A CIA officer and his recruit arrive in Damascus to hunt for a killer 'The most realistic and authentic depiction of modern-day tradecraft in nonpermissive and hostile environments you will find in print. I am shocked the CIA's Publication Review Board allowed David McCloskey's Damascus Station to see the light of day. Read it now, before it is banned!' - Jack Carr, Navy SEAL sniper and New York Times bestselling author of The Devil's Hand CIA case officer Sam Joseph is dispatched to Paris to recruit Syrian Palace official Mariam Haddad. The two fall into a forbidden relationship, which supercharges Haddad's recruitment and creates unspeakable danger when they enter Damascus to find the man responsible for the disappearance of an American spy. But the cat and mouse chase for the killer soon leads to a trail of high-profile assassinations and the discovery of a dark secret at the heart of the Syrian regime, bringing the pair under the all-seeing eyes of Assad's spy catcher, Ali Hassan, and his brother Rustum, the head of the feared Republican Guard. Set against the backdrop of a Syria pulsing with fear and rebellion, Damascus Station is a gripping thriller that offers a textured portrayal of espionage, love, loyalty, and betrayal in one of the most difficult CIA assignments on the planet.

The second novel from the author of Damascus Station ('One of the best spy thrillers in years' The Times) CIA operatives Sia and Max enter Russia to recruit Vladimir Putin’s moneyman. Sia works for a London firm that conceals the wealth of the super-rich. Max’s family business in Mexico – a CIA front since the 1960s – is a farm that breeds high-end racehorses. They pose as a couple, and their targets are Vadim, Putin’s private banker, and his wife Anna, who is both a banker and an intelligence officer herself… Praise for Damascus Station: 'Simply marvellous storytelling...a stand-out thriller and essential reading for fans of the genre' - Financial Times 'The best spy novel I have ever read' - General David Petraeus, former director of the CIA

CIA case officer Sam Joseph is dispatched to Paris to recruit Syrian Palace official Mariam Haddad. The two fall into a forbidden relationship, which supercharges Haddad's recruitment and creates unspeakable danger when they enter Damascus to find the man responsible for the disappearance of an American spy. But the cat and mouse chase for the killer soon leads to a trail of high-profile assassinations and the discovery of a dark secret at the heart of the Syrian regime, bringing the pair under the all-seeing eyes of Assad's spy catcher, Ali Hassan, and his brother Rustum, the head of the feared Republican Guard. Set against the backdrop of a Syria pulsing with fear and rebellion, Damascus Station is a gripping thriller that offers a textured portrayal of espionage, love, loyalty, and betrayal in one of the most difficult CIA assignments on the planet.

In the United States, approximately 2.5 million students are diagnosed as having a learning disability and the majority of those children are placed in special education because of an inability to read as expected. As a result of this diagnosis, these children may be placed in special education classrooms - classrooms that are separate from the `mainstream' population. For children with learning disabilities, there is likely no place, other than in school, where a student's inability to read as expected leads to this separation from his/her peers. Once school is over, these children play alongside the kids in their neighbourhoods, participate in sports teams, and attend community activities. This book looks at the impact of being labelled as learning disabled and separated from peers in school through the eyes of Samson, a middle school student described both as learning disabled and a non-reader. This qualitative case study explores how Samson, his family, his teachers and this researcher make sense of special education and the complexities of learning to read as an adolescent. Throughout this book, there is a contrasting of the laws and procedures designed to guide special education, with the actual experiences of those impacted by these laws and procedures. Through the three years that Samson was in middle school, this book investigates his perspective on his classes, his interpretation of what it means to `be' a student in special education, and the process by which he learns to read. How disability gets created, contested, and discussed is highlighted through the many contexts that allow disability to be recognised and to fade into the background.

For over a century the economics profession has extended its reach to encompass policy formation and institutional design while largely ignoring the ethical challenges that attend the profession's influence over the lives of others. Economists have proven to be disinterested in ethics. Embracing emotivism, they often treat ethics a matter of mere preference. Moreover, economists tend to be hostile to professional economic ethics, which they incorrectly equate with a code of conduct that would be at best ineffectual and at worst disruptive to good economic practice. But good ethical reasoning is not reducible to mere tastes, and professional ethics is not reducible to a code. Instead, professional economic ethics refers to a new field of investigation-a tradition of sustained and lively inquiry into the irrepressible ethical entailments of academic and applied economic practice. The Oxford Handbook of Professional Economic Ethics explores a wide range of questions related to the nature of ethical economic practice and the content of professional economic ethics. It explores current thinking that has emerged in these areas while widening substantially the terrain of economic ethics. There has never been a volume that poses so directly and intensively the question of the need for and content of professional ethics for economics. The Handbook incorporates the work of leading scholars and practitioners, including academic economists from various theoretical traditions; applied economists, beyond academia, whose work has direct and immense social impact; and philosophers, professional ethicists, and others whose work has addressed the nature of "professionalism " and its implications for ethical practice.

Katie McCloskey was forever changed by the privilege of working under Mother Teresa, one of history's great humanitarians, and the sisters of the Missionaries of Charity, attending to God's poor, the needy, the lonely, and the abandoned. In her tours of service in India, Katie, along with her fellow volunteers, found her own life transformed as she helped uplift the lives of others.

In this vivid, compelling account of her time in Calcutta, Katie offers anyone with an open heart the means to share in the exuberance one can find in even the most horrifying of circumstances. Her stories illuminate how closeness to human beings who are neglected and discarded is closeness to God. To be sure, Katie learned that "only God could give us the courage, the perseverance, and the grace we needed to serve the poorest of the poor," but Mother Teresa and the sisters showed her how a personal commitment to others is a path to genuine joy and true self-fulfillment.

Whether we journey to India or simply serve our family and community, "The Calling" shows how we can use our love, skills, time, and talents to renew not just the lives of others but also our own.

The field of economics proves to be a matter of metaphor and storytelling - its mathematics is metaphoric and its policy-making is narrative. Economists have begun to realize this and to rethink how they speak. This volume is the result of a conference held at Wellesley College, involving both theoretical and applied economists, that explored the consequences of the rhetoric and the conversation of the field of economics.

Signs of Power in Habsburg Spain and the New World explores the representation of political, economic, military, religious, and juridical power in texts and artifacts from early modern Spain and her American viceroyalties. In addition to analyzing the dynamics of power in written texts, chapters also examine pieces of material culture including coats of arms, coins, paintings and engravings. As the essays demonstrate, many of these objects work to transform the amorphous concept of power into a material reality with considerable symbolic dimensions subject to, and dependent on, interpretation. With its broad approach to the discourses of power, Signs of Power brings together studies of both canonical literary works as well as more obscure texts and objects. The position of the works studied with respect to the official center of power also varies. Whereas certain essays focus on the ways in which portrayals of power champion the aspirations of the Spanish Crown, other essays attend to voices of dissent that effectively call into question that authority.

Development education is a radical form of learning that addresses the structural causes of poverty and injustice in the global North and South. This volume debates development education practice and the policy environment in which it is delivered. It affirmatively points to the transformative power of education as a means toward social change.

The facts behind a fish that's worth its weight in gold. Some fish breathe air and some fish fly, but the most wonderful fish of all turns out to be the one you've got at home. In another offering of the beloved Giggle and Learn series, Kevin McCloskey blends science, art, and comedy to reveal the true story behind the common goldfish.

This book is a study of how the changing ethos of schooling transformed and redefined what it means to be a teacher. The distinction between the ethos of teaching and the ethos of schooling is an important one. The fundamental reasons why people are drawn to the teaching profession have remained remarkably stable, while the ethos of the schools have changed since the mid -1960s. Although teachers' fundamental attitudes have not changed, the challenges they face related to their individual freedom, moral and social authority, and power have altered dramatically.

This book brings together the exciting new findings that will bring us closer to a better understanding of the alterations of neuronal connectivity in autistic brains. This volume authoritatively covers  the epidemiology, physiology, neurodevelopment, genetics, environmental influences, imaging studies, neuroanatomy, and neurochemistry of autism spectrum disorders.  While the neurobiology of autism is still a long way from being understood, this book posits techniques, such as using brain imaging to find signatures in early days of life, that could help move the diagnosis and help identify neural pathways.  Understanding these mechanisms opens the possibility to pharmacological, behavioral, and psychosocial therapeutic interventions.  With contributions from the leading international autism researchers, Neurobiology of Autism Spectrum Disorders is the go-to reference for researchers and clinicians with an interest in understanding the underlying neurobiology of autism spectrum disorders. 

Learning Leadership in a Changing World provides direction and support in the form of the 4R Model of Leadership-a theoretically sound, conceptually straightforward, and educationally powerful framework.

Disability is defined by hierarchy. Regardless of culture or context, persons with disabilities are almost always pushed to the bottom of the social hierarchy. With the advent of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), disability human rights seemingly provided a path forward for tearing down ableist social hierarchies and ensuring that all persons with disabilities everywhere were treated equally. Despite important progress, the disability human rights project not only remains incomplete, but has often created new hierarchies among persons with disabilities themselves or across the human rights it promotes. Certain groups of persons with disabilities have gained new voices while others remain silenced and certain rights are prioritized over others depending on what states, international organizations, or advocates want rather than what those on the ground need most. This volume was inspired both by the continued need to expose human rights violations against persons with disabilities, but to also explore the nuanced role that hierarchies play in the spread, implementation, and protection of disability human rights. The enjoyment of human rights is not equal nor is the recognition of specific individuals and groups’ rights. In order to change this situation, inequalities across the disability human rights movement must be explored. Divided into five parts Who counts as disabled? Political, social, and cultural context Which rights on top, whose rights on bottom? Pushed to the periphery in the disability rights movement Representations of disability and comprised of 34 newly-written chapters including case-studies from the Anglophone Caribbean, Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, China, Ghana, Haiti, Hungary, India, Israel, Kenya, Latin America, Poland, Russia, Scotland, Serbia and South Africa, and other countries, this book will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, human rights law and social policy.

What's the scoop behind all the mucus? Did you know snails build roads like engineers and go undercover in camouflage like spies? Did you know they can be smaller than a seed or bigger than a grown-up's hand? Kevin McCloskey mixes snail science, art, and hilarity for the newest book in his Giggle and Learn series, praised by the New York Times as "a winning combination of facts and gross-out fun."