Midlife Musings Plus Sundry Sonnets From The Porch

"There is no one quite like Barbara Kingsolver in contemporary literature," raves the Washington Post Book World, and it is right. She has been nominated three times for the ABBY award, and her critically acclaimed writings consistently enjoy spectacular commercial success as they entertain and touch her legions of loyal fans. In High Tide in Tucson, she returnsto her familiar themes of family, community, the common good and the natural world. The title essay considers Buster, a hermit crab that accidentally stows away on Kingsolver's return trip from the Bahamas to her desert home, and turns out to have manic-depressive tendencies. Buster is running around for all he's worth -- one can only presume it's high tide in Tucson. Kingsolver brings a moral vision and refreshing sense of humor to subjects ranging from modern motherhood to the history of private property to the suspended citizenship of human beings in the Animal Kingdom. Beautifully packaged, with original illustrations by well-known illustrator Paul Mirocha, these wise lessons on the urgent business of being alive make it a perfect gift for Kingsolver's many fans.

You are just one small step away from the life you know you deserve. It's time to leverage your life. Life Leverage means taking control of your life, easily balancing your work and free time, making the most money with the minimum time input & wastage, and living a happier and more successful life. Using Rob Moore's remarkable Life Leverage model, you'll quickly banish & outsource all your confusion, frustration and stress & live your ideal, globally mobile life, doing more of what you love on your own terms. Learn how to: - Live a life of clarity & purpose, merging your passion & profession - Make money & make a difference, banishing work unhappiness - Use the fast-start wealth strategies of the new tech-rich - Maximise the time you have; don't waste a moment by outsourcing everything - Leverage all the things in your life that don't make you feel alive 'This book shows you how to get more done, faster and easier than you ever thought possible. A great book that will change your life'. Brian Tracy, bestselling author of Eat That Frog

America’s most provocative intellectual brings her blazing powers of analysis to the most famous poems of the Western tradition—and unearths some previously obscure verses worthy of a place in our canon. Combining close reading with a panoramic breadth of learning, Camille Paglia sharpens our understanding of poems we thought we knew, from Shakespeare to Dickinson to Plath, and makes a case for including in the canon works by Paul Blackburn, Wanda Coleman, Chuck Wachtel, Rochelle Kraut—and even Joni Mitchell. Daring, riveting, and beautifully written, Break, Blow, Burn is a modern classic that excites even seasoned poetry lovers—and continues to create generations of new ones.

Businesses today want actionable insights into their data—they want their data to reveal itself to them in a natural and user–friendly form. What could be more natural than human language? Natural–language search is at the center of a storm of ever–increasing web–driven demand for human–computer communication and information access. SQL Server 2008 provides the tools to take advantage of the features of its built–in enterprise–level natural–language search engine in the form of integrated full–text search (iFTS). iFTS uses text–aware relational queries to provide your users with fast access to content. Whether you want to set up an enterprise–wide Internet or intranet search engine or create less ambitious natural–language search applications, this book will teach you how to get the most out of SQL Server 2008 iFTS: Introducing powerful iFTS features in SQL Server, such as the FREETEXT and CONTAINS predicates, custom thesauruses, and stop lists Showing you how to optimize full–text query performance through features like full–text indexes and iFilters Providing examples that help you understand and apply the power of iFTS in your daily projects

Virtually unknown today, Alfred Russel Wallace was the co-discoverer of natural selection with Charles Darwin and an eminent scientist who stood out among his Victorian peers as a man of formidable mind and equally outsized personality. Now Michael Shermer rescues Wallace from the shadow of Darwin in this landmark biography. Here we see Wallace as perhaps the greatest naturalist of his age--spending years in remote jungles, collecting astounding quantities of specimens, writing thoughtfully and with bemused detachment at his reception in places where no white man had ever gone. Here, too, is his supple and forceful intelligence at work, grappling with such arcane problems as the bright coloration of caterpillars, or shaping his 1858 paper on natural selection that prompted Darwin to publish (with Wallace) the first paper outlining the theory of evolution. Shermer also shows that Wallace's self-trained intellect, while powerful, also embraced surprisingly naive ideas, such as his deep interest in the study of spiritual manifestations and seances. Shermer shows that the same iconoclastic outlook that led him to overturn scientific orthodoxy as he worked in relative isolation also led him to embrace irrational beliefs, and thus tarnish his reputation. As author of Why People Believe Weird Things and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, Shermer is an authority on why people embrace the irrational. Now he turns his keen judgment and incisive analysis to Wallace's life and his contradictory beliefs, restoring a leading figure in the rise of modern science to his rightful place.

That a Jew living in Nazi Berlin survived the Holocaust at all is surprising. That he was a homosexual and a teenage leader in the resistance and yet survived is amazing. But that he endured the ongoing horror with an open heart, with love and without vitriol, and has written about it so beautifully is truly miraculous. This is Gad Beck's story.