Unusual

"Introduces the reader to a wealth of extraordinary life forms"-- P. [4] of cover.

A book about why the United States is different from other industrialized countries.

The Book of Unusual Knowledge is a mammoth 704-page hardcover book crammed with a cornucopia of information--some useful, others not so much--but all of it completely captivating. It's perfect for anyone with a curious mind and a passion for learning. With quirky illustrations and a vast array of articles, anecdotes, lists, and games, this book will provide hours of fascinating reading. It will also expand your knowledge on a range of topics, including the animal kingdom, art, sports, technology, history, politics, the universe, and much, much more. Sample topics include: * Are plastic bags killing sacred cows in India? * Does NASCAR have roots in bootlegging moonshine? * Did Ronald Reagan see not one--but two--UFOs during his lifetime? Gorgeous leatherette binding with gilded accents makes The Book of Unusual Knowledge a handsome addition to your library.

A searing indictment of the American penal system that finds the roots of the recent prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo in the steady dismantling of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment. The revelations of prisoner abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib and more recently at Guantánamo were shocking to most Americans. And those who condemned the treatment of prisoners abroad have focused on U.S. military procedures and abuses of executive powers in the war on terror, or, more specifically, on the now-famous White House legal counsel memos on the acceptable limits of torture. But in The Story of Cruel and Unusual, Colin Dayan argues that anyone who has followed U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding the Eighth Amendment prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment would recognize the prisoners' treatment at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo as a natural extension of the language of our courts and practices in U.S. prisons. In fact, it was no coincidence that White House legal counsel referred to a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1980s and 1990s in making its case for torture.Dayan traces the roots of "acceptable" torture to slave codes of the nineteenth century that deeply embedded the dehumanization of the incarcerated in our legal system. Although the Eighth Amendment was interpreted generously during the prisoners' rights movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, this period of judicial concern was an anomaly. Over the last thirty years, Supreme Court decisions have once again dismantled Eighth Amendment protections and rendered such words as "cruel" and "inhuman" meaningless when applied to conditions of confinement and treatment during detention. Prisoners' actual pain and suffering have been explained away in a rhetorical haze—with rationalizations, for example, that measure cruelty not by the pain or suffering inflicted, but by the intent of the person who inflicted it. The Story of Cruel and Unusual is a stunningly original work of legal scholarship, and a searing indictment of the U.S. penal system.

Designed to shed light on sexually unusual expression, this unique book will assist helping professionals in their treatments and referrals of persons with sexually unusual life styles and behaviors. Based on the premise, “First, do no harm,” The Sexually Unusual is targeted for all helping professionals with little or no academic or clinical training in sexuality, who encounter clients involved in coercive and non-coercive unusual sexual behaviors. The vast majority of helping professionals, from all disciplines, who have had neither academic nor clinical training in addressing sex-related concerns, will find sensible and empathetic approaches to working with the sexually unusual--pedophiles, obscene phone callers, transvestites, transsexuals, exhibitionists, sexual addicts, and more. A historical perspective broadens the reader's view and displays the evolving and unfolding nature of the human condition.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF NUMEROUS BOOKS, INCLUDING SUPERNATURAL ACCESS AND HELL'S TOXIC TRIO God's miracles are often uncommon, unordinary, and unusual. This book will challenge you to let God interrupt the mundane in your life so that you can experience unusual blessings, favor, and more. God wants to do extraordinary things in and through His people. He performed uncommon miracles throughout the Book of Acts, revealing a rare dimension of His power that brought miraculous results, and He wants to do the same today. In this sixty-day journey Ryan LeStrange challenges readers to let God interrupt the mundane patterns in their lives and reveal unusual measures of His power. With revelation from Scripture and confessions to declare each day, this book will help readers prepare their hearts for unusual miracles to become a reality in their lives--unusual blessings, unusual favor, unusual breakthroughs, and more. God's people were not born to live mediocre lives void of the power of God. They were designed to do kingdom exploits. This book is a tool that will help readers break the hold of the average, embrace God's supernatural possibilities, and walk in extraordinary power. Also Available in Spanish ISBN: 978-1-62999-307-2 OTHER BOOKS BY RYAN LESTRANGE: A Higher Dimension (2019) ISBN: 978-1629997032 The Power of the Double (2019) ISBN: 978-1629996639 Hell's Toxic Trio (2018) ISBN: 978-1629994888 Supernatural Access (2017) ISBN: 978-1629991689

The true and gripping account of the nine-year struggle by a small band of lawyers to abolish the death penalty in the United States. Its new edition features a 2011 Foreword by death-penalty author Evan Mandery of CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, as well as a new Preface by the author.The mission, plotted out over lunch in New York's Central Park in the early 1960s, seemed as impossible as going to the moon: abolish capital punishment in every state. The approach would fight on multiple fronts, with multiple strategies. The people would be dedicated, bright, unsure, unpopular, and fascinating. This is their story: not only the cases and the arguments before courts, the death row inmates and their victims, the judges and politicians urging law and order, this is the true account of the real-life lawyers from the inside. The United States indeed went to the moon, and a few years later the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. The victory was long-sought and sweet, and the pages of this book vividly let the reader live the struggle and the victory. And while the abolition eventually became as impermanent as the nation's presence on the moon, these dedicated attorneys certainly made a difference. This is their tale.As Evan Mandery writes in his new Foreword, "In these pages, Meltsner lays bare every aspect of his and his colleaguesi thinking. You will read how they handicapped their chances, which arguments they thought would work (you may be surprised), and what they thought of the Supreme Court justices who would decide the crucial cases. You will come to understand what they perceived to be the basis for support for the death penalty, and, with Meltsner's unflinching honesty, what they perceived to be the inconsistencies in their position."Mandery concludes: "It is my odd lot in life to have read almost every major book ever written about the death penalty in America. This is the best and the most important. Every serious scholar who wants to advance an argument about capital punishment in the United States--whether it is abolitionist or in favor of the death penalty, or merely a tactical assessment--cites this book. It is open and supremely accessible." And the author's "constitutional vision was years ahead of its time. His book is timeless." Part of the Legal History and Biography Series from Quid Pro Books, the new ebook editions feature embedded pagination from previous editions (consistent with the new paperback edition as well, allowing continuity in all formats), active TOC and endnotes, and quality digital formatting.

From creative minds worldwide have come fantasy coin issues never listed in any other comprehensive reference. Unusual Coins includes thousands of issues spawned from the non-circulating legal tender boom, but not fitting into the realm of legitimate coinage. Here you'll find coins used by the inhabitants of Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings. These are real coins, created by Tom Maringer of Scottsdale, Ark., based on reference to coins in the trilogy. Unusual World Coins features: • Expanded Page Count: to accommodate over 7,000 photos • Clear images of coins • Detailed descriptive listings • Over 12,000 accurate market values About the Author George Cuhaj is an experienced and accomplished numismatist and researcher. An avid collector with a passion for this hobby, he is closely aligned with leaders in the field. A past president of the American Medalic Sculpture Association, he is a frequent instructor at the American Numismatic Association's Summer Seminars. George is also editor for The Standard Catalog of World Paper Money series. Thomas Michael holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and a Master of Arts degree in economics. He has more than 20 years of experience researching and reporting on world coin prices and market trends.

Abnormal burial practices have long been a source of fascination and debate within the fields of mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology. The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange investigates an unparalleled geographic and temporal range of burials that differ from the usual customs of their broader societies, emphasizing the importance of a holistic, context-driven approach to these intriguing cases. From an Andean burial dating to 3500 BC to mummified bodies interred in the Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo, Sicily, during the twentieth century, the studies in this volume cross the globe and span millennia. The unusual cases explored here include Native American cemeteries in Illinois, “vampire” burials in medieval Poland, and a mass grave of decapitated soldiers in ancient China. Moving away from the simplistic assumption that these burials represent people who were considered deviant in society, contributors demonstrate the importance of an integrated biocultural approach in determining why an individual was buried in an unusual way. Drawing on historical, sociocultural, archaeological, and biological data, this volume critically evaluates the binary of “typical” versus “atypical” burials. It expands our understanding of the continuum of variation within mortuary practices, helping researchers better interpret burial evidence to learn about the people and cultures of the past. A volume in the series Bioarchaeological Interpretations of the Human Past: Local, Regional, and Global Perspectives, edited by Clark Spencer Larsen

This volume contains the proceedings of the workshop held at the DIMACS Center of Rutgers University (Piscataway, NJ) on Unusual Applications of Number Theory. Standard applications of number theory are to computer science and cryptology. In this volume, well-known number theorist, Melvyn B. Nathanson, gathers articles from the workshop on other, less standard applications in number theory, as well as topics in number theory with potential applications in science and engineering. The material is suitable for graduate students and researchers interested in number theory and its applications.