Invisible Seasons

In 1979, a group of women athletes at Michigan State University, their civil rights attorney, the institution’s Title IX coordinator, and a close circle of college students used the law to confront a powerful institution—their own university. By the mid-1970s, opposition from the NCAA had made intercollegiate athletics the most controversial part of Title IX, the 1972 federal law prohibiting discrimi nation in all federally funded education programs and activities. At the same time, some of the most motivated, highly skilled women athletes in colleges and universities could no longer tolerate the long-standing differences between men’s and women‘s separate but obviously unequal sports programs. In Invisible Seasons, Belanger recalls the remarkable story of how the MSU women athletes helped change the landscape of higher education athletics. They learned the hard way that even groundbreaking civil rights laws are not self-executing. This behind-the-scenes look at a university sports program challenges us all to think about what it really means to put equality into practice, especially in the money-driven world of college sports.

A knight faces one of the deadliest bloodsheds of his time. An African slave is trapped in the intrigues of a world that threatens his survival. A modern Indian girl struggles through her daily life often marooned amid passion, desire, and commitments. An aspiring CEO treads a path of hardship, lesser travelled by people. Though they all belong to different time zones, geographical boundaries, and gender - one element of mystery behaviour binds them that defy every boundary, culture, and norm. This secretive side is cunning enough to just change the face and occupy a new possessor. The imposter side is invincibly hidden inside the mind's ravine only to peep out and strike at the most opportune moment. What begins as a mystery becomes an eye-opener for everyone and helps unmask an invisible imposter within us. Sprinkled with liberal doses of witticism and humour, these tales will make the readers laugh, cry, rage, and think. "Imagination at its best- Will surely emerge as a star novel of this Millennium" --Mr. Sanjay Agrawal

China’s most sophisticated system of computational astronomy was created for a Mongol emperor who could neither read nor write Chinese, to celebrate victory over China after forty years of devastating war. This book explains how and why, and reconstructs the observatory and the science that made it possible. For two thousand years, a fundamental ritual of government was the emperor’s “granting the seasons” to his people at the New Year by issuing an almanac containing an accurate lunisolar calendar. The high point of this tradition was the “Season-granting system” (Shou-shih li, 1280). Its treatise records detailed instructions for computing eclipses of the sun and moon and motions of the planets, based on a rich archive of observations, some ancient and some new. Sivin, the West’s leading scholar of the Chinese sciences, not only recreates the project’s cultural, political, bureaucratic, and personal dimensions, but translates the extensive treatise and explains every procedure in minimally technical language. The book contains many tables, illustrations, and aids to reference. It is clearly written for anyone who wants to understand the fundamental role of science in Chinese history. There is no comparable study of state science in any other early civilization.

With the twelve-volume series Feasting on the Word, Westminster John Knox Press offers one of the most extensive and well-respected resources for preaching on the market today. When complete, the twelve volumes will cover all of the Sundays in the three-year lectionary cycle, along with moveable occasions. The page layout is truly unique. For each lectionary text, preachers will find brief essays-- one each on the exegetical, theological, pastoral, and homiletical challenges of the text. Each volume will also contain an index of biblical passages so that nonlectionary preachers may make use of its contents. The printed volumes for Ordinary Time include the complementary stream during Year A, the complementary stream during the first half of Year B, the semicontinuous stream during the second half of Year B, and the semicontinuous stream during Year C. Beginning with the season after Pentecost for Year C, the alternate lections for Ordinary Time not in the print volumes will be available online at feastingontheword.net.