Drawing mainly from unpublished materials on frontier history and people, the author recounts legendary law-breaking figures from Pennsylvania to California. Each of the 11 chapters is devoted to an outlaw or outlaw family in a specific U.S. state. In addition to the lesser known legends, he includes the story of Wyatt Earp (and the Earp family), in his post OK Corral years in Idaho's Coeur d'Alene Mountains. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
On Monday, 4 March 2019, Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia collapsed in the centre of Salisbury in Wiltshire. Both were suffering the effects of A-234, a third-generation Russian-manufactured military grade Novichok nerve agent. As three suspects, all GRU officers, were quickly identified, it was also established that the door handle to the Skripals’ suburban home had been contaminated with the toxin. Whilst the Skripals had lived in the cathedral city for the past seven years, what Sergei’s neighbours did not know was that he had once been a colonel in the Russian Federation’s military intelligence service. Back in July 1996, he had been posted under diplomatic cover to Madrid where he was subsequently cultivated by Pablo Miller, an MI6 officer operating as a businessman under the alias Antonio Alvares de Idalgo. Sergei’s recruitment by Miller was one of many successes achieved by Western agencies following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. These counter-intelligence triumphs had their origins in a joint FBI/CIA project codenamed COURTSHIP which was based on the rather risky tactic of making an approach to almost any identified KGB or GRU officer, in almost any environment – a technique known as a ‘cold pitch’. It soon yielded results; within five years COURTSHIP had netted about twenty assets. Codenamed FORTHWITH, Sergei was betrayed in December 2001. Arrested in 2004, he was convicted of high treason in Russia, but was subsequently included in a prisoner swap in July 2010 and brought to the UK. The journey to the attempt on his life had begun. The Vienna spy swap was the culmination of a CIA plan to free a specific individual, Gennadi Vasilenko, who had been the Agency’s key mole inside the KGB since March 1979. To acquire the necessary leverage, the FBI swooped on a large network in the United States, bringing to an end a surveillance operation, codenamed GHOST STORIES, that lasted ten years. Anxious to avoid further embarrassment over the arrests, Vladimir Putin personally authorised an exchange, unaware of Vasilenko’s true status. It was only after the transaction had been completed, and two further Russian spies were exfiltrated from Moscow, that the Kremlin learned of Vasilenko’s value, and the scale of the deception. For the very first time, a Russian government had been persuaded to release four traitors and send them to the West. The humiliation was complete. As Spy Swap reveals, Putin’s retribution would manifest itself in a quiet Wiltshire market town.
A Newbery Medal winning modern classic about a racially divided small town and a boy who runs. Jeffrey Lionel "Maniac" Magee might have lived a normal life if a freak accident hadn't made him an orphan. After living with his unhappy and uptight aunt and uncle for eight years, he decides to run--and not just run away, but run. This is where the myth of Maniac Magee begins, as he changes the lives of a racially divided small town with his amazing and legendary feats.
Provides articles covering children's literature from around the world as well as biographical and critical reviews of authors including Avi, C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, and Anno Mitsumasa.
. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.
Fingerprints constitute one of the most important categories of physical evidence, and it is among the few that can be truly individualized. During the last two decades, many new and exciting developments have taken place in the field of fingerprint science, particularly in the realm of methods for developing latent prints and in the growth of imag
