The Opaque Veil

Hugh Wilkie is an officer of the Colonial Fleet. The only person alive able to meld his mind with the HCSIS computer. A system capable of not just controlling a Dread Naught but mankinds last hope in discovering the vector of the horrid disease targeting only humans one world after another. Hugh solves the mystery of the Pliil Plague but no one believes what he discovers. Wilkie finds out what has also been hidden from him by the Science Academy. He must fight not only to save humanity he must fight to save his own life with his new found powers. Hugh travels the Earth and the galaxy with his friends, to The Opaque Veil and back, in an attempt to save his people from doom. Hugh Wilkie comes to a realization he is part of an ancient prophecy when the truth of his own origins begin to surface. Hugh must struggle not only with the moral choices of modern humanity and its questionable ethics in modifying their genetic base, but he must grapple with the hard questions of his own path, identity and very soul. It reads like a fast-paced adventure story from the pulps or cliff-hanger series of old but with a decidedly modern sensibility -Rob Allison, Copy Editor

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The veil can be an instrument of feminist empowerment, and veiled anonymity can confer power to women. Starting from her own marriage ceremony at which she first wore a full veil, Rafia Zakaria examines how veils do more than they get credit for. Part memoir and part philosophical investigation, Veil questions that what is seen is always good and free, and that what is veiled can only signal servility and subterfuge. From personal encounters with the veil in France (where it is banned) to Iran (where it is compulsory), Zakaria shows how the garment's reputation as a pre-modern relic is fraught and up for grabs. The veil is an object in constant transformation, whose myriad meanings challenge the absolute truths of patriarchy. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

The founder of the Diamond Approach to Self-Realization examines narcissism through a spiritual lens, presenting it as our greatest barrier to understanding our truest self In this book, the author explores the underlying spiritual understanding of narcissism. He presents a detailed map of the steps involved in working through barriers that prevent us from recognizing the most essential nature of our true identity. “Almaas is one of the most significant voices for a new and remarkably integrated spiritual vision. His work connects the personal, the universal, the psychological and the spiritual not as pieces put together, but as the inseparable mandala of the sacred that we are. I respect his work to the highest degree and commend it to anyone interested in living the life of the spirit.” —Jack Kornfield, Ph.D., author of After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

This book combines loosely "autobiographical" texts by two of the most influential French intellectuals of our time. "Savoir," by Hélène Cixous is an account of her experience of recovered sight after a lifetime of severe myopia; Jacques Derrida's "A Silkworm of One's Own" muses on a host of motifs, including his varied responses to "Savoir."

Learning to Speak a New Tongue attempts to respond to a timely question facing America today: What holds people together in a fragmented world? The response comes from a religious community that has not been very visible: Asian Americans. The author employs the threefold epistemological scaffold familiar to Asian Americans: (1) translocal value orientation embedded in the experiences of racialization, (2) a heightened sensitivity to pathos arising out of our dissonance with the societal norms and values, and (3) amphibolous spirituality, that is, a co-existence of multiple religious traditions without any resolution of their differences. The angle of vision embedded in this epistemological framework of Asian Americans' lives may well provide a clue to an alternate architectural paradigm in building a new peoplehood and to redefine democratic freedom as the historical paradigm of American peoplehood.

In this exciting and challenging account of the development and sustainability of the liberal democratic state, Ajume H. Wingo offers a completely new perspective from that provided by political theorists. Such theorists will typically argue for the basic values of liberal democracies by rationally justifying them. This book argues that it is non-rational factors - rhetoric, symbols, traditions - that more often than not provide the real source of motivation. Drawing from both historical and philosophical sources Ajume H. Wingo demonstrates that these 'veils', as he calls them, can play an essential role in a thriving, stable liberal democratic state. This theory of veil politics furnishes a conceptual framework within which we can reassess the role of aesthetics in politics, the nature and function of political myths in liberal democracies, and the value of civic education.

This book reflects on the phenomenon of biotechnology and how it affects the body and discusses a number of related issues, including visualization, mediation, and epistemology. The author offers a compelling thesis, arguing that the exploration of the human body has one ultimate aim: to gain knowledge of it and to conquer it. Exploration of body has an intrinsic link to power, since knowledge is constitutive for the power over the body. Ultimately the conquest of body means the power to intervene into life processes. The book breaks new ground with its study of body visualizations, from the Renaissance drawings to the medical imaging. In particular, it investigates their complex mediality. It also considers the extension and the reach of biopower that is now possible thanks to a wide range of engineering applications. The author originally questions the research approach by rethinking the relationship between mental and sensual examination. She takes into consideration the epistemological problem of the two modes of exploration: obtaining knowledge from empirical exploration and projecting that knowledge to the object of exploration.

Literature and the Great War offers a fresh, challenging interpretation of the literature of the period, reappraising the settled assumptions through which war writing has come to be read in recent years.