On any given day, there are over 500,000 children in the United States' foster care system. This story is written by one of those former foster children. It is not an autobiography, but the details are based on true events. It is truly "Only by Grace" these children survive an underfunded, overworked foster care system designed to help, but most often fails.

Young Erasmus Cromwell-Smith II's adventure happens inside of Venice's San Marco Square's astrological clock. Exactly a year after his first quest in Prague's astrological clock, together with the same band of five harlequin dressed youngsters, he experiences a city filled with wizards, enchanters, witches, conjurers and an evil gnome. The youngsters seek clues in order to reach the mysterious the church of St. Giorgio Maggiore across Venice's basin, and become "young wizards." Once more t...

The Keeper Cycle's third quest opens with the one thing that canno happen: in the held city of Jaipur, where a sundial the size of a palac reads the sky to the second, the shadow has begun to fall wrong. The Samrat Yantra - the Supreme Instrument, greatest of the great stone instruments of the astronomer-king Jai Singh - has no gears to jam and no hands to slip: it casts an honest shadow, and an honest shadow cannot lie. Yet it is lying - and if Makar Sankranti, the day the sun turns north...

The Keeper Cycle's second quest begins with a single golden feather, fallen out of a clear summer sky onto the Bund - dropped by the Golden Rooster, eldest of the Orloj's three sons, keeping a promise nine hundred years old. It summons the six young keepers, with Hina Tanaka and her ledger, to the one city of the quest that will not hold still - Shanghai, where a squat stone tower called Big Ching chimed Westminster over the river, and where, behind the real city, a held city is waiting fo...

In Geniality, the second volume of The Equilibrist Series, author Erasmus Cromwell-Smith II takes us deeper into the life and mind of Professor Cromwell-Smith and his beloved Victoria. Spanning dormitory gatherings at Harvard, clandestine mentor sessions, and unexpected crossroads of separation and reunion, this narrative unveils how true genius lies not in rarified intellect but in the authenticity and warmth of our everyday gifts.Weaving togethe...

This is the first of a three-volume anthology of Edo- and Meiji-era urban literature that includes An Edo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Mega-City, 1750–1850 and A Tokyo Anthology: Literature from Japan’s Modern Metropolis, 1850–1920. The present work focuses on the years in which bourgeois culture first emerged in Japan, telling the story of the rising commoner arts of Kamigata, or the “Upper Regions” of Kyoto and Osaka, which harkened back to Japan’s middle ages eve...

This is an autobiography and a book about self-motivation...this is a book about suicide prevention...this is a book about growing up in the Los Angeles area dealing with gangs and the roots of racism in America and recidivism...this is a book about endurance...this is a book about young love...this is a book about prison life and life after prison...this is a book about Ray-Ray The Dirty One.

Founded in 1935, the New Farmers of America (NFA) was the first national organization for Black farm boys studying vocational agriculture at segregated public high schools across the South—and as far north as New Jersey. Sociologist and award-winning author Bobby J. Smith II charts new terrain in Black history by uncovering the hidden story of the organization, which grew to an annual membership of more than 55,000 members and empowered Black boys to challenge racial exclusion in agricultu...

George P. Smith, II is a leading figure in the world of medical law and ethics. During his long career he has addressed some of the most important issues in bioethics and has contributed much original thought to debates in the field. This book celebrates his contribution to scholarship in this area and brings together his key writings in bioethics. The chapters include previously published material which has been substantially updated to reflect recent developments in medicine and law. The...

This multigenerational memoir sketches the lives of three generations of the author’s family that were involved with some of the most profound issues of the twentieth century. Smith’s paternal grandfather was present at the creation of General Motors Corporation and served as its Vice President and General Counsel. His maternal grandfather, William G. Maguire, was an entrepreneur and natural gas pipeline pioneer with a visionary grasp of natural gas’s significance in the twentieth century ...

A new cycle of the quest begins. A letter folded seventeen times calls the six young wizards to Tokyo - to a city that once kept hours no clock in Europe could hold: unequal hours, hours that stretch in summer and shrink in winter, hours that belong to the sun and not to the machine. At the heart of the mystery stands the most extraordinary timepiece the six have ever faced: the Man-nen dokei, the Myriad Year Clock - the ten-thousand-year clock, the most Japanese machine ever built, with a...

The fourth and final volume of The Equilibrist series is a compilation of all poems, essays, and fables of the first three books. A precious craft of artful verses that are straightforward, easy to understand. Through art that speaks to all, the author seeks to elicit emotions while provoking reflection. With verses that jump with ease out of the pages of the book, enrapturing anyone's heart, Cromwell-Smith tackles a full circle of life with subjects like Hope, Inspiration, Self-Reliance, ...