broken in spirit—who, running free in the fields with Gamal, comes back to his happy self and opens up for the author a whole new surprising but purposeful world. A captivating tale of the power of animals and the love that can heal the heart and restore the soul.