Search Filters

"Exceptions to Their Rule" unveils the obscured narratives of the Basques and Wabanaki, two societies that thrived as democratic bastions amidst the autocratic darkness sweeping the globe from 1420 to 1620. Author Rick Sloan exposes the devastating impact of unchecked autocratic power while celebrating these resilient cultures that stood firm, embodying the spirit of liberty, mutual respect, and sustainable industry.

"Do no harm" is a creed and oath of beneficence all healthcare professionals are expected to strictly abide by in their practices. As patients, we expect those in the medical community to uphold the health, safety, and general wellbeing of every person under their care. While a vast majority of medical professionals sustain their oath resolutely, there are exceptions to any rule.

For the most part we inherit our opinions. We are the heirs of habits and mental customs. Our beliefs, like the fashion of our garments, depend on where we were born. We are molded and fashioned by our surroundings. Environment is a sculptor—a painter. If we had been born in Constantinople, the most of us would have said: “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.” If our parents had lived on the banks of the Ganges, we would have been worshipers of Shiva, longing for the heaven of Nirvana. As a rule, children love their parents, believe what they teach, and take great pride in saying that the religion of mother is good enough for them. Most people love peace. They do not like to differ with their neighbors. They like company. They are social. They enjoy traveling on the highway with the multitude. They hate to walk alone. The Scotch are Calvinists because their fathers were. The Irish are Catholics because their fathers were. The English are Episcopalians because their fathers were, and the Americans are divided in a hundred sects because their fathers were. This is the general rule, to which there are many exceptions. Children sometimes are superior to their parents, modify their ideas, change their customs, and arrive at different conclusions. But this is generally so gradual that the departure is scarcely noticed, and those who change usually insist that they are still following the fathers.

From New York Times bestselling author Gena Showalter, comes another scorching Original Heartbreakers tale featuring an aloof bad boy and the rowdy Southern belle who rocks his world...Millionaire video-game creator Lincoln West has a dark and tragic past. The sought-after bachelor lives by a rigid schedule and a single rule — one relationship per year, lasting no more than two months. No exceptions. He moved to small town Strawberry Valley, Oklahoma, with his brothers-by-circumstance hoping to escape the worst of his memories — until a brash beauty dredges up long-buried emotions.A reformed party girl, Jessie Kay Dillon is determined to walk the straight and narrow. But her love-hate sizzle with West is just too irresistible. They can't be near each other without tearing off their clothes, but the last thing she needs is to be his next two-month dump. Can she be the one exception? Because as any former girl-gone-wild knows: rules are made to be broken.“Emotional, heart-tugging, kept me turning the pages!” — Carly Phillips, New York Times bestselling author

“Be like Mike?” Just about every basketball player and billions of people across the globe want to be like Mike. The “Mike” referenced here is, of course, Michael Jordan, widely acclaimed as the greatest basketball player of all time. Despite the desires of so many, none of us, with the possible exceptions of Lebron James and my nine-year old grandson, Eli Massaro Roy, will ever be like Mike. This is in part because the fundamental rules of basketball are biased, favoring some such as Jordan, James, and hopefully Eli and disadvantaging others such as most of us mortals. Put simply, the fundamental rules of basketball are decidedly political. This book explains how and why this is so. Readers who know and love basketball and especially those who do not will discover much about the game they never knew. Among the many basketball-related questions answered in the book are the following. What rule was instituted in reaction to teams’ dangerously throwing their smaller players into the balconies overlooking most early basketball courts? How did creative cheating help bring the dribble into the game? What popular singer would sacrifice “ a first born or two” to be like Michael Jordan? What is basketball’s “Bashor resiliency test?” What is a spatula pick? What key role did passionate fans have in the origins of basketball’s backboards? Likewise, readers who know and love politics and especially those who do not will discover much they did not know about politics. Why are rules or laws often stretched or broken? Why do rules become more and more complex over time? Why is no rule or law ever neutral? What roles did religion, law enforcement and the Progressive Movement play in the origin and development of basketball? Why is basketball likely the elitist of all the elite professional team sports? The book features a simple, engaging and often humorous style to expose the biased and unequal aspects of the rules of basketball.

Thunderstruck - Vicki Lewis ThompsonDamon Harrison never gets too involved. A cowboy at heart, Damon has turned his commitment phobia into a living, flipping houses. The only exceptions to that rule? His foster family at Thunder Mountain Ranch. And now those ‘exceptions’ have talked Damon into working on a new project with a carpenter named Phil...Only ‘Phil’ is a nickname for Philomena Turner. She has a wicked way with carpentry, and an even wickeder way of turning Damon's head. And the chemistry is like a lightning bolt of lust. But Phil wants a family and a home, and no hotshot cowboy — even a tantalizingly sexy one — will change that. All she can steal are a few nights of sizzling passion before she has to set this lone cowboy free...Her Sexy Texas Cowboy - Ali OlsonWorkaholic Manhattanite Renee Gainey is in Texas for her sister’s wedding, and waiting for her is none other than Jeremiah Richards, the irresistible cowboy Renee is not allowed to have. Her sister would freak out if there were sexy shenanigans going on right before her nuptials! But what single maid-of-honour could resist the best man when he’s a red-hot Texan?As the wedding draws closer, the burning attraction between Renee and Jeremiah consumes them both. Soon they’re finding ways to sneak out of wedding duties to satisfy their cravings for each other. In her sister’s spare room. Up in the barn’s hay loft. Every chance they can get. But once the wedding is over, Renee is going back to New York. Hopefully with her heart intact...A Cowboy in Paradise - Shana GrayLosing her luggage was Jimi Calloway’s first clue that her friend’s Hawaiian destination wedding would be a nightmare. The fact that it’s at a ranch instead of on the beach and she’ll be ‘glamping’? It's officially the Vacation from Hell. Until this city girl gets a glimpse of her smokin’-hot cowboy guide. Suddenly this vacation is looking up...Sure, Jimi’s designer wardrobe is lost somewhere over the ocean, but she’s too busy learning just how incredible — and incredibly wicked — ‘roughing it’ with the sexy, rugged Dallas Wilde can be to care. Besides, it’s only a vacation fling. Only, no one warned Jimi how easy it was to fall for a cowboy in paradise.

I. First Get Your Text or Subject A great many neglect to do that, and when they get through preaching they do not know what they have been talking about, neither does the audience. Never get up to speak without having something definite in your mind to speak about. There may be exceptions to that rule. There are times when one is called on suddenly to speak, and one has a right then to look to God for subject matter and manner of address. There are other times when one has made full preparation, but it becomes evident when he is about to speak that he must take up some other line of truth. In such a case also, one must depend upon God. But under ordinary circumstances, one should either have something definite in his mind that he is to speak about, or else keep silent. It is true God has said in His Word, “Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it” (Ps. 81:10), but this promise, as the context clearly shows, has nothing whatever to do with our opening our mouth in speaking. Most people who take this promise as applying to their preaching, and who make their boast that they never prepare beforehand what they are going to say, when they open their mouths have them filled with anything but the wisdom of God. Christ did say to His disciples, “Take no thought how or what ye shall speak; for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you” (Matt. 10:19, 20); but this promise did not have to do with preaching, but with witnessing for Christ in circumstances of emergency and peril. In all cases of similar emergency, we have a right to rest in the same promise, and we have a right also to take the spirit of it as applying to our preaching. But if one has an opportunity to prepare for the services before him, and neglects that opportunity, God will not set a premium upon his laziness and neglect, by giving him a sermon in his time of need. Another classic title brought to you by CrossReach Publications!

THE seventeenth century is the period when Europe, shattered in its political and religious ideas by the Reformation, reconstructed its political system upon the principle of territorialism under the rule of absolute monarchs. It opens with Henry IV., it closes with Peter the Great. It reaches its climax in Louis XIV. and the Great Elector. It is therefore the century in which the principal European States took the form, and acquired the position in Europe, which they have held more or less up to the present time. A century, in which France takes the lead in European affairs, and enters on a course of embittered rivalry with Germany, in which England assumes a position of first importance in the affairs of Europe, in which the Emperor, ousted from all effective control over German politics, finds the true centre of his power on the Danube, in which Prussia becomes the dominant state in north Germany, in which Russia begins to drive in the Turkish outposts on the Pruth and the Euxine  –  a century, in short, which saw the birth of the Franco-German Question and of the Eastern Question  –  cannot be said to be deficient in modern interest. The map of Europe at the close of the seventeenth shows the same great divisions as it does at the close of the nineteenth century, with the notable exception of Italy. Prussia and Russia have grown bigger, France and Turkey have grown smaller, the Empire has become definitely Austrian, but in all its main divisions the political map of Europe is practically unchanged. The states which were formed in the general reconstruction of Europe after the religious wars of the sixteenth century are the states of which modern Europe is now composed. Great nations are apt to change their forms of internal government much more often than they do their political boundaries and influence; but it is a remarkable thing that, with the great exception of France, the principal European states possess at the present time not only a similar political position, but a similar form of government to that which they possessed at the close of the seventeenth century. In spite of the wave of revolutionary principles, which flowed out from France over Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, the principal states of Europe at the present time are in all essentials absolute monarchies, and these monarchies are as absolute now as they were then, with the two exceptions of Italy, which did not then exist, and France, which is now a Republic, but has been everything in turn and nothing long. The formation of the modern European states system is therefore the main element of continuous interest and importance in the history of the seventeenth century, that is to say, the acquisition by the chief European states of the boundaries, which they have since substantially retained, the adoption by them of the form of government to which they have since adhered, and the assumption by them, relatively to the other states, of a position and influence in the affairs of Europe which they have since enjoyed. The sixteenth century saw the final dismemberment of medieval Europe, the seventeenth saw its reconstruction in the modern form in which we know it now.  

Explanation of Swami Vivekananda about Ashtanga Yoga and Patanjali's yoga aphorisms.  Since the dawn of history, various extraordinary phenomena have been recorded as happening amongst human beings. Witnesses are not wanting in modern times to attest to the fact of such events, even in societies living under the full blaze of modern science.  But what do they imitate? It is not the sign of a candid and scientific mind to throw overboard anything without proper investigation. Surface scientists, unable to explain the various extraordinary mental phenomena, strive to ignore their very existence. They are, therefore, more culpable than those who think that their prayers are answered by a being, or beings, above the clouds, or than those who believe that their petitions will make such beings change the course of the universe.   The latter have the excuse of ignorance, or at least of a defective system of education, which has taught them dependence upon such beings, a dependence which has become a part of their degenerate nature. The former have no such excuse.  For thousands of years such phenomena have been studied, investigated, and generalised, the whole ground of the religious faculties of man has been analysed, and the practical result is the science of Raja-Yoga. Raja-Yoga does not, after the unpardonable manner of some modern scientists, deny the existence of facts which are difficult to explain; on the other hand, it gently yet in no uncertain terms tells the superstitious that miracles, and answers to prayers, and powers of faith, though true as facts, are not rendered comprehensible through the superstitious explanation of attributing them to the agency of a being, or beings, above the clouds.   It declares that each man is only a conduit for the infinite ocean of knowledge and power that lies behind mankind. It teaches that desires and wants are in man, that the power of supply is also in man; and that wherever and whenever a desire, a want, a prayer has been fulfilled; it was out of this infinite magazine that the supply came, and not from any supernatural being. The idea of supernatural beings may rouse to a certain extent the power of action in man, but it also brings spiritual decay. It brings dependence; it brings fear; it brings superstition. It degenerates into a horrible belief in the natural weakness of man. There is no supernatural, says the Yogi, but there are in nature gross manifestations and subtle manifestations. The subtle are the causes, the gross the effects. The gross can be easily perceived by the senses; not so the subtle. The practice of Raja - yoga will lead to the acquisition of the more subtle perceptions.  All the orthodox systems of India philosophy have one goal in view, the liberation of the soul through perfection. The method is by Yoga. The word Yoga covers an immense ground, but both the Sankhya and the Vedanta Schools point to Yoga in some form or other.  The subject of the present book is that form of Yoga known as Raja-Yoga. The aphorisms of Patanjali are the highest authority on Raja-Yoga, and form its textbook. The other philosophers, though occasionally differing from Patanjali in some philosophical points, have, as a rule, acceded to his method of practice a decided consent. The first part of this book comprises several lectures to classes delivered by the present writer in New York.   The second part is a rather free translation of the aphorisms (Sutras) of Patanjali, with a running commentary. Effort has been made to avoid technicalities as far as possible, and to keep to the free and easy style of conversation. In the first part some simple and specific directions are given for the student who wants to practise, but all such are especially and earnestly reminded that, with few exceptions, Yoga can only be safely learnt by direct contact with a teacher. If these conversations succeed in awakening a desire for further information on the subject, the teacher will not be wanting.