The public education system in New York is in turmoil. Is this because of leadership in Albany, the No Child Left Behind Act, parents who fail in their effort to raise children properly, or is it just the fault of kids who show little to no respect for authority, peers, or themselves? Or should we accept the most popular place of blame? The teacher is the problem. The former world, where teachers were revered, looked up to by children and parents, and respected because of the crucial role they played, is all but a forgotten memory. Today, parents and school administrators often demonize teachers and are openly critical of the tenure system, which protects their positions seemingly forever. Riverton School District has lots of issues. There is rampant bullying and peer intimidation. Some kids are even afraid to come to school. The disrespect and outrageous behavior runs not only unchecked, but leadership in Albany wants to see even less discipline and consequences for the young perpetrators. Brendan Moss teaches eighth-grade math at Riverton. As a widower and devoted father of three, he does his best to assist young people, but the school superintendent wants to use the veteran math teacher as a test case to overturn the right to lifetime tenure. Dont Blame the Messenger addresses school policies, State Department of Education leadership, bullying, and why a teachers tenure should be maintained and viewed as something good for kids and the process of learning. The author works in the trenches, where truth and reality collide. Opinions on what is wrong with public education vary. Dont Blame the Messenger is written by a teacher who knows how it really is.

This volume explores the growing hostility of the public toward the media, discussing the reasons behind the ever-widening communications gap and the disturbing consequences of the problem.

Lies aren't her only weapons against the fae... In the Halow system, one of Earth’s three sister star systems, tek and magic—humans and fae—are at war. Kesh Lasota is a ghost in the machine. Invisible to tek, she’s hired by the criminal underworld to carry illegal messages through the Halow system. But when one of those messages kills its recipient, Kesh finds herself on the run with a bounty on her head and a quick-witted marshal on her tail. Proving her innocence should be straightforward. Until a warfae steals the evidence she needs. The fae haven’t been seen in Halow in over a thousand years. And this one—a brutally efficient killer able to wield tek—should not exist. But neither should Kesh. As Kesh’s carefully crafted lie of a life crumbles around her, she knows being invisible is no longer an option. To hunt the warfae, to stop him from destroying a thousand-year fragile peace, she must resurrect the horrors of her past. Kesh Lasota was a ghost. Now she’s back, and there’s only one thing she knows for certain: Nobody shoots the messenger and gets away with it. Reader note: This series is professionally edited and proofread for your reading enjoyment. DragonCon Award finalist for Best Fantasy (Paranormal) 2018 Messenger Chronicles reading order: Shoot the Messenger, #1 Game of Lies, #2 The Nightshade's Touch, #3 Prince of Dreams, #4 Her Dark Legion, #5 (coming late 2019) Shoot the Messenger is a full-length novel: 80,000 words. Genre: Science-fantasy. Paranormal in a sci-fi setting. Slow-burn alternative relationship dynamic. Dark fantasy. Paranormal fantasy. Urban fantasy series. Perfect for readers of Ilona Andrews, Jeaniene Frost, Lilith Saintcrow and Laurell K Hamilton. Download for free now and begin this fae-in-space fantasy adventure!

These days the truth is hard to find. If the press is not beleived-or believable-because politicians have turned the public against it, then the press is not free, and without a free press, there is no democracy. Includes behind the scenes stories about reporters and politicians in conflict, an objective look at the ongoing debate over liberal and conservative bias in the news media, an engaging story of the Internet's positive and negative impact on the reliable flow of information, and a media resource guide to the best sources of objective reporting.

Jan Karski, a young Polish diplomat turned cavalry officer, joined the Polish underground movement after escaping from a Soviet detention camp in 1939. He served as a courier for the underground, ferrying messages between occupied Poland and the exiled Polish leaders, before he was captured and brutally tortured by the Gestapo. Escaping from the Germans, Jan Karski was charged with the mission of his lifetime: to convey a message to the Allies about Hitler's program to exterminate the Jews of Europe. He visited Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto so that he could relate the truth about inhuman conditions first hand when he met, soon after, with leaders and top officials in London and President Roosevelt in Washington. He had the ears of the decision–makers, yet nothing was done to prevent the ultimate fate of millions of Jews. Published to immense acclaim in France, The Messenger is a compelling and tragic story. An extraordinary novelized biography about a man's moral courage and our collective humanity, with parallels to Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark and WG Sebald's Austerliz.

Swami Vivekananda was a great admirer of Jesus Christ. We find his heartfelt adoration for this Messiah spread throughout his Works. This booklet published by Advaita Ashrama, a Publication House of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math, India, contains a lecture delivered by him on Christ at Los Angeles in 1900.

A New York Times bestselling series A USA TODAY bestselling series A California Young Reader Medal–winning series In this riveting series opener, a telepathic girl must figure out why she is the key to her brand-new world before the wrong person finds the answer first. Twelve-year-old Sophie has never quite fit into her life. She’s skipped multiple grades and doesn’t really connect with the older kids at school, but she’s not comfortable with her family, either. The reason? Sophie’s a Telepath, someone who can read minds. No one knows her secret—at least, that’s what she thinks… But the day Sophie meets Fitz, a mysterious (and adorable) boy, she learns she’s not alone. He’s a Telepath too, and it turns out the reason she has never felt at home is that, well…she isn’t. Fitz opens Sophie’s eyes to a shocking truth, and she is forced to leave behind her family for a new life in a place that is vastly different from what she has ever known. But Sophie still has secrets, and they’re buried deep in her memory for good reason: The answers are dangerous and in high-demand. What is her true identity, and why was she hidden among humans? The truth could mean life or death—and time is running out.

“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

On the trail of a deadly al-Qaeda operative, Gabriel Allon returns in a spellbinding story of deception, power, and revenge by the #1 New York Times bestselling "world-class practitioner of spy fiction" (Washington Post). Gabriel Allon—art restorer and spy—is about to face the greatest challenge of his life. An al-Qaeda suspect is killed in London, and photographs are found on his computer—photographs that lead Israeli intelligence to suspect that al-Qaeda is planning one of its most audacious attacks ever, aimed straight at the heart of the Vatican. Allon and his colleagues soon find themselves in a deadly duel of wits against one of the most dangerous men in the world—a hunt that will take them across Europe to the Caribbean and back. But for them, there may not be enough of anything: enough time, enough facts, enough luck. All Allon can do is set his trap—and hope that he is not the one caught in it.

Major Motion Picture based on Dark Alliance and starring Jeremy Renner, "Kill the Messenger," to be be released in Fall 2014 In August 1996, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News reporting the results of his year-long investigation into the roots of the crack cocaine epidemic in America, specifically in Los Angeles. The series, titled “Dark Alliance,” revealed that for the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and funneled millions in drug profits to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras. Gary Webb pushed his investigation even further in his book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Drawing from then newly declassified documents, undercover DEA audio and videotapes that had never been publicly released, federal court testimony, and interviews, Webb demonstrates how our government knowingly allowed massive amounts of drugs and money to change hands at the expense of our communities. Webb’s own stranger-than-fiction experience is also woven into the book. His excoriation by the media—not because of any wrongdoing on his part, but by an insidious process of innuendo and suggestion that in effect blamed Webb for the implications of the story—had been all but predicted. Webb was warned off doing a CIA expose by a former Associated Press journalist who lost his job when, years before, he had stumbled onto the germ of the “Dark Alliance” story. And though Internal investigations by both the CIA and the Justice Department eventually vindicated Webb, he had by then been pushed out of the Mercury News and gone to work for the California State Legislature Task Force on Government Oversight. He died in 2004.