During the Second World War Birmingham suffered 365 air raid alerts and 77 actual air raids. These raids took place between the 8th August 1940 and the 23rd April 1943. There were over 9,000 casualties of whom 2,241 were killed. This book contains the first hand accounts of some of those who survived. The Memorial shown on the front cover "The Tree of Life" by Lorenzo Quinn is dedicated to the memory of all victims of the Blitz on Birmingham. The memorial was donated to the City of Birmingham by the Halcyon Gallery on behalf of its founders Racna and Lionel Green, in association with Birmingham City Council and Birmingham Air Raids Remembrance Association.

Let's say you're the manager of one of the most beloved franchises in Major League Baseball, with every past and current player available on your bench. Game time is approaching and the ump needs your line-up card. Who's your starting pitcher? Fireballer Dwight Gooden, lights-out Tom Seaver, or run-stingy Jacob de Grom? Is Gary Carter behind the plate or Mike Piazza? Who'll bat clean-up? Combining statistical analysis, common sense, and a host of intangibles, Brian Wright constructs an all-time All-Star Mets line-up for the ages. Agree with his choices or not, you'll learn all there is to know about the men who played for and managed New York's Amazin' Mets.

Brigid of Kildare, Ireland, is uniquely venerated as both a goddess and a saint throughout Ireland, Europe and the USA. Often referred to as Mary of the Gael and considered the second most important saint in Ireland after St Patrick, her widespread popularity has led to the creation of more traditional activities than any other saint; some of which survive to this day. As a result of original historical and archaeological research Brian Wright provides a fascinating insight into this unique and mysterious figure. This book uncovers for the first time when and by whom the goddess was 'conceived' and evidence that St Brigid was a real person. It also explains how she 'became' a saint, her historical links with the unification of Ireland under a High King in the first century and discusses in depth her first documented visit to England in AD 488. Today, Brigid remains strongly connected with the fertility of crops, animals and humans and is celebrated throughout the world via the continuation of customs, ceremonies and relics with origins dating back to pre-Christian times. Using a combination of early Celtic history, archaeology, tradition and folklore from Ireland, Britain and other countries, this comprehensive study unravels the mystery of a goddess and saint previously complicated by the passage of time.

The conservation of genetic resources is vital to the maintenance of biodiversity and to the world's ability to feed its growing population. There are now more than a thousand genebanks worldwide involved in the ex situ (meaning "away from the source") storage of particular classes of crops. Since the 1970s, the eleven genebanks maintained by the centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) have become pivotal to the global conservation effort. However, key policy and management issues - usually with economic dimensions - have largely been overlooked.This provided the impetus for a series of detailed economic studies, led by IFPRI, in collaboration with five CGIAR centres: CIAT (based in Colombia), CIMMYT (Mexico), ICARDA (Syria), ICRISAT (India) and IRRI (Philippines). This book reports these studies and discusses their wider implications.

Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament is the inaugural volume of The Text and Canon of the New Testament series, edited by Daniel B. Wallace. This first volume focuses on issues in textual criticism; in particular, to what degree did the scribes, who copied their exemplars by hand, corrupt the autographs? All but one of the chapters deals specifically with New Testament textual criticism. The other addresses textual issues related to an early apocryphal work, the Gospel of Thomas. The book begins with the full transcription of Wallace's presentation at the Fourth Annual Greer-Heard Forum, in which he and Bart Ehrman debated over the reliability of the New Testament manuscripts. Adam Messer looks at the patristic evidence of "nor the Son" in Matthew 24:36 in a quest to determine whether the excision of these words was influenced by orthodox Fathers. Philip Miller wrestles with whether the least orthodox reading should be a valid principle for determining the autographic text. Matthew Morgan focuses attention on the only two Greek manuscripts that have a potentially Sabellian reading in John 1:1c. Timothy Ricchuiti tackles the textual history of the Gospel of Thomas, examining the Coptic text and the three Greek fragments, using internal evidence in order to determine the earliest stratum of Thomas. Brian Wright thoroughly examines the textual reliability of the passages in which Jesus appears to be called God, concluding that the textual proof of the designation theos as applied to Jesus in the NT merely confirms what other grounds have already established. Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament will be a valuable resource for those working in textual criticism, early Christianity, New Testament apocrypha, and patristics.