Professor Luke Shannon gets upbraided by a Cuban exile at Seattle University. Thirty years ago, Luke didn't keep his promise to Ana Sanchez, a high-profile dissident and his former lover. Her uncle was Cuba's deceased Hero of the Republic, General Arnaldo Ochoa. Luke promised to tell his story to the world. Luke finds out that Ana is still alive but in failing health. In Miami, he catches Cubana Aviacion's last flight to Havana.Then COVID-19 hits Cuba in 2020. All bets are off if L...

Since 1990 Roland Murphy's Tree of Life has been a standard introduction to the wisdom literature of the Bible. Now The Tree of Life is available in a third edition, complete with a new preface by the author and a special supplement that surveys the latest developments in wisdom research.This superb study thoroughly explores the wisdom writings of the Bible, interpreting this literature in a way that illumines the development of Israel's search for wisdom throughou...

This "riveting account of one of history's greatest blunders" chronicles Russia's tragic mishandling of Nazi Germany's invasion during WWII (William L. O'Neill, The New Leader).On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany's Operation Barbarossa was launched against Russia. Within days, the invading army had taken hundreds of thousands of Soviet captives while the Luftwaffe bombed a number of Russian cities, including Minsk. Though accurate intelligence about the plan ha...

Murphy sees three of the six books (Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes) as being technically 'wisdom literature.' The others are either love poems or historical narrative that fit well within the context of the subject presented here. In this volume previous form-critical work is carefully evaluated, and the result is a thorough-going form-critical treatment of this part of the Old Testament. The work is enhanced by bibliographies for each Old Testament book and a glossary of general terms.

Pity the Plumeria TreePity the poor plumeria tree:no white petals again this year;and again its green, oblong leavesfall before their prime, exposeits skeletal frame like a desert fossil.We hadn’t asked all that muchof the plumeria---neither the shadenor the elegance the others give---only that it be a privacy screenbetween our patio and the passersby.Perhaps it thinks itself the orphanw...

Why do mediocre products suddenly become global bestsellers, and why do rational investors buy into obvious financial bubbles right before they burst? The answer lies in the Bandwagon Effect—the powerful psychological phenomenon where the probability of individual adoption increases directly with the rate of collective adoption. We are biologically hardwired to outsource our judgment to the crowd, equating popularity with safety and truth. This analysis dives deep into the behavioral econo...

Domesticated hamsters, meaning those in pet stores and research labs, appeared to be highly inbred, coming from siblings originally captured in 1930. In 1971 Michael R. Murphy and his wife Janet were the first to bring back to the U.S. live wild hamsters since 1930. The resulting colony of wild hamsters was essential to certain new scientific findings. The couple visited London, the American University of Beirut, and several ancient, historical, and archaeological sites in Lebanon and Syri...

Fantasia on the life and works of W.B. Yeats set as a dream during his last days in the south of France. Captures the symbols, the quest for magic, the Celtic folklore and the tremendous creative drive of the greatest Irish poet in his twilight years. All this in a story of a young man's quest to rescue his girl transformed into a swan, a journey full of perils and trials. The worst enemy is time. Can all this be truly complete before the dreamer awakes?

A light-hearted old style OZ book with an ocean of humor and rich plot. Dorothy is swept from the Emerald City along with stolen flowers into a spiral rainbow sea of petals. She is rescued by an odd duck, Captain Tuckerdown Bufflehead Drake III, and his crew, Motley and Powwy the Parrot. Set on a course to find the source of ancient magic by Queen Belizabuzz of the Undersea Hive, they are accompanied by beople drones and a Mingwing Hummer. Island adventures, more transformed characters, in...

Two Americans in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War land in France to search out Charles Baudelaire("Les Fleurs du Mal"), to offer that notable poet a literary business proposal. Meeting Baudelaire in exile in Belgium, they offer unpublished, "genuine" manuscripts to the Poe fan and translator. What follows is a jumble of doubles, fraud, and mystery that tests the patience of the very ill and failing Baudelaire- whose own last angry works are themselves in disarray. Included in these...

The Christmas Miracle comes to Dracula's Castle via a newly installed cable dish. A crisis of fear, dissatisfaction and dwindling finances lead to a special haunting of the old demon himself. Three Night Visitors using the large TV screen show Vlad Dracul his Christmas past, present and future, but can the Christmas spirit itself prevail? An incredible and scandalous challenge, a war of mismatched stereotypes, comedy, and satire that would have both Dickens and Stoker clutching crucifixes ...

Bless the voice that tells these stories Beautiful and touching. The gospels for being humans. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?... A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faith...