It’s 1994. Cell phones have yet to give seamen a bittersweet connection to the world they leave ashore, and Captain John Raymond has been riding the tides of loneliness for years. Lost in the choppy two-weeks on, two-weeks off rhythm of tugboat life, he feels most alone laying at anchor in New York Harbor because home is so close but seems a world away. The harbor is where John performs The Wheelhouse Café, singing over a marine radio in the wheelhouse. He doesn’t know if anyone hears him . . . until he meets Arden McHale. Arden is adrift when John finds her sobbing at the wake for Billy Mickelson, a tugboat captain lost at sea. She is terrified that her rejection of Billy’s long-harbored love is the reason behind her childhood friend’s tragic disappearance. Arden is also distraught that her go-to remedy of work marathons and round-the-clock cocktails fails to calm her waves of guilt and grief. Though John and Arden are from two different worlds, they share an intoxicating connection that threatens to derail Arden’s budding romance with another man and makes John realize just how empty his life has become. Soon after Billy’s wake, Arden asks John to help protect her eight year-old nephew from his abusive father. John agrees to let the boy stow away on the tug until he’s out of danger. During the ensuing adventure, the connection between John and Arden deepens as they talk over the marine radio set up in her apartment, and Arden swoons as she listens John sing in The Wheelhouse Café. But as John opens up to being heard and understood, Arden is faced with more questions than answers. Will she ever forgive herself for abandoning Billy? Can she let go of feeling responsible for his death? Is she capable of falling in love, especially with someone who’s given his heart to the sea for so long?

Now available for the first time—more than 50 years after it was written—is the memoir of Michael Dillon/Lobzang Jivaka (1915–62), the British doctor and Buddhist monastic novice chiefly known to scholars of sex, gender, and sexuality for his pioneering transition from female to male between 1939 and 1949, and for his groundbreaking 1946 book Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology. Here at last is Dillon/Jivaka’s extraordinary life story told in his own words. Out of the Ordinary captures Dillon/Jivaka’s various journeys—to Oxford, into medicine, across the world by ship—within the major narratives of his gender and religious journeys. Moving chronologically, Dillon/Jivaka begins with his childhood in Folkestone, England, where he was raised by his spinster aunts, and tells of his days at Oxford immersed in theology, classics, and rowing. He recounts his hormonal transition while working as an auto mechanic and fire watcher during World War II and his surgical transition under Sir Harold Gillies while Dillon himself attended medical school. He details his worldwide travel as a ship’s surgeon in the British Merchant Navy with extensive commentary on his interactions with colonial and postcolonial subjects, followed by his “outing” by the British press while he was serving aboard The City of Bath. Out of the Ordinary is not only a salient record of an early sex transition but also a unique account of religious conversion in the mid–twentieth century. Dillon/Jivaka chronicles his gradual shift from Anglican Christianity to the esoteric spiritual systems of George Gurdjieff and Peter Ouspensky to Theravada and finally Mahayana Buddhism. He concludes his memoir with the contested circumstances of his Buddhist monastic ordination in India and Tibet. Ultimately, while Dillon/Jivaka died before becoming a monk, his novice ordination was significant: It made him the first white European man to be ordained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Out of the Ordinary is a landmark publication that sets free a distinct voice from the history of the transgender movement.

The global crisis the automotive industry has slipped into over the second half of 2008 has set a fierce spotlight not only on which cars are the right ones to bring to the market but also on how these cars are developed. Be it OEMs developing new models, suppliers integerating themselves deeper into the development processes of different OEMs, analysts estimating economical risks and opportunities of automotive investments, or even governments creating and evaluating scenarios for financial aid for suffering automotive companies: At the end of the day, it is absolutely indispensable to comprehensively understand the processes of auto- tive development – the core subject of this book. Let’s face it: More than a century after Carl Benz, Wilhelm Maybach and Gottlieb Daimler developed and produced their first motor vehicles, the overall concept of passenger cars has not changed much. Even though components have been considerably optimized since then, motor cars in the 21st century are still driven by combustion engines that transmit their propulsive power to the road s- face via gearboxes, transmission shafts and wheels, which together with spri- damper units allow driving stability and ride comfort. Vehicles are still navigated by means of a steering wheel that turns the front wheels, and the required control elements are still located on a dashboard in front of the driver who operates the car sitting in a seat.

Guidebook to the Elbe Cycle Route through Czechia and Germany. This 1232km route along one of Europe's great rivers follows the Elbe from its source to the North Sea coast, visiting Prague, Dresden, Magdeburg and Hamburg. 29 stages of easy, flat cycling mainly on quiet country roads and dedicated cycle tracks.