Better Times Than These


Book Description

Frank Holden and other soldiers from varying backgrounds find their lives radically changed in Vietnam by a war that they find difficult to understand or support.




Better Times - Facet I


Book Description

Spavin Lawson enjoyed his quiet life as the leader of a team of theoretical physicist who worked for the U.S. Governments Temporal Ministry. The quiet, dedicated scientist was content with his life in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Together with his wife, Clarissa, he had a nice home and two teenaged daughters, Sasha and Stephanie. The experienced the epitome of the American dream. Unfortunately, three centuries of abuse had finally caught up with the planet. The warned climate change that had been pooh-poohed for more than one-hundred years came crashing ashore. With new sea levels and relentless hurricanes assaulting the coasts, hordes of survivors were forced inland only to find that droughts had decimated the breadbasket of the world. Spavin knew that the United States of the 22nd Century was not survivable. His idyllic lifestyle came to an abrupt end. With his family, Spavin embarked upon a journey to seek better times. The Lawsons' journey was unlike any journey in the annals of Man.




Ten Times Better


Book Description

Together again, the whimsical duo -- poet Richard Michelson and artist Leonard Baskin show that learning to count and to multiply by ten need never be boring! In dueling poetry, a motley crew of animals argues for the honor of the number each represents. Whether it's a crocodile arguing with an ant or a centipede with a three-toed sloth, each animal is sure that its number is the one to beat! Fiddlesticks! Six? The best? Poppycock! You want TEN TIMES BETTER? Dial a croc.The poems are always clever, sometimes even preposterous. The watercolors are bold in tones conveying the animal's conviction that its number is undoubtedly the best! Interesting natural history information at the back of the book gives young readers more facts to ponder while mathematical problems give them the chance to put into practice what they have just learned. All in all, children will laugh their way along the road to numerical literacy in a counting book like no other.




Better Times - Facet Iii


Book Description

Spavin Lawson kept his promise to the united human population of 32nd Century Texas City. He and his wife, Clarissa, had gathered the brightest minds they could find and put together the Technology Development Plan. The Plan was a template to build a civilization based upon ecologically sound principles. Unfortunately, the completion of The Plan required a population density that did not exist in the 32nd Century. Cataclysmic events a millennium earlier had reduced humans to uncivilized tribes totaling fewer than ten thousand people in what was once North America. Unknown to the citizens of the new city, long lost humans who were struggling to survive on Mars and Luna also assisted in the development of The Plan. A secret node on the Technology Development Plan was dedicated to the eventual reunification of all Humankind. Spavin could not entrust the future of his progeny and the human race to chance. He knew that the two-hundred year plan would need a boost at the critical point of Reunification. With his family and Shadow Warrior Nevlyn Bydman, he used his time dilator so he could guide the completion of The Plan and ensure Humankind would find better times.




Better Times - Facet Ii


Book Description

From 32nd Century Wyoming, Spavin Lawson led a group of one-thousand refugees from the bunker that housed Resurgent City in a search for better times. The 22nd Century Government bunker had exceeded the design specifications of its creators thanks to the leadership of its first elected Mayor. A small city had expanded and prospered inside the mountain. The original population of less than two hundred souls had grown into nearly five-thousand. Unfortunately, the ancient nuclear power plant that provided the people the power to survive had leaked radiation for generations. The net effect of the radiation and the cave environment had altered the population. The people had developed genetic albinism with eyes well suited to the dimly lit cave city. Small in stature yet curious and adaptive, the Tribe followed the tall, dark-haired man and his wife without question. The outside world was foreign and frightening but within days, the people realized that The Judges of Resurgent City had held them in a grasp of religious fervor not based on factuality or reality. The journey they embarked upon was destined to lead them to the coast of Texas. Spavin Lawson, physicist by training, believed the coast would provide better opportunities for the otherwise doomed population. He reckoned that South Texas coast would allow the petite, pale people to re-establish the human race on Earth. That location was further from the immediate geological and environmental effects of the Yellowstone super volcano eruption that had induced a global deep freeze ten centuries earlier. His greatest concerns for Humankind were the long term effects of the high radiation exposures and the lack of genetic diversity.




Waiting for Better Times


Book Description










Better Times


Book Description

Winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction, the stories in Better Times focus on what's happening in places people don't think to look. Women, sometimes displaced, often lonely, are at the heart of these stories. In Better Times Sara Batkie focuses on the moments in women's lives when the wider world is wrapped up in other matters: a father and daughter, separated by time and an ocean, dreaming of each other; a girl in a home for "troubled women" imagining the journey of the first dog in space; a phantom breast returning to haunt a woman after her mastectomy; a young woman giving birth to a litter of eggs. Such are the ordinary women weathering extraordinary circumstances in Better Times. Divided into three sections covering the recent past, our current era, and the world to come, the stories gathered here--with characters stymied by loneliness, motherhood, illness, even cataclysmic climate change--interrogate the idea that so-called better times ever existed, particularly for women.




The Better Angels of Our Nature


Book Description

Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think this is the most violent age ever seen. Yet as bestselling author Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true.