No Guarantees is about a young African-American male who tries to overcome everyday stresses and problems while attending college. One of his major problems is that he is in love with a young lady [Shirl] who happens to be one of his best friends, and she happens to have a steady boyfriend. Despite this fact, Horne has finally convinced her to go out on a “real” date with him. The date starts out rocky, but ends with Horne passionately kissing her. He is excited and happy about what happened on the date, however, the events that follow the date do not go as well as he anticipated, and his excitement and happiness turn to uncertainty and disappointment. While Horne is constantly riding an emotional roller coaster with Shirl, he tries to have fun and keep perspective on things by kicking it with his boys: Stevall, a twenty something virgin; Corey, a player who prides himself on being able to juice money out of women; Fred, an always hungry geek who is desperate for love; Tim, a loud talking, skinny, want to be mack daddy. They all keep him on his toes as he discovers that in life and love nothing is guaranteed.

In No Guarantees, Jennifer Jamieson Woods spins a tale of love, loss, and redemption. From a small town in Ontario, Canada, young Josephine Duckworth follows her sister to Anchorage, Alaska. It is the oil boom of the 1970s, when the men outnumber the women four to one. She falls in love with a true Alaskan man. She moves in with him into his cabin in the woods. After they spend two weeks snowed in, she realizes she is pregnant. Although he wants her to have an abortion, she is unwilling. When things go terribly wrong with her pregnancy, she begins a downward spiral that takes her to the depths of despair. She finds work that fills her soul but loses her job due to her excessive drinking. A woman in her life sees her potential, cuts her no slack, but at the same time helps to set her on a path that will lead to positive change in her life. A move takes the character Josie to Bellingham, Washington, where she finds the solution for her drinking problem as well as a means of gaining closure over her loss. You'll laugh; you'll cry along with Josie as she comes of age and confronts her tragic experience. Her perseverance comes through as she tries to make heads and tails of her big ordeal. Eventually she learns that there are no guarantees in life.

Stuart Hall’s retirement from the Open University in 1997 provided a unique opportunity to reflect on an academic career which has had the most profound impact on scholarship and teaching in many parts of the world. From his early work on the media, through his influential re-working of Gramsci for the analysis of Britain in the late 1970s, through his considered debates on Thatcherism and more recently on “race” and new ethnicities, Hall has been an inspirational figure for generations of academics. He has helped to make universities places where ideas and social commitment can exist alongside each other. This collection invites a wide range of academics who have been influenced by Stuart Hall’s writing to contribute not a memoir or a eulogy but an engaged piece of social, cultural or historical analysis which continues and develops the field of thinking opened up by Hall. The topics covered include identity and hybridity, history and post-colonialism, pedagogy and cultural politics, space and place, globalization and economy, modernity and difference.

This is a review of where the women of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean stand on key social and cultural issues. What progress have women in particular countries made? How do social pressures, cultural expectations and continuing poverty hold back effective recognition of their rights? What prospects, as a result of continuing research, activism by women's organizations and measures by government, does the next generation hold out of for further progress in women's social position?

This volume provides coverage of syndicated bank credit agreements and loan transfers, international bond issues including equity-linked bonds, note programs and high yield notes, bondholder trustees and collective action clauses and more.

This publication helps policy makers to better understand annuity products and the guarantees they provide in order to optimise the role that these products can play in financing retirement.