Chariots of the Gods | Unsolved Mysteries of the Past

By Erich von Daniken
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Pages: 248, Date: 1999-01-01
ISBN / ASIN: 0425166805

Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods is a work of monumental importance--the first book to introduce the shocking theory that ancient Earth had been visited by aliens. This world-famous bestseller has withstood the test of time, inspiring countless books and films, including the author's own popular sequel, The Eyes of the Sphinx.

But here is where it all began--von Daniken's startling theories of our earliest encounters with alien worlds, based upon his lifelong studies of ancient ruins, lost cities, potential spaceports, and a myriad of hard scientific facts that point to extraterrestrial intervention in human history. Most incredible of all, however, is von Daniken's theory that we ourselves are the descendants of these galactic pioneers--and the archeological discoveries that prove it... * An alien astronaut preserved in a pyramid
* Thousand-year-old spaceflight navigation charts
* Computer astronomy from Incan and Egyptian ruins
* A map of the land beneath the ice cap of Antarctica
* A giant spaceport discovered in the Andes
Includes remarkable photos that document mankind's first contact with aliens at the dawn of civilization.

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Barack Obama, The Aloha Zen President

by: Michael Haas

publisher: Praeger

year: 2011, pages: 461

How a Son of the 50th State May Revitalize America Based on 12 Multicultural Principles
Obama's aspiration to transform the United States using Hawai`i as his model has been a conspicuous theme in his books and speeches over the years. In them, he extols Hawai`i's multicultural ethos, describing how a normative, problem-solving mindset predicated on mutual respect and harmonious interchange is inculcated in the culture, politics, and society of the Islands.

Indeed, this "Aloha Spirit" is imbued in Barack Obama, is part of what made him irresistibly charismatic as a candidate, and explains why voters in 2010 were baffled at his demeanor after he became the 44th President of the United States.This unique book examines Obama's decisions as an adult and as president and exposes how they are directly linked to the culture of Hawai`i and Obama's multicultural life as a child.

The author and contributors also describe the ways in which native Hawaiians were dispossessed of their sovereignty and their land, how they steadfastly sought justice, and how their quest served as a model for Obama's mobilization of support for his candidacy.

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Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth

By: Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi, Mahadev Desai
publisher: Beacon Press
year: 1993, pages: 269
PDF 1.2 MB

Translated by Mahadev Desai and with a New PrefaceThe only authorized American editionMohandas K. Gandhi is one of the most inspiring figures of our time. In his classic autobiography he recounts the story of his life and how he developed his concept of active nonviolent resistance, which propelled the Indian struggle for independence and countless other nonviolent struggles of the twentieth century.

In a new foreword, noted peace expert and teacher Sissela Bok urges us to adopt Gandhi's "attitude of experimenting, of tesing what will and will not bear close scrutiny, what can and cannot be adapted to new circumstances," in order to bring about change in our own lives and communities.

All royalties earned on this book are paid to the Navajivan Trust, founded by Gandhi, for use in carrying on his work.

Gandhi's nonviolent struggles in South Africa and India had already brought him to such a level of notoriety, adulation, and controversy that when asked to write an autobiography midway through his career, he took it as an opportunity to explain himself.

Although accepting of his status as a great innovator in the struggle against racism, violence, and, just then, colonialism, Gandhi feared that enthusiasm for his ideas tended to exceed a deeper understanding. He says that he was after truth rooted in devotion to God and attributed the turning points, successes, and challenges in his life to the will of God.

His attempts to get closer to this divine power led him to seek purity through simple living, dietary practices (he called himself a fruitarian), celibacy, and ahimsa, a life without violence. It is in this sense that he calls his book The Story of My Experiments with Truth, offering it also as a reference for those who would follow in his footsteps. A reader expecting a complete accounting of his actions, however, will be sorely disappointed. Although Gandhi presents his episodes chronologically, he happily leaves wide gaps, such as the entire satyagraha struggle in South Africa, for which he refers the reader to another of his books.

And writing for his contemporaries, he takes it for granted that the reader is familiar with the major events of his life and of the political milieu of early 20th-century India. For the objective story, try Yogesh Chadha's Gandhi: A Life. For the inner world of a man held as a criminal by the British, a hero by Muslims, and a holy man by Hindus, look no further than these experiments. --Brian Bruya

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Empire of Magic: medieval romance and the politics of cultural fantasy

By Geraldine Heng
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Number Of Pages: 496 Date: 2003-05-15
File Size : 1.6 MB

Product Description:
Empire of Magic presents a beginning and genealogy for medieval romance and the King Arthur legend through the history of Europe's encounters with the East in crusades, travel, missionizing, and empire formation. It also produces definitions of "race" and "nation" for the medieval period and argues that the Middle Ages and medieval fantasies of race and religion have recently returned.

Drawing on feminist and gender theory, as well as cultural analyses of race, class, and colonialism,

this provocative book revises our understanding of the beginnings of the 900-year-old cultural genre we call romance, as well as the King Arthur legend. Geraldine Heng argues that romance arose in the twelfth century as a cultural response to the trauma and horror of taboo acts—in particular, the cannibalism committed by crusaders on the bodies of Muslim enemies in Syria during the First Crusade. From such encounters with the East, Heng suggests, sprang the fantastical episodes featuring King Arthur in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s chronicle, the History of the Kings of England, a work where history and fantasy collide and merge, each into the other, inventing crucial new examples and models for romances to come.
After locating the rise of romance and Arthurian legend in the contact zones of East and West, Heng demonstrates the adaptability of romance and its key role in the genesis of an English national identity. Discussing Jews, women, children, and sexuality in works like the romance of Richard Lionheart, stories of the saintly Constance, Arthurian chivalric literature, the legend of Prester John, and travel narratives, Heng shows how fantasy enabled audiences to work through issues of communal identity, race, color, class and alternative sexualities in socially sanctioned and safe modes of cultural discussion in which pleasure, not anxiety, was paramount. Romance also engaged with the threat of modernity in the late medieval period, as economic, social, and technological transformations occurred, and awareness grew of a vastly enlarged world beyond Europe, one encompassing India, China, and Africa. Finally, Heng posits, romance locates England and Europe within an empire of magic and knowledge that surveys the world and makes it intelligible—usable—for the future to come.

Empire of Magic is expansive in scope, spanning the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, and detailed in coverage, examining various types of romance—historical, national, popular, chivalric, family, and travel romances,among others—to see how cultural fantasy responds to changing crises,pressures, and demands in a number of different ways. Boldly controversial,theoretically sophisticated, and historically rooted, Empire of Magic is a dramatic re-staging of the role romance played in the culture of a period and world in ways that suggest how cultural fantasy still functions for us today.

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Historical Dictionary of the War of 1812 (Historical Dictionaries of War, Revolution, and Civil Unrest)

By Robert Malcomson
Publisher: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Number Of Pages: 768
Publication Date: 2006-01-28
rar'd pdf (with bookmarks) | 4.84 MB

Covers the period leading up to the war (1803-1812) and the events of the war itself (1812-1815), the chronology lays out the war. The dictionary includes more than 1,400 dictionary entries covering descriptions of engagements, explanations of weaponry, the compositions of regiments, major figures and a full list of key places, issues and terms. Also included are 21 photographs and 6 maps.

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Success Stories in Asian Aquaculture

By Sena S. De Silva, F. Brian Davy
Publisher: Springer
Number Of Pages: 214
Publication Date: 2009-10-14
File Type : rar'd pdf with cover & bookmarks
File Size : 3.879 MB

Product Description:
The stories presented in Success Stories in Asian Aquaculture reflect the unique nature of Asian aquaculture, providing first-time insight into how and why it has become so successful. Overall, the book demonstrates how the resilience, adaptability, and innovation of small-scale aquaculture farmers have been crucial to this success.

It also places aquaculture development in Asia into a wider global context, and describes its relationship to natural systems, social conditions, and economics. The book is unique in its in-depth presentation of primary research on Asian aquaculture, and in demonstrating how aquaculture can have a lasting positive impact on livelihoods, food security, and sustainable development.
This book will appeal to a wide range of readers. The introduction and conclusion give an excellent general overview of Asian aquaculture, and the individual case studies provide a wealth of new information for specialist readers. Researchers, development workers, and decision-makers, in particular, will be interested in how the Asian experience might be used to strengthen aquaculture development more generally and in other parts of the developing tropics of Latin America and Africa.

Sena S. De Silva is Director General of the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific and Honorary Professor of Aquaculture and Fisheries Biology at the School Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia.

F. Brian Davy is Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Canada and has over 35 years of experience in the field of aquatic resources.

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John Adams By David McCullough

By David McCullough
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Number Of Pages: 752
Publication Date: 2001-05-22
File Size : 5.58 MB
File Type : PDF

Left to his own devices, John Adams might have lived out his days as a Massachusetts country lawyer, devoted to his family and friends. As it was, events swiftly overtook him, and Adams--who, David McCullough writes, was "not a man of the world" and not fond of politics--came to greatness as the second president of the United States, and one of the most distinguished of a generation of revolutionary leaders.

He found reason to dislike sectarian wrangling even more in the aftermath of war, when Federalist and anti-Federalist factions vied bitterly for power, introducing scandal into an administration beset by other difficulties--including pirates on the high seas, conflict with France and England, and all the public controversy attendant in building a nation.

Overshadowed by the lustrous presidents Washington and Jefferson, who bracketed his tenure in office, Adams emerges from McCullough's brilliant biography as a truly heroic figure--not only for his significant role in the American Revolution but also for maintaining his personal integrity in its strife-filled aftermath.

McCullough spends much of his narrative examining the troubled friendship between Adams and Jefferson, who had in common a love for books and ideas but differed on almost every other imaginable point. Reading his pages, it is easy to imagine the two as alter egos. (Strangely, both died on the same day, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.) But McCullough also considers Adams in his own light, and the portrait that emerges is altogether fascinating. --Gregory McNamee


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English Historical Documents (Library Binding)

By G. M. Young, W. D. Handcock
Publisher: Routledge
Number Of Pages: 1044 Date: 1996-07-01
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0415143748
File Size : 2.2 MB | File Type : Rar

Product Description:
An authoritative work of primary evidence bringing together the most impressive and comprehensive collection of documents on English history ever published.

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