A Question Of Power And Survival

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A Question of Freedom

Author : Dwayne Betts
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101133368
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis A Question of Freedom by : Dwayne Betts

Download or read book A Question of Freedom written by Dwayne Betts and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-08-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique prison narrative that testifies to the power of books to transform a young man's life At the age of sixteen, R. Dwayne Betts-a good student from a lower- middle-class family-carjacked a man with a friend. He had never held a gun before, but within a matter of minutes he had committed six felonies. In Virginia, carjacking is a "certifiable" offense, meaning that Betts would be treated as an adult under state law. A bright young kid, he served his nine-year sentence as part of the adult population in some of the worst prisons in the state. A Question of Freedom chronicles Betts's years in prison, reflecting back on his crime and looking ahead to how his experiences and the books he discovered while incarcerated would define him. Utterly alone, Betts confronts profound questions about violence, freedom, crime, race, and the justice system. Confined by cinder-block walls and barbed wire, he discovers the power of language through books, poetry, and his own pen. Above all, A Question of Freedom is about a quest for identity-one that guarantees Betts's survival in a hostile environment and that incorporates an understanding of how his own past led to the moment of his crime.

A Question of Power

Author : Bessie Head
Publisher : Waveland Press
ISBN 13 : 1478635142
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (786 download)

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Book Synopsis A Question of Power by : Bessie Head

Download or read book A Question of Power written by Bessie Head and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 2017-03-06 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fast-paced, semi-autobiographical novel, Head exposes the complicated life of Elizabeth, whose reality is intermingled with nightmarish dreams and hallucinations. Like the author, Elizabeth was conceived out-of-wedlock; her mother was white and her father black—a union outlawed in apartheid South Africa. Elizabeth eventually leaves with her young son to live in Botswana, a country less oppressed by colonial domination, where she finds stability for herself and her son by working on an experimental farm. As readers grow to know Elizabeth, they experience the inner chaos that threatens her stability, and her constant struggle to emerge from the torment of her dreams. There she is plagued by two men, Sello and Dan, who represent complex notions of politics, sex, religion, individuality, and the blurred line between good and evil. Elizabeth’s troubling but amazing roller-coaster ride ends in an unfettered discovery.

Survival of the Savvy

Author : Rick Brandon
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0743274296
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (432 download)

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Book Synopsis Survival of the Savvy by : Rick Brandon

Download or read book Survival of the Savvy written by Rick Brandon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2004-12-06 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two of the nation's most successful corporate leadership consultants now reveal their proven, systematic program for using the power of "high-integrity" politics to achieve career success, maximize team impact, and protect the company's reputation and bottom line. Each day in business, a corporate version of "survival of the fittest" is played out. Power plays, turf battles, deceptions, and sabotages block individuals' career progress and threaten companies' resources and results. In Survival of the Savvy, Rick Brandon and Marty Seldman provide ethical but street-smart strategies for navigating corporate politics to gain "impact with integrity," helping readers to: -Identify political styles at work through the Style Strengths Finder, and avoid being under or overly political -Discover the corporate "buzz" on you, and manage the corporate "airwaves" -Decipher unwritten company rules and protect yourself from sabotage and hidden agendas -Build key networks to promote yourself and your ideas with integrity -Learn to detect deception and filter misleading information -Increase your team's organizational savvy, influence, and impact -Gauge the political health of the company and forge a high-integrity political culture In addition, Survival of the Savvy helps individuals discover and overcome their own political blind spots and vulnerabilities. They learn step-by-step methods to avoid being underestimated or denied full recognition for their achievements. It shows them how to put forward their ideas and advance their careers in an ethical manner, with a high level of political awareness and skill. After reading this book, you will never have to say, "I didn't see it coming." Organizational savvy is a mission-critical competency for the complete leader. This timely and timeless book provides cutting-edge strategies and skills for surviving and thriving as you build individual and company success.

Power

Author : Richard Heinberg
Publisher : New Society Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1771423579
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (714 download)

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Book Synopsis Power by : Richard Heinberg

Download or read book Power written by Richard Heinberg and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Impeccably researched and masterfully written, this book explains how and why humanity is driving itself off the cliff. — Dahr Jamail, author, The End of Ice Weaving together findings from a wide range of disciplines, Power traces how four key elements developed to give humans extraordinary power: tool making ability, language, social complexity, and the ability to harness energy sources ― most significantly, fossil fuels. It asks whether we have, at this point, overpowered natural and social systems, and if we have, what we can do about it. Has Homo sapiens — one species among millions — become powerful enough to threaten a mass extinction and disrupt the Earth's climate? Why have we developed so many ways of oppressing one another? Can we change our relationship with power to avert ecological catastrophe, reduce social inequality, and stave off collapse? These questions — and their answers — will determine our fate.

Survival Lessons

Author : Alice Hoffman
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504064542
Total Pages : 75 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis Survival Lessons by : Alice Hoffman

Download or read book Survival Lessons written by Alice Hoffman and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times–bestselling author and cancer survivor tells how to hold on to joy in times of sorrow in this “absolutely beautiful book” (Sue Monk Kidd). The prize-winning author of such modern literary classics as Practical Magic, The World That We Knew, and The Marriage of Opposites, Alice Hoffman is also a cancer survivor. In Survival Lessons, she shares her transformative journey, showing us how to re-envision our own lives and relationships with our friends and family, and the significance of the everyday choices we make. Sorrow and joy are both part of the human experience, and the beauty of the world is easy to overlook during periods of crisis, illness, or loss. Here, Hoffman offers wit, wisdom, and comfort in “an optimistic instruction manual [for] anyone struggling with self-care in a time of trouble” (Story Circle Book Reviews). “In this gem of a book, Alice Hoffman acknowledges the sorrows of life, while reminding us of its joys. Survival Lessons is filled with love, insight, and lots of practical advice—including a crazy-good brownie recipe.” —Will Schwalbe, New York Times–bestselling author of The End of Your Life Book Club “Hoffman’s storytelling artistry enlivens each intimate, thoughtfully distilled, charming, and nurturing lesson in living.” —Booklist “[Survival Lessons] is not about [Hoffman’s] breast cancer per se but about making choices that will improve readers’ lives and relationships and remind them ‘of the beauty of life.’” —Library Journal “Full of smart intentions and kind reminders . . . Uplifting advice we’ll gladly take.” —Better Homes & Gardens

Surviving Autocracy

Author : Masha Gessen
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593332245
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (933 download)

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Book Synopsis Surviving Autocracy by : Masha Gessen

Download or read book Surviving Autocracy written by Masha Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen.” —The New York Times “A reckoning with what has been lost in the past few years and a map forward with our beliefs intact.” —Interview As seen on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and heard on NPR’s All Things Considered: the bestselling, National Book Award–winning journalist offers an essential guide to understanding, resisting, and recovering from the ravages of our tumultuous times. This incisive book provides an essential guide to understanding and recovering from the calamitous corrosion of American democracy over the past few years. Thanks to the special perspective that is the legacy of a Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, Masha Gessen has a sixth sense for the manifestations of autocracy—and the unique cross-cultural fluency to delineate their emergence to Americans. Gessen not only anatomizes the corrosion of the institutions and cultural norms we hoped would save us but also tells us the story of how a short few years changed us from a people who saw ourselves as a nation of immigrants to a populace haggling over a border wall, heirs to a degraded sense of truth, meaning, and possibility. Surviving Autocracy is an inventory of ravages and a call to account but also a beacon to recovery—and to the hope of what comes next.

The Logic of Political Survival

Author : Bruce Bueno De Mesquita
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262261774
Total Pages : 602 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (622 download)

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Book Synopsis The Logic of Political Survival by : Bruce Bueno De Mesquita

Download or read book The Logic of Political Survival written by Bruce Bueno De Mesquita and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2005-01-14 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors of this ambitious book address a fundamental political question: why are leaders who produce peace and prosperity turned out of office while those who preside over corruption, war, and misery endure? Considering this political puzzle, they also answer the related economic question of why some countries experience successful economic development and others do not. The authors construct a provocative theory on the selection of leaders and present specific formal models from which their central claims can be deduced. They show how political leaders allocate resources and how institutions for selecting leaders create incentives for leaders to pursue good and bad public policy. They also extend the model to explain the consequences of war on political survival. Throughout the book, they provide illustrations from history, ranging from ancient Sparta to Vichy France, and test the model against statistics gathered from cross-national data. The authors explain the political intuition underlying their theory in nontechnical language, reserving formal proofs for chapter appendixes. They conclude by presenting policy prescriptions based on what has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically.

Survival Math

Author : Mitchell Jackson
Publisher : Scribner
ISBN 13 : 1501131737
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis Survival Math by : Mitchell Jackson

Download or read book Survival Math written by Mitchell Jackson and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A vibrant memoir of race, violence, family, and manhood…a virtuosic wail of a book” (The Boston Globe), Survival Math calculates how award-winning author Mitchell S. Jackson survived the Portland, Oregon, of his youth. This “spellbinding” (NPR) book explores gangs and guns, near-death experiences, sex work, masculinity, composite fathers, the concept of “hustle,” and the destructive power of addiction—all framed within the story of Mitchell Jackson, his family, and his community. Lauded for its breathtaking pace, its tender portrayals, its stark candor, and its luminous style, Survival Math reveals on every page the searching intellect and originality of its author. The primary narrative, focused on understanding the antecedents of Jackson’s family’s experience, is complemented by survivor files, which feature photographs and riveting short narratives of several of Jackson’s male relatives. “A vulnerable, sobering look at Jackson’s life and beyond, in all its tragedies, burdens, and faults” (San Francisco Chronicle), the sum of Survival Math’s parts is a highly original whole, one that reflects on the exigencies—over generations—that have shaped the lives of so many disenfranchised Americans. “Both poetic and brutally honest” (Salon), Mitchell S. Jackson’s nonfiction debut is as essential as it is beautiful, as real as it is artful, a singular achievement, not to be missed.

Horizon

Author : Barry Lopez
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0525656219
Total Pages : 592 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (256 download)

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Book Synopsis Horizon by : Barry Lopez

Download or read book Horizon written by Barry Lopez and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE NEW YORK TIMES • NPR • THE GUARDIAN From pole to pole and across decades of lived experience, National Book Award-winning author Barry Lopez delivers his most far-ranging, yet personal, work to date. Horizon moves indelibly, immersively, through the author’s travels to six regions of the world: from Western Oregon to the High Arctic; from the Galápagos to the Kenyan desert; from Botany Bay in Australia to finally, unforgettably, the ice shelves of Antarctica. Along the way, Lopez probes the long history of humanity’s thirst for exploration, including the prehistoric peoples who trekked across Skraeling Island in northern Canada, the colonialists who plundered Central Africa, an enlightenment-era Englishman who sailed the Pacific, a Native American emissary who found his way into isolationist Japan, and today’s ecotourists in the tropics. And always, throughout his journeys to some of the hottest, coldest, and most desolate places on the globe, Lopez searches for meaning and purpose in a broken world.

Survival

Author : Adam Y. Stern
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 081225287X
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Survival by : Adam Y. Stern

Download or read book Survival written by Adam Y. Stern and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2021-03-26 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For a world mired in catastrophe, nothing could be more urgent than the question of survival. In this theoretically and methodologically groundbreaking book, Adam Y. Stern calls for a critical reevaluation of survival as a contemporary regime of representation. In Survival, Stern asks what texts, what institutions, and what traditions have made survival a recognizable element of our current political vocabulary. The book begins by suggesting that the interpretive key lies in the discursive prominence of "Jewish survival." Yet the Jewish example, he argues, is less a marker of Jewish history than an index of Christianity's impact on the modern, secular, political imagination. With this inversion, the book repositions Jewish survival as the supplemental effect and mask of a more capacious political theology of Christian survival. The argument proceeds by taking major moments in twentieth-century philosophy, theology, and political theory as occasions for collecting the scattered elements of survival's theological-political archive. Through readings of canonical texts by secular and Jewish thinkers—Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig, and Sigmund Freud—Stern shows that survival belongs to a history of debates about the sovereignty and subjection of Christ's body. Interrogating survival as a rhetorical formation, the book intervenes in discussions about biopolitics, secularism, political theology, and the philosophy of religion.

A Question of Power

Author : Robert Bryce
Publisher : PublicAffairs
ISBN 13 : 1610397509
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis A Question of Power by : Robert Bryce

Download or read book A Question of Power written by Robert Bryce and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An acclaimed author and celebrated journalist breaks down the history of electricity and the impact of global energy use on the world and the environment. Global demand for power is doubling every two decades, but electricity remains one of the most difficult forms of energy to supply and do so reliably. Today, some three billion people live in places where per-capita electricity use is less than what's used by an average American refrigerator. How we close the colossal gap between the electricity rich and the electricity poor will determine our success in addressing issues like women's rights, inequality, and climate change. In A Question of Power, veteran journalist Robert Bryce tells the human story of electricity, the world's most important form of energy. Through onsite reporting from India, Iceland, Lebanon, Puerto Rico, New York, and Colorado, he shows how our cities, our money--our very lives--depend on reliable flows of electricity. He highlights the factors needed for successful electrification and explains why so many people are still stuck in the dark. With vivid writing and incisive analysis, he powerfully debunks the notion that our energy needs can be met solely with renewables and demonstrates why--if we are serious about addressing climate change--nuclear energy must play a much bigger role. Electricity has fueled a new epoch in the history of civilization. A Question of Power explains how that happened and what it means for our future.

Naturalizing Heidegger

Author : David E. Storey
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 143845483X
Total Pages : 286 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Naturalizing Heidegger by : David E. Storey

Download or read book Naturalizing Heidegger written by David E. Storey and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the evolution of Heideggers thinking about nature and its relevance for environmental ethics. In Naturalizing Heidegger, David E. Storey proposes a new interpretation of Heideggers importance for environmental philosophy, finding in the development of his thought from the early 1920s to his later work in the 1940s the groundwork for a naturalistic ontology of life. Primarily drawing on Heideggers engagement with Nietzsche, but also on his readings of Aristotle and the biologist Jakob von Uexküll, Storey focuses on his critique of the nihilism at the heart of modernity, and his conception of the intentionality of organisms and their relation to their environments. From these ideas, a vision of nature emerges that recognizes the intrinsic value of all living things and their kinship with one another, and which anticipates later approaches in the philosophy of nature, such as Hans Jonass phenomenology of life and Evan Thompsons contemporary attempt to naturalize phenomenology.

Warlord Survival

Author : Romain Malejacq
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 150174643X
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Warlord Survival by : Romain Malejacq

Download or read book Warlord Survival written by Romain Malejacq and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do warlords survive and even thrive in contexts that are explicitly set up to undermine them? How do they rise after each fall? Warlord Survival answers these questions. Drawing on hundreds of in-depth interviews in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2018, with ministers, governors, a former vice-president, warlords and their entourages, opposition leaders, diplomats, NGO workers, and local journalists and researchers, Romain Malejacq provides a full investigation of how warlords adapt and explains why weak states like Afghanistan allow it to happen. Malejacq follows the careers of four warlords in Herat, Sheberghan, and Panjshir—Ismail Khan, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ahmad Shah Massoud, and Mohammad Qasim Fahim). He shows how they have successfully negotiated complicated political environments to survive ever since the beginning of the Soviet-Afghan war. The picture he paints in Warlord Survival is one of astute political entrepreneurs with a proven ability to organize violence. Warlords exert authority through a process in which they combine, instrumentalize, and convert different forms of power to prevent the emergence of a strong, centralized state. But, as Malejacq shows, the personal relationships and networks fundamental to the authority of Ismail Khan, Dostum, Massoud, and Fahim are not necessarily contrary to bureaucratic state authority. In fact, these four warlords, and others like them, offer durable and flexible forms of power in unstable, violent countries.

Prescription for Survival

Author : Bernard Lown
Publisher : Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1576757854
Total Pages : 461 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (767 download)

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Book Synopsis Prescription for Survival by : Bernard Lown

Download or read book Prescription for Survival written by Bernard Lown and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2008 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of how a group of Soviet and American doctors came together to stop nuclear proliferation and ended up winning the Nobel Peace Prize and influencing the course of history. This book also sheds light on what really drove and still drives the nuclear arms race, and the importance of citizen involvement in social change efforts.

Rough Animals

Author : Rae DelBianco
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1628729740
Total Pages : 295 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (287 download)

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Book Synopsis Rough Animals by : Rae DelBianco

Download or read book Rough Animals written by Rae DelBianco and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 25 Best Thriller Books of the Summer—New York Post Best New Books Coming Out Summer 2018 —Southern Living 46 Great Books to Read This Summer—Nylon Dazzling Debuts"—WYPR, "The Weekly Reader" Summer Thrillers That Will Have You at the Edge of Your Chaise Lounge—Refinery29 8 New Books You Should Read This June—vulture.com What We Read, Watched, and Listened to in May—Outside “Furious and electric . . . a fever dream."—Publishers Weekly, *Starred Review!* Breaking Bad meets No Country for Old Men... Ever since their father's untimely death five years before, Wyatt Smith and his inseparably close twin sister, Lucy, have scraped by alone on their family's isolated ranch in Box Elder County, Utah. That is until one morning when, just after spotting one of their steers lying dead in the field, Wyatt is hit in the arm by a hail of gunfire that takes four more cattle with it. The shooter: a fever-eyed, fearsome girl-child with a TEC-9 in her left hand and a worn shotgun in her right. They hold the girl captive, but she breaks loose overnight and heads south into the desert. With the dawning realization that the loss of cattle will mean the certain loss of the ranch, Wyatt feels he has no choice but to go after her and somehow find restitution for what's been lost. Wyatt's decision sets him on an epic twelve-day odyssey through a nightmarish underworld he only half understands; a world that pitches him not only against the primordial ways of men and the beautiful yet brutally unforgiving landscape, but also against himself. As he winds his way down from the mountains of Box Elder to the mesas of Monument Valley and back, Wyatt is forced to look for the first time at who he is and what he’s capable of, and how those hard truths set him irrevocably apart from the one person he’s ever really known and loved. Steeped in a mythic, wildly alive language of its own, and gripping from the first gunshot to the last, Rough Animals is a tour de force from a powerful new voice.

Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things

Author : Laurence Gonzales
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393069656
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things by : Laurence Gonzales

Download or read book Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things written by Laurence Gonzales and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-10-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Well-written and fascinating . . . this is the kind of book you want everyone to read.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer “Curiosity, awareness, attention,” Laurence Gonzales writes. “Those are the tools of our everyday survival. . . . We all must be scientists at heart or be victims of forces that we don’t understand.” In this fascinating account, Gonzales turns his talent for gripping narrative, knowledge of the way our minds and bodies work, and bottomless curiosity about the world to the topic of how we can best use the blessings of evolution to overcome the hazards of everyday life. Everyday Survival will teach you to make the right choices for our complex, dangerous, and quickly changing world—whether you are climbing a mountain or the corporate ladder.

Survival

Author : Julie E. Czerneda
Publisher : Astra Publishing House
ISBN 13 : 1101010878
Total Pages : 423 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Survival by : Julie E. Czerneda

Download or read book Survival written by Julie E. Czerneda and published by Astra Publishing House. This book was released on 2005-05-03 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biologist Mackenzie Connor is charged with protecting the human race after a devastating alien invasion in this first book in the Species Imperative science fiction series Herself a biologist, Julie E. Czerneda has earned a reputation in science fiction circles for her ability to create beautifully crafted, imaginative, yet believably realized alien races. In Survival, the first novel in her new series, Species Imperative, she draws upon this talent to build races, characters, and a universe which will draw readers into a magnificent tale of interstellar intrigue, as an Earth scientist is caught up in a terrifying interspecies conflict. Senior co-administrator of the Norcoast Salmon Research Facility, Dr. Mackenzie Connor, Mac to her friends and colleagues, was a trained biologist, whose work had definitely become her life. And working at Norcoast Base, set in an ideal location just where the Tannu River sped down the west side of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast was the perfect situation for Mac. She and fellow scientist Dr. Emily Mamani were just settling in to monitor this year's salmon runs when their research was interrupted by the unprecedented arrival of Brymn, the first member of the alien race known as the Ohryn to ever set foot on Earth. Brymn was an archaeologist, and much of his research had focused on a region of space known as the Chasm, a part of the universe that was literally dead, all of its worlds empty of any life-forms, though traces existed of the civilizations that must once have flourished in the region. Brymn had sought out Mac because she was a biologist -- a discipline strictly forbidden among his own people -- and he felt that through her expertise she might be able to help him discover what had created the Chasm. But Mac had little interest in alien races and in studies that ranged beyond Earth, and as politely as she was capable of, she tried to make it clear that she was unwilling to abandon her own work. However, the decision was soon taken out of her hands when a mysterious and devastating attack on the Base resulted in the abduction of Emily, and forced Mac to flee for her life with Brymn and the Earth special agents who were escorting him. Suddenly, it appeared that Earth itself might be under attack by the legendary race the Ohryn called the Ro, the beings they thought might be the destructive force behind the Chasm. Cut off from everything and everyone she knew, Mac found herself in grave danger and charged with the responsibility of learning everything she could that might possibly aid Earth in protecting the human race from extinction...