Kamiri, a dirt-poor migrant raised in tribal culture, is drawn to the city, where he joins his brother in the illegal drugs trade. Disillusioned, Kamiri enters professional football, but his jealous brother shoots Kamiri in the knee, forcing him to begin work as a forest ranger. Hassan, of doubtful parentage, is the youngest child in a rich and powerful Muslim family. Lonely and insecure at university, he joins Dorothy at a political protest that goes wrong, and finds himself in a terrorist organisation. Appalled by their activities, he escapes and enters the Army’s officer candidate school. Dorothy, a college graduate from a middle-class Christian family, is an idealist who is unsure whether to enter politics or medicine. Set back in both careers, she makes a decision, and faces a further romantic choice between Kamiri or Hassan. These three East African young people are intertwined in friendship, as each seeks a fully satisfying and challenging life and career identity. Two voices are heard throughout. One, seemingly the voice of God, and the Other, possibly Satan's voice, offer conflicting guidance on achieving superpersonhood.

Sarah, a free-spirited artist in her late twenties, accepts an assignment from her granduncle, Albert Smithson, to write his memoir. ‘Bertie’ has a crippling terror of death brought about by the agonising death of his father, who was an atheist. He learns that there are three conditions one must attain to die in a peaceful state. At age fifty-four, he has none of them and is determined to achieve them all.

What happens when a Black American billionaire with feral business instincts engages with a violent Sicilian Mafia family? Will his wealth become the justification for an affair that funds a migrant charity? The billionaire and his wife, the migrant charity couple, and the Mafia family find that they are neighbors in the mysterious Nebrodi Mountains of Sicily. Jerry Johnson, an African American billionaire from the Bronx, New York, and his young Spanish wife, Balencia Hidalgo, an accomplished artist, have renovated and enlarged their 18th-century residence in the small village of Gabiana in the Nebrodi Mountains. The Johnson’s new neighbours are David and Eva Pretorius, who work for a refugee charity in Sicily. Situated between the two couples is the Forio family, of which Salvatore (known as Shorty) is the head. Shorty has a wife and three married children living with him, and they are Mafia. “This is a fast-paced, action-packed tale that skillfully showcases love, family, tragedy, and loss amidst a bevy of criminal activity.” – Blue Ink Reviews

Kamiri, a dirt-poor migrant raised in tribal culture, is drawn to the city, where he joins his brother in the illegal drugs trade. Disillusioned, Kamiri enters professional football, but his jealous brother shoots Kamiri in the knee, forcing him to begin work as a forest ranger. Hassan, of doubtful parentage, is the youngest child in a rich and powerful Muslim family. Lonely and insecure at university, he joins Dorothy at a political protest that goes wrong, and finds himself in a terrorist organisation. Appalled by their activities, he escapes and enters the Army’s officer candidate school. Dorothy, a college graduate from a middle-class Christian family, is an idealist who is unsure whether to enter politics or medicine. Set back in both careers, she makes a decision, and faces a further romantic choice between Kamiri or Hassan. These three East African young people are intertwined in friendship, as each seeks a fully satisfying and challenging life and career identity. Two voices are heard throughout. One, seemingly the voice of God, and the Other, possibly Satan's voice, offer conflicting guidance on achieving superpersonhood. “Appealing characters and an intriguing portrait of modern Africa.” – Susan Waggoner, Foreword Reviews

Presenting a thorough examination of the sacred forests of Asia, this volume engages with dynamic new scholarly dialogues on the nature of sacred space, place, landscape, and ecology in the context of the sharply contested ideas of the Anthropocene. Given the vast geographic range of sacred groves in Asia, this volume discusses the diversity of associated cosmologies, ecologies, traditional local resource management practices, and environmental governance systems developed during the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. Adopting theoretical perspectives from political ecology, the book views ecology and polity as constitutive elements interacting within local, regional, and global networks. Readers will find the very first systematic comparative analysis of sacred forests that include the karchall mabhuy of the Katu people of Central Vietnam, the leuweng kolot of the Baduy people of West Java, the fengshui forests of southern China, the groves to the goddess Sarna Mata worshiped by the Oraon people of Jharkhand India, the mauelsoop and bibosoop of Korea, and many more. Comprising in-depth, field-based case studies, each chapter shows how the forest’s sacrality must not be conceptually delinked from its roles in common property regimes, resource security, spiritual matters of ultimate concern, and cultural identity. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of indigenous studies, environmental anthropology, political ecology, geography, religion and heritage, nature conservation, environmental protection, and Asian studies.

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg claims to run the city like a business. In Bloomberg's New York, Julian Brash applies methods from anthropology, geography, and other social science disciplines to examine what that means. He describes the mayor's attitude toward governance as the Bloomberg Way--a philosophy that holds up the mayor as CEO, government as a private corporation, desirable residents and businesses as customers and clients, and the city itself as a product to be branded and marketed as a luxury good. Commonly represented as pragmatic and nonideological, the Bloomberg Way, Brash argues, is in fact an ambitious reformulation of neoliberal governance that advances specific class interests. He considers the implications of this in a blow-by-blow account of the debate over the Hudson Yards plan, which aimed to transform Manhattan's far west side into the city's next great high-end district. Bringing this plan to fruition proved surprisingly difficult as activists and entrenched interests pushed back against the Bloomberg administration, suggesting that despite Bloomberg's success in redrawing the rules of urban governance, older political arrangements--and opportunities for social justice--remain.

Why and how has the business corporation come to exert such a powerful influence on American society? The essays here take up this question, offering a fresh perspective on the ways in which the business corporation has assumed an enduring place in the modern capitalist economy, and how it has affected American society, culture and politics over the past two centuries. The authors challenge standard assumptions about the business corporation's emergence and performance in the United States over the past two centuries. Reviewing in depth the different theoretical and historiographical traditions that have treated the corporation, the volume seeks a new departure that can more fully explain this crucial institution of capitalism. Rejecting assertions that the corporation is dead, the essays show that in fact it has survived and even thrived down to the present in part because of the ways in which it has related to its social, political and cultural environmental. In doing so, the book breaks with older explanations ground in technology and economics, and treats the corporation for the first time as a fully social institution. Drawing on a variety of social theories and approaches, the essays help to point the way toward future studies of this powerful and enduring institution, offering a new periodization and a new set of question for scholars to explore. The range of essays engages the legal and political position of the corporation, the ways in which the corporation has been shaped by and shaped American culture, the controversies over corporate regulation and corporate power, and the efforts of minority and disadvantaged groups to gain access to the resources and opportunities that corporations control.

Serves as a guide for teachers and non-academic C S Lewis enthusiasts who lead Lewis study groups. This work covers chapters that include a biographical sketch of Lewis' life at the time he was composing the book, including his influences. It also contains a "For Further Reading" bibliography of books related to the book under discussion.

Seeking Father Khaliq is a modern allegory about one man’s search for spiritual fulfillment. Set in the Middle East, Philosophy Professor Kareem al-Busiri teaches at a prestigious Egyptian university. The professor is persuaded to undertake important pilgrimages. He falls in love with a colleague, while attempting to manage mortal conflicts of values and ideology between his two sons. Carefully researched and constructed, this dynamic story reflects the current religious, political, and social turmoil of the region. Seeking Father Khaliq is unique in its Middle East setting, and its focus on Islam, as well as elements of Christianity and Judaism. The use of the jihadist conflict in Egypt as a surrogate for larger regional conflicts, the religious pilgrimages, and the resolution of inter-faith marriage issues are also highlighted.

'Courageous teachers wanted to rebuilt war-torn nation.'With her marriage over and life gone flat, Theresa Turner responds to an online ad, and lands at a school in Kurdish Iraq. Befriended by a widow in a nearby village, Theresa is embroiled in the joys and agonies of traditional Kurds, especially the women who survived Saddam's genocide only to be crippled by age-old restrictions, brutality and honor killings. Theresa's greatest challenge will be balancing respect for cultural values while trying to introduce more enlightened attitudes toward women ? at the same time seeking new spiritual dimensions within herself.'The Kurdish Bike is gripping, tender, wry and compassionate ? an eye-opener into little-known customs in one of the world's most explosive regions ? a novel of love, betrayal and redemption.