It's nighttime and the air is cold. It's brisk as it washes over bare skin, a reminder that it's winter. And as you walk beneath the clear midnight sky, the moon casts a shadow ever so slightly, it reminds you that you're alive. At the age of twenty-eight, the Narrator has taken only three steps in life: one for being cynical, one for being bitter, and one for being jaded. But an extraordinary thing happens after a life-saving encounter with a stranger leads to an adventure of self-discovery and reawakening to the world. The journey brings the Narrator into the lives of a past love, a pregnant neighbor, and a churning river that nearly claims the Narrator's life. Are the relationships that develop after the accident mere coincidence, or part of something greater, and perhaps, driven by fate? thirty-six hours of self-imposed exile is a novel that poses the question, "What does it mean to be alive?" Through the changing of the Boston seasons, this novel explores the cyclical nature of the human state, from apathy to understanding, and from love to loss and back again.

Elegantly written, tirelessly researched, full of shocking revelations, Edith and Woodrow offers the definitive examination of the controversial role Woodrow Wilson's second wife played in running the country. "The story of Wilson's second marriage, and of the large events on which its shadow was cast, is darker and more devious, and more astonishing, than previously recorded." -- from the Preface Constructing a thrilling, tightly contained narrative around a trove of previously undisclosed documents, medical diagnoses, White House memoranda, and internal documents, acclaimed journalist and historian Phyllis Lee Levin sheds new light on the central role of Edith Bolling Galt in Woodrow Wilson's administration. Shortly after Ellen Wilson's death on the eve of World War I in 1914, President Wilson was swept off his feet by Edith Bolling Galt. They were married in December 1915, and, Levin shows, Edith Wilson set out immediately to consolidate her influence on him and tried to destroy his relationships with Colonel House, his closest friend and adviser, and with Joe Tumulty, his longtime secretary. Wilson resisted these efforts, but Edith was persistent and eventually succeeded. With the quick ending of World War I following America's entry in 1918, Wilson left for the Paris Peace Conference, where he pushed for the establishment of the League of Nations. Congress, led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, resisted the idea of an international body that would require one country to go to the defense of another and blocked ratification. Defiant, Wilson set out on a cross-country tour to convince the American people to support him. It was during the middle of this tour, in the fall of 1919, that he suffered a devastating stroke and was rushed back to Washington. Although there has always been controversy regarding Edith Wilson's role in the eighteen months remaining of Wilson's second term, it is clear now from newly released medical records that the stroke had totally incapacitated him. Citing this information and numerous specific memoranda, journals, and diaries, Levin makes a powerfully persuasive case that Mrs. Wilson all but singlehandedly ran the country during this time. Ten years in the making, Edith and Woodrow is a magnificent, dramatic, and deeply rewarding work of history.

At the time of Christ, world politics was an ebb and flow of colliding empires and forces. The world knew only dynastic succession and rule by force. Israel was swept up in this world. Her expectations of deliverance, while diverse, had in common the anticipation of violent liberation by an alliance of God, the expected one (Theo), and Israel’s forces. Her vision included the subjugation of the world to Yahweh. Any messianic claimant would be expected to fulfill this hope. Mark’s story of Jesus must be read against such expectations of military power. Mark knows that Jesus’ plan of salvation differed radically from this. Rather than liberation through revolution, it involved deliverance through humble, loving service and cross-bearing. However, the disciples follow Jesus but do not understand Jesus’ purpose. They constantly expect war. So, the Gospel is then read from Mark’s full understanding and the disciples’ flawed perspective. In this first volume of Jesus in a World of Colliding Empires, Keown backgrounds Mark and the political situations of the world at the time. He then unpacks Mark 1:1—8:29 as Jesus seeks to show the disciples he is Messiah while drawing out the deep irony of their incomprehension.

Owen Linton-House grows up living his parents' hopes and dreams, but when he is expelled from school, he leaves home in shame, the day before his eighteenth birthday. Living in a squat in Battersea, he rescues an Afghan Hound, becomes addicted to heroin, and ends up smuggling drugs out of Amsterdam for a Russian cartel. When MI6 make him an offer he cannot refuse, Owen starts to live out a real-life spy thriller, caught up in an international drugs network, living and working in Canada and Afghanistan, trying to find the source of the drugs, how they are brought into the country, and who is responsible. Throughout his adventure, Owen is searching for love, for his own identity, and for a measure of redemption, vowing to return home when he is thirty. It is his sister, Helen, who writes his story. Owen's adventure is framed by rain, snow and scorching heat. He is introduced to Mayakovsky's 'The Bathhouse,' to steam baths, and to steamy relationships. He is drawn into the shady world of drugs, of cannabis, heroin, ecstasy, and amphetamines. In spite of his mistakes, it is hard not to feel compassion for Owen, and "Rain, Steam and Speed" prompts the reader to ponder if we can ever really break free from our pasts, our parents' expectations, the consequences of our poor choices, and our addictions.

We live in an age of asymmetric warfare. Huge armies no longer face each other on the battlefield. Instead heads of major powers and lone assassins (or martyrs) target each other to pursue their agendas. President Donald Trump felt it necessary to use drones to blow away the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Qasem Soleimani-a mastermind of terrorism in the Middle East who threatened the lives of US troops-and President Barack Obama felt fully justified in sending in US Navy SEALs to take out Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. This is the nature of modern warfare. And it is only going to get worse. When nineteen-year-old Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, in 1914, he triggered the First World War. Few assassinations have had such devastating consequences, but political assassinations have always changed the world – often in ways that the assassins and their cohorts could not have predicted. The murder of John F. Kennedy left Lyndon B. Johnson free to escalate the war in Vietnam. However, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. while not derailing the demands for African American civil rights in the US, did lead many to abandoning his commitment to nonviolence and adopting more radical means. In a world globalized by social media, more lone-wolf assassins seek their fifteen minutes of fame by taking out a famous figure, while leaders of world powers have everything to gain by decapitating terrorist organizations, employing the latest surveillance technology to obliterate their leaders. There are forty-eight assassinations that changed the world in this book. Rest assured that in the coming years we will see many more.

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of core areas of investigation and theory relating to the history of women and science. Bringing together new research with syntheses of pivotal scholarship, the volume acknowledges and integrates history, theory and practice across a range of disciplines and periods. While the handbook’s primary focus is on women's experiences, chapters also reflect more broadly on gender, including issues of femininity and masculinity as related to scientific practice and representation. Spanning the period from the birth of modern science in the late seventeenth century to current challenges facing women in STEM, it takes a thematic and comparative approach to unpack the central issues relating to women in science across different regions and cultures. Topics covered include scientific networks; institutions and archives; cultures of science; science communication; and access and diversity. With its breadth of coverage, this handbook will be the go-to resource for undergraduates taking courses on the history and philosophy of science and gender history, while at the same time providing the foundation for more advanced scholars to undertake further historical and theoretical investigation.