John Grider's Century


Book Description

Sharon McGriff-Payne has spent the past three years of this first decade of the 21st Century mesmerized by African Americans from the 19th Century, especially the insistent voice of John Grider. Grider captured McGriff-Payne's imagination and guided her to mine largely neglected archives to unearth and compile the stories of African Americans in California's North Bay counties of Solano, Napa, and Sonoma from the 1840s through the 1920s. Grider, a former slave, Bear Flag veteran, and hardworking everyman has inspired McGriff-Payne's research. The indomitable Miss Delilah L. Beasley has also inspired the author. Her 1919 book, The Negro Trail Blazers of California, preserved the names and deeds of many of the North Bay's African American pioneers. John Grider's Century seeks to add those black voices to California's larger historical narrative, with the message, "We were here!" "Tell my story," Grider prompted. McGriff-Payne has attempted to fulfill that command and dedicates this volume to him and the other pioneers who founded schools, formed churches and civic organizations, advocated policy, built businesses, raised families and triumphed over daunting odds.




Human Ecology


Book Description

'The scope and clarity of this book make it accessible and informative to a wide readership. Its messages should be an essential component of the education for all students from secondary school to university... [It] provides a clear and comprehensible account of concepts that can be applied in our individual and collective lives to pursue the promising and secure future to which we all aspire' From the Foreword by Maurice Strong, Chairman of the Earth Council and former Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit) The most important questions of the future will turn on the relationship between human societies and the natural ecosystems on which we all, in the end, depend. The interactions and interdependencies of the social and natural worlds are the focus of growing attention from a wide range of environmental, social and life sciences. Understanding them is critical to achieving the balance involved in sustainable development. Human Ecology: Basic Concepts for Sustainable Development presents an extremely clear and accessible account of this complex range of issues and of the concepts and tools required to understand and tackle them. Extensively supported by graphics and detailed examples, this book makes an excellent introduction for students at all levels, and for general readers wanting to know why and how to respond to the dilemmas we face.




America's National Game


Book Description

This book is Albert Spaldings work of "historic facts concerning the beginning, evolution, development and popularity of base ball, with personal reminiscences of its vicissitudes, its victories and its votaries." It is one of the defining books in the early formative years of modern baseball.




Galactic Pot-healer


Book Description

What could an omnipresent and seemingly omnipotent entity want with a humble pot-healer? Or with the dozens of other odd creatures it has lured to Plowman's Planet? And if the Glimmung is a god, are its ends positive or malign? Combining quixotic adventure, spine-chilling horror, and deliriously paranoid theology, Galactic Pot-Healer is a uniquely Dickian voyage to alternate worlds of the imagination.




Radio Free Albemuth


Book Description

As America gasps in a stranglehold of a skull-crushing totalitarian regime, a supernatural intelligence speaks from the stars. Will the agents of ominiscent Valis succeed in their mission of liberation? Or will the tactics of President Freemont extend the grip?