The Israel you do not know has all the worth you cannot refrain from knowing. The State of Israel encompasses all the worth a beautiful and a vibrant civilization on Earth could be expected of. Blossoming with stupendous culture, the Holy Land of Israel is the birthplace of Jesus Christ. Life in its fullness, beauty on its climax, intrinsic virtues full of aesthetic fragrance – Israel is just incredible and inscrutable. The lands, the waters, the airs and the skies of Israel unceasingly sing the glory of a unique civilization on Earth. Every stone here narrates a unique history of the Jewish civilization. Every majestic monument in Israel speaks volumes about the great history of the Jewish land and culture. The winsome smile every child, every man and every woman wears reveals the great achievements the Jewish culture has generously added to our world. With exemplary agricultural systems, state-of-the-art environmental management, giant leaps in science and technology, baffling engineering structures and architecture and extraordinary socio-cultural organizations like the Kibbutzim, and with an intensive quest of peace and living a life of dignity, the Jews of Israel are all-prepared to reach the stars.

The Speaking Stone: Stories Cemeteries Tell is a literary love letter to the joys of wandering graveyards and the discoveries such wanderings can yield. Here, Michael Griffith roams Spring Grove (founded 1844), the nation's third-largest cemetery, following curiosity and accident wherever they lead. The result is this fascinating collection, which narrates the lives of those he encountered on the way. Griffith lingers amidst the traces left behind--these are stories of race, feminism, art, and death, uncovered through obituaries, archival documents, and family legacies. Some essays focus on well-known figures like the feminist icon and freethinker Fanny Wright, but most chronicle the lives of lesser-known figures (a spiritual medium, a temperance advocate, the designers of caskets and hearses, the inventor of the glass-door oven) or of nearly unknown ones (a young heiress who died under mysterious circumstances, the daring sign-painters known as walldogs). The Speaking Stone examines what endures and what doesn't, reflecting on the vanity and poignancy of our attempts to leave monuments that last. Archival photos grace the pages of these thirteen essays that explore a larger, deeply tangled complex of ideas about place, history, self, and art.

Returning to the enigmatic planet first introduced in his compelling Dark Water's Embrace, Stephen Leigh thoughtfully examines issues of prejudice and race relations among the descendants of the world's marroned human survivors and its native inhabitants. On the faraway planet Mictlan, a tiny human society has had to sruggle with severe and often disturbing complications to adapt to their desolate surroundings. There were physical mutations and birth defects among them, then an uneasy coexistence with the Miccail, an indigenous tri-gendered intelligent species. Most startling of all was the evolution of a third human sex: the Sa, or midmale. Now the fragile peace that governs the humans and the Miccail is shattered after a young human Sa child is kidnapped, igniting all the half-buried animosities smoldering between the two groups, as savagery and violence break out across the planet. The answer may lie in an imposing carved monolith--the Speaking Stone that contains the secrets of the ancient Miccail religion. Facing annhilation at the hands of its warring civilizations, the planet's only chance for survival hinges on deciphering the stone's cryptic hierloglyphs.Returning to the enigmatic planet first introduced in his compelling Dark Water's Embrace, Stephen Leigh thoughtfully examines issues of prejudice and race relations among the descendants of the world's marroned human survivors and its native inhabitants. On the faraway planet Mictlan, a tiny human society has had to sruggle with severe and often disturbing complications to adapt to their desolate surroundings. There were physical mutations and birth defects among them, then an uneasy coexistence with the Miccail, an indigenous tri-gendered intelligent species. Most startling of all was the evolution of a third human sex: the Sa, or midmale. Now the fragile peace that governs the humans and the Miccail is shattered after a young human Sa child is kidnapped, igniting all the half-buried animosities smoldering between the two groups, as savagery and violence break out across the planet. The answer may lie in an imposing carved monolith--the Speaking Stone that contains the secrets of the ancient Miccail religion. Facing annhilation at the hands of its warring civilizations, the planet's only chance for survival hinges on deciphering the stone's cryptic hierloglyphs.

Explores the mysterious monument of Stonehenge and reveals some of its secrets and history.

The romance and excitement of Dany's life as wife of legendary Austrian composer Stefan Barndt is suddenly threatened by her pregnancy and her growing sense of malevolent forces moving through the lonely hills above Brandt's desert-edge California home.

The Intifada inspired a new kind of Palestinian radicalism, a radicalism borne on young shoulders, a radicalism that conducts its dialogue with Israel and the local population via the stone, the slingshot, the petro bomb, and the leaflet. The leaflets bring the people into the streets and instruct them what to do, and when, and how. They determine the boundaries of the permissible. If one wants to know why the Intifada erupted, what the Palestinians think and what they are fighting for, how they operate and how they perceive Israel, and whether there is anything to talk about, one should read the Palestinian leaflets. They are the documents from which the Palestinians go forth and to which they return. Mishal and Aharoni first provide some historical background to the Intifada and deal with the question of how it came about and what prevented its outbreak during the first twenty years of Israeli rule in the territories. They then turn to the leaflets and examine in detail their contents and motivations. Speaking Stones concludes with a selection of over fifty translated leaflets of the two leading bodies in the Intifada: the United National Command and the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas.