The village of San Isidro has been without its doctor for eighteen months. Moises has remained a recluse, refusing to even look at a patient, since the day the army took his wife away during the country's civil war. But when a mysterious plague begins to ravage the countryside around San Isidro, the local parish priest convinces Moises to take action. And when Moises examines his first patient, he discovers he has the miraculous power to heal this plague with the touch of his hand. But among the thousands of pilgrims who flock to San Isidro, Moises is forced to confront his past, and San Isidro the violence that tore it apart. A meditation on mourning, redemption, and revenge, Seven Spots On The Sun follows each character's attempt to come to terms with the extraordinary losses they have suffered and the miracles they have witnessed.

When a senseless act of violence changes her life forever, a liberal college professor finds herself inexplicably drawn to the very weapon used to perpetrate the crime - and to the irresistible feeling of power that comes from holding life and death in her hands. Peering down the barrel of a uniquely American crisis, she begins to suspect that when it comes to gun violence, we're all part of the problem.

When this book was first published in 1978, tropical forests were unquestionably the largest scientifically unexplored region of the world, and being rapidly depleted by short-term exploitation. Species were being rendered extinct at a rate that is probably greater than the rate at which they are being discovered. This book is an assessment of scientific knowledge of tropical tree biology - construction, development, physiology, reproductive biology and evolution - set against a background of community ecology and forest structure. Its emphasis is on the study of the individual tree as a living system integrated into the larger forest community. The book publishes the results of the Fourth Cabot Symposium held at the Harvard Forest in 1976 and presents the special knowledge of the participants, each an expert in a special field. Much of the subject matter is presented in the form of reviews, making information easily accessible to an interested nonspecialist audience.