For the first time in hardback, enjoy this collection of six action-packed short stories featuring Jimmy Carson (Operative Three) and Brains Benton (Operative X). This edition includes three previously unpublished tales. It also includes the story of how Brains and Jimmy met and the holiday favorite, "Christmas Eve in Crestwood."

The Law of Abundance a precise science that brings great clarity and predictability to every outcome; a philosophy that broadens insights and expands influence; a spirituality that can insulate you from failure; a journey that can take you anywhere you want to go; a vision that can bring you great fortune; a process for real transformation; a key to unlocking life's mysteries; a gift to all humanity. This book will change the way you look at everything. It presents a completely new paradigm that goes far beyond any previous attempt at explaining how and why life unfolds as it does. Here you will learn exactly how the most successful people throughout history have used the Law of Abundance to create the world we live in, to earn vast amounts of money, gain tremendous respect and personal power, maintain exceptional relationships, find deep joy and contentment, and accomplish every great thing. The Law of Abundance is based on scientifically proven principles that never change and never fail. So, if you believe you have tried everything and are still not experiencing wealth, health, happiness, achievement, great relationships and every other thing you desire, understanding and applying the Law of Abundance can completely and profoundly change your life - guaranteed.

Exiting OZ is an eye-opening book about leadership as it must become for organizations to survive in today's rapidly changing world. It is a must read for leaders interested in building a sustainable organization and populating it with dedicated, high performance people, and for high performance people interested in avoiding the perils and pitfalls of OZ organizations.OZ is a metaphor for Organizational Zeal, the notion that the organization is more important than the people that keep it alive. OZ organizations are full of ineffective leaders and each is exposed in this book through clever comparisons to the characters from L. Frank Baum's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.Exiting OZ takes you on a fascinating journey through the world of typical organizations and explains in colorful analogies why business-as-usual is a formula for failure as the newer generations move into the workforce majority and reject standard management practices.Giving organizations a ten to twelve year window to get it right, the authors explain, and back their assertions with plenty of data, why organizations of every kind, from corporations to governments, to academic, religious and other institutions must adopt new leadership strategies if they are to survive and thrive.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

More than two thirds of Americans are overweight, over one third are obese.43% of Americans are projected to be obese in 10 years time.Nearly one third of children and adolescents are overweight, 17% are obese.Since 1980, obesity prevalence among children and adolescents has almost tripled.Between 1988 and 2008 the prevalence of obesity among adults increased at all income and education levels.After smoking, obesity is America's leading cause of premature death and is linked to 70% of heart disease and 80% of diabetes.In 2008 the medical costs associated with obesity were estimated to be $147 billion.

In spite of the grim picture that these statistics paint, obesity is not your destiny and it need not be your end. Whatever your particular weight challenge may be do not accept it as your lot in life. If you have attempted to lose weight in the past and failed, do not be disheartened; it is within you to win victory over this foe. Get the encouragement and the tools you need to lose weight - and keep it off- with Living Life Lean.

This issue reviews and updates a variety of topics in pancreatic imaging.? Pearls on the Multiphasic CT of the pancreas are offered, along with the key MRI techniques for pancreatic imaging. Emerging CT, MR and US techniques for pancreatic evaluation (such as dual energy, DCMRI, spectroscopy, and US contrast) are elucidated.? Ultrasound for pancreatic imaging is given a thorough review.? An update on staging and resectability of pancreatic adenocarcinoma is discussed.? Acute and chronic pancreatitis are reviewed, as well as cystic pancreatic lesions, congenital pancreatic anomalies, uncommon solid pancreatic neoplasms, and other pancreatic pathology. Post-operative imaging of the pancreas is discussed, and finally, an update on endoscopic techniques for the pancreas is provided.

Things seem to be going well for Brains Benton and Jimmy Carson of the Benton and Carson International Detective Agency, when suddenly some strange things start to happen. Things go from bad to worse when they wind up framed for arson! Join Operative Three and X as they try to capture one of the most dangerous criminals they've ever encountered!

This thirteenth volume of the Academy of International Business series reflects the complexity of challenges faced by managers in today's global economy and the richness of the academic field of international business. It is novel in the range of issues it brings together with a number of chapters on two important contemporary themes in international business: the internationalization of services and doing business in China. The book concludes with the collective thoughts of several prominent international business scholars on new directions for international business scholarship.

This grammar of Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) phonology adds to a sparse literature on the units of categorical form in the world's sign languages. At the same time, it brings descriptive and theoretical research on sign language phonology into better alignment by systematically evaluating current models of sign language phonology for each of the main parameters - handshape, location, and movement - against the KSL data. This grammar also makes a methodological contribution by using a unique dataset of KSL minimal pairs in the analysis, demonstrating that minimal pairs are not as infrequent in sign languages as previously thought. The main content of the book is found in five chapters on handshape, location, core articulatory movement, manner of movement, and other distinctive features (e.g., orientation, mouth actions). The book also contains two large appendices that document the phonological evidence for each of the 44 handshapes and 37 locations. This book will be a key reference for descriptive and typological studies of sign phonology, as well as a helpful resource for linguists interested in understanding the similarities and differences between current models of sign phonology and identifying promising avenues for future research.

Sacred and Secular Intersections in Music of the Long Nineteenth Century: Church, Stage, and Concert Hall explores interconnections of the sacred and the secular in music and aesthetic debates of the long nineteenth century. The essays in this volume view the category of the sacred not as a monolithic attribute that applies only to music written for and performed in a religious ritual. Rather, the "sacred" is viewed as a functional as well as a topical category that enhances the discourse of cross-pollination of musical vocabularies between sacred and secular compositions, church and concert music. Using a variety of methodological approaches, the contributors articulate how sacred and religious identities coalesce, reconcile, fuse, or intersect in works from the long nineteenth century that traverse an array of genres and compositional styles.

Renowned music historian Philipp Spitta has written that of all the German musicians of the 19th century, none has exercised a greater influence over his own generation and that succeeding it than Weber. Spitta s statement reflects Weber s popularity at the end of the nineteenth century both for his place as a foundational figure of German Romantic opera and for his role in the early German Nationalist movement in music. Indeed, Weber s Der Freischutz is still considered the first German Romantic opera, enjoying a place of privilege in the modern operatic repertoire with performances held the world over and at least two cinematic productions. Despite its enormous popularity throughout the nineteenth century, however, Weber s swan song, Oberon, has remained separate from the mainstream thrust of our modern understanding of German Romantic opera. In Carl Maria von Weber: Oberon and the Cosmopolitanism in the Early German Romantic, music historian and theorist Joseph E. Morgan reassesses Weber s work and aesthetics not just for their influence but also as an expression of the aesthetics and cosmopolitanism that underlay the early Romantic and Nationalist movement in Germany. In a discussion with analyses that features nearly one-hundred musical examples, Morgan tracks the development of Weber s musical style across his career. The investigation culminates with Weber s last and long-misunderstood work, explaining its thematic and harmonic organization, its stylistic idiosyncrasies, and the tenuous place that it holds on the margins of the operatic canon. The discussion is enhanced and corroborated by frequent attention to correlating developments in other art from the period, including painting, poetry and literature. This text will be of interest to students, scholars, and connoisseurs interested in acquiring a new insight on the performance, reception, and aesthetics of early German Romantic opera. Further, because of the interdisciplinary nature of the investigation, anyone interested in the early romantic and nationalist movement in Germany will also certainly find interesting and valuable insights in this book."

Tyranny and Music is an edited collection of essays that explore how musical artists respond to cruel or oppressive governments and ruling regimes. Its primary strength and unique quality lies in its diversity, presenting a postmodern collage of scholarship that reaches across the divides of classical, popular and traditional musics just as it connects musical resistance of the past with the present and the near (Western) with the far (non-Western). Contemporary topics include Chosan's analysis of blood diamonds in the Sierra Leonean Civil War, and collective memory in the Persian Gulf War songs. Historical topics include the image of John Wilkes Booth in the popular imagination, censorship in the Soviet Union, Victor Ullman's song setting at Terezin, artistic restrictions in Maoist China, anti-inquisition propaganda in the outbreak of the Dutch revolt, Revolutionary Era Anthems in the United States and much more. These essays, while remarkable in their scholarly erudition, also provide intimate glimpses of the resiliency of the individual artist. From Cherine Amr's Heavy Metal resistance to the Muslim Brotherhood to Hanns Eisler's battle with the United States House on Un-American Activities Committee, stories of human struggle and perseverance arise from each of these narratives.

Roepke's The Social Crisis of Our Time is a series of blasts against the "malformations" of economics: the Nazi and Communist forms of collectivism both come in for severe criticism. Roepke shows the process by which the Western liberal tradition itself makes possible these rebellions against open economic systems. The drive toward social welfare, full employment policies, and the state management of fiscal fluctuations all lead away from free societies no less than market economies.

In this age of large cities, mass culture, and ever more massive events, people must struggle against an overwhelming crowd of their own creations to maintain human integrity. In this manual for human survival, Arthur E. Morgan offers a solution: peaceful existence in the small, primary community where, more easily than anywhere else, people can find a way to live well. Ultimately striving to show that the small community is "the lifeblood of civilization," this volume examines the political organization, membership, economics, health, and ethics characteristics of small communities. Like Rousseau before him, Morgan observes that we have less control over our affairs than in the past. In increasing our control of the natural environment, human beings have built a social environment so out of scale that it becomes nearly impossible for people to maintain balance. The struggle now is less with the natural order than with the social order, and preserving human integrity against the plethora of our own creations is the core problem. The need to rediscover elementary forms of human existence has been accelerated by the efficiencies of centralized control and mass persuasion. In the face of this, small communities or intimate groups become the primary pattern in which human beings must live if the good life is to be a realistic goal. The timely nature of this volume has grown as the electronic displaces the mechanical as a moral rival to human community.

Scholars have long recognized Carl Maria von Weber as the father of the German Romantic and Nationalist music. The success of his opera Der Freischutz almost single handedly brought German operatic style onto the world stage, competing with and challenging established operatic traditions in France and Italy. Indeed the overtures to his last three operas, Der Freischutz, Euryanthe, and Oberon initiated the genre of the concert overture and are a part of the standard repertoire for most modern symphony orchestras. His works in other genres, including his various concerti and chamber works also stand as centerpieces in the modern concert hall. In Experiencing Carl Maria von Weber: A Listener's Companion, Joseph Morgan walks readers through the many masterpieces that comprise Weber's oeuvre, providing key insights by integrating critical points in the composer's life with the burgeoning Romantic and Nationalist movements in Germany that Weber's music came to champion. Morgan brings to life the musical character of Weber's most important compositions, from his most popular works such as his programme work Aufforderung zum Tanz (Invitation to the Dance), his majestic solo pieces, and his path-breaking song cycle Die Temperamente beim Verluste der Geliebten (Temperaments on the Loss of a Lover). At every turn, Morgan brings together biographical, political, aesthetic, and historical matters to inform our understanding of Weber's compositional genius. From the virtuosity of his piano works and their influence on Liszt and Chopin to his relationships with composers from the earliest parts of the 19th century, including Giacomo Meyerbeer, Franz Schubert and Beethoven, Experiencing Carl Maria von Weber reveals not only the compositional genius of this figure in Romantic music, but his achievements as well as a conductor, music director, and critic who lent his powerful support to his musical peers on stage and page.

Clinical neuropsychologists frequently evaluate individuals within a forensic context, and therefore must address questions regarding the possible presence of reduced effort, response bias and/or malingering. This volume offers a wide range of instructive real-world case examples involving the complex differential diagnosis where symptom exaggeration and/or malingering cloud the picture. Written by expert forensic neuropsychologists, the scenarios described provide informed, empirically-based and scientifically-derived opinions on the topic. Issues related to malingering, such as response bias and insufficient effort, are discussed thoroughly with regard to a large number of clinical conditions and assessment instruments. Test data and non-test information are considered and integrated by the numerous experts. Expert guidance for clinicians who must address the issue of malingering is provided in a straightforward and well-organized format. To date, there has not been a comparable collection of rich case material relevant to forensic practice in clinical neuropsychology.