The relatives' station wagon: it smelled like a real car, looked like a rainbow, and was roomy enough for a crowd.
Lucky! Because a big crowd in all shapes and sizes piled into that old wagon at four o'clock one summer morning and piled out of it the next day at their relatives' place on the north side of the mountains. All in good moods.
The visitors settled in everywhere throughout the house, laughing and making music and hugging everyone from the kitchen to the front room. And they stayed for weeks.
Cynthia Rylant's words and Stephen Gammell's pictures take warm delight in the time the relatives came -- when two sides of a family made one roomy middle.
Who says dating a vampire is easy? Raven's nocturnal romance with her immortal love, Alexander, is definitely dicey, but even more so with Alexander's meddling half-vamp cousin in town. Claude and his sketchy gang are on the hunt for a stash of blood-filled vials that can turn them into pure vampires. With an old family feud casting a shadow on the search, they'll do anything to get their hands on the vials. Raven and Alexander must swiftly mastermind a plan to outwit them, but will the very lure of the vials create more risk for Raven than she could ever imagine? And deepen her own quandary about the possibility of becoming a vampire?
Xiaoming Wang and Richard H. Tedford have spent the past 20 years studying the evolutionary history of the family Canidae. Both are well known for having established the modern framework for the evolutionary relationship of canids. Combining their research with Mauricio Antón's impeccable reconstructions of both extinct and extant species, Wang and Tedford present a remarkably detailed and nuanced portrait of the origin and evolution of canids over the past 40 million years.
The authors cull their history from the most recent scientific research conducted on the vast collections of the American Museum of Natural History and other leading institutions. The fossil record of the Canidae, particularly those from their birth place in North America, are the strongest of their kind among known groups of carnivorans. Such a wonderfully detailed evolutionary history provides access to a natural history that is not possible with many other groups of carnivorans.
With their rich fossil record, diverse adaptations to various environments, and different predatory specializations, canids are an ideal model organism for the mapping of predator behavior and morphological specializations. They also offer an excellent contrast to felids, which remain entrenched in extreme predatory specializations. The innovative illustrated approach in this book is the perfect accompaniment to an extremely important branch of animal and fossil study. It transforms the science of paleontology into a thrilling visual experience and provides an unprecedented reference for anyone fascinated by dogs.
The author of 50 Jobs Worse Than Yours is back with fifty relatives so bad they might make you actually look forward to your next Thanksgiving.
They’re kooky, they’re crazy—50 Relatives Worse Than Yours is a nightmarish family reunion that will have you appreciating your own weird clan. There’s the Family Newsletter Publisher who keeps you updated on how Uncle Carl’s hip is doing; there’s Holistic New Age Aunt, who knows Madonna from Kabbalah class but refuses to introduce you because that would be bad karma; and there’s Child Who Was in a National TV Commercial, who has more money than you do. And then there’s Uncle Speedo, the Monopoly Bank Thief, and Your Son, the Tenant.
Filled with hilarious photographs and bullet points listing all their horrible characteristics, 50 Relatives Worse Than Yours is the perfect gift for anyone who’s embarrassed by some members of their family, which let’s just admit it is about everyone. And who knows, you might even recognize a relative or two…
For every holiday, wedding, funeral, or birth of a child, families gather for what are supposed to be times of celebration or remembrance. But often these gatherings create more stress and conflict than joy and connection. When Difficult Relatives Happen to Good People speaks to those who look forward to family gatherings but also dream being around certain relatives. The opinionated aging parent, the bigoted uncle, the brother who drinks too much, the cousin who flaunts her money and status--all of these characters appear in the sometimes humorous but always instructive stories throughout this book. Based on years of researching family conflict, Dr. Felder offers practical advice about how to make the most of your heartfelt connections with the family members you love while staying clear of the toxic ones.
Full of specific recommendations for every kind of family situation, from religious disagreements and sibling rivalries to drug, alcohol, and gambling problems, When Difficult Relatives Happen to Good People describes with witty, inspiring examples how to identify when to step in and when to step back, how to avoid feeling like a martyr, and how to stay relaxed in situations that once would have made you cringe.
About this product: Here's a book for cat lovers, but those who prefer good hard science to the warm and fuzzy feline tomes. While very readable, not to mention beautifully and lavishly illustrated, The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives is a serious and intelligent look at how today's lions, tigers, and other cat species are linked to their ancient and extinct ancestors. The way cats have evolved over 25 million years, and the descriptions of feline behavior, both ancient and present, will intrigue animal lovers in general, and not just cat people.
About this product: This accessible introductory reference source surveys the linguistic and cultural background of the earliest known Germanic languages and examines their similarities and differences. The Languages covered include: * Gothic * Old Norse * Old Saxon * Old English * Old Low Franconian * Old High German Written in a lively style, each chapter opens with a brief cultural history of the people who used the language, followed by selected authentic and translated texts and an examination of particular areas including grammar, pronunciation, lexis, dialect variation and borrowing, textual transmission, analogy and drift.
About this product: This book is about letting the little guy do what the big guy has always done. Hedge funds, pension funds, and other institutions have always used relative strength investing to rack up big returns, yet the methodology has never been presented to the individual investor as a viable, easy-to-understand investment strategy, as it is in this book. Michael Carr, a personal investor with a longtime background in system design and analysis, has applied his professional expertise to investing. After running millions of relative strength calculations, Carr proves that relative strength investing works in any market climate. By strictly following his methodologies outlined in this book, you can more than double the returns of the S&P 500, with less risk. Carr shares his results, methodology, and step-by-step instructions here in this book. Smarter Investing in Any Economy: The Definitive Guide to Relative Strength Investing will show you how relative strength strategies allow you to invest successfully in both bull and bear markets. Even in a market downturn, something is always going up. Relative strength will help you pinpoint that stock, currency, or commodity that s on its way up. Recent advances in computing capability and the widespread availability of ETFs have now opened up relative strength strategies to virtually any investor. Relative strength has been widely used for years by financial institutions; however, it was never accessible to individual investors because of complex custom programming requirements. Computing advances, coupled with new ETFs that limit risk have made relative strength a viable strategy for long-term investors and day traders alike. Carr has broken down his technique to the level that any Microsoft user can implement his strategies successfully.
Here, the Foundations of Buddhist Thought series shifts to helping readers progress on the Buddhist path by explaining the two "truths," or ways of viewing reality. Geshe Tashi Tsering describes how our perception of reality is obscured or clarified depending on the truth in which we perceive and believe. His systematic approach to Buddhist thought allows readers to gradually but surely enhance their knowledge of Buddhism without feeling overwhelmed.
About this product: The essays in Relative Values draw on new work in anthropology, science studies, gender theory, critical race studies, and postmodernism to offer a radical revisioning of kinship and kinship theory. Through a combination of vivid case studies and trenchant theoretical essays, the contributors—a group of internationally recognized scholars—examine both the history of kinship theory and its future, at once raising questions that have long occupied a central place within the discipline of anthropology and moving beyond them. Ideas about kinship are vital not only to understanding but also to forming many of the practices and innovations of contemporary society. How do the cultural logics of contemporary biopolitics, commodification, and globalization intersect with kinship practices and theories? In what ways do kinship analogies inform scientific and clinical practices; and what happens to kinship when it is created in such unfamiliar sites as biogenetic labs, new reproductive technology clinics, and the computers of artificial life scientists? How does kinship constitute—and get constituted by—the relations of power that draw lines of hierarchy and equality, exclusion and inclusion, ambivalence and violence? The contributors assess the implications for kinship of such phenomena as blood transfusions, adoption across national borders, genetic support groups, photography, and the new reproductive technologies while ranging from rural China to mid-century Africa to contemporary Norway and the Unit! ed States. Addressing these and other timely issues, Relative Values injects new life into one of anthropology's most important disciplinary traditions.
Posing these and other timely questions, Relative Values injects an important interdisciplinary curiosity into one of anthropology’s most important disciplinary traditions.