Two days aboard what he believes is the Trans-Siberian Express, the author discovers he’s on the wrong train. It is 1987, and he is traveling in the Soviet Union, holding a train ticket that mistakenly identifies him as a Finn. In fact, he is a short, dark-skinned Mexican-American-Russian-Jew, who speaks only enough Russian to proclaim that he is Bob, the tourist from America. As the trip unfolds, what begins as the fulfillment of a childhood dream becomes a journey with a cast of characte...

In the summer of 2007, Robert Goldstein departs Helsinki on a self-supported bicycle epic across Finland with the goal of pedaling to the Barents Sea. Aboard a folding bicycle towing a wagon, he weathers furious storms, survives a near-disastrous accident and obsesses whether he will be eaten by a bear as he makes his way through the remote forests of Eastern Finland. In sparsely populated Lapland, his solitude is relieved by reindeer who become his constant companions as he slowly makes h...

Join author Robert Goldstein and his wife, Melinda Denson, on a seemingly idyllic trip to celebrate his retirement by traversing Canada on the remnants of its once robust transcontinental train service. More than a routine travelogue, the author describes what happens when two individuals marry late in life, then spend a week crammed in a train compartment. Goldstein is determined to cure his inner restlessness and obsession with being on time, even inventing a new philosophy - Zen Train M...

In this comprehensive account of censorship of the visual arts in nineteenth-century Europe, when imagery was accessible to the illiterate in ways that print was not, specialists in the history of the major European countries trace the use of censorship by the authorities to implement their fears of the visual arts, from caricature to cinema.

There is no better, more authoritative chronicle of Pearl Harbor and its repercussions than the three Gordon W. Prange titles collected here.

Cat's Whisker is the story of Samuel Baron, an engineer, inventor, and successful entrepreneur. Trained as a scientist, Baron nonetheless nurtures a lifelong fascination with mysticism and spirituality, investigating themes as varied and interesting as meditation, jiu-jitsu, biology, anthropology, tai chi, BDSM-and the search for the perfect cocktail. His life is a quest-ultimately a successful one-for a view of the cosmos where science and spirituality don't just peacefully coexist but ar...

This volume explores and challenges the assumption that behavioral proclivities and pathologies are directly traceable to experience—an assumption that still widely dominates folk psychology as well as the perspective of many mental health practitioners. This tendency continues despite powerful evidence from the field of behavioral genetics that genetic endowment dwarfs other discrete influences on development and psychopathology when extrinsic conditions are not extreme.An interdi...

First published in 1995, Saving Old Glory provides a detailed account of the origins and development of the American flag desecration controversy.

Titles in B.E.S.'s popular series of Pet Handbooks present comprehensive information and helpful advice from breeders, veterinarians, and other pet experts. These full-color books instruct on housing, feeding, healthcare, and more. In The Betta Handbook, those interested in these brilliantly colored beginners' fishes will learn how to keep them well-fed and healthy so they can continue to brighten the aquarium tank. This book covers all the Betta varieties.

During the Allies’ invasion of Italy in the thick of World War II, American soldier James Kutcher was hit by a German mortar shell and lost both of his legs. Back home, rehabilitated and given a job at the Veterans’ Administration, he was soon to learn that his battles were far from over. In 1948, in the throes of the post-war Red Scare, the hysteria over perceived Communist threats that marked the Cold War, the government moved to fire Kutcher because of his membership in a small, left-wi...

When Stanley Berman, a Jewish New York attorney, is appointed Chief Counsel at a North Carolina University, he opts to share a house with his good friend, Thomas McClellan, a professor in the school’s English Department. The men spend their evenings drinking wine, playing chess, and lamenting their ineptitude with women. Then the Professor, a Southern good old boy, former high school football lineman, and avid hunter, hatches a scheme to bring a young woman into the house, insisting that a...

In a free society where it often seems nothing is sacred, many feel that one thing at least should be: that despite constitutional guarantees of free speech, it should be illegal to desecrate the American flag. For most Americans, no symbol is more charged with emotion, and incidents of its abuse have led many to declare that freedom of expression has its limits.When Gregory Lee Johnson burned a flag as part of a political protest, he was convicted for flag desecration under Texas ...