New Releases by Michael Williams

About the Author Dr. James Michael Williams has worked with children for almost two decades. He has served as a general education and special education classroom teacher and as an administrator in the public school educational system. His passion has always been to help students who struggle to learn or fit in socially. He hopes that the Beaks Family series books will help children understand their feelings are normal and give them the coping skills to help them succeed in school and life. Join the Beaks family adventures at www.babybeaksinc.com! About the Illustrator Mrs. Susie Seubert has a career in finance and accounting but during the COVID epidemic, she decided to take the time to learn to draw. She hopes others realize you are never too old to achieve your dreams.

Living with regrets is like living in a house without walls. You're constantly exposed to the elements, vulnerable to the world around you, and unable to find solace. Regrets can haunt you like ghosts, reminding you of past mistakes, missed opportunities, and unsaid words. They can consume your thoughts, leaving you trapped in a cycle of hate, self-doubt, and "what-ifs." The What If Factor: Living Beyond the Question Mark is a book that will help you break free from the chains of doubt and uncertainty. Dr. Williams encourages readers to ask themselves difficult questions about their dreams and goals and then provides guidance on overcoming setbacks, staying motivated, and achieving those goals. Imagine a life where you're not afraid to take risks... Where you're not held back by self-doubt... Where you're living your dreams to the fullest... That's the life that The What If Factor can help you create. In this book, you'll learn how to: Embrace the unknown. Life is full of uncertainty, but that's part of what makes it so exciting! Dr. Williams will teach you to embrace the unknown and see it as an opportunity for growth and adventure. Face your giants head-on. Everyone has giants in their lives—those fears and doubts that hold us back. But Dr. Williams will show you how to face your giants head-on and overcome them. Embark on your personal journey of growth and self-discovery. The What If Factor is a roadmap to a more fulfilling and meaningful life. Dr. Williams will guide you on your personal journey of growth and self-discovery.

This book argues that the principles of Pan-Africanism are more important than ever in ensuring the liberation of the people Africa, those at home and abroad, and the rapid development of the African continent. The writings and practice of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first post-independence prime minister and president, were key in laying out a vision for post-independence Africa. Now, in an effort to counter the deluge of neo-liberal thinking that has engulfed so much of the debate on African development in recent decades, Michael Williams illuminates just how important a role an Nkrumaist intellectual framework can play in providing an accurate diagnosis of, and effective solution to, Africa’s development crisis. This is done by examining Nkrumah’s vision of the critical role Pan-Africanism must play in the development of the continent. Raising vitally important questions about Africa’s development and the quality of life of its populations, this book will be a key text for researchers of African politics, development studies, and the Pan-African movement.

Kids that grew up in the small southern Iowa town of Milo truly had a walk in the park during their childhood. There was so much to enjoy during those tender years as Little Leaguers, Boy Scouts, high school athletes, or members of the school band. Hunting and fishing with friends occupied nearly every weekend and filled those treasured moments with unforgettable memories. That all changed when America became involved in the Vietnam War, and the boys of Milo were called to join the military. Soon to be lost would be the innocence of their youth. From 1960 to 1975, nearly two-thirds of the young men from this tightly knit community departed their tranquil town and became soldiers. Many served overseas to include Southeast Asia. Some did not return home. Many came back with visible battle scars and Purple Hearts pinned on their chest. Many returned with hidden wounds, buried deep within their soul that haunted them for years. The Boys of Milo is a true account of the events that impacted these young men on their journey to far-flung parts of the United States and the world during an exceedingly difficult time in American history. Some of their stories are humorous, others are so gripping they defy believability. All, however, are true accounts as now told by old men. Their stories allow those who knew them to remember and for all to understand them. Consider what God has done: Who can straighten what he has made crooked? When times are good, be happy: but when times are bad, consider God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future. — Ecclesiastes 7:13–15

The influential role Tichenor played in shaping both the Baptist denomination and southern culture Isaac Taylor Tichenor worked as a Confederate chaplain, a mining executive, and as president of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama (now Auburn University). He also served as corresponding secretary for the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in Atlanta from 1882 until 1899. In these capacities Tichenor developed the New South ideas that were incorporated into every aspect of his work and ultimately influenced many areas of southern life, including business, education, religion, and culture. In Isaac Taylor Tichenor: The Creation of the Baptist New South, Michael E. Williams Sr. provides a comprehensive analysis of Tichenor’s life, examining the overall impact of his life and work. This volume also documents the methodologies Tichenor used to rally Southern Baptist support around its struggling Home Mission Board, which defined the makeup of the Southern Baptist Convention and defended the territory of the convention. Tichenor was highly influential in forming a uniquely southern mindset prior to and at the turn of the century. Williams contends that Tichenor’s role in shaping Southern Baptists as they became the largest denomination in the South was crucial in determining their identity both the identities of the region and the SBC.

This book offers the first comprehensive exploration of how the ancient past has shaped screen stardom in Hollywood since the silent era. It engages with debates on historical reception, gender and sexuality, nostalgia, authenticity and the uses of the past. Michael Williams gives fresh insights into ‘divinized stardom’, a highly influential and yet understudied phenomenon that predates Hollywood and continues into the digital age. Case studies include Greta Garbo and Mata Hari (1931); Buster Crabbe and the 1930s Olympian body; the marketing of Rita Hayworth as Venus in the 1940s; sculpture and star performance in Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004); landscape and sexuality in Troy (2004); digital afterimages of stars such as Marilyn Monroe; and the classical body in the contemporary ancient epic genre. The author’s richly layered ‘archaeological’ approach uses detailed textual analysis and archival research to survey the use of themyth and iconography of ancient Greece and Rome in some of stardom’s most popular and fascinating incarnations. This interdisciplinary study will be significant for anyone interested in star studies, film and cultural history, and classical reception.

This all-new, 365-day, full-color interactive devotional contains short, easy-to-handle studies of God's Word and the hands-on activities will engage readers with the Bible and the ways in which all Scripture points to Jesus.

The How to Read the Bible Pack, Second Edition includes six books from six leading biblical scholars in one pack that will help you understand the Bible more clearly and get the most out of your Bible-reading experience.

"My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge." Hosea 4:6 Don't be left out; Learn what God's all about. Get Saved! That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. Romans 10: 9-10 When you learn to follow His ways; You'll start to have better days! Guaranteed!

Touching on the fields of philosophy, critical theory, cultural studies, and queer theory, Pervert-Schizoid-Woman critiques the organization of Western economy, language, and desire. Author Michael Williams seeks to promote alternative frameworks for a posthumanist theory and practice of perverse selfhood and sociality. In this study, he identifies the capitalist economic system as structured by scarcity and supply/demand dynamics, discerning the paradoxical accumulation of debt as the essence of the assumed scarcity in the financial system. He also uncovers the profound isomorphism between the economics of scarcity and the castration and lack at the center of the psychoanalytic interpretation of gender, sexuality, and desire, concluding that the essential negativity in the scarcity of capitalism, the absence in the structure of language, and the castration in the network of desire are the sources of the dysfunctions in Western systems of finance, expression, and gender and sexuality.

After the first tractors appeared on the scene in the late 1890s, it took another two decades and plenty of modifications for farmers to embrace this once-crude technology in favor of the steam engine, further advancing the power-farming revolution. Written by an international expert in agricultural machinery, Farm Tractors takes readers back to the nineteenth century to look at the precursors to modern tractors and travels through the years to follow the machine's evolution as tractors became indispensable equipment on farms across America. INSIDE FARM TRACTORS: •How steam-powered machinery gave way to tractors, and how tractors changed the way that farmers worked •Prominent early manufacturers and models, including Henry Ford's legendary Model F, International Harvester's Farmall, the Waterloo Boy, John Deere, and many more •The use of hydraulics, the advent of diesel engines, the availability of four-wheel drive, and other technical breakthroughs •The introduction of new fuel sources as alternatives to gasoline •Specialized tractors for orchard work, high-acreage operations, carrying loads, cultivating, and other scenarios •The tractor industry's major expansion following World War II •Modern-day tractors and an outlook on the future of farm machinery

Eastern Sevier County rests in the toursity foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park but also boasts a colorful history of its own. Eastern Sevier County is home to the small communities of Foxfire Mountain, Pittman Center, Jones Cove, Richardson's Cove, Locust Ridge, and Pearl Valley. Foxfire Mountain is best known today for the adventure park and agri-tourist destination brought to life by the Postlewaite family, yet it also boasts a colorful history that includes Benjamin Owens, a judge notorious for hanging convicts from an oak tree on his property. Locust Ridge is the birthplace of country music legend Dolly Parton, and it has been reported that her father compensated the attending physician who delivered Dolly with a bag of cornmeal. Pittman Center, originally a Cherokee hunting ground, is now the largest community in this portion of the county. Strangely, the town is named for Dr. Eli Pittman of New York, who assisted local minister John Burnett with fundraising to build a school to serve the area. Pittman Center is now a favorite destination for those enjoying the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

To Pass On a Good Earth is the candid and compelling new biography of one of the twentieth century’s most distinctive and influential scholars. The legendary "Great God beyond the Sierras," Carl Ortwin Sauer is America’s most famed geographer, an inspiration to both academics and poets, yet no book-length biography of him has existed until now. This Missouri-born son of German immigrants contributed to many fields, with a versatility rare in his time and virtually unknown today. Sauer explored plant and animal domestication, the entry of Native Americans into the continent, their transformation of the land into prairies and cultivated fields, and subsequent European enterprise that fueled prosperity but also triggered environmental degradation and the loss of cultural diversity. Providing profound and invaluable insights into the human occupance, cultivation--and often ruination--of the earth, Sauer revolutionized our understanding of the impact of European conquest of the New World. Author and fellow geographer Michael Williams had access to Sauer’s voluminous correspondence in the Bancroft Library at Berkeley and in family collections. Enlivened by these intimate letters to family and colleagues, To Pass On a Good Earth reveals the rare qualities of mind and heart that made Sauer one of America’s most treasured--as well as troubled--intellectual pioneers. He brought both historical rigor and humanistic understanding to the burgeoning environmental movement and ceaselessly championed an ecumenical approach in an age of increasing specialization.

This book is structured as a step-by-step course of study along the lines of a VLSI integrated circuit design project. The entire Verilog language is presented, from the basics to everything necessary for synthesis of an entire 70,000 transistor, full-duplex serializer-deserializer, including synthesizable PLLs. The author includes everything an engineer needs for in-depth understanding of the Verilog language: Syntax, synthesis semantics, simulation and test. Complete solutions for the 27 labs are provided in the downloadable files that accompany the book. For readers with access to appropriate electronic design tools, all solutions can be developed, simulated, and synthesized as described in the book. A partial list of design topics includes design partitioning, hierarchy decomposition, safe coding styles, back annotation, wrapper modules, concurrency, race conditions, assertion-based verification, clock synchronization, and design for test. A concluding presentation of special topics includes System Verilog and Verilog-AMS.

Pragmatists have traditionally been enemies of representationalism but friends of naturalism, when naturalism is understood to pertain to human subjects, in the sense of Hume and Nietzsche. In this volume Huw Price presents his distinctive version of this traditional combination, as delivered in his René Descartes Lectures at Tilburg University in 2008. Price contrasts his view with other contemporary forms of philosophical naturalism, comparing it with other pragmatist and neo-pragmatist views such as those of Robert Brandom and Simon Blackburn. Linking their different 'expressivist' programmes, Price argues for a radical global expressivism that combines key elements from both. With Paul Horwich and Michael Williams, Brandom and Blackburn respond to Price in new essays. Price replies in the closing essay, emphasising links between his views and those of Wilfrid Sellars. The volume will be of great interest to advanced students of philosophy of language and metaphysics.

Almost every neurologist encounters ethical issues daily. This exemplary ethics text meets the needs of students, residents, fellows, and practicing neurologists who want an accessible case-based text for learning, and it meets the needs of directors of medical student clerkships and residency programs in neurology who want an accessible case-based text for teaching. The book’s case-based approach places key ethical principles into a practical, real-world context to aid in decision-making. Each chapter includes an outstanding array of learning features includes Learning Objectives, Clinical Vignettes, Questions to guide self-study and group discussions, Key Points, Key Words, Suggestions for Further Reading, and more. Clinical Pragmatism model helps readers analyze ethical issues in a clinical context. Practical Ethics in Clinical Neurology is a companion to the most highly respected ethics text in neurology and neurosurgery, Bernat's Ethical Issues in Neurology, 3rd edition.

A Gospel Freed From Christianity "ONE The Gospel According to Mike" uncovers the good news in a way never before examined in traditional religion by removing layers of sectarian doctrines and denominational views that have been piled upon it for centuries. This truth returns the message of Christ to its deserving and proper place of being called "Good News." It's a gospel unhidden and unfettered by the dogma of theologians and institutions. It is a gospel freed from Christianity. A gospel based solely on scriptural and Biblical foundations. "ONE" scripturally debunks the doctrines that have propagated the fear of a still angry God and eternal punishment.

New York Times–bestselling series: Discover the backstory of Sturm Brightblade, the noble Solamnic Knight and future Hero of the Lance Although twins Raistlin and Caramon Majere urge him not to go, Sturm Brightblade attends an annual Solamnic ceremony that is interrupted by a stranger who offers a taunting challenge and clues from the past. He speaks of death . . . Once young Sturm accepts a mysterious gauntlet, he must undertake a dangerous journey with some curious friends, rescue a fair if querulous maid, defeat a traitor knight, and learn the secret fate of his long-lost father. And most important of all, he must learn the true meaning of honor.

The world’s least promising knight gets his first taste of high-stakes adventure in this rollicking epic fantasy from the beloved Dragonlance book series! Weasel’s luck was not always good . . . Galen Pathwarden, known as “the Weasel”, would give anything to stay clear of adventure, danger, or heroism. Cowardly, deceitful, and hardly noble—and mired in a backwater castle far from any action—he bickers with his siblings and schemes against his elders. But one fateful night, Galen’s dreary life is turned upside down when a sinister visitor arrives bearing gold, unspeakable magic, and a centuries-old curse. The encounter launches Galen on a bizarre quest into swamp and forest, headed toward a mythical fortress. With the great Solamnic Knight, Sir Bayard Brightblade—and a none-too-bright centaur named Agion—at his side Galen must overcome the schemes and traps of a sinister illusionist known only as the Scorpion.

... This book provides step-by-step instruction for implementing a narrative-based approach as an alternative to traditional discipline strategies.

“Anyone who doubts the power of history to inform the present should read this closely argued and sweeping survey. This is rich, timely, and sobering historical fare written in a measured, non-sensationalist style by a master of his craft. One only hopes (almost certainly vainly) that today’s policymakers take its lessons to heart.”—Brian Fagan, Los Angeles Times Published in 2002, Deforesting the Earth was a landmark study of the history and geography of deforestation. Now available as an abridgment, this edition retains the breadth of the original while rendering its arguments accessible to a general readership. Deforestation—the thinning, changing, and wholesale clearing of forests for fuel, shelter, and agriculture—is among the most important ways humans have transformed the environment. Surveying ten thousand years to trace human-induced deforestation’s effect on economies, societies, and landscapes around the world, Deforesting the Earth is the preeminent history of this process and its consequences. Beginning with the return of the forests after the ice age to Europe, North America, and the tropics, Michael Williams traces the impact of human-set fires for gathering and hunting, land clearing for agriculture, and other activities from the Paleolithic age through the classical world and the medieval period. He then focuses on forest clearing both within Europe and by European imperialists and industrialists abroad, from the 1500s to the early 1900s, in such places as the New World, India, and Latin America, and considers indigenous clearing in India, China, and Japan. Finally, he covers the current alarming escalation of deforestation, with our ever-increasing human population placing a potentially unsupportable burden on the world’s forests.

The only dictionary available focusing on UK law enforcement, this invaluable volume covers every aspect of criminal law including pathology, forensic medicine, commerce and trade, criminology, and psychology. Essential reference for trainee and practising police officers, and other professionals needing clear definitions of law enforcement terms.

An omnibus edition containing the three novels in the Legends series is accompanied by extensive notes by the authors, as well as commentary from the original members of the Dragonlance setting conceptual team.

The international drug trade is estimated to exceed four hundred billion dollars annually. With astronomical profit margins and insatiable demand, that underground economy provides unique opportunities for those on the "shadowy" side of America's "war on drugs" to control world events and influence the global power structure. Just don't get caught with your hands in their cookie jar. It's 1972, and when Jeff Patten receives an urgent-albeit unusual-request from a new client, he agrees to drop what he's doing and fly half-way across the country to retrieve a large cash investment for a new business venture. He figures out that all is not as it seems-but before he can learn his client's true intentions, an unexpected accident takes his life, leaving his questions unanswered and millions of dollars unaccounted for. Thirty years later, Jack Hixson is approached by Jeff Patten's daughter to look into the suspicious circumstances surrounding her father's untimely demise. What he finds is a trail of cleverly disguised clues that set him on a perilous quest to locate the long lost money. The Four Horsemen is a suspenseful legal thriller that will pull you into the world of two small town attorneys who unwittingly become entangled a secretive conspiracy intent on controlling the international flow of drugs and manipulating the global power structure.

When Frankie Opperman - surfer, rugby captain, and Helderkloof High's golden boy - is found drowned in the school pool, Jake Mulligan is called to investigate. He finds himself at the heart of a school in crisis, yet no one seems willing to help. Why the baffling silence from Frankie's former friends? Is the cool barrier put up by Frankie's recently-dumped girlfriend just her nature? When Jake turns to the flirtatious Diana Polesky, who seems to be courting expulsion, and then to the eccentric but much-loved English teacher, the investigations take an unexpected twist. Michael Williams's latest novel tells a tense and brilliantly choreographed story that weaves its way through school rivalry and racism, loyalty, betrayal, and initiation into young adulthood with extraordinary insight and realism.

Most anyone interested in such topics as creation mythology, Jungian theory, or the idea of "secret teachings" in ancient Judaism and Christianity has found "gnosticism" compelling. Yet the term "gnosticism," which often connotes a single rebellious movement against the prevailing religions of late antiquity, gives the false impression of a monolithic religious phenomenon. Here Michael Williams challenges the validity of the widely invoked category of ancient "gnosticism" and the ways it has been described. Presenting such famous writings and movements as the Apocryphon of John and Valentinian Christianity, Williams uncovers the similarities and differences among some major traditions widely categorized as gnostic. He provides an eloquent, systematic argument for a more accurate way to discuss these interpretive approaches. The modern construct "gnosticism" is not justified by any ancient self-definition, and many of the most commonly cited religious features that supposedly define gnosticism phenomenologically turn out to be questionable. Exploring the sample sets of "gnostic" teachings, Williams refutes generalizations concerning asceticism and libertinism, attitudes toward the body and the created world, and alleged features of protest, parasitism, and elitism. He sketches a fresh model for understanding ancient innovations on more "mainstream" Judaism and Christianity, a model that is informed by modern research on dynamics in new religious movements and is freed from the false stereotypes from which the category "gnosticism" has been constructed.

In Unnatural Doubts, Michael Williams constructs a masterly polemic against the very idea of epistemology, as traditionally conceived. Although philosophers have often found problems in efforts to study the nature and limits of human knowledge, Williams provides the first book that systematically argues against there being such a thing as knowledge of the external world. He maintains that knowledge of the world consitutes a theoretically coherent kind of knowledge, whose possibility needs to be defended, only given a deeply problematic doctrine he calls "epistemological realism." The only alternative to epistemological realism is a thoroughgoing contextualism.

A rich novel about a young man from Soweto, whose life changes dramatically when he joins the cast of a musical that travels to Broadway.

The long-awaited tale of the New York Times best-selling Dragonlance series' greatest villain--Takhisis, Queen of Darkness--follows her as she is worshipped by legions of evil beings and spends her time plotting to escape from the Abyss. Original.