The original title of this collection was The Many Realities of Ynot Nagromthis because some of the people who may have read my novels and/or a few of the short stories contained in this volume have asked me if I consider myself a science fiction writer. As you will see, many of these thirty stories and essays are far from that genre; therefore, I do not consider myself to be such a writer. Rather, I see myself at times consumed with the possibilities of alternative realities. For instance, what if there was a way the South would have been able to win the battle of Gettysburg and, with it, the Civil War, the Titanic had missed the iceberg, we were able to build a Super Hadron Collider the circumference of the moon, which then opened a parallel universe to ours, and George Custer had not chosen to leave his two Gatling guns behind on his way to the Little Bighorn? As the cover proclaims, I have also included my literary essays, short stories, and personal tales for all of you. And as the Koran begins, Not a word of this book should you doubt. Tony Morgan
Pastor and popular church culture blogger Tony Morgan once worked as a city manager, a CEO-type job with the suit and tie, corner office, the works. Despite his top-rank status, Tony’s list of responsibilities still included killing cockroaches whenever a freaked out co-worker spotted one in the building. That’s where this unconventional, unforgettable book on church leadership begins. Morgan’s point is that great leaders don’t have to do everything. The key is to play from your strengths while building a team that manages around your weaknesses. Written in a relaxed style similar to marketing guru Seth Godin, Killing Cockroaches’ 142 offbeat, on-target entries will delight and energize church leaders. Chapter titles include “10 Easy Ways to Make Your Church Services More Boring” (creative services), “Action Speaks Louder than Advertising” (meeting people’s physical needs), and “The Power of Simple” (eliminating noise).
WHEN THE SEA SHALL GIVE UP HER DEAD The year is 2012 and Tod Johnson, a senior CIA officer, receives a call from a man with whom he has not spoken in some twenty years. This man is Ari Arad, a semi-retired officer of the Aman, the security arm of the Israeli Army. In an atypically urgent voice, Ari urges Tod to come to meet with him in Israel the next day. There, Tod is told a shocking secret which could have disastrous consequences for both Israel and America. Exactly what consequences, when they will occur, and where, are completely unknown. After several days of fruitless speculation, Tod is attempting to return to Boston when his El Al plane is turned around in mid-flight and heads back to Tel Aviv. As Tod suspects, the person behind this in-flight maneuver is Ari himself, who, in a city in the Negev Desert, has discovered a cryptic note: 17, 9, 12 Lituya Bay 100,000,000 dead This note was found beside the body of a man who had access to one of Israels greatest secrets; a secret that Tod and Ari must now assume has been give to someone bent on mass murder. The two quickly come to the conclusion that the numbers on the first line of the note represent a dateSeptember 17, 2012, but the critical questions of who, where and how these terrorists intend to kill 100 million people remain unanswered. Through a tortuous process of elimination Ari concludes that a 100 year-old man living in Beirut, the last living senior member of the Nazi holocaust machine, may be the individual behind the plot. However, an elaborate attempt to infiltrate this mans organization fails, and the pair are left to continue their speculations. They ultimately conclude that the only way the number of deaths indicated in the note could be achieved is through the cataclysmic employment of a vast amount of water, billions of tons of water. The second half of the book is devoted to the events of the 8 days remaining until the disaster is scheduled to occur. The story travels back and forth from Washington to North Africa, to Israel, to Boston, to Spain, to the Mediterranean, to Beirut, to the Canary Islands and back again. The cast of characters includes: the female President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Spain, a beautiful and brainy CIA analyst, various North African Arabs, the Special Forces officer who recently captured Bin Laden, former Mossad agents, and even Tods wife. Eventually, Tod and Ari discover the nature and location of the plot, but are they too late to prevent it?
Acclaimed church leader, blogger, founder and chief strategic officer of The Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan unpacks the lifecycle of a typical church, identifies characteristics of each phase, and provides practical next steps a church can take to move towards sustained health. Think about your church for a moment. Is it growing? Is it diminishing? Is it somewhere in between? Acclaimed church leader, blogger, and founder and chief strategic officer of The Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan has identified the seven stages of a church's lifecycle that range from the hopeful and optimistic days of launch, to the stagnating last stages of life support. Regardless of the stage in which you find your church, it carries with it the world's greatest mission—to "go and make disciples of all the nations . . ." With eternity at stake the Church should be doing most everything within its power to see lives changed forever. The Church should strive for the pinnacle of the lifecycle, where they are continually making new disciples and experiencing what Morgan refers to as "sustained health." In The Unstuck Church, Morgan unpacks each phase of the church lifecycle, and offers specific and strategic next steps the church leader can take to find it's way to sustained health . . . and finally become unstuck. The Unstuck Church is a call for honest an assessment of where your church sits on the lifecycle, and a challenge to move beyond it.
Information Modeling and Relational Databases, Third Edition, provides an introduction to ORM (Object-Role Modeling) and much more. In fact, it is the only book to go beyond introductory coverage and provide all of the in-depth instruction you need to transform knowledge from domain experts into a sound database design. This book is intended for anyone with a stake in the accuracy and efficacy of databases: systems analysts, information modelers, database designers and administrators, and programmers. Dr. Terry Halpin and Dr. Tony Morgan, pioneers in the development of ORM, blend conceptual information with practical instruction that will let you begin using ORM effectively as soon as possible. The all-new Third Edition includes coverage of advances and improvements in ORM and UML, nominalization, relational mapping, SQL, XML, data interchange, NoSQL databases, ontological modeling, and post-relational databases. Supported by examples, exercises, and useful background information, the authors’ step-by-step approach teaches you to develop a natural-language-based ORM model, and then, where needed, abstract ER and UML models from it. This book will quickly make you proficient in the modeling technique that is proving vital to the development of accurate and efficient databases that best meet real business objectives. "This book is an excellent introduction to both information modeling in ORM and relational databases. The book is very clearly written in a step-by-step manner and contains an abundance of well-chosen examples illuminating practice and theory in information modeling. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in conceptual modeling and databases." — Dr. Herman Balsters, Director of the Faculty of Industrial Engineering, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Presents the most in-depth coverage of object-role modeling, including a thorough update of the book for the latest versions of ORM, ER, UML, OWL, and BPMN modeling. Includes clear coverage of relational database concepts as well as the latest developments in SQL, XML, information modeling, data exchange, and schema transformation. Case studies and a large number of class-tested exercises are provided for many topics. Includes all-new chapters on data file formats and NoSQL databases.
READER COMMENTS: “Mr. Morgan, I read your book and was blown away. It was amazing.” -- Physician, Mount Kisco, NY “Morgan’s ability to meld the spiritual, historical, and fictional makes for a thought provoking page-turner.” -- Editor, Cambridge, MA “I looked forward to picking it up every night. I never knew what was coming next.” -- Book Club Reader, London, England “Incident combines history, love, murder, and family. It’s got everything you look for in a super entertaining read.” -- Realtor, Stamford, CT “Morgan is well-read, articulate and has a good sense of history. He delivers—which is what all authors hope to do.” -- Quote, Danbury News-Times 11/08/08 “I read your book and enjoyed it, then I bought two more copies for friends.” -- Former Rhodes Scholar, Washington, DC
The Tudor period was notable for religious turmoil. Under Queen Elizabeth I, the slowly reforming Protestant Church of England finally gained a level of stability, but many people, from paupers to Lords, clung to Catholicism. Most crossed their fingers and attended Protestant services. Others, the ‘recusants’, remained defiant and refused to conform. This book takes a fresh look into the life and death of one prominent Catholic recusant, Margaret Clitherow, and the wider events which shaped her story and that of many others. In 1970, Margaret was made a saint, one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. All suffered a similar fate. Elizabeth’s government faced threats from multiple directions - poor harvests, disease, attempts at invasion and plots to replace the Queen with a Catholic monarch. In York, friction was growing between the Council of the North and the city Corporation. But for much of the population, life went on as normal. One well-to-do family in the city celebrated the birth of a daughter. Brought up for a time as a Protestant, Margaret Middleton eventually married a butcher, John Clitherow. They set up home in the Shambles and raised a family. Margaret’s destiny changed when she embraced Catholicism. In 1586, Margaret’s stepfather was elected Lord Mayor of York. A few weeks later, Margaret was arrested for harbouring Catholic priests. Coincidence, or something more sinister? What happened next was sensational. One woman taking on the northern authorities, the Church of England and assizes judiciary. Sentenced to death for refusing to make a plea in court, Margaret received a last-minute reprieve due to claims of her pregnancy, only for these to be rejected. Following Margaret’s brutal execution, Queen Elizbeth is said to have apologised to the people of York. With one martyr and no winner, Margaret’s story is examined as a microcosm of Tudor life, a family tragedy of faith and betrayal, set against a backdrop of political power games, treason and plot.
Do you dare find out what's happening behind the counters of your neighborhood fast-food joint? Then grab a bucket and dive into one of the creepiest graphic novels of the year! Supersized: Strange Tales from a Fast-Food Culture is an entertaining—and at times gut-wrenching—series of stories focusing on America's ubiquitous and potentially destructive fast-food culture. A perfect companion to Super Size Me, the graphic novel bridges the gaps between humor, fact, and heart, while peering behind the scenes of the fast-food world. • Written by Morgan Spurlock with writer Jeremy Barlow and drawn by a variety of creators, Supersized: Strange Tales from a Fast-Food Culture is an original graphic-novel companion to the Academy Award-nominated movie and expands on some of the bizarre stories not featured in the original film. • The creative brain trust behind The Simpsons chose Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me, 30 Days, Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?) to direct the Simpsons twentieth-anniversary documentary.
READER COMMENTS: "Mr. Morgan, I read your book and was blown away. It was amazing." -- Physician, Mount Kisco, NY "Morgan's ability to meld the spiritual, historical, and fictional makes for a thought provoking page-turner." -- Editor, Cambridge, MA "I looked forward to picking it up every night. I never knew what was coming next." -- Book Club Reader, London, England "Incident combines history, love, murder, and family. It's got everything you look for in a super entertaining read." -- Realtor, Stamford, CT "Morgan is well-read, articulate and has a good sense of history. He delivers which is what all authors hope to do." -- Quote, Danbury News-Times 11/08/08 "I read your book and enjoyed it, then I bought two more copies for friends." -- Former Rhodes Scholar, Washington, DC
I came up with the concept of this very amusing book when I visited some old sketches that I had done years ago. That developed into the book "a collection of strange and unusual bars". It's more than a book on bars though; it's about old friends, or meeting new friends and the places they go to hangout. Of course these aren't bars that we would normally frequent but tongue and cheek concepts of characters in their natural environment, I mean, if they had bars. There are 13 full color illustrations with opposing pages of comical blurbs and a drink recipe that goes with each one. This book is filled with lots of fun eye candy.
Posters, photography, and objects from the height of Spiritualism and the history of magic gain renewed power when seen through today’s lens. The human desire to connect with the dead since the mid-19th century gave rise to a fascination with the supernatural and the magical. Mediums and magicians from Harry Houdini, Margery the Medium, Howard Thurston, and the Fox Sisters offered “communication” with the departed at séances and magic shows, two interrelated forms of popular culture that relied heavily on illusions and stagecraft. This is the first illustrated volume to gather the art and objects that made medium and magician performances iconic during the Spiritualism movement and beyond, a time when people actively debated and wondered, "can spirits return?" An international selection of paintings, photographs, posters, stage apparatuses, film, publications, and other objects reveal how audiences were entranced and mystified by these experiential performances, captivating willing believers and garnering skeptics as they navigated the intersecting realms of science and spirituality. From the origins of the iconic Oujia board to spirit photography, this book is a treasure trove.
Paint a Picture For Growth! Reach your community with the gospel! What if every church in America was creative, compelling, and culturally relevant? Imagine how many people these churches would reach with the gospel! In their third Simply Strategic book, bestselling authors Tim Stevens and Tony Morgan show you how to attune an unchanging message to a changing cultureain a way that attracts a crowd and helps you sustain growth year after year. # These in-the-trenches authors demonstrate that all of this can happenain your church. Stevens and Morgan show you how to: Become a student of your culture, # Give people a reason to attend, # Plan for growth, # Use secular music for redemptive purposes, # And more a 99 chapters of growth strategies! Reach out to an unchurched but spiritually hungry generation by applying the practical ideas in this bookaand watch your church grow!
Sir John Norton-Griffiths was one of a breed of adventurer, pioneer, entrepreneur and soldier whose like is very seldom seen. Having learnt his trade and made his fortune mining the rich seams of south Africa, he turned his expertise to more deadly use in the Great war. He led the gallant miners who burrowed deep under enemy lines with devastating effect.He went on to wreak havoc on the Danube. Always a controversial figure, he died (or was he murdered?) in mysterious circumstances. This is the story of a true maverick who was a formidable force and legend wherever he went.
Companion volume to TThe Australian Guide to American Football', focussing on the history and culture of the game, with sections on the Superbowl and the role of the quarterback, profiles of the 28 NFL teams and the impact of the media and gambling on the game.
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