Jackie Thompson has just about done it all Jackie emigrated to Australia in 2004 where she established her own highly successful Contemporary Cakes and Classes cake decorating business in Brisbane. Jackie is a highly qualified chef and pastry chef who has worked in some of the grandest five-star hotels in UK and Europe; she has created cakes and food for Bridget Jones The Edge of Reason, Finding Neverland, Wimbledon and Iris in the UK and she is qualified at the highest level of British City and Guilds in Sugar craft in all aspects of cake decorating and flower making. And now Jackie has harnessed her significant experience and passion for baking and cake decorating into a very practical DIY book for decorators of all levels. Her first book Contemporary Cake Designs - Book One brings together a wealth of knowledge about recipes, baking and twelve distinctly different decorated cake projects that allow the reader to learn how to decorate at their own pace in their own home, with the aid of some amazing photos. Contemporary Cake Designs - Book One is not just another book about cake decorating. It is a book that is filled with a wealth of wonderful tips on what to do, what not to do, how to do it and why not to do it and it has an amazing 500+ photographs that make this book a pictorial step-by-step guide on some of the intricate techniques of this growing craft. "I take inspiration from life - from the environment and friends and I use these daily lessons to build ideas for my cakes" Jackie said. "And it is this positive attitude for life that has driven me to try to create a book, a DIY tool, which will take my craft to the masses."

"Kiowa Humanity and the Invasion of the State" illuminates the ways in which Kiowas on the southern plains dealt with the U.S. government's efforts to control them after they were forced onto a reservation by an 1867 treaty. The overarching effects of colonial domination resembled those suffered by other Native groups at the time--a considerable loss of land and population decline, as well as a continual erosion of the Kiowas' political, cultural, economic, and religious sovereignty and traditions. Although readily acknowledging these far-reaching consequences, Jacki Thompson Rand sees the root impact of colonialism and the concomitant Kiowa responses as centered less on policy disputes than on the disruptions to their daily life and to their humanity. Colonialism attacked the Kiowas on the most human, everyday level--through starvation, outbreaks of smallpox, emotional disorientation, and continual difficulties in securing clothing and shelter, and the Kiowas' responses and counterassertions of sovereignty thus tended to focus on efforts to feed their people, sustain the physical community, and preserve psychic equilibrium. Offering a fresh, original view of Native responses to colonialism, this study demonstrates amply that Native struggles against the encroachment of the state go well beyond armed resistance and political strategizing. Rand shows that the Native response was born of everyday survival and the yearning for well-being and community