In America, when people reach the legal drinking age, few have ever received any real education or preparation about how to do so safely. This is like handing a new driver the keys to the car along with their license-without any practice or permit. Safe Drinking Academy fills the information gap to give readers the facts about alcohol, ideally before they decide whether or not to drink.Despite a legal drinking age of 21, people between the ages of 12 and 20 are respons...

The biggest regret of Michael Healy-Rae's life was a time he didn't talk when somebody needed him the most. After that, he vowed to never stop talking, listening and trying to really hear what people were saying.In his first book, which is neither political nor a memoir, Michael celebrates the power of talk to forge real human connections and sustain us. In a collection of true stories that are sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant and sometimes heartbreaking, he follows in the tradition ...

Ontology was once understood to be the philosophical inquiry into the structure of reality: the analysis and categorization of ‘what there is’. Recently, however, a field called ‘ontology’ has become part of the rapidly growing research industry in information technology. The two fields have more in common than just their name.Theory and Applications of Ontology is a two-volume anthology that aims to further an informed discussion about the relationship between ontology in...

An early spring morning . . . a young man fi shing in arock-pool at the edge of the sea and exulting in his catch. . . a voice calling suddenly to him . . . the voice of a youngwoman who is slowly walking out from the waves . . .I beg you, let it free again.Th is is the setting for Th e Day of the Mermaid, a storyof the awakened love of that young man for the maidenwho appears before him, recounted when he is old andlooking back upon...

One of our finest narrative historians, Lawrence James has written an illuminating, genuinely new biography of Winston Churchill that focuses solely on his contradictory relationship with the British Empire. As a young army officer in the late nineteenth century serving in conflicts in India, South Africa, and the Sudan, his attitude toward the Empire was the Victorian paternalistic approach—at once responsible and superior. Conscious even then of his political career ahead, Churchill foun...

At fourteen the unworldly, idealistic Jack Easy leaves the luxury of his father's estate in England and sails into a world of action and adventure aboard the sloop of war HMS Harpy. At first Jack finds it hard to stomach the discipline of naval life and, with his mischievous sense of humor, is always getting himself into scrapes. But soon he is bravely taming a band of mutinous seamen, outwitting a wily and murderous Sicilian nobleman, and breathing the smell of gunpowder and raw ...

In 1911 in Delhi, King George V is on the brink of being crowned emperor of India. While on duty near Simla, a handsome British intelligence officer, Clive Farnol, finds a plot to assassinate His Majesty. Meanwhile, a young Bostonian reporter, Bridie O'Brady, is in town to write about the coronation. In this exotic tale of romance and intrigue, Clive and Bridie must together trek from Simla to Delhi amidst ambush attempts and a sly group of traveling companions—Indian, German, and English ...

When a strange coded message arrives at 221B Baker Street, sent by a member of Professor Moriarty’s criminal organization, Sherlock Holmes soon deciphers it and finds a warning: someone is about to be murdered. A visit from a Scotland Yard inspector confirms that one John Douglas has been mysteriously killed in Sussex. Even Sherlock Holmes, well accustomed to the bizarre, finds the elements of this case unusual. John Douglas lived at Birlstone Manor House, built on the ruins of a castle su...

Berlin, early 1948. The city, still occupied by the four Allied powers, still largely in ruins, has become the cockpit of a new Cold War, and as spring unfolds its German inhabitants live in fear of the Soviets enforcing a Western withdrawal. Here, as elsewhere in Europe, the legacies of the War have become entangled in the new Soviet-American conflict, creating a world of bizarre and fleeting loyalties, a paradise for spies. John Russell works for both Stalin's NKVD and the newly created ...

In this wholly original book, biologist David Haskell uses a one-square-meter patch of old-growth Tennessee forest as a window into the entire natural world. Visiting it almost daily for one year to trace nature's path through the seasons, he brings the forest and its inhabitants to vivid life.Each of this book's short chapters begins with a simple observation: a salamander scuttling across the leaf litter; the first blossom of spring wildflowers. From these, Haskell spins a brilli...

London. December 1981. The IRA is on the attack, a cold war is being waged, another war is just over the horizon, and Stephen Donaldson spends his days listening. When he first joined the Institute, he expected to encounter glamorous, high-risk espionage. Instead he gets the tape-recorded conversations of ancient Communists and ineffectual revolutionaries—until the day he is assigned a new case: the ultra-secret PHOENIX, a suspected internal leak. The monotony of Stephen's routine is broke...

Experts believe that Brazil, the world's fifth largest country and its seventh largest economy, will be one of the most important global powers by the year 2030. Yet far more attention has been paid to the other rising behemoths, Russia, India, and China. Often ignored and underappreciated, Brazil, according to renowned, award-winning journalist Michael Reid, has finally begun to live up to its potential but faces important challenges before it becomes a nation of substantial global signif...