No issue is more hotly debated than how, or even if, a politician's private life affects his public competence. In A Question of Character John F.... Kennedy's two lives—public and private—are examined to answer this timely question. Respected historian and biographer Thomas C. Reeves reveals discrepancies between JFK's public persona, which has reached mythic proportions, and his scandalous private behavior. Most illuminating is the constant theme or Joe Kennedy's almost total control of JFK's behavior and politics throughout most of his son's career. "The John Kennedy who emerges from these pages was not a man of good moral character. He was reared not to be good but to win." — Los Angeles TimesReeves has provided the most truthful and balanced assessment of John F. Kennedy to date. Written more in sorrow than in anger, A Question of Character explores the sensitive and difficult question of how people, and history itself, ought to judge the relationship between personal character and national leadership.

A powerful debut memoir from a published poet and emerging writer. At the age of sixteen, R. Dwayne Betts- a good student from a lower-middle-class... family-carjacked a man with a friend. He had never held a gun before, but within a matter of minutes he had committed six felonies. In Virginia, carjacking is a "certifiable" offense, meaning that Dwayne would be treated as an adult under state law. A bright young kid, weighing only 126 pounds- not enough to fill out a medium T-shirt -he served his eight-year sentence as part of the adult population in some of the worst prisons in the state. A Question of Freedom is a coming-of-age story, with the unique twist that it takes place in prison. Utterly alone-and with the growing realization that he really is not going home any time soon-Dwayne confronts profound questions about violence, freedom, crime, race, and the justice system. Above all, A Question of Freedom is about a quest for identity-one that guarantees Dwayne's survival in a hostile environment and that incorporates an understanding of how his own past led to the moment of his crime.

A unique prison narrative that testifies to the power of books to transform a young man's life At the age of sixteen, R. Dwayne Betts-a good student... from a lower- middle-class family-carjacked a man with a friend. He had never held a gun before, but within a matter of minutes he had committed six felonies. In Virginia, carjacking is a "certifiable" offense, meaning that Betts would be treated as an adult under state law. A bright young kid, he served his nine-year sentence as part of the adult population in some of the worst prisons in the state. A Question of Freedom chronicles Betts's years in prison, reflecting back on his crime and looking ahead to how his experiences and the books he discovered while incarcerated would define him. Utterly alone, Betts confronts profound questions about violence, freedom, crime, race, and the justice system. Confined by cinder-block walls and barbed wire, he discovers the power of language through books, poetry, and his own pen. Above all, A Question of Freedom is about a quest for identity-one that guarantees Betts's survival in a hostile environment and that incorporates an understanding of how his own past led to the moment of his crime.

One hundred years after the deportations and mass murder of Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and other peoples in the final years of the Ottoman Empire,... the history of the Armenian genocide is a victim of historical distortion, state-sponsored falsification, and deep divisions between Armenians and Turks. Working together for the first time, Turkish, Armenian, and other scholars present here a compelling reconstruction of what happened and why. This volume gathers the most up-to-date scholarship on Armenian genocide, looking at how the event has been written about in Western and Turkish historiographies; what was happening on the eve of the catastrophe; portraits of the perpetrators; detailed accounts of the massacres; how the event has been perceived in both local and international contexts, including World War I; and reflections on the broader implications of what happened then. The result is a comprehensive work that moves beyond nationalist master narratives and offers a more complete understanding of this tragic event.

A Question of Honor is the gripping, little-known story of the refugee Polish pilots who joined the RAF and played an essential role in saving Britain... from the Nazis, only to be betrayed by the Allies after the war.After Poland fell to the Nazis, thousands of Polish pilots, soldiers, and sailors escaped to England. Devoted to liberating their homeland, some would form the RAF’s 303 squadron, known as the Kosciuszko Squadron, after the elite unit in which many had flown back home. Their thrilling exploits and fearless flying made them celebrities in Britain, where they were “adopted” by socialites and seduced by countless women, even as they yearned for news from home. During the Battle of Britain, they downed more German aircraft than any other squadron, but in a stunning twist at the war’s end, the Allies rewarded their valor by abandoning Poland to Joseph Stalin. This moving, fascinating book uncovers a crucial forgotten chapter in World War II–and Polish–history.

Tobacco companies had been protecting their turf for decades. They had congressmen in their pocket. They had corrupt scientists who made excuses about... nicotine, cancer and addiction. They had hordes of lawyers to threaten anyone—inside the industry or out—who posed a problem. They had a whole lot of money to spend. And they were good at getting people to do what they wanted them to do. After all, they had already convinced millions of Americans to take up an addictive, unhealthy, and potentially deadly habit. David Kessler didn't care about all that. In this book he tells for the first time the thrilling detective story of how the underdog FDA—while safeguarding the nation's food, drugs, and blood supply—finally decided to take on one of the world's most powerful opponents, and how it won. Like A Civil Action or And the Band Played On, A Question of Intent weaves together science, law, and fascinating characters to tell an important and often unexpectedly moving story. We follow Kessler's team of investigators as they race to find the clues that will allow the FDA to assert jurisdiction over cigarettes, while the tobacco companies and their lawyers fight back—hard. Full of insider information and drama, told with wit, and animated by its author's moral passion, A Question of Intent reads like a Grisham thriller, with one exception—everything in it is true.

Each of these essays illuminates an important dimension of the complex array of Black male experiences as workers, artists, warriors, and leaders. The... essays describe the expectations and demands to struggle, to resist, and facilitate the survival of African American culture and community. Black manhood was shaped not only in relation to Black womanhood, but was variously nurtured and challenged, honed and transformed against a backdrop of white male power and domination, and the relentless expectations and demands on them to struggle, resist, and to facilitate the survival of African-American culture and community.

It is never clear to Elizabeth whether the mission school principal's cruel revelation of her origins is at the bottom of her mental breakdown. She has... left South Africa with her son and is living in the village of Motabeng, the place of sand, in Botswana where there are no street lights at night.

"An indispensable and riveting account" of the CIA's development and use of torture, from the cold war to Abu Ghraib and beyond (Naomi Klein, The... Nation)In this revelatory account of the CIA's fifty-year effort to develop new forms of torture, historian Alfred W. McCoy locates the deep roots of recent scandals at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo in a long-standing, covert program of interrogation. A Question of Torture investigates the CIA's practice of "sensory deprivation" and "self-inflicted pain," in which techniques including isolation, hooding, hours of standing, and manipulation of time assault the victim's senses and destroy the basis of personal identity. McCoy traces the spread of these practices across the globe, from Vietnam to Iran to Central America, and argues that after 9/11, psychological torture became the weapon of choice in the CIA's global prisons, reinforced by "rendition" of detainees to "torture-friendly" countries. Finally, McCoy shows that information extracted by coercion is worthless, making a strong case for the FBI's legal methods of interrogation. Scrupulously documented and grippingly told, A Question of Torture is a devastating indictment of inhumane practices that have damaged America's laws, military, and international standing.

The first three editions of A Quick and Dirty Guide to War not only provided essential tools for understanding wars and hot spots around the world, they... delivered remarkably accurate projections on the outcomes of each conflict. War-game simulation specialists James F. Dunnigan and Austin Bay have revised their highly regarded analyses, bringing up to date not only the many conventional conflicts around the world today but the new battlegrounds that have emerged since the previous edition was published more than a decade ago - the Global War on Terror, counterinsurgency struggles around the world and the latest frontier of modern combat: cyber war.This fourth edition takes up where the last edition left off and analyzes the monumental events that have occurred since 1996 - September 11, the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - while guiding readers through dozens of other significant developments around the globe, including the tinderbox situation with Iran and oil flow through the Persian Gulf; the final disintegration of Yugoslavia; the struggle for regional influence between Brazil, Colombia and Hugo Chávez's Venezuela; Israel's attempts to deal with a fragmented Palestine Liberation Organization; China and India's growing influence in Asia and beyond; ongoing chaos and suffering on the Horn of Africa; Russia's struggle to reassert itself on the world stage; and much more.Dunnigan and Bay present an enormous amount of information in a series of concise, insightful briefings coupled with their shrewd projections of potential outcomes, making A Quick and Dirty Guide to War a thought-provoking reference on the face of war in the 21st century.

Clinical trials are at the heart of the successful development of new medicines for patients. Like any other specialized area, clinical trials has a... vocabulary and jargon all its own and the processes involved are highly standardized for ethical, practical and regulatory reasons. No matter. Most people can get a grip on the topic in sufficient detail to understand in general terms what people are talking about. The first part of this book provides a helicopter view of the clinical trials process with Chapter 1 explaining why we do what we do as a broad structure into which the later process chapters will fit. The second chapter reviews the history of clinical trials per se and the evolving ethical and regulatory considerations (i.e., how we got to where we are). Complementing these two chapters is the commercial perspective: the imperative for moving forward. Armed with these three chapters as background, the succeeding nuts and bolts process chapters will fall into place. You will be able to see exactly how any given discipline fits in and plays its part in delivering the overall clinical trial program. For make no mistake, the successful design, execution and delivery of an effective clinical trial program relies on excellent cooperation, understanding and respect within an often widely dispersed multi-disciplinary team. We specifically set out to ask experienced clinical researchers from all the relevant disciplines to write succinct and straightforward chapters which would explain what their role is and how this fits into a very exciting big picture, overall. In addition, we felt it was very important to acknowledge the role of the patient because without their participation no clinical trial would proceed. Frequently, it is the enthusiasm and dedication of patients that keep clinical trials on track. There is currently a great need for a better public support of clinical trials, but this can only happen if both patients and clinical trial researchers fully engage with each other. Many clinical researchers are highly experienced in the operational and regulatory aspects of trials, but how many of them have actually become involved as a patient? The answer is probably very few! In combination with the other contributions, Chapter 13 helps fill this gap as it is written by someone who has both worked on clinical trials and yet also participated as a patient. We have tried to present these chapters in a logical way so that the flow of the clinical trials process is also apparent. This is rather artificial, as it will be clear to those who read the book straight through, that many activities happen in parallel and that while there is relatively little down time for any specific group, there are often times of frenzied activity! Each chapter also stands alone as a quick dip foundation or refresher. Everyone involved in clinical trials finds it demanding to keep up-todate with current developments in the field. Therefore, as a final aspect to the book we have tried to explore what the future of clinical trials might be. There are numerous factors that have shaped clinical trials until now and far more that will influence their development in the future. We can only guess at what the future of clinical trials might be, but one certainty is that we will continue to rely on them for the development of new medicines. We believe you will come away with a really good basic grasp of the excitement of the clinical trials process, its drivers, checks and balances, and how you may even be able to contribute in a wide variety of ways.

Recognizing that there is a vast difference between children getting it and children holding on to what they have learned, Shanna lays out the universal... principles of "stickiness" and describes how they can be used to tweak your teaching for a more lasting impact on young writers. A Quick Guide to Making Your Teaching Stick is part of the Workshop Help Desk series. About the Workshop Help Desk series The Workshop Help Desk series is designed for teachers who believe in workshop teaching and who have already rolled up their sleeves enough to have encountered the predictable challenges. If you've struggled to get around quickly enough to help all your writers, if you've wondered how to tweak your teaching to make it more effective and lasting, if you've needed to adapt your teaching for English learners, if you've struggled to teach grammar or nonfiction writing or test prep...if you've faced these and other specific, pressing challenges, then this series is for you. Provided in a compact 5" x 7" format, the Workshop Help Desk series offers pocket-sized professional development. For a comprehensive overview of the Units of Study for Teaching Writing series, including sample minilessons, sample videos, curricular calendars, overview presentations, frequently asked questions, and information on the companion principal's guide and the Workshop Help Desk series visit unitsofstudy.com.

In A Quick Guide to Reaching Struggling Writers Colleen Cruz shows how to stop struggling with writers who struggle. You'll find effective support for... students who say: I'm not a good writer; My hand hurts; I don't know how to spell; I don't have anything to write about; I never get to write anything I want to write; I'm done. A Quick Guide to Reaching Struggling Writers is part of the Workshop Help Desk series. About the Workshop Help Desk seriesThe Workshop Help Desk series is designed for teachers who believe in workshop teaching and who have already rolled up their sleeves enough to have encountered the predictable challenges. If you've struggled to get around quickly enough to help all your writers, if you've wondered how to tweak your teaching to make it more effective and lasting, if you've needed to adapt your teaching for English learners, if you've struggled to teach grammar or nonfiction writing or test prep...if you've faced these and other specific, pressing challenges, then this series is for you. Provided in a compact 5" x 7" format, the Workshop Help Desk series offers pocket-sized professional development. For a comprehensive overview of the Units of Study for Teaching Writing series, including sample minilessons, sample videos, curricular calendars, overview presentations, frequently asked questions, and information on the companion principal's guide and the Workshop Help Desk series visit unitsofstudy.com.

"Informational writing is the perfect genre for second graders because nobody is more curious about the workings of the world and is more eager to tell... you a zillion facts about the topic at hand." --Marika Paez Wiesen Informational writing taps into second graders natural inclination to explore and excitedly share the new and strange discoveries that fill their worlds on a daily basis. Marika Paez Wiesen offers a framework that will help you harness this energy and implement an informational writing unit of study that thoughtfully addresses the wide range of learners typically found in a second grade classroom. Addressing the heightened emphasis on reading and writing informational texts in the Common Core State Standards and on state tests, this unit of study guides you through the entire writing process. After considering how to plan and prepare an informational writing unit that builds on young writers? passions, interests, and abilities, Marika describes how to get started choosing topics, planning a draft, and beginning to write chapters. Ensuing chapters explore ways to elaborate on and revise these chapters with an eye towards addressing conventions and using features common to nonfiction texts. The final chapter offers ideas on how best to celebrate this writing and extend this learning across the curriculum. A Quick Guide to Teaching Informational Writing, Grade 2 is part of the Workshop Help Desk series. About the Workshop Help Desk series The Workshop Help Desk series is designed for teachers who believe in workshop teaching and who have already rolled up their sleeves enough to have encountered the predictable challenges. If you've struggled to get around quickly enough to help all your students, if you've wondered how to tweak your teaching to make it more effective and lasting, if you've needed to adapt your teaching for English learners, if you've struggled to teach grammar or nonfiction writing or test prep...if you've faced these and other specific, pressing challenges, then this series is for you. Provided in a compact 5" x 7" format, the Workshop Help Desk series offers pocket-sized professional development. For a comprehensive overview of the Units of Study for Teaching Writing series, including sample minilessons, sample videos, overview presentations, frequently asked questions, and information on the companion principal's guide and the Workshop Help Desk series visit unitsofstudy.com.

Children have voices that need to be heard and ideas that need to be understood. Building on this premise Sarah describes why you should try a... persuasive writing unit of study, describes two units of study for the primary classroom, and lists tips and ideas for helping students get their persuasive writing out into the world. A Quick Guide to Teaching Persuasive Writing is part of the Workshop Help Desk series. About the Workshop Help Desk series The Workshop Help Desk series is designed for teachers who believe in workshop teaching and who have already rolled up their sleeves enough to have encountered the predictable challenges. If you've struggled to get around quickly enough to help all your writers, if you've wondered how to tweak your teaching to make it more effective and lasting, if you've needed to adapt your teaching for English learners, if you've struggled to teach grammar or nonfiction writing or test prep...if you've faced these and other specific, pressing challenges, then this series is for you. Provided in a compact 5" x 7" format, the Workshop Help Desk series offers pocket-sized professional development. For a comprehensive overview of the Units of Study for Teaching Writing series, including sample minilessons, sample videos, curricular calendars, overview presentations, frequently asked questions, and information on the companion principal's guide and the Workshop Help Desk series visit unitsofstudy.com.