There is a place in the world that only you can fill and it has been designed especially for you. No one else can fill that place, that purpose, that connection to others but you. Challenge yourself to continue the journey even when someone tells you no, or yet another door closes and the doctor's report is bad. The truth is you will not leave earth until your appointed time to do so and the fact that you are still here should tell you that you are not done. The dream, the passion, the vision that you may have felt since early childhood, I believe was given to you by God, who gave you dominion over the earth, therefore you already have everything you need to manifest it. Be tenacious about your life journey, be determined to fulfill your dream.

The Tenacity of the Couple-Norm explores the ongoing strength and insidious grip of couple-normativity across changing landscapes of law, policy and everyday life in four contrasting national contexts: the UK, Bulgaria, Norway and Portugal. By investigating how the couple-norm is lived and experienced, how it has changed over time, and how it varies between places and social groups, this book provides a detailed analysis of changing intimate citizenship regimes in Europe, and makes a major intervention in understandings of the contemporary condition of personal life. The authors develop the feminist concept of ‘intimate citizenship’ and propose the new concept of ‘intimate citizenship regime’, offering a study of intimate citizenship regimes as normative systems that have been undergoing profound change in recent decades. Against the backdrop of processes of de-patriarchalization, liberalization, pluralization and homonormalization, the ongoing potency of the couple-norm becomes ever clearer.

Some life stories beggar belief . . . even those of people we may yet to hear of. In this astonishing memoir, author Guy Marchi recounts the truly extraordinary story of his life. Born and raised in small-town British Columbia, Marchi’s experiences have been unbelievable. He enjoyed a successful musical career, travelling much of the world, spending years touring Southeast Asia and earned his name into the Guinness Book of World Records for most instruments played (186). Not only did he have an incredible musical career, though—he also became a high-ranking athlete, running marathons, setting power-lifting records, placing nationally as a cyclist, and winning the Fitness Canada competition. Beyond this, Marchi has had a number of other extraordinary experiences, including living in India as a beggar, being forced to run—on foot—from a criminal inquest, sailing the Caribbean for two years, and building an immaculate two-story authentic log house with the logs cut from his own land. Striking, evocative, and dynamic, Marchi’s is a truly incredible story of what one might accomplish in a single lifetime—if only you set your mind to it.

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer combines extensive field research with historical inquiry to produce a dramatic study of a minority people in Russia, the Khanty (Ostiak) of Northwest Siberia. Although First Nations, indigenous peoples, have often been victims of expansionist state-building, Balzer shows that processes of acquiring ethnic identity can involve transcending victimhood. She brings Khanty views of their history and current life into focus, revealing multiple levels of cultural activism. She argues that anthropological theory and practice can derive from indigenous insights, and should help indigenous peoples. Balzer brings to life the saga of the Khanty over several centuries. She analyzes trends in Siberian ethnic interaction that strongly affected minority lives: colonization, Christianization, revitalization, Sovietization, and regionalization. These processes incorporate suprastate and state politics, including recent devastations stemming from the energy industry's land thefts. Balzer documents changes that might seem to foreshadow the demise of indigenous ethnicity. Yet the final chapters reveal ways some Khanty have preserved cultural values and dignity in crisis. Khanty identity has varied with the politics of individuals, groups, and generations. It has been shaped by recent grass-roots mobilization, ecological activism, and religious revival, as well as older historical memory, language-based solidarity, and loyalty to a homeland. The Tenacity of Ethnicity demonstrates how at each historical turn, Siberian experiences shed new light on old debates concerning colonialism, conversion, revitalization, ethnicity, and nationalism. This volume will be important for political scientists, historians, and regional specialists, as well as anthropologists and sociologists.

The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs is a passionate yet analytical critique of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptural fundamentalists. Schimmel examines the ways in which otherwise intelligent and bright Jews, Christians, and Muslims defend their belief in the divine authorship of the Bible or of the Koran, and other religious beliefs derived from those claims, against overwhelming evidence and argument to the contrary from science, scholarship, common sense, and rational analysis. He also examines the motives, fears, and anxieties of scriptural fundamentalists that induce them to cling so tenaciously to their unreasonable beliefs. Schimmel begins with reflections on his own journey from commitment to Orthodox Judaism, through doubts about its theological dogmas and doctrines, to eventual denial of their truth. He follows this with an examination of theological and philosophical debates about the proper relationships between faith, reason, and revelation. Schimmel then devotes separate chapters to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptural fundamentalism, noting their similarities and differences. He analyzes in depth the psychological and social reasons why people acquire, maintain, and protect unreasonable religious beliefs, and how they do so. Schimmel also discusses unethical and immoral consequences of scriptural fundamentalism, such as gender inequality, homophobia, lack of intellectual honesty, self-righteousness, intolerance, propagation of falsehood, and in some instances, the advocacy of violence and terrorism. He concludes with a discussion of why, when, and where it is appropriate to critique, challenge, and combat scriptural fundamentalists. The Tenacity of Unreasonable Beliefs is thoughtful and provocative, written to encourage self-reflection and self-criticism, and to stimulate and to enlighten all who are interested in the psychology of religion and in religious fundamentalism.

"J.S. Law is a powerful new voice, and his heroine Dan Lewis lives up to the title. She is fearless and doesn't quit in the faces of all odds. The murky world of submarines and murder make The Dark Beneath addictively readable, and memories of it linger like dreams." -#1 New York Times bestselling author, Patricia Cornwell Two hundred meters below the ocean's surface, you can't run, you can't hide, and the truth won't set you free. An officer hangs himself in the engine room of naval submarine HMS Tenacity. A woman's murder bears disturbing similarities to an old case. Lieutenant Danielle "Dan" Lewis grasps for the truth before it submerges in the gray waters of the English Channel. Cramped, claustrophobic, and under strict command, the confines of HMS Tenacity are unwelcoming in the best of circumstances. For Dan, the only female aboard, who must methodically interrogate a tightknit and hostile crew, it's her own special place in hell. Recently reassigned to the Special Investigation Branch's Kill Team, Dan's hardheaded reputation precedes her. But facing an obstinate ship's company, a commanding officer too eager to close the case, and a constant threat of unfriendly male interest, she learns that under enough pressure everyone has their breaking point.

It is July 2039, and two highly disciplined men with nerves of steel honed in a $2 billion nuclear submarine are obsessively discussing infectious diseases. Marine Lt. Colonel Buzz Striker and Navy Commander Dwight Hoggue are sitting on highly classified information from the Chinese that an aggressive virus reported to cause a cytokine storm in its victims in a matter of hours has been unleashed on the world. They prepare for the worst. Six months later, Striker is in hiding, and Commander Hoggue is devastated. His grandchildren and his wife are dead. Isolated in a cabin outside a Floridian forest, Hoggue watches helplessly as the virus spreads across the United States, eventually collapsing the government and leaving only the addicted and compulsive unaffected by the disease. Suddenly, Hoggue becomes a man on a mission, determined to build his own paramilitary organization that will combat those who wish to enslave the survivors for their own selfish purposes. In this science fiction tale, a societal collapse reveals a futuristic hell populated only by alcoholic, drug-addicted, cruel enslavers. As a devastated population awaits a miracle, two military commanders must do everything in their power to bring order, salvation, and ultimately hopebefore all life ends forever.

The impact of an ethic of care, or its absence, is the focus of the schooling stories that make up this volume. The case studies examine the interconnected level of daily behaviour, describing relationships within various urban school support programmes.

This book describes the founding and importance of the American Society of Exercise Physiologists (ASEP). It explores the professional issues, organizational concerns, and ethical trends that all exercise physiologists face. A significant purpose of this study is to continue the changes in exercise physiology and the expected professional results for decades to come. This book also emphasizes the work of the ASEP leadership in creating the professional infrastructure for exercise physiology.

Demonstrating the centrality of diplomacy in the Vietnam War, Pierre Asselin traces the secret negotiations that led up to the Paris Agreement of 1973, which ended America's involvement but failed to bring peace in Vietnam. Because the two sides signed the agreement under duress, he argues, the peace it promised was doomed to unravel. By January of 1973, the continuing military stalemate and mounting difficulties on the domestic front forced both Washington and Hanoi to conclude that signing a vague and largely unworkable peace agreement was the most expedient way to achieve their most pressing objectives. For Washington, those objectives included the release of American prisoners, military withdrawal without formal capitulation, and preservation of American credibility in the Cold War. Hanoi, on the other hand, sought to secure the removal of American forces, protect the socialist revolution in the North, and improve the prospects for reunification with the South. Using newly available archival sources from Vietnam, the United States, and Canada, Asselin reconstructs the secret negotiations, highlighting the creative roles of Hanoi, the National Liberation Front, and Saigon in constructing the final settlement.