Clyde Harris¿ multimillion-dollar gift to the Seventh-day Adventist Church shocked the world¿was it a leap of faith or a lapse in judgment?

With high hopes, Daphne Ballinger lands her dream job at The New York Times. But it's not long until writing about weddings becomes a painful reminder of her own failed romance, and her love of the city slowly sours as well. Is it time to give up the Big Apple for her small hometown of Appleton? When her eccentric Aunt Dee passes away and leaves a sizeable estate to Daphne, going back home is an easy choice. What isn’t easy is coming to terms with the downright odd clauses written into the will. Daphne only stands to inherit the estate if she agrees to her aunt's very specific posthumous terms -- personal and professional. And if she fails to comply, the sprawling old Victorian house shall be bequeathed to . . . Aunt Dee’s cats. And if Daphne thinks that’s odd, wait until she finds out an array of secrets about Aunt Dee's life, and how imperfect circumstances can sometimes lead to God's perfect timing.

"Evaluates Mike Ahern's political and leadership style, covering his long career in politics from the late 1960s to 1990." - cover.

This book tells of the challenges faced by white and black school administrators, teachers, parents, and students as Alachua County, Florida, moved from segregated schools to a single, unitary school system. After Brown v. Board of Education, the South’s separate white and black schools continued under lower court opinions, provided black students could choose to go to white schools. Not until 1968 did the NAACP Legal Defense Fund convince the Supreme Court to end dual school systems. Almost fifty years later, African Americans in Alachua County remain divided over that outcome. A unique study including extensive interviews, We Can Do It asks important questions, among them: How did both races, without precedent, work together to create desegregated schools? What conflicts arose, and how were they resolved (or not)? How was the community affected? And at a time when resegregation and persistent white-black achievement gaps continue to challenge public schools, what lessons can we learn from the generation that desegregated our schools?

This provocative book debunks the myth that American gun culture was intentionally created by gun makers and demonstrates that gun ownership and use have been a core part of American society since our colonial origins. Revisionist historians argue that American gun culture and manufacturing are relatively recent developments. They further claim that widespread gun violence was largely absent from early American history because guns of all types, and especially handguns, were rare before 1848. According to these revisionists, American gun culture was the creation of the first mass production gun manufacturers, who used clever marketing to sell guns to people who neither wanted nor needed them. However, as proven in this first scholarly history of "gun culture" in early America, gun ownership and use have in fact been central to American society from its very beginnings. Lock, Stock, and Barrel: The Origins of American Gun Culture shows that gunsmithing and gun manufacturing were important parts of the economies of the colonies and the early republic and explains how the American gun industry helped to create our modern world of precision mass production and high wages for workers.

When Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was released in 1998, few would have prophesied quite the impact this low-budget crime comedy would have. Almost overnight it became a cultural phenomenon, launched the careers of Guy Ritchie, Matthew Vaughn and Jason Statham, amongst others, and spawned a television series and numerous British gangster film rip-offs in the process. But box office gold didn't come without huge upheaval, and the making of the film was often fraught. In Have a Butcher's, actor Stephen Marcus (Nick The Greek in the film) recounts the on-set dramas, the behind-the-scenes banter, his initial meeting with Guy Ritchie, the subsequent trips to Hollywood as the boys basked in success and critical acclaim, and the numerous financial problems that were only solved when Sting and Trudie Styler came on board. Drawing upon interviews with his co-stars, never-before-seen photos and original storyboards, Stephen tells the story of a film that has become a firm cult favourite.