During the spring and summer of 2021, global news reports were filled with the impending US/NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan. At best, it would be viewed as a stalemate, with an orderly transition to a stable, US-backed Afghan government. At worse, it would be looked upon as two decades of futile war, ending with a shameful retreat that left the county at the mercy of a ruthless Taliban regime. What went wrong?This close look at the history of foreign invasions of the country, from ...

The U.S. pandemic narratives which embodied many conflicting structures failed to provide guidance for groups and individuals to construct a clear understanding of the pandemic or a consistent measure to combat the disease. This book provides a careful examination of the discordant narratives that embodied the chaos, tensions, and conflicts in the U.S. pandemic responses. The ultimate goal of this volume is to help groups and individuals understand just what went wrong in the U.S. pandemic...

Marriage’s central role in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints distinguishes the faith while simultaneously reflecting widespread American beliefs. But what does Latter-day Saint marriage mean for men? Holly Welker presents a collection of essays exploring this question. The essayists provide insight into challenges involving sexuality, physical and emotional illness, addiction, loss of faith, infidelity, sexual orientation, and other topics. Conversational and heartfelt, the w...

Brother against Brother: 140 Civil War Memoirs assembles a vast documentary chorus from the American Civil War, illuminating combat, command, captivity, nursing, naval service, campaigning, and the unsettled moral terrain of national rupture. Ranging from terse battlefield recollection and military analysis to reflective autobiography and eyewitness narrative, the volume preserves the varied registers through which participants made meaning of war. Accounts of major operations stand beside...

The almost unnaturally bright light of the Glow-worm has puzzled, charmed and fascinated generations of poets, artists, scientists and nature lovers. But now, this enigmatic species is in decline and under threat.This book describes the life of Lampyris noctiluca, how it feeds, grows, defends itself and breeds; its natural enemies, its evolution, and how and why it produces that remarkable and vivid light. Details of Glow-worm habitat, ecology and conservation are also con...

The important role that randomness plays in evolutionary changeJohn Tyler Bonner, one of our most distinguished and insightful biologists, here challenges a central tenet of evolutionary biology. In this concise, elegantly written book, he makes the bold and provocative claim that some biological diversity may be explained by something other than natural selection.With his customary wit and accessible style, Bonner makes an argument for the underappreciated...

John Tyler Bonner, one of our most distinguished and creative biologists, here offers a completely new perspective on the role of size in biology. In his hallmark friendly style, he explores the universal impact of being the right size. By examining stories ranging from Alice in Wonderland to Gulliver's Travels, he shows that humans have always been fascinated by things big and small. Why then does size always reside on the fringes of science and never on the center stage? Why do biologist...

Noted biologist and author John Tyler Bonner has experimented with cellular slime molds for more than sixty years, and he has done more than anyone else to raise these peculiar collections of amoebae from a minor biological curiosity to a major model organism--one that is widely studied for clues to the development and evolution of all living things. Now, five decades after he published his first pioneering book on cellular slime molds, Bonner steps back from the proliferating and increasi...

"The great achievement of this book," observed the distinguished science writer Gerald Wendt, "is that it presents the basic concepts of biology in concise, lucid, orderly form and thus gradually and understandably transforms the miracle of life into a succession of miraculously simple processes." John Tyler Bonner's series of concise essays explores the foundations of modern biology: the cell, genetics, development, and evolution. "Biologists are fortunate in having such a scientist and a...

John Tyler Bonner makes a new attack on an old problem: the question of how progressive increase in the size and complexity of animals and plants has occurred. "How is it," he inquires, "that an egg turns into an elaborate adult? How is it that a bacterium, given many millions of years, could have evolved into an elephant?" The author argues that we can understand this progression in terms of natural selection, but that in order to do so we must consider the role of development--or more pr...

Mindfulness and Critical Friendship: A New Perspective on Professional Development for Educators assembles an international community of scholar-practitioners from multiple disciplines who utilize different methodologies and ideological perspectives to reflect on and interrogate contexts that situate mindfulness and critical friendship as constructs which support professional development for educators. Mindfulness and critical friendship connect critically and creatively like-minded collea...

It is Christmas vacation and the Psy family along with Whips friends Bobi and Pition, head up to Canada; but it is a scam run by a Russian dynasty of white tigers, the Satvrinskis, who kidnap Whips kid sister Sarah and try to make her as smart as she is expected to be by running a ceremony of sacrifice. It is up to Whip and his pals, along with a walrus named Fentruck, to save the day.