'Angel investors' provide small amounts of capital ($100k-$3m) to early stage, high-risk ventures. In recent years, they have not only grown in numbers and sophistication, they have garnered the attention of larger investors and governments throughout the world who are interested in the phenomenal power of startups to bring innovative products to consumers, create jobs and economic value, and sustain macroeconomic growth.This comes as no surprise. Some of the world's most valuable and influential companies, such as Google, Facebook, and Uber were able to survive and thrive in their make-or-break early years only through the backing of angels.Angels Without Borders: Trends and Policies Shaping Angel Investment Worldwide, drawing on chapter contributors from more than two dozen nations, will be the only book on the market to examine this trend from a global perspective. It is a very useful reference for anyone who is interested in learning about the angel investment movement.

Angels - and stories of how they can rescue, support and heal us in times of trouble - have become deservedly popular in recent years. Glennyce Eckersley shows how angels can be experienced in many different forms - in traditional guise with wings; as a simple light or fragrance or even as people with modern-day clothing. Full of extraordinary, true and heartwarming stories from all round the globe, Angels to Watch Over Us is an enchanting book that will open your eyes to new possibilities, and to other worlds.

The study of the reciprocal relationship between the Bible and popular culture has blossomed in the past few decades, and the time seems ripe for a broadly-conceived work that assesses the current state of the field, offers examples of work in that field, and suggests future directions for further study. This Handbook includes a wide range of topics organized under several broad themes, including biblical characters (such as Adam, Eve, David and Jesus) and themes (like Creation, Hell, and Apocalyptic) in popular culture; the Bible in popular cultural genres (for example, film, comics, and Jazz); and "lived" examples (such as museums and theme parks). The Handbook concludes with a section taking stock of methodologies and the impact of the field on teaching and publishing. The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and American Popular Culture represents a major contribution to the field by some of its leading practitioners, and will be a key resource for the future development of the study of both the Bible and its role in American popular culture.

We don't know much about angels but the little information the Bible does give yields some very important life lessons.

"There are many angels, maybe as many as the stars in the sky . . . ." And every single one of these precious beings offers the world unique blessings. ANGEL POWER describes the special tasks and responsibilities of each of the Nine Choirs of Angels. The Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones are angels of goodness, love, and wisdom. The Angels of Dominion are angels of leadership. From the Virtue Angels flow miracles of healing, comfort, and peace. The Power Angels are special warriors against evil and defenders of goodness. The Principalities, Archangels, and Angels administer our planet. By illuminating each Choir's special powers, the author enables us more easily to draw upon its particular, radiant light. Weaving her own personal angel experiences together with angel prayers and with true angel stories she has been told, the author teaches us to open ourselves to angelic guidance, support, and protection. Her book spreads before us a dazzling and profoundly reassuring prospect of angel power at work -- a vision so beautiful and potent that those who experience it feel they know heaven on earth.

"My American Harp" presents 1,169 poems written 2010-2014 by Surazeus that explore what it means to be an American in the modern world of an interconnected global civilization.

Why were white bourgeois gay male writers so interested in spies, espionage, and treason in the twentieth century? Erin G. Carlston believes such figures and themes were critical to exploring citizenship and its limits, requirements, and possibilities in the modern Western state. Through close readings of Proust's novels, Auden's poetry, and Kushner's play Angels in America, which all reference real-life espionage cases involving Jews, homosexuals, or Communists, Carlston connects gay men's fascination with spying into larger debates about the making and contestation of social identity. Incorporating readings of nonliterary cultural artifacts, such as trial transcripts, into her analysis, Carlston pinpoints moments when national self-conceptions in France, England, and the United States grew unstable, linking the twentieth-century tensions around citizenship to the social and political concerns of three generations of influential writers. -- Book Jacket.

Baseball is the only major team sport that doesn't feature a clock, and there's a familiar saying among fans that as long as outs remain, the game can, theoretically, go on forever. Every now and again, it nearly does, as author Phil Lowry demonstrates. The product of more than four decades of research, this book catalogs baseball games from around the world and throughout history that lasted 20 or more innings, stretched five or more hours, or ended after 1:00 am. Lowry also examines probability models to predict how often games of unusual length will occur.

America had a radically different relationship with drugs a century ago. Drug prohibitions were few, and while alcohol was considered a menace, the public regularly consumed substances that are widely demonized today. Heroin was marketed by Bayer Pharmaceuticals, and marijuana was available as a tincture of cannabis sold by Parke Davis and Company. Exploring how this rather benign relationship with psychoactive drugs was transformed into one of confusion and chaos, The Cult of Pharmacology tells the dramatic story of how, as one legal drug after another fell from grace, new pharmaceutical substances took their place. Whether Valium or OxyContin at the pharmacy, cocaine or meth purchased on the street, or alcohol and tobacco from the corner store, drugs and drug use proliferated in twentieth-century America despite an escalating war on “drugs.” Richard DeGrandpre, a past fellow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and author of the best-selling book Ritalin Nation, delivers a remarkably original interpretation of drugs by examining the seductive but ill-fated belief that they are chemically predestined to be either good or evil. He argues that the determination to treat the medically sanctioned use of drugs such as Miltown or Seconal separately from the illicit use of substances like heroin or ecstasy has blinded America to how drugs are transformed by the manner in which a culture deals with them. Bringing forth a wealth of scientific research showing the powerful influence of social and psychological factors on how the brain is affected by drugs, DeGrandpre demonstrates that psychoactive substances are not angels or demons irrespective of why, how, or by whom they are used. The Cult of Pharmacology is a bold and necessary new account of America’s complex relationship with drugs.