Based on the best-selling CD-ROM game on the market, a novel fills out the lives of the game's characters, tracing the strange apprenticeship of Atrus to his father, Gehn, who wields the power to create worlds.

: Dear all Manufacturers, As a business development coach when I am Working With various business owners one problem seen most for small and medium-scale manufacturers mostly struggle for operation management systems effectiveness and productivity. The operation management system is the main key area of every manufacturer where he spends a lot of time and effort for better service, which is important also for order completed within right time with the right quality, right quantity & in less cost hence customer satisfaction increases, scale-up repeat business, and bit competition. This book's strategies & deep information about systems will help business owners to improve the efficiency & effectiveness of all operations by reducing waste continuously hence increasing the productivity of the operation. I recommended this for all business owners for increasing product quality and improving the efficiency of employees and resources for quality & quantity control. This book will help and guide us in this continuous development journey. Nihal Atter.

As Brandon Sanderson’s #1 bestselling Skyward series celebrates its third volume, Cytonic, travel back in time to the origin of Cytonics in the novella Defending Elysium. Centuries before Spensa looked skyward from the planet Detritus—back on Old Earth before it was lost—Jason Write faced a crucial question: was humanity ready to join galactic society? When faster-than-light communications were discovered by a small telephone company in 2071, alien species such as the Tenasi and Varvax overheard them and came to visit Earth. Because the Phone Company controls all communications with the aliens, their operatives like Jason operate above the law. Now, on the space platform Evensong, one of the Phone Company’s scientists has gone missing before surfacing in a hospital with amnesia, and Jason is sent to investigate. Right as he arrives, the body of a murdered Varvax ambassador is discovered, sure to cause a galactic incident. Coln Abrams of the United Intelligence Bureau seizes the opportunity to investigate Jason as he deals with the crisis. This could be the UIB’s chance to discover the Phone Company’s secrets—how does FTL communication work, and what is Jason hiding? Winner of Spain’s UPC Award for Science Fiction in 2007.

Whether picketing outside abortion clinics, speaking out at school board meetings, or attending anti-death penalty vigils, many Americans have publicly opposed local, state, or federal government policies on the basis of their religious convictions. In The Fracture of Good Order, Jason Bivins examines the growing phenomenon of Christian protest against civil authority and political order in the United States. He argues that since the 1960s, there has been a proliferation of religious activism against what protesters perceive as government's excessive power and lack of moral principle. Calling this phenomenon "Christian antiliberalism," Bivins finds at its center a belief that American politics is based on a liberal tradition that gives government too much social and economic influence and threatens the practice of a religious life. Focusing on the Catholic pacifism of Daniel and Philip Berrigan and the Jonah House resistance community, the Christian Right's homeschooling movement, and the evangelical Sojourners community, Bivins combines religious studies with political theory to explore the common ground shared by these disparate groups. Despite their vast ideological and institutional differences, Bivins argues, these activists justify their actions in overtly religious terms based on a rejection of basic tenets of the American political system. Analyzing the widespread dissatisfaction with the conventional forms of political identity and affiliation that characterize American civic life today, Bivins sheds light on the complex relations between religion and democratic society.

Dr. Rob Park's life is out of order. His estranged wife is leaving him, the relationship to his daughters is strained and his academic career is at a dead end. He escapes into the cult of LEGO and the study of classification systems. By sorting his collection of LEGO bricks he reconnects to his daughters and he maintains his sobriety while maneuvering in the bizarre world of academia. Prof. Dr. Smith and his newly found Adult Fans Of LEGO help him to find a new structure for himself, his brick collection and his family.

A teacher, scholar, practitioner, and publicist, Richard Ullman has been a unique and influential figure in U.S. foreign and security policy over the past forty years. This volume, created on the initiative of some of Ullman's most accomplished former students, is less a summing up of his work than a sort of intellectual kaleidoscope held up to his ideas. The result is a spirited and highly readable set of essays on themes relating to U.S. foreign and defense policy in a period of nearly unprecedented dynamism in the international system. The volume includes contributions by David Gompert, I.M. Destler, Michael Doyle, Michael O'Hanlon, and eight other distinguished scholars and practitioners of international relations. Major issues addressed in The Real and the Ideal include: · Changing international conceptions of state sovereignty, governmental legitimacy and ethics, and their relationship to national influence and power · New roles played by military power, including an exploration of emerging guidelines for the use of force in the defense of norms and values that go beyond traditional definitions of national interest · The domestic context for the setting of U.S. foreign and defense policy, including an analysis of recent and heretofore unpublished polling data regarding the public's propensity to support international engagement · Assessments of the effects of alliance relationships on interstate relations, including case studies of trans-Atlantic relations in the post-Cold War period, the foreign policy of the unified Germany, and relations among China, Japan, and Taiwan · A highly original, revisionist assessment of U.S. foreign policy of liberal isolationism in the 1920s, along with lessons for U.S. statesmen and policy makers today. A Council on Foreign Relations book.