Osama bin Laden has haunted the popular psyche and stymied the world's mightiest military for the last five years. Despite President Bush's declaration that he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive," despite being one of the world's most notorious men, and despite the barrage of coverage surrounding him, Osama bin Laden remains at large -- and shrouded in a fog of anecdote and myth, rumor and fact. Peter Bergen, author of the bestselling book Holy War, Inc., offers an astounding, unparalleled portrait of bin Laden, comprised of Bergen's own interviews with more than fifty people who have known bin Laden personally, from his brother-in-law to his high school English teacher to former members of al Qaeda. The resulting collage of voices and memories affords an unprecedented glimpse into the life and the true nature of the man directly responsible for the largest terror attack in history. No journalist knows more about Osama bin Laden than Peter Bergen. In 1997, well before bin Laden became a household name, Bergen met with him, and has since followed his activities closely. After an insightful introduction -- in which Bergen recounts how, at their meeting, bin Laden "presented himself as a soft-spoken cleric, rather than as the firebreathing leader of a global terrorist organization" -- Bergen stands aside to make way for the voices of dozens of people with firsthand, sometimes intimate experience with the al Qaeda leader. Current conventional wisdom seems to be that bin Laden and his organization have faded in importance, but Bergen argues urgently that that perspective is far from accurate -- indeed, each day that bin Laden remains free adds to al Qaeda's public relations triumph, for his legend only grows among his supporters. More concretely, he continues to provide broad strategic guidance for jihadists -- his many statements released on video or audio tape since 9/11, for instance, have exerted direct influence on terrorists' actions. In 2003 the world suffered more significant terror attacks than had occurred in a single year during the previous two decades -- and in 2004, the number of attacks doubled over 2003. In 2004, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Iraq's most ferocious insurgent leader, pledged his allegiance to bin Laden, a sign of the continued importance of al Qaeda's leader. How did Osama bin Laden transform himself from a shy, polite, middle-of-his-class schoolboy to commander of the world's most formidable terrorist organization? Where was bin Laden on 9/11, and what was his reaction to it? How did he escape from Tora Bora? Is al Qaeda a top-down organization or a loose ideological alliance? What is it about this man that draws hundreds of thousands of followers, and makes men willing to fly airplanes into buildings at his command? This definitive and engaging portrait gives the American public its first true, enduring insight into a man who has declared us his greatest enemy.

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? This question opens up an important research perspective. In this book, Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books. Focusing on the intersection of information technology and architectural formulation, the authors create an evolving intellectual reflection on digital architecture and computer science.

Drawing on some of the most powerful theories and trends in physics, biology, philosophy, and psychology, D'Souza concludes that belief in life after deathoffers depth and significance to this life.

During a visit to Jordan Nicholas Hagger stood on Mount Nebo where the prophet Moses stood, and looked down on the Promised Land of Canaan that Moses saw shortly before he died. It seemed as if all the kingdoms of the earth were spread out below him, a new Promised Land: a coming World State called for by Dante and Kant, and more recently by Truman, Einstein, Churchill, Eisenhower, Gandhi, Russell, J.F. Kennedy and Gorbachev - and Hagger himself in World State and World Constitution. Combining travelogue and historical reflection, Nicholas Hagger draws on previous visits to the Biblical Middle East and traces the development of his Universalism in his formative years and then in his “wilderness years”, when like Moses he spent 40 years in the wilderness setting out Universalism in 60 books and arriving at its ten commandments. He reflects on a remarkable life and its pattern and reaches some conclusions on the Providential nature of its direction and on the European civilisation. Weaving together his wanderings in Arabia and Egypt, his past travels and his writings, he presents a coming democratic, partly federal World State with sufficient authority to abolish war, enforce disarmament, combat famine, disease and poverty and solve the world’s financial, environmental and virological problems, and in a closing vision a coming Promised Land that like Moses he will not live to see. This is a stunning work with a prophetic vision of the future.

Reminiscing the events from many decades ago and putting them into words, structuring to reflect the chronology and nuances of human interactions, especially between parents and children who share many facets of their lives together, was the easiest part of this endeavor. The difficult part was to walk the very fine line of respecting the diversity of opinions within the family members relevant to each event or issue and to avoid being judgmental or biased.

Interrupted Life is a gripping collection of writings by and about imprisoned women in the United States, a country that jails a larger percentage of its population than any other nation in the world. This eye-opening work brings together scores of voices from both inside and outside the prison system including incarcerated and previously incarcerated women, their advocates and allies, abolitionists, academics, and other analysts. In vivid, often highly personal essays, poems, stories, reports, and manifestos, they offer an unprecedented view of the realities of women's experiences as they try to sustain relations with children and family on the outside, struggle for healthcare, fight to define and achieve basic rights, deal with irrational sentencing systems, remake life after prison; and more. Together, these powerful writings are an intense and visceral examination of life behind bars for women, and, taken together, they underscore the failures of imagination and policy that have too often underwritten our current prison system.