Search results for ""Author Scott""

Part natural history, part poetry, Mountains of the Heart is full of hidden gems and less traveled parts of the Appalachian Mountains Stretching almost unbroken from Alabama to Belle Isle, Newfoundland, the Appalachians are one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world. In Mountains of the Heart, renowned author and avid naturalist Scott Weidensaul shows how geology, ecology, climate, evolution, and 500 million years of history have shaped one of the continent's greatest landscapes into an ecosystem of unmatched beauty. This edition celebrates the book's 20th anniversary of publication and includes a new foreword from the author.

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When Jack Parker's father dies Jack knows one thing: Tom Parker was a good man. Beyond that, decades of distance and silence had kept the two men from truly knowing each other. Jack attends the funeral with the hope he can shovel some dirt onto Tom’s casket, collect a few commiserations, and put miles between himself and the questions he’d let simmer since he’d left home years before. But when a group of strangers appears at the funeral, Jack realizes he has more questions than answers about how his father actually lived his life. Jack picks up the pieces, moving back home to help his ailing mother and continue work on his father’s many projects. He soon finds himself at the center of a family maelstrom, worsened by his troubled siblings’ lives and continued unearthings of Tom’s secrecy. Haunted by hazy nightmares from his youth and driven by guilt, Jack tries to uncover why his father kept such a considerable part of his life from them all. The secrets Jack uncovers might shake the foundation of the refuge he hopes to create. Suddenly thrust into a dangerous world of drug deals and violence, Jack is forced to examine his own brutal limits and those of his father. When finally faced with the truth of his and Tom’s past, he realizes that sometimes secrets are best left buried on the river bottom. A Wild Eden was the 2018 South Carolina Novel Prize winner, selected by Jill McCorkle.

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Having trouble finding the perfect name for your new baby? One that celebrates your favorite fandom, whether you want it to be immediately recognizable or something cool that won’t sound out of place on the playground? Naming Your Little Geek is here to save the day! This ultimate guidebook is complete with every name a geek could ever want to give their baby, their meanings, and a list of all the legends who have borne them. From Anakin and Frodo to Indiana and Clark, Gwen and Wanda to Buffy and Xena, you can choose which is best for you and your baby. But use it with caution?a kid will never live down a name like Legolas! (But who says that’s a bad thing?) Naming Your Little Geek covers everything from comic book superheroes to role-playing game icons, Starfleet officers to sword and sorcery legends with characters who have appeared on film and TV, in novels and comic books, on the tabletop, and beyond. With nearly 1,100 names referencing more than 4,400 characters from over 1,800 unique sources, it's the perfect resource for parents naming a new child or people looking to redefine who they are!

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Beverly Hills Noir explores the city’s true crime history, delving deep inside cases that made headlines, scandals that engulfed Hollywood legends, and more strange-but-true tales that could only happen in the 90210.Beverly Hills Noir chronicles an assortment of jaw-dropping true crime stories spanning the legendary city’s history, each with oh-so-90210 twists—including a high-profile murder mystery in the city’s most extravagant mansion, the daring exploits of a handsome cat burglar with movie star looks, a toxic Tinseltown love triangle that ended in gunplay, a brazen Rodeo Drive jewelry store holdup with tragically stunning finale, an Oscar nominated actress on shoplifting spree and more—complete with major roles and countless cameos by Hollywood idols and cultural icons. A gripping, century-long tour of the glamorous city’s shadowy underbelly through crimes and misdemeanors as over-the-top as the city itself,

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Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Hair, a primary marker of our mammalian nature, is an extraordinary indicator of economic and social standing, political orientation, religious affiliation, marital status, and cultural leanings, among other things. The meanings of hair are deep, powerful, and so strongly embedded in cultural conditioning that they are usually understood unconsciously (and all the more strongly for that). In untangling its myriad meanings, Scott Lowe reveals just how little we control our hair, no matter the style: each and every passer-by decides on its significance anew. From Hittites to hippies and Pentecostals to porn stars, Hair combs through a ubiquitous personal yet public object, a charged and carefully managed dead thing. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

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During the spring of my fourteenth year, I ran away from home. On a cold night in early February, I disappeared into a Kansas snowstorm. My family lived outside Kansas City. For much of our time together, Dad preached at Edwardsville Christian Church. We lived in the parsonage, a two-bedroom box just south of the railroad tracks separating the white and black parts of town. As the Civil Rights movement heated up, Mom crossed the tracks whenever she could. For that, and for other indiscernible reasons, Dad beat her. My story begins during America's Civil Rights movement, a time when my family fell apart and my future became a struggle between parents and ways of life. Much of my struggle took place within my father's house. In running away, I found a new life. But I wasn't alone. My journey also marked a rebirth for mom and for Jefferson Jackson, the black Baptist preacher who became my father and who raised me. Together, we lived in hiding and in poverty. From that beginning, I've risen to the highest levels of international charity, serving as senior vice president of World Vision U.S. and vice president of PATH before joining Global Impact as CEO. Take Me with You delivers a first-person narrative of a boy who found his future by running away. My childhood and escape from abuse has influenced my present work and driven a personal inspiration to leave a lasting mark on humanity. Today, as the CEO and President of Global Impact, I've made a career of trying to stop cycles of abuse, racism, and inequality. I'm the sum of my story, this memoir rooted in love, faith, and moral courage. Take Me with You is one boy's story about choosing love, forgiveness, and the charity within--and about choosing to be positive. Take Me with You is a call to action to help those in need, especially children. As the statistics reveal, there is an alarming need both in the United States and throughout the world: * In 2013, 14.7 million children under the age of 18 were in poverty in the America * More than one in three African American children live in food-insecure households * Today, nearly 18,000 children under age 5 will die of mostly preventable causes, such as diarrhea, malaria, and pneumonia. This translates to more than 6.5 million per year * Globally, nearly half of under five deaths are attributable to undernutrition * Globally, 51 million under-five-year-olds were wasted (malnourished) and 17 million were severely wasted in 2013 * 4 in 10 children fail to meet minimum learning standards worldwide * Each year, between 2000 through the present, there have been at least 10 million children under age 18 who had lost either one or both parents to AIDS * In 2013, 4 in 5 deaths due to malaria were in children under five I hope that my story will inspire you and encourage you to do whatever you can to change a life for the better. All children--whether in the United States or in third-world countries--deserve to have a fighting chance in life. You have the choice to live your life in a way that will change another person's life for the better, and maybe transform your own along the way. Go ahead, make your mark.

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As a farmer with decades spent working in fields, Scott Chaskey has been shaped by daily attention to the earth. A leader in the international Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement, he has combined a longstanding commitment to food sovereignty and organic farming with a belief that humble attention to microbial life and diversity of species provides invaluable lessons for building healthy human communities. Along the way, even while planning rotations of fields, ordering seeds, tending to crops and their ecosystems, Chaskey was writing. And in this lively collection of essays, he explores the evolution of his perspective—as a farmer and as a poet. Tracing the first stage in his development back to a homestead in Maine, on the ancestral lands of the Abenaki, he recalls learning to cultivate plants and nourish reciprocal relationships among species, even as he was reading Yeats and beginning to write poems. He describes cycling across Ireland, a surprise meeting with Seamus Heaney, and, later, farming in Cornwall’s ancient landscape of granite, bramble, and windswept trees. He travels to China for an international conference on Community Supported Agriculture, reading ancient wilderness poetry along the way, and then on to the pueblo of Santa Clara in New Mexico, where he joins a group of Indigenous women harvesting amaranth seeds. Closer to home on the Southfork of Long Island, he describes planting redwood saplings and writing verse under the canopy of an American beech.“Enlivened by decades of work in open fields washed by the salt spray of the Atlantic”—words that describe his prose as well as his vision of connectedness—Scott Chaskey has given us a book for our time. A seed of hope and regeneration.

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A brilliant and original account of how Gorbachev's easing of information controls destroyed the illusions of communism and drove the Soviet system to ruin. Shane writes with such bracing authority, such startling insight, that Dismantling Utopia must be regarded as one of the essential works on the fall of the Soviet Union. —Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times

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Two years ago, Darren Street made a name for himself as the man who rooted out corruption in the district attorney’s office. Now the hotheaded young lawyer is in the public eye yet again—this time, accused of murder. Jalen Jordan retained Street for what seemed to be a minor traffic violation, but when evidence turned up linking Jordan to the death of two boys, Street wanted out of the case. To ensure his lawyer’s cooperation and silence, Jordan threatened to make Street’s son the next victim. Shortly after, Jordan’s own body turned up with a bullet hole in his chest. Now Street is on trial for his life, and the enemy he made in the DA’s office is clearly out for blood. It’s one lawyer out to frame another. Can a desperate father escape punishment for a crime he didn’t commit?

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In the third suspense-filled instalment of the critically acclaimed MacNeice Mysteries, Detective Superintendent MacNeice finds himself in the line of fire when two seemingly random acts of violence lead him deep into Dundurn’s seedy underbelly.On a cold morning in early spring, the body of a young woman is found trapped in the ice of Dundurn Bay. The next day at dawn, a homeless man discovers a school teacher in a public park. Gagged and bound with duct tape, the man is rigged to an elaborate grenade that’s been set to blow if anyone attempts to free him.Detective Superintendent MacNeice and his team are called in to investigate the two seemingly unrelated crimes, and quickly find themselves venturing into the dive bars and rooming houses of Dundurn, where Irish immigrants rub elbows with mercenaries and the city’s criminal underclass….

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Horror films have been around for more than 100 years, and they continue to make a large impact on popular culture as they reflect their contemporary zeitgeist. Between the mid-1950s and mid-1980s, drive-in theaters were at their peak of popularity, and each decade brought forward new challenges and themes. This book explores 60 B horror films, divided into 12 fun and uniquely-themed categories. Chapters discuss how the Atomic Age, the Vietnam War, the women''s liberation movement and other current events and social issues affected these films. Films covered include Willard, The Fly, Santa Sangre and many more.

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For more than a decade, The Next Level has been an indispensable guide to executive success. It reads like a series of conversations with a trusted coach who has brought together a cadre of successful senior leaders to deliver a master class on executive level best practices. This practical, actionable guide to success at the executive level helps readers understand what they need to pick up and let go of to achieve the results that are expected at the next level. Along with simple and immediately applicable tools and frameworks he's road-tested with thousands of coaching clients, Eblin offers clear, practical advice reinforced by interviews and case studies from executives who know what it takes to succeed. With fresh insights throughout, this 3rd edition will help readers sustain their success over the long run with new information on how to develop a personal action plan for leading at their best by living at their best. NEW TO THIS EDITION:1. Updated Introduction and Afterword2. New insights on leadership effectiveness gleaned by the author since the 2nd edition3. A completely revised chapter 3 with new guidance on creating a Life GPS personal action plan4. New and updated Coachable Moment tools (including the TRACK Model of Effective Delegation)5. A revised appendix with the latest approach to creating a self-directed Executive Success Plan (ESP)

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Every encounter begins with a greeting, and different cultures have developed innumerable ways of showing pleasure at someone’s arrival. Humans have been greeting each other for thousands of years, so it should be the most straightforward thing in the world, but this seemingly simple act is fraught with complications, leading to awkward misunderstandings, intercultural fumblings, and social gaffes that can potentially fracture relationships forever. Why is that? Why are greetings so important? Is there a right and wrong way to say hello? In his illuminating book One Kiss or Two?, Andy Scott—a well-traveled former diplomat and no stranger to botched first contacts himself—takes a closer look at what greetings are all about. In examining how they have developed over human history, he uncovers a kaleidoscopic world of etiquette, body-language, evolution, neuroscience, anthropology, and history. Through in-depth research and his personal experience, and with the help of experts ranging from the world-famous primatologist Jane Goodall to top sociologist Erving Goffman, Scott takes readers on a captivating journey through a subject far richer than we might have expected. By the end of it, we are able to make more sense of what lies behind greetings—and what it means to be human in the modern, cross-cultural age.

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Watch out world, here he comes! The Hug Machine! Whether you are big, or small, or square, or long, or spikey, or soft, no one can resist his unbelievable hugs! HUG ACCOMPLISHED! This endearing story encourages a warm, caring, and buoyantly affectionate approach to life. Everyone deserves a hug-and this book!

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“Richly composed and sweetly appealing—just right for baby storytimes as well as one-to-one sharing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Perfectly suitable as a read-aloud.” —School Library Journal Take a deep breath and dive into a day in the life of a baby whale, told with luminous illustrations and spare text, with a fresh twist on a timeless message.Swim! Play all day. Breathe. This simply told story follows a young whale on a journey of discovery as he experiences his first day at sea on his own! He swims, explores, and makes friends in his marine habitat. After a day of independence, this little whale delights in returning home to his mother. Young readers will be drawn to Scott Magoon’s reassuring story of adventure.

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