When his closest ally, Hawk, is beaten and left for dead while protecting a bookie, Spenser embarks on an epic journey to rehabilitate his best pal, body and soul. But that means infiltrating a ruthless mob—and redefining his friendship with Hawk in the name of vengeance... “Cold Service moves with the speed of light.”—Orlando Sentinel

When his closest ally, Hawk, is beaten and left for dead while protecting a bookie, Spenser embarks on an epic journey to rehabilitate his best pal, body and soul. But that means infiltrating a ruthless mob—and redefining his friendship with Hawk in the name of vengeance... “Cold Service moves with the speed of light.”—Orlando Sentinel

Miller (Momma Zen) uses daily household chores?laundry, kitchen, yard?to demonstrate timeless Buddhist principles. The skillful weaving of personal anecdotes, a few Zen terms, and acute insights?sometimes addressing the reader directly?distinguish this book from others in the genre. Miller, a Zen priest and student of the late Maezumi Roshi, argues for?the faultless wisdom of following instructions? when going about the mundane activities that form the substance of everyday life. --publisher.

On 26 December, 1991, the hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time. Yet, just six years earlier, when Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and chose Eduard Shevardnadze as his foreign minister, the Cold War seemed like a permanent fixture in world politics. Until its denouement, no Western or Soviet politician foresaw that the standoff between the two superpowers -- after decades of struggle over every aspect of security, politics, economics, and ideas -- would end within the lifetime of the current generation. Nor was it at all obvious that that the Soviet political leadership would undertake a huge internal reform of the USSR, or that the threat of a nuclear Armageddon could or would be peacefully wound down. Drawing on pioneering archival research, Robert Service's gripping investigation of the final years of the Cold War pinpoints the extraordinary relationships between Ronald Reagan, Gorbachev, George Shultz, and Shevardnadze, who found ways to cooperate during times of exceptional change around the world. A story of American pressure and Soviet long-term decline and overstretch, The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991 shows how a small but skillful group of statesmen grew determined to end the Cold War on their watch and transformed the global political landscape irreversibly.

Considering the importance which Latinos will have on American culture and politics in the 21st century, very little of a nonscholarly nature has been written about them. Rogers fills the gap somewhat with this journalistic biography of Ernesto Cortes,a grass-roots leader who teaches Latinos how to use the political system. A man who combines religion and secular ideology, Cortes is doing for the Latino communities nationally what Jesse Jackson did in Chicago a decade earlier. The book effectively captures the flavor of the movement in small, rural locales and in major urban centers, conveying Cortes's ideology and energy, as well as the issues close to the Latino heart. A welcome look at minority politics in the 1990s.