The Fields of Yesterday is about the life of Alfred Duncan. It begins in a small Arkansas town in 1929 and in a chronological manner follows his life for over seven decades. Several things set his life apart and makes it interesting. They are related to the gifts and abilities that he was blessed with and how he has used them. The hardships of the 1930s and somewhat into the mid 1940s had a profound effect on shaping him into the man he became. He had a strong work ethic and did not expect anything from life that he had not earned in some way. The concept of an entitlement was totally foreign to him and for the most part, those of his generation as well. His friends and the games they played give an interesting insight into what children used to do with their idle time. His work and actual employment when still a child also gives good insight into how things were with many families in the 1930s and 1940s. Being a shoe-shine boy gave him some insight into human nature as well as did being a newspaper delivery boy. Even though he did not realize it at the time, those things were teaching him good business practices, organization and administration. All that would be of great value to him in the years to come. His time in the United States Navy in 1948 1952 continued his preparation for life in a much different manner. One specific skill in the area of woodworking was especially honed as he served as one of only fifty Patternmakers in the entire United States Navy. His travels into waters off Europe, North Africa and western Asia gave him exposures to other cultures as he visited small towns and large cities in those areas of the world. Our nations economic difficulties in the early and mid 1950s was in the mix for making decisions that involved marriage, family, moving and putting down roots. That was expected to turn out as a typical American dream, meaning a home, a good job and a secure future. Several things contributed to that dream becoming a realitynot the least being his employment by Dixie Cup Company. Added to that was schooling under the G.I. Bill and finally the establishment of a sideline occupation. His high school training in Architectural and Mechanical Drawing plus added studies by correspondence combined with his experience as a Patternmaker enabled him to hang up his shingle as an Architectural, Mechanical and Patent Draftsman. That opened doors to a new level of relationships with people as well as added income to the family. During those years he and his family had settled into regular participation in the life of their church and that brought them into a deeper understanding of what it means to be a Christian, or maybe better, A Follower of Christ. That understanding also brought some unrest to Mr. Duncans life in the form of career dissatisfaction and a seeking for what God was leading him to do. After several months of prayer and thought he determined that God was calling him to enter the Pastoral Ministry. The settled life that he and his family had been living suddenly became unsettled. A rural church invited him to serve as their Pastor, and with that, move into their parsonage. Some burning the bridges decisions were made as they sold the home they had worked so hard for and he quit his job that had been the source of economic security. This was starting all over at age thirty, and involved entering into an area where he had no prior experience. The years that followed, and the record of the churches he served, reveal the victories and the defeats that are so much a part of being a Pastor. His life was indeed a great adventure and this book will certainly inspire others to meet life with courage as they trust God to supply their every need.

From the author of No.1 international bestseller Collapse, a mesmerizing portrait of the human past that offers profound lessons for how we can live today Visionary, prize-winning author Jared Diamond changed the way we think about the rise and fall of human civilizations with his previous international bestsellers Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse. Now he returns with another epic - and groundbreaking - journey into our rapidly receding past. In The World Until Yesterday, Diamond reveals how traditional societies around the world offer an extraordinary window onto how our ancestors lived for the majority of human history - until virtually yesterday, in evolutionary terms - and provide unique, often overlooked insights into human nature. Drawing extensively on his decades working in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, Diamond explores how tribal societies approach essential human problems, from childrearing to conflict resolution to health, and discovers we have much to learn from traditional ways of life. He unearths remarkable findings - from the reason why modern afflictions like diabetes, obesity and Alzheimer's are virtually non-existent in tribal societies to the surprising benefits of multilingualism. Panoramic in scope and thrillingly original, The World Until Yesterday provides an enthralling first-hand picture of the human past that also suggests profound lessons for how to live well today. Jared Diamond is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the seminal million-copy-bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, which was named one of TIME's best non-fiction books of all time, and Collapse, a #1 international bestseller. A professor of geography at UCLA and noted polymath, Diamond's work has been influential in the fields of anthropology, biology, ornithology, ecology and history, among others.

Life in a small English coastal mining community during and after the Second World War, through the eyes of a small boy

When Israeli Nobel Laureate S. Y. Agnon published the novel Only Yesterday in 1945, it quickly became recognized as a major work of world literature, not only for its vivid historical reconstruction of Israel's founding society. The book tells a seemingly simple tale about a man who immigrates to Palestine with the Second Aliya--the several hundred idealists who returned between 1904 and 1914 to work the Hebrew soil as in Biblical times and revive Hebrew culture. This epic novel also engages the reader in a fascinating network of meanings, contradictions, and paradoxes all leading to the question, what, if anything, controls human existence? Seduced by Zionist slogans, young Isaac Kumer imagines the Land of Israel filled with the financial, social, and erotic opportunities that were denied him, the son of an impoverished shopkeeper, in Poland. Once there, he cannot find the agricultural work he anticipated. Instead Isaac happens upon house-painting jobs as he moves from secular, Zionist Jaffa, where the ideological fervor and sexual freedom are alien to him, to ultra-orthodox, anti-Zionist Jerusalem. While some of his Zionist friends turn capitalist, becoming successful merchants, his own life remains adrift and impoverished in a land torn between idealism and practicality, a place that is at once homeland and diaspora. Eventually he marries a religious woman in Jerusalem, after his worldly girlfriend in Jaffa rejects him. Led astray by circumstances, Isaac always ends up in the place opposite of where he wants to be, but why? The text soars to Surrealist-Kafkaesque dimensions when, in a playful mode, Isaac drips paint on a stray dog, writing "Crazy Dog" on his back. Causing panic wherever he roams, the dog takes over the story, until, after enduring persecution for so long without "understanding" why, he really does go mad and bites Isaac. The dog has been interpreted as everything from the embodiment of Exile to a daemonic force, and becomes an unforgettable character in a book about the death of God, the deception of discourse, the power of suppressed eroticism, and the destiny of a people depicted in all its darkness and promise.

This is my memoirs. Memories from my days as able-bodied, until now as paraplegic. The days in school, me and the horses, combat with terrorists. Do you enjoy your laugh and action from bygone days? I hope you enjoy the book.

Sci-fi crime noir: When a dead man sets you on a collision course with the police and a gunfight in a cemetery, as a reasonably respectable PI, you might feel the need to reconsider your line of work. But when a dead woman comes back to life to hire you and someone blows your house up, it might be time to get out of town.

"... a summary of some of the essential features of the prehistory, history, and customs of the Navaho Indians of Arizona and New Mexico."--preface.

Describes the University of Arizona Archaeological Field School at Grasshopper Pueblo in northern Arizona, its excavation of a five-hundred-room Mogollon Pueblo occupied during the 1300s AD, and the intellectual debates the major project engendered.

Yesterday in the Hills recalls life in North Georgia from the 1890s until World War II and records vanished and vanishing folkways of the region. Here is folklore at its best--seen from the inside and mediated though the heart. Yesterday in the Hills is built upon the bedrock of experience and memory, but its sharply drawn characters and beautifully proportioned narrative transcend reminiscence and realistically depict hill country life as it once was.