Rick Williams and his wife, Marilyn, oversee seventy-eight churches as the regional superintendents of Colorado. Wayne Franklin and his wife, Chloe, are also regional superintendents and oversee more than forty churches throughout the state of Wyoming. Nearby in Nebraska, regional superintendent Al Pike and his wife, Janis, shepherd more than fifty churches. When these three superintendents meet at the Rocky Mountain Regional conference, they learn they have one thing in common. They are all fed up with the statistics in the churches they oversee. Ninety-four percent of those churches have plateaued or are declining. Rick, Wayne, and Al are determined to do something to change this. Follow their heroic struggle to spark The Beginning of an awakening in churches across America and the surprising twists and turns their journey takes. Let the Holy Spirit move you to prayer and to action as you read the true scenarios these fictional characters encounter. Allow the Lord to work through you to become part of the solution, not part of the problem.

The HMM2004 International Symposium on History of Machines and Mechanisms is the second event of a series that has been started in 2000 as main activity of the IFToMM Permanent Commission for History of MMS, Mechanism and Machine Science. The aim of the HMM Symposium is to be a forum to exchange views, opinions, and experiences on History of MMS from technical viewpoints in order to track the past but also to look at future developments in MMS. The HMM Symposium Series is devoted to the technical aspects of historical deve- pments and therefore it has been addressed mainly to the IFToMM Community. In fact, most the authors of the contributed papers are experts in MMS and related topics. This year HMM Symposium came back to Cassino, after the challenging first event in 2000. The HMM2004 International Symposium on History of Machines and Mechanisms was held at the University of Cassino, Italy, from 12 to 15 May 2004. These Proceedings contain 29 papers by authors from all around the world. These papers cover the wide field of the History of Mechanical Engineering and particularly the History of MMS. The contributions address mainly technical aspects of historical developments of Machines and Mechanisms. History of IFToMM, the International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science is also outlined through the historical activities of some of its Commissions.

Death has been deemed the “great equalizer,” but each journey towards our shared, ultimate fate is unique. The length of our lives, the quality of our last days, how our deaths are perceived by others, and the handling of our remains are governed by nature and many socio-cultural factors. Unequal Before Death is an edited collection that addresses inequalities surrounding death from the perspectives of scholars in a wide range of humanistic and social science disciplines, including art history, anthropology, Film and media studies, political science, popular culture, psychology, religion, sociology, and statistics. The majority of the chapters of this interdisciplinary anthology are revised versions of papers presented at the second Austin H. Kutscher Memorial Conference, entitled “Unequal Before Death,” organized by the Columbia University Seminar on Death in March 2010 and attended by leading experts in academia, healthcare and the not-for-profit sector. The purpose of this volume is to bring attention to the many inequalities affecting the end of life experience and to encourage collaborative research and action that can improve the experience for the dying and those around them. This volume does not question the truism of death as the ultimate equalizer but rather, seeks to explore the many ways in which the final journey is not equal.

Richard C. Atkinson was named president of the University of California in August 1995, barely four weeks after the UC Regents voted to end affirmative action. How he dealt with the admissions wars—the political, legal, and academic consequences of that historic and controversial decision, as well as the issue of governance—is discussed in this book. Another focus is the entrepreneurial university—the expansion of the University’s research enterprise into new forms of scientific research with industry during Atkinson’s presidency. The final crisis of his administration was the prolonged controversy over the University’s management of the Los Alamos and Livermore nuclear weapons research laboratories that began with the arrest of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee on charges of espionage in 1999. Entrepreneurial President explains what was at stake during each of these episodes, how Atkinson addressed the issues, and why the outcomes matter to the University and to the people of California. Pelfrey’s book provides an analysis of the challenges, perils, and limits of presidential leadership in the nation’s leading public university, while bringing a historical perspective to bear on the current serious threats to its future as a university.