Samak the Ayyar


Book Description

The adventures of Samak, a trickster-warrior hero of Persia’s thousand-year-old oral storytelling tradition, are beloved in Iran. Samak is an ayyar, a warrior who comes from the common people and embodies the ideals of loyalty, selflessness, and honor—a figure that recalls samurai, ronin, and knights yet is distinctive to Persian legend. His exploits—set against an epic background of palace intrigue, battlefield heroics, and star-crossed romance between a noble prince and princess—are as deeply rooted in Persian culture as are the stories of Robin Hood and King Arthur in the West. However, this majestic tale has remained little known outside Iran. Translated from the original Persian by Freydoon Rassouli and adapted by Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner, this timeless masterwork can now be enjoyed by English-speaking readers. A thrilling and suspenseful saga, Samak the Ayyar also offers a vivid portrait of Persia a thousand years ago. Within an epic quest narrative teeming with action and supernatural forces, it sheds light on the lives of ordinary people and their social worlds. This is the first complete English-language version of a treasure of world culture. The translation is grounded in the twelfth-century Persian text while paying homage to the dynamic culture of storytelling from which it arose.




Mr. Murder


Book Description

#1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz delivers a gripping novel of a man accused of stealing not just someone’s identity, but his entire life... A big house. A beautiful wife. Two happy and healthy children. It’s a nice life that writer Martin Stillwater has made for himself. But he can’t shake this feeling of impending disaster. One bad moment on an otherwise fine day has put Marty on a collision course with a killer—a man with a mere shadow of an identity who is desperately searching for something more... Martin’s home. Martin’s family. Martin’s life.




School, Family, and Community Partnerships


Book Description

Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.




The Shattered Crown


Book Description

Corin an Fol, Longswordsman and ex mercenary has but one objective: retire early and settle down. Unfortunately the gods have other ideas. When Corin arrives home after many years fighting foreign wars, he finds bad news waiting for him. The High King has been murdered and his crystal crown, the Tekara, destroyed. The Tekara is no ordinary crown. Wrought of solid crystal it contains a charm of strength that has protected the Four Kingdoms for millennia. But the Tekara is vulnerable to one thing: treachery. So when Caswallon the schemer secretly places the crown on Prince Tarin's head he knows it will shatter, causing the realms to fall apart. He stands to gain as soon as it breaks. Though many suspect Caswallon, who is known as a sorcerer, only one dares stand against him: Queen Ariane of Kelwyn. She is visited by her goddess in a dream who warns that Prince Tarin has fled with the shards of the Shattered Crown, and only by finding both Prince and Crown can the Four Kingdoms be saved. After being promised gold, Corin an Fol reluctantly joins the queen's desperate quest to salvage the missing shards. But Caswallon is on to them and already watching their every move.




Abundance


Book Description

The authors document how four forces--exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion--are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. "Abundance" establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.




Cadillac Desert


Book Description

“I’ve been thinking a lot about Cadillac Desert in the past few weeks, as the rain fell and fell and kept falling over California, much of which, despite the pouring heavens, seems likely to remain in the grip of a severe drought. Reisner anticipated this moment. He worried that the West’s success with irrigation could be a mirage — that it took water for granted and didn’t appreciate the precariousness of our capacity to control it.” – Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times, January 20,2023 "The definitive work on the West's water crisis." --Newsweek The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West. Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden--an Eden that may only be a mirage. This edition includes a new postscript by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, that updates Western water issues over the last two decades, including the long-term impact of climate change and how the region can prepare for the future.




Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes


Book Description

Ten years after the horrific murders at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza that ripped their town apart, Charlie, whose father owned the restaurant, and her childhood friends reunite on the anniversary of the tragedy and find themselves at the old pizza place which had been locked up and abandoned for years. After they discover a way inside, they realize that things are not as they used to be. The four adult-sized animatronic mascots that once entertained patrons have changed. They now have a dark secret . . . and a murderous agenda. *Not suitable for younger readers*




The Making of Prince of Persia


Book Description

The creator of one of the most innovative and best-selling video games of all time gives an unvarnished look into the process in this one-of-a-kind compilation. Before Prince of Persia was a best-selling video game franchise and a Disney movie, it was an Apple II computer game created and programmed by one person, Jordan Mechner. Mechner's candid and revealing journals from the time capture the journey from his parents’ basement to the forefront of the fast-growing 1980s video game industry... and the creative, technical, and personal struggles that brought the prince into being and ultimately into the homes of millions of people worldwide. Now, on the 30th anniversary of Prince of Persia’s release, Mechner looks back at the journals he kept from 1985 to 1993, offering new insights into the game that established him as a pioneer of cinematic storytelling in the industry. This beautifully illustrated and annotated collector’s edition includes: 300 pages of Jordan’s original journals, Present-day margin notations by Jordan adding explanation, context, and affectionate cartoons of real-life characters, Archival visuals illustrating the stages of the game’s creation, Work-in-progress sketches, rotoscoped animation, screen shots, interface design, memos, and more, A full-color 32-page "Legacy" section in which Jordan and fans share Prince of Persia memories from the past 30 years, including the Ubisoft games and Disney movie. The Making of Prince of Persia is both a tribute to a timeless classic, and an indelible look at the creative process that will resonate with retro-gaming fans, game developers, and writers, artists, and creators of all stripes.




Leading Marines (McWp 6-10) (Formerly McWp 6-11)


Book Description

Marine Corps Warfighting Publication MCWP 6-10 (Formerly MCWP 6-11) Leading Marines 2 May 2016 The act of leading Marines is a sacred responsibility and a rewarding experience. This publication describes a leadership philosophy that speaks to who we are as Marines. It is about the relationship between the leader and the led. It is also about the bond between all Marines that is formed in the common forge of selfless service and shared hardships. It's in this forge where Marines are hardened like steel, and the undefinable spirit that forms the character of our Corps is born. It draws from shared experiences, hardships, and challenges in training and combat. Leading Marines is not meant to be read passively; as you read this publication, think about the material. You should reflect on, discuss, and apply the concepts presented in this publication. Furthermore, it is the responsibility of leaders at all levels to mentor and develop the next generation of Marine leaders.




Distributed Services with Go


Book Description

You know the basics of Go and are eager to put your knowledge to work. This book is just what you need to apply Go to real-world situations. You'll build a distributed service that's highly available, resilient, and scalable. Along the way you'll master the techniques, tools, and tricks that skilled Go programmers use every day to build quality applications. Level up your Go skills today. Take your Go skills to the next level by learning how to design, develop, and deploy a distributed service. Start from the bare essentials of storage handling, then work your way through networking a client and server, and finally to distributing server instances, deployment, and testing. All this will make coding in your day job or side projects easier, faster, and more fun. Lay out your applications and libraries to be modular and easy to maintain. Build networked, secure clients and servers with gRPC. Monitor your applications with metrics, logs, and traces to make them debuggable and reliable. Test and benchmark your applications to ensure they're correct and fast. Build your own distributed services with service discovery and consensus. Write CLIs to configure your applications. Deploy applications to the cloud with Kubernetes and manage them with your own Kubernetes Operator. Dive into writing Go and join the hundreds of thousands who are using it to build software for the real world. What You Need: Go 1.11 and Kubernetes 1.12.