What would you do if you found out that not everything in your life was as it seemed? At 30 Bethany thought her life was settled, if not what she expected, but then she finds out she isn't who or what she believed she was. As she starts to discover this hidden world, where witches, vampires, shapeshifters, and magic are real, she also has to cope with changes to her own life and make some Impossible Choices.
“Any book hereafter isn’t going to be the same.” If the past caught up with you and there was nowhere left to run Would you trust yourself to turn and face it? Time is running out for the men who hide at the edge of the city. The once peaceful existence of their tribe is threatened by an unstable government, one that grows ever more extreme in its desperation to be the richest metropolis in the world. For Jacob, the tribe’s mentor, the sight of a construction crane on the horizon can only mean one thing… There’s nowhere left to run. Unnerved by this development, the tribe looks to Jacob for what to do next. But with few options left, he is forced into an impossible choice. If they stay, they will be at the mercy of the government’s radical and often deadly eviction process. But if they leave the city altogether, they can’t be sure what fate awaits them over the border or whether they will all survive past the arctic winter months. Amid this threat to their future, the members of the tribe turn one by one to their pasts. Defying the doctrine, they connect on a level they never have before, sharing stories of the lives they’ve come from, the people they once were. But for Jacob the time is drawing close when he must put their safety above all else and tell them of the third option. One that would see them go their separate ways. And bring about the end of the tribe for good. Unmasked is a gripping tale of division and impossible choices, and the final book in the Hidden Sanctuary series
" How Taiwan can overcome internal stresses and the threat from China Taiwan was a poster child for the “third wave” of global democratization in the 1980s. It was the first Chinese society to make the transition todemocracy, and it did so gradually and peacefully. But Taiwan today faces a host of internal issues, starting with the aging of society and the resulting intergenerational conflicts over spending priorities. China's long-term threat to incorporate the island on terms similar to those used for Hong Kong exacerbates the island's home-grown problems. Taiwan remains heavily dependent on the United States for its security, but it must use its own resources to cope with Beijing's constant intimidation and pressure. How Taiwan responds to the internal and external challenges it faces—and what the United States and other outside powers do to help—will determine whether it is able to stand its ground against China's ambitions. The book explores the broad range of issues and policy choices Taiwan confronts and offers suggestions both for what Taiwan can do to help itself and what the United States should do to improve Taiwan's chances of success. "
Born the year of Lebanons independence in 1943, in Khiyam, a village of South Lebanon, Dr. Kamel Mohanna studied, at the time of illiteracy, defying poverty to become a doctor. He forged himself a Lebanese role by joining the student movement which, in the sixties heaved France. Then in the seventies, following the path traced by Che Guevara, he joined the revolutionaries in the mountains of Dhofar. It is there that he participated in the march of barefoot doctors on the footsteps of Mao Zedong. He resisted the mermaids of Paris, Canada and the chic neighborhoods of Beirut. Upon his return to Lebanon, he preferred to them the misery of the Palestinian refugee camps, where he lived with the poor and sick of whom he made his cause. In the middle of the civil war, in the seventies and eighties, he travelled the length and breadth of Lebanon; not hesitating to go against all commonly accepted political precepts. In 1979, he founded the AMEL association, pacifist in time of war, open to all in time of partition, preaching the life in the shadow of the collective suicide. Until today and through this non-denominational organization, he endeavors to develop the humanity of human beings, without taking into account its religious, political and geographical affiliations, to attain a more just and dignified world. Descriptor(s): PHYSICIANS | LEBANESE CIVIL WAR 1975-1991 | POLITICAL CONDITIONS | LEBANON | DIARIES | BIOGRAPHIES
Conflict: How Soldiers Make Impossible Decisions is about making hard choices--where all outcomes are potentially negative. The authors draw on interviews conducted with soldiers about the situations they faced and the decisions they made at war. These are vivid and sometimes distressing stories. They form the data from which the authors explore the cognitive processes associated with choice, commitment to action and (sometimes) error, as well as goal directed thinking, innovation and courage. By referring to real cases, Conflict invites readers to consider their own responses under extreme circumstances and ask themselves how they would choose between difficult options. In doing so this book will go some way to helping readers understand what it feels like when choosing between least-worst decisions.
A New York Times Bestseller “I’ll be forever changed by Dr. Eger’s story…The Choice is a reminder of what courage looks like in the worst of times and that we all have the ability to pay attention to what we’ve lost, or to pay attention to what we still have.”—Oprah “Dr. Eger’s life reveals our capacity to transcend even the greatest of horrors and to use that suffering for the benefit of others. She has found true freedom and forgiveness and shows us how we can as well.” —Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate “Dr. Edith Eva Eger is my kind of hero. She survived unspeakable horrors and brutality; but rather than let her painful past destroy her, she chose to transform it into a powerful gift—one she uses to help others heal.” —Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle Winner of the National Jewish Book Award and Christopher Award At the age of sixteen, Edith Eger was sent to Auschwitz. Hours after her parents were killed, Nazi officer Dr. Josef Mengele, forced Edie to dance for his amusement and her survival. Edie was pulled from a pile of corpses when the American troops liberated the camps in 1945. Edie spent decades struggling with flashbacks and survivor’s guilt, determined to stay silent and hide from the past. Thirty-five years after the war ended, she returned to Auschwitz and was finally able to fully heal and forgive the one person she’d been unable to forgive—herself. Edie weaves her remarkable personal journey with the moving stories of those she has helped heal. She explores how we can be imprisoned in our own minds and shows us how to find the key to freedom. The Choice is a life-changing book that will provide hope and comfort to generations of readers.
“Crammed with provocative insights, raw emotion, and heartbreaking dilemmas,” (The New York Times) First, Do No Harm is a powerful examination of how life and death decisions are made at a major metropolitan hospital in Houston, as told through the stories of doctors, patients, families, and hospital administrators facing unthinkable choices. What is life worth? And when is a life worth living? Journalist Lisa Belkin examines how these questions are asked and answered over one dramatic summer at Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas. In an account that is fascinating, revealing, and almost novelistic in its immediacy, Belkin takes us inside a major hospital and introduces us to the people who must make life and death decisions every day. As we walk through the hallways of the hospital we meet a young pediatrician who must decide whether to perform a risky last-ditch surgery on a teenager who has spent most of his fifteen years in a hospital; we watch as new parents battle with doctors over whether to disconnect their fragile, premature twins from the machine that keeps them breathing; we are in the operating room as a poor immigrant, paralyzed from a gunshot in the neck, is asked by doctors whether or not he wishes to stay alive; we witness the worry of a kidney specialist as he decides whether or not to transfer an uninsured baby to the county hospital down the road. We experience critical moments in the lives of these real people as Belkin explores challenging issues and questions involving medical ethics, human suffering, modern technology, legal liability, and financial reality. As medical technology advances, the choices grow more complicated. How far should we go to save a life? Who decides? And who pays?
Deconstruction and pragmatism constitute two of the major intellectual influences on the contemporary theoretical scene; influences personified in the work of Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. Both Rortian pragmatism, which draws the consequences of post-war developments in Anglo-American philosophy, and Derridian deconstruction, which extends and troubles the phonomenological and Heideggerian influence on the Continental tradition, have hitherto generally been viewed as mutually exclusive philosophical language games. The purpose of this volume is to bring deconstruction and pragmatism into critical confrontation with one another through staging a debate between Derrida and Rorty, itself based on discussions that took place at the College International de Philosophie in Paris in 1993. The ground for this debate is layed out in introductory papers by Simon Critchley and Ernesto Laclau, and the remainder of the volume records Derrida's and Rorty's responses to each other's work. Chantal Mouffe gives an overview of the stakes of this debate in a helpful preface.
