Best Selling Books by Ryan Kelly

"Out of the shadows of the first millennium come those who will define the next. Circa A.D. 980, an accomplished Viking named Sven returns to his family estates in Orkney. Used to lush Mediterranean palaces, exotic women and epic combat, Sven only intends to claim his inheritance before excaping this cold backwater forever. But his ruthless uncle Gorm has stolen Sven''s brithright. Viewed as both an outsider and a traitor, Sven embarks on a one-man war against his uncle''s organization, only to find himself drawn back into a past he''d tried so hard to leave behind" -- p. [4] of cover.

Kurdistan History and suppression. The Europe of the East, Turkey, Iraqi, Iran, Syria, Asian Kurds. Kurds are united by language and culture, but divided by politics and religion. The Kurds are notoriously fractious, with political formations based on diverse formal ideologies, as well as more traditional clan-based rivalries. Most Kurds are Sunni, some are Shia, and a few are Yazidi. This complexity produces interesting results, as in late 2014 when the Islamist government of Turkey allowed "good" Kurds from Iraq to relieve the siege of Kobane, while prohibiting such aid from the "bad" Kurds of the secular Kurdish groups in Turkey and Syria. The Kurd population, stretching across at least 4 countries, with a diaspora in many more, historically has been hard to quantify. In 1987, estimates suggested that probably numbering close to 16 million kurds, inhabits the wide arc from eastern Turkey and the northwestern part of Syria through Soviet Azerbaijan and Iraq to the northwest of the Zagros Mountains in Iran, respresented the population of what has been referred to as "Kurdistan." About half of all Kurds worldwide lived in Turkey. Most of the rest lived in adjacent regions of Iran, Iraq, and Syri

Ivory Coast Political History. Art, Culture, Ethnic groups and Settlement. Central-West Côte d''Ivoire is a lush agricultural landscape, stuffed with rich banana, rice, and cocoa fields. The region is this West African nation''s equivalent of the corn belt of Iowa and Illinois. A long drive down stretches of road left pockmarked by the ongoing rainy season yields endless repetitions of the same scene: Tiny villages each home to only a few dozen farmers living in thatched-roof huts quietly tending to crops and livestock. Things are even more peaceful than usual now, as the Muslims that make up this area''s dominant religious affiliation celebrate Ramadan. But as you arrive in Yamoussoukro, the nation''s capital, a strange monument can be seen towering over the horizon: An enormous gilded cross that adorns the top of what is, by many accounts, the world''s largest church. Topping St. Peter''s Basilica in Rome by more than 80 feet, Basilica Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, sometimes called the "basilica in the bush," is a jaw-dropping and bizarre monument to the end of a period only a few decades ago when Côte d''Ivoire was competing against other newly-independent African nations to become the cultural and economic powerhouse of the continent

Ghana Cultural Art and History. Ghana Ethnical Custom and Local, Tradition The African devotion to his or her ancestors has been taken as the singular characteristic of African spiritual awareness, and so some early writers on African Indigenous Culture referred to African Traditional Religion as ancestor worship. That is, African spirituality in essence is the worship of dead and gone great, great grand-parents. Some early missionary writers on African traditional religion also confused African ancestors with spirits, and as a belief in spirit was considered superstitious, the veneration of the ancestors was seen as the cult of the spirits. a form of animism. Since Africans are said to be afraid of evil spirits ancestors it was concluded that therefore they have instituted the cult of the ancestors so as to placate them through sacrifices and thus avoid any harm from them. The dead are therefore likened to malevolent spirits and so these early writers on African Traditional Religion concluded that fear of spirits ancestors appears to lie at the root of the ancestor cult. That means they agreed with Henry Bergson, the French Philosopher, that fear first begat the gods. This is an unfortunate misrepresentation of the ancestor ritual and if the conclusion is valid then it means that Christianity, Islam etc. are equally founded on fear of evil spirits

Meet the "Vinyl Underground" - three ultra-hip Londoners who solve crimes the cops can''t even imagine! Pretty-boy Morrison Shepherd, autistic psychic Callum "Perv" O''Connor, morgue assistant-cum-internet porn star Leah King and no-nonsense Kim Abiola have cracked their first case and saved Kim''s father from jail. But as Morrison begins to unravel, and a series of young female corpses is discovered with apparent connections to William Blake, the team''s job is only just beginning... and they might not all make it to the end. By Si Spencer (Life During Wartime), with art by Simon Gane (Paris) and Cameron Stewart (The Other Side), this all-new series will dazzle you!

Lucifer''s quest takes him to the Japanese afterworld of Izanami, and to the terrible House of Windowless Rooms, in search of his lost wings. Leaving his immortality and power at the door, he walks into a labyrinth of traps and treachery where the only thing more dangerous than failure is success.

Angola Economic State, Oil boom and Political Stands. Angola achieved independence from Portugal in nineteen seventy-five, after which the competition between different movements that were vying to lead the country descended into civil war. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, a Marxist-oriented group that included urban intellectuals, nominally led the country. It was opposed by two factions the National Liberation Front of Angola, and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola. Oil is the backbone of the Angola''s economy. This sector makes up over 90 percent of the Country''s exports. The first oil surveys date back to nineteen hundred and six, and it was not until nineteen fifty-five that the first oil well was discovered. In nineteen sixty-six, Cabinda Gulf Oil Company discovered important oil reserves in Cabinda. From then on, oil started playing one of the most important roles in the Angolan economy, having surpassed coffee in oil exports as of 1973

Kenya Art and Culture, a History. The People, Economy, Government and Politics. Today there are around 42 different tribes in Kenya, with varying cultural identities and traditions that have, in some cases, become intertwined over time due to similarities in language and a sharing of the same environment. Visitors to Kenya have the unique opportunity to spend days in the homes of various tribal villages, learning and participating in their daily lives, and even in some cases attending ceremonies. While in the past the development of national parks, in some cases, caused displacement of tribes from traditional grazing areas, today many are employed in the management of conservancies or rangers to protect the wildlife they once kept their cattle safe from

After a fake Tommy Taylor novel is released, the author''s son, the real Tom Taylor, must find the truth and confront the darkest secrets that surround him.

Civilian leaders interpret the value of war in terms of political ends, while military leaders often pursue victory itself as war''s object. An empowered military can therefore make war harder to end. Estimates from international conflict data show that termination of a war short of victory is more likely when civilian leaders become more politically dominant. However, civil-military consequences for war termination arise from more than outright shocks to political power. Survey experimental evidence demonstrates that senior U.S. military leaders can use typical political activities to recruit public support for persisting in wars and create costs for elected leaders who want to end them. Finally, qualitative analysis of the U.S. post-9/11 wars and text analysis of a new data set of congressional testimony yield evidence of military dissent and its influence on presidential policy decisions. Altogether, this dissertation moves beyond war termination''s civil-military problem, which is about whether and how to stop fighting, and sheds light on the problem of its civil-military politics, which is about how to define war''s end but also how to resolve competing claims.

This dissertation advances a cohort perspective to analyze trends in racial and educational disparities in U.S. adult mortality. The project is organized around three themes. First, I emphasize that recent temporal changes in U.S. adult mortality risk are rooted in cohort forces. Unfortunately, much of the mortality literature has failed to account for the fact that the sociohistorical conditions of U.S. cohorts have changed dramatically, and these changes have tremendous implications for population health and mortality trends. My work clearly shows the pitfalls of omitting these cohort effects from analyses of U.S. adult mortality risk. Second, I illustrate that because exposure to social and health conditions have changed over time, resources in adulthood are growing increasingly important in shaping U.S. adult mortality risk. In this regard, my findings also highlight growing disparities in U.S. mortality across race/ethnic gender groups. Third, I advance a cohort theory of U.S. mortality, drawing from both "fundamental cause" theory and a life course perspective of mortality but couching them in a cohort framework to highlight the importance of historical changes in U.S. social and health contexts in both childhood and adulthood. This cohort perspective is then used to analyze three central topics in the U.S. mortality literature: the black-white crossover in older-adult mortality, the growing educational gap in U.S. adult mortality, and the origins and persistence of black-white inequalities in U.S. adult mortality. I estimate hierarchical age-period-cohort cross-classified random effects models using National Health Interview Survey-Linked Mortality Files between 1986 and 2006 to simultaneously analyze age, period, and cohort patterns of U.S. adult mortality rates. I find (1) the black-white crossover is a cohort-specific phenomenon, (2) educational disparities in U.S. adult mortality rates are growing across birth cohorts, not time periods, and (3) racial disparities in U.S. adult mortality rates stem from cumulative racial stratification across both cohorts and the life course. Such findings have direct consequences for both mortality theories and policy recommendations. Only by considering the disparate sociohistorical conditions that U.S. cohorts have endured across their life courses can we fully understand and address current and future health disparities in the United States.

Abstract: This activist ethnographic study analyzes the language and literacy practices within an after-school program designed to promote meaningful interactions between immigrant middle school students and their urban, low-income peers. These collaborations occurred when students engaged in pedagogical activities intended to heighten their awareness of themselves, their language and learning potential, and their capacity to resist situations and labels that limit their opportunities for social and academic success. Using a theoretical framework that supplements Cultural Historical Activity Theory with theories of social space and social practice, the study focuses on the agency displayed by and the interpersonal connections that developed between the young people as they worked to co-construct social maps of their school and to author and act in a multilingual video against gossip.