"An energizing, mobilizing read!"--Dr. Robert Jeffress Test the Water, Take the Plunge and Turn the Tide of Culture If we were created to make an impact, why do most of us feel like we're drowning in problems and fears? Why does making a living feel like fighting the current? The answer, say pastors and culture-makers Christopher and Laura Harris Smith, is simple: You need to find your river of influence. With fresh revelation and contagious excitement, Chris and Laura introduce the groundbreaking twelve cultural rivers of influence. Full of hands-on assessments, thought-provoking questionnaires and dynamic Scripture teachings, this is your map to a river adventure like no other. Along the way Chris and Laura help you · discover your spiritual personality · discern your natural, acquired and spiritual giftings · channel your personality and giftings into your God-appointed purpose · identify--and jump into!--your river of influence · flow with God toward your future · and more! Don't let fear erode your purpose or ebb your eternal impact. It's time to dive in to all He has for you--and make your splash that turns the tides of culture and ripples into eternity. Features exclusive access to videos and BRAND-NEW spiritual personality and job placement tests.

It is true, they don't make things the way they used to, they don't do things the way they used to, and the times are not what they used to be. This book is a journey back to the days of my early childhood through high school. What was like to be raised in Indiana basketball country? It was an exciting time with over 700 high school teams from every corner of the state of Indiana competing each year in a single elimination tournament for the Indiana State Basketball Championship. One small school triumphed in a miracle over the great odds against them. It is still for me to imagine what those hundreds of Indiana basketball heroes experienced by having family, friends, classmates, cheerleaders, teachers, community fans for all kinds of reasons, even stranger bystanders, cheering and shouting them on with encouragement. (www.garyleesmith.com)

Over the past two decades, how has urban agriculture changed in sub-Saharan Africa? Is city farming now better integrated into environmental management and city governance? And, looking ahead, how might urban agriculture address the needs of the low-income households and modernizing cities of Africa? In this book, leading specialists in the fields of urban agriculture and urban environment present a unique collection of case studies that examines the growing role of local food production in urban livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa. Amongst many issues, the authors probe the changing role of urban agriculture, the risks and benefits of crop-livestock systems, and the opportunities for making locally produced food more easily available and more profitable. Concluding chapters reflect on the policy and governance implications of greater integration of urban natural resources and the built environment, an expanded role for urban agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa and the crucial role of women in urban food systems. "African Urban Harvest" will be of interest to decision-makers, development professionals, researchers, academics, and students and educators in urban planning, development studies, African studies, and environmental studies.

This book is a collection of studies on state-of-art techniques developed for producing value-added N-containing chemicals and N-doped carbon materials from renewable sources via sustainable technologies. Aiming to improve conversion effectiveness and develop innovative techniques for new value-added N-containing products, topics in the text address recent advances, assess and highlight promising methods or technological strategies, and outline direct conversion routes for conversion of renewable resources to N-containing chemicals and materials. World-renowned authorities, experts, and professionals have contributed individual chapters in selected areas to cover the overall topic comprehensively. In addition to researchers and professionals in the field, educators teaching university courses on biomass transformation, biomass energy, energy materials, heterocyclic chemistry, resource materials and sustainable development and green chemistry will find the text informative with new international perspectives. 

Reading Lee Smith ranks among the great pleasures of American fiction . . . Gives evidence again of the grace and insight that distinguish her work. Robert Stone, author of Death of the Black-Haired GirlIt s 1936 when orphaned thirteen-year-old Evalina Toussaint is admitted to Highland Hospital, a mental institution in Asheville, North Carolina, known for its innovative treatments for nervous disorders and addictions. Taken under the wing of the hospital s most notable patient, Zelda Fitzgerald, Evalina witnesses cascading events that lead up to the tragic fire of 1948 that killed nine women in a locked ward, Zelda among them. Author Lee Smith has created, through a seamless blending of fiction and fact, a mesmerizing novel about a world apart--in which art and madness are luminously intertwined."

In "The Christmas Letters," three generations of women reveal their stories of love and marriage in the letters they write to family and friends during the holidays. It's a down-home Christmas story about tradition, family, and the shared experiences of women.

Here, in a letter of her own, Lee Smith explains how she was inspired to write this celebrated epistolary novel:

Dear Friends,

Like me, you probably get Christmas letters every year. I read every word and save every letter. Because every Christmas letter is the story of a life, and what story can be more interesting than the story of our lives? Often, it is the story of an entire family. But you also have to read between the lines with Christmas letters. Sometimes, what is not said is even more important than what is on the page.

In "The Christmas Letters," I have used this familiar format to illumine the lives, hopes, dreams, and disappointments of three generations of American women. Much of the story of "The Christmas Letters" is also told through shared recipes. As Mary, my favorite character, says, "I feel as if I have written out my life story in recipes! The Cool Whip and mushroom soup years, the hibachi and fondue period, then the quiche and crepes phase, and now it's these salsa years."

I wrote this little book for the same reason I write to my friends and relatives every holiday--Christmas letters give us a chance to remember and celebrate who we are.

With warmest greetings, Lee Smith

Founded on the work of the renowned Advanced Combustion Engineering Research Center, the authors document and integrate current knowledge of the organic and inorganic structure of coal and its reaction processes. With the urgent need for cleaner, more efficient use of this worldwide fuel, their work will set a clear course for future research.

For new graduates, the key challenge remains how to secure that first career-related job. Full of guidance and tips on how to handle the complex field of job hunting, Kick Start Your Career can help navigate an ever-changing job market and secure your chance at your desired career. It is a valuable investment in your future. It advises the reader on how to: stand out in job applications; use social media for job searching; create resumes and cover letters that stand out; succeed at interviews. It provides a practical, hands on, step-by-step approach. With an integrated Personal Plan that helps create key job search documents it directs soon-to-be graduates towards achieving their career aspirations. Accompanying online resources include examples and templates, which can be downloaded in Word format to help you prepare resumes and other job search documents. This book will help graduates progressively build up job-hunting resources - skills, achievements, resume, cover letter and interview responses - and turn this into a practical outcome: a new job. It is a key companion to any student or recent graduate exploring the job market.

Like an old-fashioned hymn sung in rounds, Something's Rising gives a stirring voice to the lives, culture, and determination of the people fighting the destructive practice of mountaintop removal in the coalfields of central Appalachia. Each person's story, unique and unfiltered, articulates the hardship of living in these majestic mountains amid the daily desecration of the land by the coal industry because of America's insistence on cheap energy. Developed as an alternative to strip mining, mountaintop removal mining consists of blasting away the tops of mountains, dumping waste into the valleys, and retrieving the exposed coal. This process buries streams, pollutes wells and waterways, and alters fragile ecologies in the region. The people who live, work, and raise families in central Appalachia face not only the physical destruction of their land but also the loss of their culture and health in a society dominated by the consequences of mountaintop removal. Included here are oral histories from Jean Ritchie, "the mother of folk," who doesn't let her eighty-six years slow down her fighting spirit; Judy Bonds, a tough-talking coal-miner's daughter; Kathy Mattea, the beloved country singer who believes cooperation is the key to winning the battle; Jack Spadaro, the heroic whistle-blower who has risked everything to share his insider knowledge of federal mining agencies; Larry Bush, who doesn't back down even when speeding coal trucks are used to intimidate him; Denise Giardina, a celebrated writer who ran for governor to bring attention to the issue; and many more. The book features both well-known activists and people rarely in the media. Each oral history is prefaced with a biographical essay that vividly establishes the interview settings and the subjects' connections to their region. Written and edited by native sons of the mountains, this compelling book captures a fever-pitch moment in the movement against mountaintop removal. Silas House and Jason Howard are experts on the history of resistance in Appalachia, the legacy of exploitation of the region's natural resources, and area's unique culture and landscape. This lyrical and informative text provides a critical perspective on a powerful industry. The cumulative effect of these stories is stunning and powerful. Something's Rising will long stand as a testament to the social and ecological consequences of energy at any cost and will be especially welcomed by readers of Appalachian studies, environmental science, and by all who value the mountain's majesty -- our national heritage.

Birthplace of jazz, home to the beignet, city of a thousand legends, New Orleans grew out of a unique blend of cultures. Its architecture and cuisine, born of Spanish, French, Caribbean, African, and other influences, created a city unlike any other in America. Its popular saying, laissez les bons temps rouler—"let the good times roll�—reflects the upbeat spirit of its citizens, a spirit that has at times been diminished by tragedy, but that can never be vanquished. Remembering New Orleans celebrates that spirit in more than 100 striking, black-and-white photographs selected from local and national archives. With these fine historic images from her best-selling book, Historic Photos of New Orleans, Melissa Lee Smith provides a valuable and revealing historical retrospective on the growth and development of New Orleans. Here are the grand buildings and the immigrant slums, the cast-iron corn fences and the open-air markets, Mardi Gras parades and scenes of daily life. From the French Quarter and the elegant Garden District to the infamous Storyville, the people and places of New Orleans tell their unique story through these beautiful, rarely seen images.

Birthplace of jazz, home to the beignet, city of a thousand legends, New Orleans grew out of a unique blend of cultures. Its architecture and cuisine, born of Spanish, French, Caribbean, African and other influences, created a city unlike any other in America. Its popular saying, laissez les bons temps rouler—let the good times roll—reflects the upbeat spirit of its citizens, a spirit that has at times been diminished by tragedy, but that can never be vanquished. Historic Photos of New Orleans celebrates that spirit in nearly 200 striking, black-and-white photographs selected from local and national archives. Here are the grand buildings and the immigrant slums, the cast-iron corn fences and the open-air markets, Mardi Gras parades and scenes of daily life. From the French Quarter and the elegant Garden District to the infamous Storyville, the people and places of New Orleans tell their unique story through these beautiful, rarely seen images.

The editors and authors of Professional Teacher Dispositions: Additions to the Mainstream contribute to the long tradition in education of the discussions of teacher dispositions. It is intended for novice and experienced teachers, for those who educate future teachers, and for those who hire teachers. This book includes theoretical aspects of dispositions in education and case vignettes for discussion and reflection. Professional Teacher Dispositions provides a resource for school administrators in the professional selection of teachers, teacher educators in the selection of candidates for teacher education programs, and as a basis for developing professional development or pre-service activities in education. The authors address issues of character and passion that have a profound impact on the decision to be a teacher, the reasons for teaching and effect the day-to-day functioning of teachers in our school classrooms. Chapters address social justice and equity issues, reflection, caring, love, teaching as a calling.

The editors and authors of Professional Teacher Dispositions: Additions to the Mainstream contribute to the long tradition in education of the discussions of teacher dispositions. It is intended for novice and experienced teachers, for those who educate future teachers, and for those who hire teachers. This book includes theoretical aspects of dispositions in education and case vignettes for discussion and reflection. Professional Teacher Dispositions provides a resource for school administrators in the professional selection of teachers, teacher educators in the selection of candidates for teacher education programs, and as a basis for developing professional development or pre-service activities in education. The authors address issues of character and passion that have a profound impact on the decision to be a teacher, the reasons for teaching and effect the day-to-day functioning of teachers in our school classrooms. Chapters address social justice and equity issues, reflection, caring, love, teaching as a calling.

The Appalachian dulcimer is one of America's major contributions to world music and folk art. Homemade and handmade, played by people with no formal knowledge of music, this beautiful instrument entered the post-World-War-II Folk Revival with virtually no written record. Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions tells the fascinating story of the effort to recover the instrument's lost history through fieldwork in the Southern mountains, finding of old instruments, and listening to the tales of old folks. After reviewing the instrument's distinctive musical features, Ralph Lee Smith presents the dulcimer's story chronologically, tracing its roots in a Renaissance German instrument, the scheitholt; describing the early history of the scheitholt and the dulcimer in America; and outlining the development of distinctive dulcimer styles in Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. The story continues into the 20th Century, through the final group of tradition-based Appalachian makers whose work flowed into the national scene of the Folk Revival. This fully revised edition provides expanded information about the history of the scheitholt and the dulcimer before the Civil War and discusses traditions and types that are still being discovered and documented. Smith also adds his personal adventures in searching for the dulcimer's history. A new final chapter describes types and styles that do not fit conveniently into the mainstream development of the instrument. The book concludes with several appendixes, including measurements of representative dulcimers and listings of dulcimer recordings in the Archive of Folk Culture of the Library of Congress.

Here, the authors offer a deeper understanding of the various concepts and relevance of dispositions to teaching and other professions that serve in school settings. This book provides a broad basis for conceptualizing the what and how of dispositions. Features: Historical and definitional perspectives of dispositions as traits and beliefs, Pragmatic application, Contemporary views of dispositions in teaching and teacher education, An overview of the various methods that have been utilized to incorporate dispositions and dispositional concepts in educational curricula, Strategies for identifying features of effective professionals, Discussions on issues in the selection and retention of candidates in professional preparation programs and critical dispositions. A valuable reference given the current emphasis on dispositions as expected components in many state and professional organization standards, it also presents: the legal and political implications and religious traditions of dispositions in teacher education programs, a model for the classification of research related to dispositions. Will be of interest to teacher educators, administrators, teachers, and others in school related professions.

Contents:
1. School Policy Under the Spotlight 2. Testing the Theory in Testing Policy 3. School Choice and the Illusion of Demcracy 4. The Contribution of Mass Media to Desegregation Policy 5. Research and the Illusion of Rationality 6. Education Policy Inc 7. Finale