It’s the fall of 2010 at Jesuit-run Boston College, where senior Jack Knecht has just seen a ghostly figure in long antique robes slipping into Gasson... Hall, the Gothic bell tower looming over the stately campus. Students and faculty alike, comfortably at home on The Heights, know the building is locked for major renovations this semester. Why would a spirit in 18th-century dress be haunting contemporary college life? Jack wonders. Thus begins this driving mystery-adventure in which Jack and his girlfriend, Fran Romero, run from menacing ghosts, are attacked out of the blue by a fiery dragon overhead and a raging bull underground, and have to face suspicious Jesuits threatening expulsion, all while keeping up with classes in this most sociable of schools. These are reasons enough to quickly decipher a tantalizing ancient map that convincingly points to the BC campus as the secret site of the Holy Grail, lost for centuries now. Proceeding by their wits with crucial help from eccentric art history professor Melinda Galen, the fey ghost of the last Templar grand master Jacques de Molay, and an imaginative, close-knit circle of college friends, Fran and Jack embark on a journey of discovery. The trail, however, is a twisted one, winding from the religious cult of Mithraism rooted in the ancient Syrian city of Dura-Europos through the medieval Templars down to modern-day Jesuits bearing a colorful history from Old World to New. Amid campus Quidditch games and undergraduate parties, dance rehearsals, middle-of-the-night discussions about hooking up, and communal meals, the young students pool their various esoteric disciplines to pursue the mystery of the Grail’s location. In the course of investigating the recondite riddles of the Mithraic cult, Fran and Jack come to pursue a Grail for a new millennium and thereby seek to become initiates into the mysteries of love. But in our age of crisis, with the planet suffering while economies spin out of control, can Fran and Jack find a way through the phantasmagoric maze confronting them, to find at last the Grail and arrive at a newly awakened consciousness? Grail Mysterium is a novel about love and its possibilities, about dating and relationships among the younger Linked Generation, and about the fundamental shift in human interconnectedness now underway in the 21st century. This book is the first in the Adventure on The Heights series by Thomas Kaplan-Maxfield.

Growing up in southern Manitoba, Gander Stake learns to love the prairie, not for its vistas, but for its animal life and for the magic of the new... machines that make it prosper. More agonizingly, however, he must learn how to love both his family and his grade-school sweetheart.Set against the backdrop of World War I, this classic of prairie realism, first published in 1926, ponders whether the battle for grain is not as crucial to a nation's self-worth as the battle in Europe.From the Paperback edition.

If you are new to C++ programming, C++ Primer Plus, Fifth Edition is a friendly and easy-to-use self-study guide. You will cover the latest and most... useful language enhancements, the Standard Template Library and ways to streamline object-oriented programming with C++. This guide also illustrates how to handle input and output, make programs perform repetitive tasks, manipulate data, hide information, use functions and build flexible, easily modifiable programs. With the help of this book, you will: Learn C++ programming from the ground up. Learn through real-world, hands-on examples. Experiment with concepts, including classes, inheritance, templates and exceptions. Reinforce knowledge gained through end-of-chapter review questions and practice programming exercises. C++ Primer Plus, Fifth Edition makes learning and using important object-oriented programming concepts understandable. Choose this classic to learn the fundamentals and more of C++ programming.  

Ngugi's reflection on a key chapter in Kenya's past - the period just before independence -- explores the question of nationalism and the challenges an... independent Kenya will face.

In her ethnography of the Gwembe Tonga people of rural Zambia, Lisa Cliggett explores what happens to kinship ties in times of famine. The Tonga, a... matrilineal Bantu-speaking society, had long lived and farmed along the banks of the Zambezi River, but when the Kariba Dam was completed and the river valley was flooded in 1958, approximately 57,000 people were forcibly relocated. All of southern Africa has suffered from severe droughts in the last three decades, and the Gwembe Valley has proved particularly susceptible to failed harvests and sociopolitically and ecologically triggered crises.The work of survival for the Gwembe Tonga includes difficult decisions about how to distribute inadequate resources among family members. Physically limited elderly Tonga who rely on their kin for food and assistance are particularly vulnerable. Cliggett examines Tonga household economies and support systems for the elderly. Old men and women, she finds, use deeply gendered approaches to encourage aid from their children and fend off starvation. In extreme circumstances, often the only resources at people's disposal are social support networks. Cliggett's book tells a story about how people living in environmentally and economically dire circumstances manage their social and material worlds to the best of their ability, sometimes at the cost of maintaining kinship bonds-a finding that challenges Western notions of family among indigenous people, especially in rural Africa.

The definitive account of one of the most accomplished, controversial, and polarizing figures in American historyBill Clinton is the most arresting... leader of his generation. He transformed American politics, and his eight years as president spawned arguments that continue to resonate. For all that has been written about this singular personality–including Clinton’s own massive autobiography–there has been no comprehensive, nonpartisan overview of the Clinton presidency. Few writers are as qualified and equipped to tackle this vast subject as the award-winning veteran Washington Post correspondent John F. Harris, who covered Clinton for six of his eight years in office–as long as any reporter for a major newspaper. In The Survivor, Harris frames the historical debate about President William Jefferson Clinton, by revealing the inner workings of the Clinton White House and providing the first objective analysis of Clinton’s leadership and its consequences.Harris shows Clinton entering the Oval Office in 1993 primed to make history. But with the Cold War recently concluded and the country coming off a nearly uninterrupted generation of Republican presidents, the new president’s entry into this maelstrom of events was tumultuous. His troubles were exacerbated by the habits, personal contacts, and the management style, he had developed in his years as governor of Arkansas. Clinton’s enthusiasm and temper were legendary, and he and Hillary Rodham Clinton–whose ambitions and ordeals also fill these pages–arrived filled with mistrust about many of the characters who greeted them in the “permanent Washington” that often holds the reins in the nation’s capital.Showing surprising doggedness and a deep-set desire to govern from the middle, Clinton repeatedly rose to the challenges; eventually winning over (or running over) political adversaries on both sides of the aisle–sometimes facing as much skepticism from fellow Democrats as from his Republican foes. But as Harris shows in his accounts of political debacles such as the attempted overhaul of health care, Clinton’s frustrations in the war against terrorism, and the numerous personal controversies that time and again threatened to consume his presidency, Bill Clinton could never manage to outrun his tendency to favor conciliation over clarity, or his own destructive appetites. The Survivor is the best kind of history, a book filled with major revelations–the tense dynamic of the Clinton inner circle and Clinton’s professional symbiosis with Al Gore to the imprint of Clinton’s immense personality on domestic and foreign affairs–as well as the minor details that leaven all great political narratives. This long-awaited synthesis of the dominant themes, events, and personalities of the Clinton years will stand as the authoritative and lasting work on the Clinton Presidency.From the Hardcover edition.

The Landscape of Qualitative Research, Third Edition, the first volume of the paperback versions of the The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Third... Edition, takes a look at the field from a broadly theoretical perspective, and is composed of the Handbook's Parts I (“Locating the Field”), II (“Major Paradigms and Perspectives”), and VI (“The Future of Qualitative Research”). The Landscape of Qualitative Research, Third Edition attempts to put the field of qualitative research in context. Part I provides background on the field, starting with history, then action research and the academy, and the politics and ethics of qualitative research. Part II isolates what we regard as the major historical and contemporary paradigms now structuring and influencing qualitative research in the human disciplines. The chapters move from competing paradigms (positivist, post positivist, constructivist, critical theory) to specific interpretive perspectives, feminisms, racialized discourses, cultural studies, sexualities, and queer theory. Part III considers the future of qualitative research.New to the Third Edition • Contains a new Reader's Guide prepared by the editors that helps students and researchers navigate through the chapters, locating the different methodologies, methods, techniques, issues, and theories relevant to their work. • Presents an abbreviated Glossary of terms that offer students and researchers a ready resource to help decode the language of qualitative research. • Offers recommended Readings that provide readers with additional sources on specific topic areas linked to their research. Intended AudienceThis text is designed for graduate students taking classes in social research methods and qualitative methods as well as researchers throughout the social sciences and in some fields within the humanities.

Gramática básica del estudiante de español presents Spanish grammar with clear and comprehensive explanations in simple Spanish language. This text... is enhanced with illustrations that exhibit the appropriate use of the material in real and cultural contexts. Gramática focuses on breaking down the most frequent grammar issues for Spanish learners and includes hundreds of exercises for students to practice their new skills. The text also includes conjugated verb tables and answer keys for quick review. Gramática can be used as the main text for a grammar course for second or third year students, as a supplement to other class material, or as a reference for advanced Spanish learners.

This package contains the following components: -0131598708: Gram¿ca b¿ca del estudiante de espa¿ol -0205703453: MySpanishKit -- Standalone Access... Card (6-month access)

La Gramatica de la Lengua Española es el resultado de mas de diex años de trabajo del catedratico y academico Emilio Alarcos Llorach, y se ha... convetido en uno de los titulos mas esperados en el mundo universitario y en el de los interesados en el estudio de nuestro idioma. ha sido redactada buscando el equilibrio entre la claridad y el rigor de la exposicion, y concebida con una intencion normativa y diddactica, por lo que constituye algo mas wue un mero tratado teorico de la material. En ella se e xponen los rasgos de la gramataica del espanol en los actos orales y escritos de los usuarios de la lengua en este siglo XX, descritos segun un hilo conductor consecuente y con una orientacion metodologica funcionalista. El autor ha tenido presente que la actitud normativa no debe ocultar la rigurosa descripcion de los hechos, y que esta no ha de imponerse sobre la claridad de la norma y el proposito didactico.

Dirigida a adultos que necesitan un libro de consulta y de referencia de la gramatica espanola. Nueva edicion de la gramatica con la que mas de 200.000... estudiantes han aprendido espanol. Los contenidos y las explicaciones se han ampliado. Los ejemplos se han adaptado para utilizar un espanol mas actual.Normas: reglas de funcionamiento de la lengua espanola. Simplificadas y completadas siguiendo las indicaciones de Nueva gramatica de la RAE (2009) y del Diccionario panhispanico de dudas (2005), asi como los cambios ortograficos plasmados en la Ortografia de la lengua espanola (2010). Incluye 36 tablas de conjugacion de los verbos regulares y de los irregulares mas frecuentes. Recursos para la comunicacion: amplia seleccion de expresiones funcionales para la comunicacion que el hablante necesita para desenvolverse en los diferentes contextos de la vida cotidiana. Sigue los repertorios de los Niveles de referencia para el espanol (Plan Curricular del Instituto Cervantes (2007). .Recomienda a los estudiantes, segun su nivel, los ejercicios que pueden realizar para practicar. Cuenta con explicaciones simples y evita cualquier metalenguaje

De gran utilidad para alumnos y profesores así como para todas aquellas personas que tengan un claro interés por el funcionamiento gramatical de... nuestra lengua.