U.S. Ski Team racer, Peter Buckar, is America's best hope for bringing home the gold in multiple races in the upcoming Olympics. Weeks prior to the Games, Peter has a devastating crash on an icy Downhill race course in Chamonix, France. Unconscious, he is medevacked to the hospital. Days later, still comatose, Peter is snatched from his hospital bed. Is it for ransom? Is it a competing country trying to eliminate their biggest competition? Or are the reasons more nefarious? The list of suspects grows rapidly as Reid Clark's Chief of Security, along with European law enforcement combine efforts to work together to find Peter before it's too late. Balkind's books are endorsed by James Patterson, Clive Cussler, & John Feinstein

Kelley Price is out-of-work and out of ideas in New Jersey when learns of an inheritance from his uncle, a long forgotten Vietnam Vet. The estate turns out to be worth millions with properties and businesses all over Hawaii. But where did the money come from? Kelley goes to collect and discovers the uncles extensive ventures might include human trafficking and drug smuggling. As he digs deeper, it gets more bizarre, as he discovers the tale of hijacked Vietnamese gold that funds a criminal empire. Even more important, he meets the uncles beautiful but mysterious step daughter.

Mining is a legitimate and honorable enterprise. It contributes immensely to the national wealth. It has been the source of some of our great fortunes. Because there is something magical in the suggestion of gold or coal or copper taken out of the ground, sharpers have made mining an instrument of successful deception. They have tricked people into investing their savings in worthless or even non-existent mines. Perhaps you who read this have bitten at an advertisement in a reputable publication, which pretended to place the wealth of some western El Dorado at your feet for a few hundred dollars. Doubtless your money has disappeared. It is for the purpose of giving you the protection of a knowledge both of legitimate mining and of the ways of thieves that this article is published. AMERICA is the land of the free and the country of opportunity for all. Incidentally, it is free hunting-ground for sharpers, and a land of opportunity for the unscrupulous. No such chances for fraudulent business exist anywhere else in the world. Americans are the richest people on earth, and the most easily parted from their money. Those whose sole ambition is to get rich quick very frequently help some other man to get rich quick. Society owes no debt to either of these. It is obliged to support them both. This is wrong both as a moral and as an industrial proposition. Once, a dollar was spent to mine a dollar. To-day two are spent: One dollar goes into blasting powder, the other into advertising and office furniture. No doubt you have heard the age-old legend of the Mother Vein of Gold, which appears and vanishes, now and again, in this corner of the world. Superstition regarding this great original vein of gold is found wherever men seek the precious metal. The feverish Spaniards called this phantom lode the Madre d’Oro, or “Mother of Gold.” Now it is located in Mexico, now in India or Peru, California or Australia. Tradition says that Montezuma got his gold from this great vein, which lay in a secret valley whose whereabouts was jealously guarded by three priests of the war tribe, sole possessors of the knowledge. Any intruder who by chance or design looked down into this valley was smitten absolutely blind. Tradition among the successors of the Aztecs says that when Montezuma passed, the Madre d’Oro sank back again into the earth, and has been seen no more. Men still follow the phantom vein. Those who see it, even in their dreams, still are smitten blind.

In 1945, US intelligence officers in Manila discovered that the Japanese had hidden large quantities of gold bullion and other looted treasure in the Philippines. President Truman decided to recover the gold but to keep its riches secret. These, combined with Japanese treasure recovered during the US occupation, and with recovered Nazi loot, would create a worldwide American political action fund to fight communism. This 'Black Gold' gave Washington virtually limitless, unaccountable funds, providing an asset base to reinforce the treasuries of America's allies, to bribe political and military leaders, and to manipulate elections in foreign countries for more than fifty years.

This title presents a survey of some of the most exciting topics in condensed matter physics today, from the perspective of the pioneering work of Sam Edwards. Original articles from leaders in the field highlight the historical development as well as new and emerging areas.

Winner of the Bancroft Prize The world of the California Gold Rush that comes down to us through fiction and film is one of half-truths. In this brilliant work of social history, Susan Lee Johnson enters the well-worked diggings of Gold Rush history and strikes a rich lode. Johnson explores the dynamic social world created by the Gold Rush in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Stockton, charting the surprising ways in which the conventions of identity—ethnic, national, and sexual—were reshaped. With a keen eye for character and story, she shows us how this peculiar world evolved over time, and how our cultural memory of the Gold Rush took root.