Forever Curious

In an intellectual clash of galactic proportions, the biggest mystery in the Universe encounters the smartest girl from Earth. Na-Yeli Maya is humanity’s champion exploring the forbidding Enigmatic Object. She’s not truly alone, as her exosuit is armed with the most advanced quantum computer—and obnoxious digital assistant—ever, and her tri-schizoid condition enables her to call up her ultimate warrior and lateral thinker personas in times of dire need. Along the way, she partners with a stranded Moiety Alien and adopts a group of hypersounders, as they make it all the way into the Core. What will they find?

Life’s Little Lessons Forever: The Rhythm and Reason for Life James E. Smith, Ph. D. This book is the third in a series of the lessons learned during my life. The first volume, Life’s Little Lessons - with some not so little was primarily situated during the adolescent years up until college. That book was about those experiences that we all most likely encounter in our own way during those developmental years. The second book, Life’s Little Lessons, too - A Proper Life with a Career, starts off where the first one ended extending those life lessons learned while developing and executing a professional career. As in both volumes, it is the individuals you interact with all around you, plus the social, physical, and clearly professional environments you live in that impact who you are now and who you will become in the future. While these lessons, collectively, are all unique influences in your personal development, it turns out these factors are only part of a set of what I refer to as lessons that everyone is exposed to and allowed to integrate into their personality, at their choosing. Together they essentially become the building blocks of your existence and help to determine how well you will, and can, participate in your ever-changing social, personal, and professional environments. It is in the responses and reactions created through our experienced stories where we learn to understand who we really are and how best we are to live and work in the complex and interwoven environments that we exist in. This book consists of a series of prepared thoughts on what I think are life’s most important issues: love, spirituality, leadership, family and friends, passion and intimacy, plus some thoughts less specific. It also includes several quotes and sayings used to reinforce ideas for my friends, family members, and students. It is hoped that reading this book will help the reader realize the importance of these lessons and how attention to their details in your own life will enhance and encourage your continued professional, personal, and social development.

In 1940, Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey built two bikes, packed what they could, and fled wartime Paris. Among the possessions they escaped with was a manuscript that would later become one of the most celebrated books in children’s literature—Curious George. Since his debut in 1941, the mischievous icon has only grown in popularity. After being captured in Africa by the Man in the Yellow Hat and taken to live in the big city’s zoo, Curious George became a symbol of curiosity, adventure, and exploration. In Curious about George: Curious George, Cultural Icons, Colonialism, and US Exceptionalism, author Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre argues that the beloved character also performs within a narrative of racism, colonialism, and heroism. Using theories of colonial and rhetorical studies to explain why cultural icons like Curious George are able to avoid criticism, Schwartz-DuPre investigates the ways these characters operate as capacious figures, embodying and circulating the narratives that construct them, and effectively argues that discourses about George provide a rich training ground for children to learn US citizenship and become innocent supporters of colonial American exceptionalism. By drawing on postcolonial theory, children’s criticisms, science and technology studies, and nostalgia, Schwartz-DuPre’s critical reading explains the dismissal of the monkey’s 1941 abduction from Africa and enslavement in the US, described in the first book, by illuminating two powerful roles he currently holds: essential STEM ambassador at a time when science and technology is central to global competitiveness and as a World War II refugee who offers a “deficient” version of the Holocaust while performing model US immigrant. Curious George’s twin heroic roles highlight racist science and an Americanized Holocaust narrative. By situating George as a representation of enslaved Africans and Holocaust refugees, Curious about George illuminates the danger of contemporary zero-sum identity politics, the colonization of marginalized identities, and racist knowledge production. Importantly, it demonstrates the ways in which popular culture can be harnessed both to promote colonial benevolence and to present possibilities for resistance.

Writing her first book “Jumping Of The Devil’s Shoulder” was often heartbreaking for Renate v.K. Ruzich. But her new life after WWII showed her how beautiful and interesting the world can be. This book tells her stories about experiences, events and places that will always stay in her mind. These stories are sometimes funny, sometimes strange, but always have opened new views to her. She wrote this in the hope that stories will make people open to their surroundings and also find the beauty in places and events that make life happier. These stories are all true and will surprise many readers. So look around and “wonder”. Then follow up and see what YOU find! Renate decided to publish her book in larger print to make it easier to read for young and old. Have fun!

12 Nobel Laureates take readers on a tour of some of the everyday issues that can be explored using basic economic principles. Topics include how economic tools can be used to rebuild nations in the aftermath of a war; financing retirement as longevity increases and what governments should really be doing to boost the economy.

In The Missing Piece of the Puzzle, two men are running out of time to have their dreams come true. Max Duncan hopes to become an accomplished author but he cannot find a good story to write. Sala Walker has a sea trunk filled with historical materials that have never been made public, but he cannot write. Neither man can achieve success on his own until a curious letter brings them together. Each man will learn that he holds the key to ther other's success. The Missing Piece of the Puzzle is a story of international intrigue, a terrifying skyjacking incident, travel to a forbidden place, a hurricane with disasterous effects, a debilitating disease that affects one of the men, and even a frightening and unexpected encounter with one of the men's wives. This is a fast paced compelling novel that brings a questionable incident in American history, the explosion and the sinking of the battleship, The Maine in 1898, into the twenty-first century.