Recent years have witnessed giant leaps in the strength of database technologies, creating a new level of capability to develop advanced applications that add value at unprecedented levels in all areas of information management and utilization. Parallel to this evolution is a need in the academia and industry for authoritative references to the research in this area, to establish a comprehensive knowledge base that will enable the information technology and managerial communities to realize maximum benefits from these innovations. Advanced Principles for Improving Database Design, Systems Modeling, and Software Development presents cutting-edge research and analysis of the most recent advancements in the fields of database systems and software development. This book provides academicians, researchers, and database practitioners with an exhaustive collection of studies that, together, represent the state of knowledge in the field.

American history is full of examples of discrimination in all forms, but never before has the wreckage from America's infatuation with eugenics and its state-sanctioned policy of hate toward the mentally ill been put in such personal terms. In this extraordinary debut book, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist John Erickson answers the questions that have long haunted an immigrant family: Why was a mother in her early twenties imprisoned and then sterilized? What caused her three children to be taken from her and placed in an orphanage that later preyed on children? What led her oldest son to commit an unspeakable act of violence? And, finally, whatever happened to her youngest son who disappeared from her life and was never seen by the family again? This is a tragic story, yet strangely an uplifting one. Because just as officials believed immorality and mental illness were as genetically linked as eye and hair color, various family members would prove them wrong. In a story that will make you seethe with anger and well with tears, When Mortals Play God shows how valuable life is, and how grit and determination can sometimes relegate evil and injustice to a back seat.

The Road to Stalingrad is designed to investigate the kind of war the Soviet Union waged, the nature of command decisions and the machinery of decision-making, the course of military operations, the emergence of Soviet 'war aims', and the Soviet style of war with Germany.

This book aims to furnish a history of the origins and development of Soviet military leadership, together with a survey of its relations with the Communist Party and the governmental apparatus, within the chronological limits of the first attempts to organise the Red Army and a military command.

The Road to Stalingrad is designed to investigate the kind of war the Soviet Union waged, the nature of command decisions and the machinery of decision-making, the course of military operations, the emergence of Soviet 'war aims', and the Soviet style of war with Germany.

Let spirituality enhance the effectiveness of your marriage and family therapy practice! The field of marriage and family therapy is starting to acknowledge that spiritual and religious issues are a valuable part of the lives of both clients and therapists. Spirituality and Family Therapy provides you with important information about this growing trend, including guidelines for therapists who are unsure how to integrate spiritual issues into their practice and detailed case studies that reveal how and why faith is a vital part of many clients' lives. Along with these features, you'll also find two unique conversational-style chapters where various authors explore their own beliefs and discuss the role of religion in their lives and careers. Spirituality and Family Therapy will help you understand your own spirituality, and use it as an important resource in your relationships with clients. In Spirituality and Family Therapy you'll learn about: the links between faith, fathering, and family therapy clinical applications for Christian mediation making altars as a way to help your clients come to terms with loss the ways spirituality helps parents cope with the death of a child ways to integrate the spirituality of the therapist into your work the value of faith in services for Alzheimer's caregivers integration of religion, gender, and spirituality in clinical practice

An objective and documentary history of the earliest origins and formative years of the Workers-Peasants Red Army from the Civil War to the initial disasters of the war with Germany, the Great Patriotic War, culminating in the "battle for Moscow" in November-December 1941.

A compelling account of the Red Army's epic struggle to drive the Germans out of Russia and back to Berlin. Beginning with the destruction of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, THE ROAD TO BERLIN is the story of how the Red Army drove the Germans from its territory, and finally invaded the Reich. Using an enormous range of primary sources - Soviet, German and Eastern European - John Erickson describes fighting and hardship on a scale almost unimaginable in the West. He provides a detailed narrative of all the battles on all the fronts, and also of the Soviet system of war which achieved, under maximum stress, near impossible feats in the field and in the factories. The book also tells of the diplomatic moves and counter-moves, including the all-important conferences at Tehran and Yalta. Comprehensive, compelling, and immensely readable, it is an indispensable book for any student of the Second World War.

The book provides the investing public, real estates practitioners, regulators, and real estate and finance academics with up-to-date information on what modern scholarly research tells us about Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). REITs are credited to allow institutional and individual investors to invest in real estate via a corporate entity. The increasing interest in REITs as indicated by their growth in market capitalisation and institutional holdings in the United States and around the world suggests that REITs are becoming an increasingly important part of investors' diversified portfolio.

A new paperback version of the first volume in John Erickson's monumental, critically acclaimed history of the Soviet-German war.In fascinating detail, "The Road to Stalingrad" takes us from the inept command structures and strategic delusions of the pre-invasion Soviet Union through Russia's humiliation as her armies fell back on all fronts, until the tide turned at last in Stalingrad. The assessment of the generals and political leaders, as well as of the wranglings within both the Allied and Axis commands, is completely unsparing. The climactic battle, so vividly described here, leaves the Red Army poised for the long fight towards Berlin.
This is not to be missed by any military buff or student of World War II.

In Islam and Postcolonial Narrative, John Erickson examines four major authors from the 'third world' - Assia Djebar, Adelkebir Khatibi, Tahar ben Jelloun and Salman Rushdie - all of whom have engaged in a critique of the relationship between Islam and the West. Erickson analyses the narrative strategies they deploy to explore the encounter between Western and Islamic values and reveals their use of the cultural resources of Islam, as well as their intertextual exchanges with other third-world writers. Erickson argues against any homogenising mode of writing labelled 'postcolonial' and any view of Islamic and Western discourses as monolithic or totalising. He reveals the way these writers valorise expansiveness, polyvalence and indeterminacy as part of an attempt to represent the views of individuals and groups that live on the cultural and political margins of society.

On 22 June 1941, German tanks rolled into the Soviet Union in an offensive which was to claim the lives of nearly 49 million people. Until the opening of Soviet archives, however, and the easing of their ideological grip, 'Operation Barbarossa' remained a mystery. Now, through the distinguished contributions of people like President Yeltsin's adviser, Colonel-General Dmitri Volkogonov, and the German historian Professor Klaus-Jurgen Muller, comes a book which for the first time challenges the official Soviet historiography and offers the first truly global picture of the war in Russia. From Nazi-Soviet relations at the start of the war, and the Soviet Union's response to the German attack, Barbarossa moves to the little examined subject of the invasion's aftermath. And offering dramatic new evidence on Hitler's objectives, Stalin's strategy and readiness for war, the Battle of Moscow, and Japan's wartime policy towards the Soviet Union, this book also deals with the previously taboo subjects of the personalities and politics of collaboration and the massive human toll of the invasion.

Cook book with recipes from around Asian combined with a little yin and yang philosophy as it applies to cooking and families.

In this first volume of John Erickson's monumental history of the grueling Soviet-German war of 1941-1945, the author takes us from the pre-invasion Soviet Union, with its inept command structures and strategic delusions, to the humiliating retreats of Soviet armies before the Barbarossa onslaught, to the climactic, grinding battle for Stalingrad that left the Red Army poised for its majestic counteroffensive. "Erickson. . . has written the outstanding history of the Soviet-German war in English, or, for that matter, any language. The research alone is breathtaking. Erickson has mastered all the Russian sources and compared them with the German records. . . . He has shed light on many heretofore murky matters."-Reid Beddow, Washington Post Book World "Masterly. . . . A vividly detailed yet comprehensive account of the decisive Eastern-front battleground."-Christopher Hudson, London Evening Standard "The outstanding book on the Soviet war in any language."-A. J. P. Taylor, Observer "This authoritative book by a first-class military historian is easily read."-Philip Warner, Daily Telegraph

Completing the most comprehensive and authoritative study ever written of the Soviet-German war, John Erickson in this volume tells the vivid and compelling story of the Red Army's epic struggle to drive the Germans from Russian soil. Beginning with the destruction of the German Army at Stalingrad, he describes a campaign of almost unimaginable hardship and fighting that led to the Soviet invasion of the Reich and the triumphant capture of Berlin. "Monumental. . . . In the future, no history of the Russo-German war can be written without reference to Erickson's detailed research and brilliant narrative."-Steven T. Ross, Naval War College Review "Erickson is our most eminent expert on Russian military history. . . [and] one of the foremost historians of the twentieth century. There is little doubt that his books will remain the definitive study of this period of Soviet history for the foreseeable future."-Michael Parrish, American Historical Review "As close to being the definitive work on Soviet strategy, and the military history, as it is possible to imagine."-Norman Stone, The Observer "With unflagging energy Professor Erickson has completed his task with a second volume in every way equal to the first. . . . [He] carries his readers along by the sheer vigour of his style and by his vivid account of the harrowing events with which he has to deal."-Sunday Times "This is a book which every thinking soldier and every student of military history simply has to read."-British Army Review

An objective and documentary history of the earliest origins and formative years of the Workers-Peasants Red Army from the Civil War to the initial disasters of the war with Germany, the Great Patriotic War, culminating in the "battle for Moscow" in November-December 1941.