Best Selling Books by Steven Scott

The Bright Family is blasting into a new school year, meeting students from all over the galaxy in the 3rd book focusing on family, friendships, and fun! It''s a brand-new school year, and the Brights are tackling it just like any other family: by hopping into their minivan, taking a portal to a custom-terraformed planetoid, and meeting students from all over the galaxy! But Nia and Jayden are about to learn that there''s more to a universal education than befriending a Glob and mastering mechball. This book includes a never-before-seen bonus tale featuring the Brights'' lovable robot nanny, Dusty, and his double from a very different dimension.

Eagle Boy is a tale about the son of a village shaman. He''s small for his age, though his mother named him Sinchi, meaning a big and strong man. He''s a master of herbs and medicines, and he has clear vision of the energy of the world. He has visions of events outside his life that he''s yet to understand. His mother is not a good shaman, but he expects to eventually succeed her in that role. His father left to serve his duty to the kingdom years before and hasn''t returned. Sinchi''s favorite person is his little sister. He loves to play with her, and explore his mountain homeland. His family''s spirit animal is the eagle, and his great grandfather is rumored to have been a great shaman and shapeshifter, able to change his form to that of an eagle. A traumatic event separates Sinchi from his mother and sister, somehow instantaneously transporting him to a different place and time. He''s taken in by the shaman of a strange tribe. The shaman tells Sinchi that he''s a shapeshifter and spiritual traveler, a divine messenger, that he was seen transforming from an eagle in the sky into a boy. The shaman tells Sinchi that he can learn to harness his power to travel back to his family and save them. It takes Sinchi years and many experiences among different peoples in different lands to come to grips with the path he''s been set upon. Will he take control of his destiny and save his family?

If the outcome of a lawsuit depends solely on facts, law, and logic, a jury''s decision should be predictable before it is announced. This study, however, finds evidence that the results of lawsuits are not predictable, implying that the decision process is influenced by some other undetermined factors accompanying the processing of facts, law, and logic. While it is widely believed that lawsuit results are unpredictable, this is the first study to document the existence of financially meaningful uncertainty in litigation. It employs the event study methodology used in the econometrics of financial markets to determine whether events reveal new information, as contrasted with fully anticipated events. The markets react to filing of lawsuits in a generally negative way, but at filing time the reactions are no worse for firms that ultimately lose their suits than they are for those that eventually prevail. When court decision are announced, by contrast, there is a detectable positive reaction for winningfirms and a negative reaction for losing firms The implications for corporate finance are straightforward, as there is no evidence the expectations formed by markets are biased. Accordingly, the uncertainty inherent in lawsuits fits within existing models for decision making subject to uncertainty. There is no apparent reason why the risks inherent in litigation are systematic, so the financial impact of the risk can be eliminated by holding a diversified portfolio. The deeper implication is for the capital budgeting decision, and indeed for the notion of designing one''s activities within the framework of the law. By the time a jury verdict is announced, all the information on which it ostensibly is based has been publicly revealed in the course of the trial, and hence should be fully reflected in the prices of the litigating firms'' shares. Yet the prices change when the result is announced. This suggests that the decision is not the mere processing of information, but rather contains animmeasurable or stochastic component as well.

Sit back and enjoy some eggnog with a coloring book that will take your mind off the daily grind that we all endure. This book contains 50 wonderful Christmas prints that will need your close attention and artistic flair to create a finished work of art. Our prints include a large assortment of Christmas related designs , all awaiting your particular inspiration to complete them in any vivid colors you choose. Our book boasts Single-sided Pages so you can avoid all your hard work damaging the next picture you plan to color. This book makes the kind of gift the person will not forget the simple and relaxing joy you have provided them. If you coloured as a child this will bring back all those wonderful memories and those forgotten artistic talents.Give it a try you will not be disappointed !

Following the award-winning bestseller They Called Us Enemy, George Takei''s new full-color graphic memoir reveals his most personal story of all--told in full for the first time anywhere! George Takei has shown the world many faces: actor, author, outspoken activist, helmsman of the starship Enterprise, living witness to the internment of Japanese Americans, and king of social media. But until October 27, 2005, there was always one piece missing--one face he did not show the world. There was one very intimate fact about George that he never shared...and it rhymes with Takei. Now, for the first time ever, George shares the full story of his life in the closet, his decision to come out as gay at the age of 68, and the way that moment transformed everything. Following the phenomenal success of his first graphic memoir, They Called Us Enemy, George Takei reunites with the team of Harmony Becker, Steven Scott, and Justin Eisinger, now joined by the award-winning colorist José Villarrubia, for a jaw-dropping new testament. From his earliest childhood crushes and youthful experiments in the rigidly conformist 1950s, to global fame as an actor and the terrible fear of exposure, to the watershed moment of speaking his truth and becoming one of the most high-profile gay men on the planet, It Rhymes with Takei offers a sweeping portrait of one iconic American navigating the tides of LGBTQ+ history. Combining historical context with intimate subjectivity, It Rhymes with Takei shows how the personal and the political have always been intertwined. Its richly emotional words and images depict the terror of entrapment even in gay community spaces, the anguish of speaking up for so many issues while remaining silent on his most personal issue, the grief of losing friends to AIDS, the joy of finding true love with Brad Altman, and the determination to declare that love openly--and legally--before the whole world. Looking back on his astonishing life on both sides of the closet door, George Takei presents a charismatic and candid account of how far America has come...and how precious that progress is.

Sit back and relax with a coloring book that will take your mind off the daily grind that we all endure.This book contains 50 Inspiring Dragon prints that will need your close attention and artistic flair to create a finished work of art. Our prints include a large assortment Fantasy Dragon artwork, all awaiting your particular inspiration to complete them in any vivid colors you choose.Our book boasts Single-sided Pages so you can avoid all your hard work damaging the next picture you plan to color. This book makes the kind of gift the person will not forget the simple and relaxing joy you have provided them. If you coloured as a child this will bring back all those wonderful memories and those forgotten artistic talents.Give it a try you will not be disappointed !

There is no honor among brothers. Ohlen receives an unexpected visit from a friend bringing portentous news of strange artifacts found in a remote northern cave. Joined by the affable shaman, Ahmahn, and the young warrior, Therran, they travel to the city of Eeron to warn Regent Merrick Stonehorn, Ohlen''s old friend and mentor. They discover Merrick has his own problems as workers in the nearby iron mines have been found with their heads cut off. Suspecting an invasion from the dvaken, a strange yet powerful race of human-like creatures, Merrick seeks help in the most unlikely of places. Can the city be saved?

Vengeance drives him. Will honor save him? A savage tribe of cru''gan brutally slaughtered his family, orphaning Ohlen when he was still a boy. Twenty years later a ferocious attack driven by a mysterious witch sends him on a perilous journey to rescue his best friend''s child. His choice between vengeance and honor will determine not only his own fate, but the fate of those he loves.

This dissertation examines sections of Richard Wagner''s final opera, Parsifal, using both Neo-Riemannian theory and Schenkerian analysis. The Neo-Riemannian discussion is primarily concerned with the creation of an inclusive model capable of analyzing any parsimonious connection between two common practice sonorities. The construction of this model is achieved in four phases. First, Riemann''s Tonnetz is expanded to include transformations involving both augmented and diminished triads. Second, Douthett and Steinbach''s Power Towers graph is expanded to include all seventh chords, and new functional designations are applied to these transformations. Third, connections between sonorities that involve a change in cardinality are examined and compared to triadic transformations. Finally, the results of all three of these analytical discussions are combined to produce an inclusive analytical model. Four short passages from Parsifal are analyzed using the inclusive model.

American bandleader John Philip Sousa’s rise to international fame during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries coincided with a time of growing self-awareness and -criticism in American musical culture. Numerous groups and music ensembles formed in the United States around this period that dedicated themselves to so-called “highbrow” European classical music while dismissing American works as imitative or inferior. Though Sousa is recognized as a composer primarily through his American marches—a genre clearly distasteful to the Eurocentric symphonic halls and opera houses of his time—his lesser-known descriptive works and multi-movement instrumental suites reveal that the bandleader desired to appease both casual concertgoers and trained music analysts. Sousa strove to entertain and educate his audience equally and show them the value in both popular (“lowbrow”) music and its high-art counterpart. His programs for the United States Marine Band and the Sousa Band were characterized by a strong presence of well-known contemporary tunes and songs and orchestral transcriptions alike. The descriptive works and suites do not neatly fall into either category, and instead serve as a middle ground that bridges the opposing ends of the spectrum. Sousa’s two descriptive works—The Chariot Race in 1890 and Sheridan’s Ride in 1891—were the result of early experimentation with the wind band ensemble to expand the United States Marine Band’s repertoire for new performance seasons. The works focused on programmatic musical depictions and instrumental effects to convey a narrative to the listener, but Sousa also incorporated more intricate musical techniques in their context, such as chromaticism and leitmotivs. The first suite, The Last Days of Pompeii in 1893, continued this practice but did so in a much larger form with multiple movements and subsequently more space for musical development. The suites are among the longest instrumental works that Sousa composed for the concert band. As such, they offer a unique perspective not only on Sousa’s navigation of high- and lowbrow musical concepts, but also on his personal compositional style.Writings and correspondences related to American music at the time and Sousa and his activities suggest that his endeavors with the new genres were generally well-received but ultimately saw limited lasting effects. Sousa personally expected that the suites—particularly The Last Days of Pompeii—would come to be considered the shining jewel of his compositional output and serve to shape future American music. Although critics and concertgoers typically lauded the pieces for both their programmatic clarity and musical depth, music analysts such as Louis C. Elson and Frederic Louis Ritter seem to have been uninterested in including them and their composer in their publications on American music. Though they failed to reach the degree of importance Sousa hoped they would in his legacy, the descriptive works and suites represent a critical facet of their composer’s beliefs on class culture and music development in America as it entered the twentieth century.

"This study proceeds in two parts. The first section is a theoretical and historical review of the role of logistics-enabled military presence as a part of coercive strategies. Operation Nickel Grass --the United States’ logistical support to Israel during the Yom Kippur War -- demonstrates how even permanently based forces may fail to deter aggression, while showing the successes and challenges of one of the first modern aerial logistics efforts. The deployment of United States forces as a part of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm was one of the largest military logistics operations of all time. Despite its coercive success, the ports of debarkation struggled to handle the tremendous flow of frontline forces, equipment, and sustainment. The time offered to the United States to deploy massive forces and overcome logistical hurdles may not be offered by future adversaries. Finally, the deployment of Task Force Hawk as a part of the conflict in Kosovo shows how even small force deployments face logistical hurdles as constraints at ports of debarkation slow the establishment of forward military presence. In sum, the theoretical review and historical cases suggest coercive strategies should employ forward presence, but that limits on throughput degrade the United States’ current capacity to employ rapid mobility to its full potential. The second section of the work examines the United States current aerial port technologies and concepts of operations. Part of this analysis rests on a recent Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-commissioned project to model the United States logistics enterprise. The DARPA project infused potential technologies, like fast sealift and heavy vertical airlift, to examine investment strategies for research and development. While the United States military tends toward platform-centric research, this work demonstrates that investment in upload and download technologies is necessary to achieve real change in speed of throughput at the most constrained portion of the logistics enterprise: forward ports of debarkation. Taken as a whole, the work casts a vision of how the United States can continue to lead the world in force projection capabilities as a part of coercive strategies"--Abstract.

"Florida Family Law is an addition to the Florida Practice Series and provides background, analysis, and practical advice on handling family law matters in the Florida family law court system. The publication also provides practical discussion of relevant case law, statutes, and rules. With valuable practice tips by a Florida family court judge, the content covers a full range of family issues, including: Formation of marriage, Marital contracts, Dissolution of marriage, Alimony and child support, Paternity, Adoption, Child custody, Domestic violence, Collaborative divorce"--

This thesis focuses on the collective form of detached houses. A result of the American phenomenon of detached, single family, freestanding houses being the standard type. Through an observation of eight environments of this house type, a theory is developed about a way of designing in the detached house neighborhood. The idea is to consider the design of houses as a group and thus be able to arrange the elements of each to achieve a multiplicity of associations. This would build a collective form that enables the house form to have a high level of individuality. The thesis is divided into two parts: first, observing systems (elements and their relationships) of existing places and deriving a design method; then, using this method, generate a design.

This practical, in-depth reference offers an exhaustive body of knowledge about every element that form and work with optical transport networks, including network applications, protocols, software and hardware technologies. The book paints a cohesive picture of transport network technologies for effective and thorough engineering and management. Specifically, it focuses on TDM technologies since IP, ATM, FR, and Ethernet traffic is transported by core TDM optical transport networks. presenting a comprehensive overview of three up and coming SONET technologies: Generic Framing Procedure (GFP), Virtual Concatenation (VCAT) and Link Capacity Adjustment Scheme (LCAS). Management technologies and protocols, including SNMP, CORBA, HTTP, XML, and CMIP/CMISE, are presented in a unified manner that illustrates how these protocols all use request/response and notification paradigm. Service provision and monitoring for ensuring network survivability, as well as the key role of OSSs play in customer satisfaction, complete this exhaustive treatment of optical transport network engineering and management.