World renowned tattoo artists "Goodtime Charlie" Cartwright and Jack Rudy recount the time spent at the famed "Goodtime Charlie's" tattoo studio along with the artists who worked alongside them

The reader finds Charles Lowrey in the Viet Nam War. A Marine Recon with extraordinary ability, Charlie and his team of both military and civilian folks will use all they have to outwit and overcome their foes. Charlie and company will meet the trouble head on! Charlie meets John Smith aka “Joe,” and together they reach far beyond government organizations to set up and pull off some of the most intricate and outrageous ops ever imagined. Charlie will have instant appeal for those who like military action and the stories of all branches of service. For readers of other preferences there are the ongoing mysteries to be unraveled. Spies and espionage with tense situations! Humorous episodes that progress to hilarious events! Love so deep and passion so intense it will stir emotions! Powerful hatred that controls and drives some to kill! The characters fight with fury, love with unbridled passion, play to win, find the answers with nearly nothing to go on, and go about all of it like it’s the most important thing they will every do. About the Author Curtis Lowder was born in West Virginia coal country and raised in West Virginia and Virginia. Being the son of a minister and a Godly mother, he was raised in a Christian home and those principles that are with him still. He found himself in trouble plenty of times despite his upbringing that taught better! He completed high school and enlisted in the Marines during the Viet Nam War. On active duty Lowder was assigned to the Second Marine Airwing and was in Avionics. He worked on jets mostly with some time at New River on helicopters. After four years active duty, he with his wife and daughter moved to Oklahoma and he joined his brother in the electrical contracting business. After a successful career, he is mostly retired and enjoying writing again. All of his experiences play into his writing as he combines fact with fiction in an intriguing and entertaining way. Lowder’s writing includes the excitement of espionage, the emotions of romance in different stages, intense dramatic events, and hilarious things that come at serious times. And in the space of a few lines, a new story emerges to follow! There is something for everyone in his writing! “One more page,” will happen often with a book written by Curtis Lowder.

Captain Kurt Dingman and Sergeant Dwight Jones of the Iowa National Guard did something no one else in the entire military operation in Iraq were able to do. They devised a computer program that would predict within 80% accuracy where, when, what type and how many IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices) were placed, waiting to explode and take the lives or limbs of U.S. soldiers. The war in Iraq rapidly changed from gun battles and kicking in doors to one of finding, removing and avoiding IED's. The IED's themselves rapidly changed from pressure activated (stepping on or running over with a vehicle) to remote controlled devices connected to a wire and push button, to wireless devices using a cordless telephone as the detonator. Task Force IED is the story of one of the Iowa National Guard's deployments in Iraq, and the success they had in prosecuting this war against IED's. In the 13 months they were there, they successfully found and removed over 800 IED's. But this fictionalized rendition of Task Force IED is about so much more than IED's. Based on a true story, it is about the men and women in National Guard uniform, and the trials and tribulations they had before, during and after deployment. They found and removed more IED's than any other battalion, yes, but five soldiers lost their lives, and they had the highest rate of suicide following deployment than any other unit. Drug and alcohol addiction, divorce, bankruptcy, PTSD and depression plagued these veterans like a disease. Why? This book attempts to answer that question because it is not unique to the war in the Middle East. The Vietnam War also found more soldiers dying by suicide following the war than were killed in the war. War is hell. There is a bright spot to this conundrum, however. The men and women of Task Force IED do find a way to address their issues of self-destruction, come to terms with the war, and find peace, happiness and even success. Task Force IED follows the lives of half a dozen soldiers, both officers and enlisted, female and male, before, during and after deployment. There is hope, even with a government that sends troops to war poorly equipped and constantly spinning in the squirrel cage craziness of endless wars.

A comprehensive anthology bringing together more than one thousand of the best American and English song lyrics of the twentieth century; an extraordinary celebration of a unique art form and an indispensable reference work and history that celebrates one of the twentieth century’s most enduring and cherished legacies. Reading Lyrics begins with the first masters of the colloquial phrase, including George M. Cohan (“Give My Regards to Broadway”), P. G. Wodehouse (“Till the Clouds Roll By”), and Irving Berlin, whose versatility and career span the period from “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” to “Annie Get Your Gun” and beyond. The Broadway musical emerges as a distinct dramatic form in the 1920s and 1930s, its evolution propelled by a trio of lyricists—Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, and Lorenz Hart—whose explorations of the psychological and emotional nuances of falling in and out of love have lost none of their wit and sophistication. Their songs, including “Night and Day,” “The Man I Love,” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” have become standards performed and recorded by generation after generation of singers. The lure of Broadway and Hollywood and the performing genius of such artists as Al Jolson, Fred Astaire, Ethel Waters, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and Ethel Merman inspired a remarkable array of talented writers, including Dorothy Fields (“A Fine Romance,” “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love”), Frank Loesser (“Guys and Dolls”), Oscar Hammerstein II (from the groundbreaking “Show Boat” of 1927 through his extraordinary collaboration with Richard Rodgers), Johnny Mercer, Yip Harburg, Andy Razaf, Noël Coward, and Stephen Sondheim. Reading Lyrics also celebrates the work of dozens of superb craftsmen whose songs remain known, but who today are themselves less known—writers like Haven Gillespie (whose “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” may be the most widely recorded song of its era); Herman Hupfeld (not only the composer/lyricist of “As Time Goes By” but also of “Are You Makin’ Any Money?” and “When Yuba Plays the Rumba on the Tuba”); the great light versifier Ogden Nash (“Speak Low,” “I’m a Stranger Here Myself,” and, yes, “The Sea-Gull and the Ea-Gull”); Don Raye (“Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” “Mister Five by Five,” and, of course, “Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet”); Bobby Troup (“Route 66”); Billy Strayhorn (not only for the omnipresent “Lush Life” but for “Something to Live For” and “A Lonely Coed”); Peggy Lee (not only a superb singer but also an original and appealing lyricist); and the unique Dave Frishberg (“I’m Hip,” “Peel Me a Grape,” “Van Lingo Mungo”). The lyricists are presented chronologically, each introduced by a succinct biography and the incisive commentary of Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball.

As President Barack Obama outlined his promise for change during the presidential campaign, he made effective use of proverbs and proverbial phrases, and invented many quotable epithets that have all the makings of future proverbs. This book examines how Obama's natural and authentic reliance on traditional metaphors enhances his impressive rhetoric, rather than reducing it to mere sound bites. Proverbs, with their often colorful metaphors, add expressiveness and emotion to his communications, giving people the opportunity to follow his pragmatic or philosophical arguments through common language. No matter the subject, Obama's prose contains metaphorical language that makes his rhetoric and oratory universally accessible. This book contains detailed analyses of the proverbial rhetoric in Obama's books Dreams from My Father (1995) and The Audacity of Hope (2006). A section looks at his proverbial language in 229 speeches, news conferences, interviews, and radio addresses, and the final section presents in-depth studies of his seven most significant addresses. It includes a comprehensive contextualized index of 1714 proverbial texts found within the writings and speeches from Obama's political beginnings to his memorable inaugural address.

Winner of the American Society of Criminology 2015 Michael J. Hindelang Book Award for the Most Outstanding Contribution to Research in Criminology Since the mid-1990s, the fast-growing suburb of Amherst, NY has been voted by numerous publications as one of the safest places to live in America. Yet, like many of America’s seemingly idyllic suburbs, Amherst is by no means without crime—especially when it comes to adolescents. In America’s Safest City, noted juvenile justice scholar Simon I. Singer uses the types of delinquency seen in Amherst as a case study illuminating the roots of juvenile offending and deviance in modern society. If we are to understand delinquency, Singer argues, we must understand it not just in impoverished areas, but in affluent ones as well. Drawing on ethnographic work, interviews with troubled youth, parents and service providers, and extensive surveys of teenage residents in Amherst, the book illustrates how a suburban environment is able to provide its youth with opportunities to avoid frequent delinquencies. Singer compares the most delinquent teens he surveys with the least delinquent, analyzing the circumstances that did or did not lead them to deviance and the ways in which they confront their personal difficulties, societal discontents, and serious troubles. Adolescents, parents, teachers, coaches and officials, he concludes, are able in this suburban setting to recognize teens’ need for ongoing sources of trust, empathy, and identity in a multitude of social settings, allowing them to become what Singer terms ‘relationally modern’ individuals better equipped to deal with the trials and tribulations of modern life. A unique and comprehensive study, America’s Safest City is a major new addition to scholarship on juveniles and crime in America. Crime, Law and Social Change's special issue on America's Safest City