Recommendations -- Background -- Female genital mutilation around the world -- Female genital mutilation in Iraqi Kurdistan -- Female genital mutilation : a human rights issue -- Official action on FGM.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

This vivid oral snapshot of an America that planted the blues is full of rhythmic grace. From the son of a sharecropper to an itinerant bluesman, Honeyboy's stories of good friends Charlie Patton, Big Walter Horton, Little Walter Jacobs, and Robert Johnson are a godsend to blues fans. History buffs will marvel at his unique perspective and firsthand accounts of the 1927 Mississippi River flood, vagrancy laws, makeshift courts in the back of seed stores, plantation life, and the Depression.

I'm gonna tell you all about it, Mom. I'm gonna tell it like I'm on the end of your bed, talking to you. I'm not gonna cover up, cause there's no need. You'll see how it's all a flippin miracle. The whole weird year. It's only one year in my life, Ma, but it's all the stuff you slept through when I was a kid. All the stuff you fished through when you got up. I'm warning you, Ma, this is the truth. Startling poetry in the grittiest of emotional word go ... raw, tender and laugh-out-loud Whiplash digs its nail into you from the funny - a kickarse gem of a book. Told with landscapes, Whiplash puts Farren on the map as a wordsmith of astonishing talent.

We Were Warriors Once is a military-political suspense novel. It chronicles the careers of four officers from the 1960s to the 1990s. Military promotions are based on an up-or-out systemyou either progress within specified time frames or you get left behind. Many officers who retire from their military careers at the Pentagon go through the revolving door and return in short order either as defense contract employees or civil servants. Not infrequently, they return to the same office where they worked before retiring. The same holds true for many political appointees. Men who once worked in Washington go off for a period to high-level assignments with defense contractors and return to influential positions in government. These revolving doors can sometimes have unintended negative consequences. President, and former five-star general, Dwight D. Eisenhowers warning against the power of the military-industrial complex is well known. However, that complex is actually tri-foldmilitary, industrial, and political. We Were Warriors Once incorporates revised editions of two previously published novels, Duty and Character and Wrong Enemy, Wrong War, with entirely new material that plumbs deeper into the defense contractors influence on national defense policies. The officers who wear the uniforms of the United States armed forces are by in large extraordinarily dedicated men and women. But in the profession of war, sometimes even the best are tempted at times to stray from the straight and narrow.

At the First Baptist Church of Maeby, Arkansas, the sins of the child belonged to the parents until the child turned thirteen. Sarah Jones was only eight years old in the summer of 1964, but with her mother Esther Mae on eight prayer lists and flipping around town with the generally mistrusted civil rights organizers, Sarah believed it was time to get baptized and take responsibility for her own sins. That would mean sitting on the mourner’s bench come revival, waiting for her sign, and then testifying in front of the whole church. But first, Sarah would need to navigate the growing tensions of small-town Arkansas in the 1960s. Both smarter and more serious than her years (a “fifty-year-old mind in an eight-year-old body,” according to Esther), Sarah was torn between the traditions, religion, and work ethic of her community and the progressive civil rights and feminist politics of her mother, who had recently returned from art school in Chicago. When organizers from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) came to town just as the revival was beginning, Sarah couldn’t help but be caught up in the turmoil. Most folks just wanted to keep the peace, and Reverend Jefferson called the SNCC organizers “the evil among us.” But her mother, along with local civil rights activist Carrie Dilworth, the SNCC organizers, Daisy Bates, attorney John Walker, and indeed most of the country, seemed determined to push Maeby toward integration. With characters as vibrant and evocative as their setting, Mourner’s Bench is the story of a young girl coming to terms with religion, racism, and feminism while also navigating the terrain of early adolescence and trying to settle into her place in her family and community.

Scenes especially selected for young thespians -- taken from such major plays as The Effect of Gamma Rays and Member of the Wedding -- are supplemented with acting tips, preparatory exercises, and directions.

Reproduction of the original: Alas! by Rhoda Broughton