It's 1962, a year after the death of Sam's father, Sam and her mother must move, along with their very liberal views, to Jackson, Mississippi. Needless to say, they don't quite fit in. As racism ensues, Sam learns to focus with her camera lens to bring forth the social injustice out of the darkness and into the light.

Here, in a single volume for the first time, is the trilogy of novels in which Reynolds Price traces the paths of two families, the Mayfields and the Kendals, through nearly two centuries of American history -- the oldest character is born in 1815; the youngest in 1985. Though their aims and wanderings carry some of them to distant states and as far afield as Europe, both families are rooted in North Carolina and Virginia; and their eventually joined lives are enhanced and deeply shadowed by the racial complexities of their world. No other narrative has portrayed that entanglement -- nor the gifts and ravages of sexual hunger and family life -- more honestly and compellingly than A Great Circle.The narrative energy of the trilogy arises, however, simply from the dozens of men, women, and children whose memorable contentments, failures, and sacrifices weave a story that is as persuasive as any human drama. It is also the secret history of a nation in crisis -- from the becalmed aftermath of the Civil War, through the Great Depression and the wars of the twentieth century, to the struggles for racial and sexual equality, the devastations of the AIDS plague, the poised hopes of the third millennium, and a great deal more. In the final richness of its texture, it offers the joy implicit in all steady views of the world. The critic Michael Kreyling has said, Trilogies produced by American novelists in [the twentieth century] can scarcely match A Great Circle's sweep and finesse. Any reader in search of the ancient pleasures of wit and laughter, tragedy and recompense, and the healing surprises of pattern and harmony inherent in the broader reaches of narrative will find plentiful reward in a story which literally answers to all the meanings of the old word saga.This combined edition contains a new preface by the author, a family tree, and an annotated list of major characters.

McMullan pens a gripping story of ten-year-old Frank Russell, who comes of age too soon during the Civil War--a war that mercilessly robs Frank of a simpler way of life, his boyhood, his family, and his idealistic dreams.

Here is the second volume of A Great Circle, the highly acclaimed Mayfield family trilogy, from one of America's literary treasures. Though a novel independent from The Surface of Earth, The Source of Light continues the saga of the Mayfield family, here focusing on Hutchins Mayfield, whose desire for self-knowledge removes him from his secure existence as a prep school teacher and takes him on a journey to Oxford and Italy to study and write. Hutchins comes back home for a family crisis but ultimately returns to England, where he achieves a maturity that enables him to cope with commitments, abandonments, and the creation of an honest personal agenda. In The Source of Light, Reynolds Price combines gravity and buoyancy, a mythic sense of the past with the mysteries of place, to forge an encompassing portrait of the strange and various world one travels through in the quest for self-fulfillment.

Alternate Light Source Imaging provides a brief guide to digital imaging using reflected infrared and ultraviolet radiation for crime scene photographers. Clear and concise instruction illustrates how to accomplish good photographs in a variety of forensic situations. It demonstrates how tunable wavelength light sources and digital imaging techniques can be used to successfully locate and document physical evidence at the crime scene, in the morgue, or in the laboratory. The scientific principles that make this type of photography possible are described, followed by the basic steps that can be utilized to capture high quality evidentiary photographs.

Argues that human freedom is threatened by systems of intelligent persuasion developed by tech giants who compete for our time and attention. This title is also available as Open Access.