On Sunday 25th April 1948, Boston, Massachusetts, became the first city in the world to suffer attack with an atomic weapon. It is now universally acknowledged that although Commander Eric Brown of the Royal Navy was the first man to break the sound barrier, he was not the first human being to exceed the speed of sound in controlled flight. The Dutch author Anne Frank, who won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Literature, based her first novels on her experiences of life in Nazi occupied Holland. The acclaimed Drake's Drum series continues in this gripping third volume.

British decline in the 20th Century is often seen as something fixed and inevitable. As the United Kingdom's financial strength ebbed, so did its power, prestige and influence in the world. Yet Britain was never a state in terminal decay. In relative decline, perhaps, but always a vital entity, one that embraced a process of re-invention; that proved ready to change and adapt its methods, its institutions and its structures.But what if that re-invention had been driven by a pragmatic realism that put the economic health of the British state at the heart of policy?Drake's Drum: The Peace of Amiens is the compulsively readable first part of a three book series that recount an immersive, thoroughly researched alternate timeline where British politics, Britain's wars and the history of the world in the 20th Century turn out very differently.

In this user-friendly interpretation of the I Ching, Michael Drake presents drumming as a revolutionary way to approach the ancient Chinese oracle. A synthesis of shamanic drum ways and Taoist philosophy, it provides for the first time the rhythmic structure of the 64 hexagrams or potential human situations. Drum patterns derived from the hexagram images render the essence of each archetype of experience into sound, giving it physical, mental, and spiritual impulse. Through the natural law of resonance, the drummer then embodies the qualities and attributes necessary to effect change or harmonize with change in any given situation. With clear and practical explanations of each of the 64 hexagrams along with useful exercises and illustrations, the author demonstrates how drumming these simple rhythm archetypes brings the essential self into accord with the pattern or way of cyclical change, and that way is known as Tao. EPUB Format for Adobe, Stanza, iPad, Sony, Blackberry, iPhone, and other eBook Readers.

In response to the phenomenal resurgence of the drum nationwide, Michael has completely revised and expanded the 1991 edition for all those folks discovering the power of drumming. This useful book reveals profound teachings about shamanic drumming, which is a time-honored method of healing and helping others. Trained as a ceremonial drummer in the Mongolian and Native American shamanic traditions, Michael presents the first practical guide to applying this ancient healing art to our modern lives. Through a series of simple exercises, lessons, and rituals, he teaches you the basic shamanic methods of drumming. The focus is on creating sacred space, journeying, power practice, power animals, geomancy, drum therapy, drum harmonics, drum circle dynamics, and the universal rhythmic phenomena that come into play whenever we drum. The techniques are simple and powerful. Whether you are an accomplished percussionist or a total beginner, this user-friendly book will help you harness the power of drumming.

Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.