Books about Precursors from Amazon.com

C.J. Cherryh creates thought-provoking stories of cultures in collision featuring well-drawn characters and plenty of intrigue Precursor directly follows Inheritor in the Foreigner series (which includes Foreigner and Invader). The series introduces the atevi, aliens with a culture based on loyalty, legal assassination, and inborn mathematical gifts.

Two hundred years ago humans crash-landed on the atevi homeworld. The two races are nearly incompatible; peace is maintained by limiting contact to a single human diplomat, the paidhi. His name is Bren Cameron.

In the first trilogy, the starship Phoenix (the same ship that brought the human colonists) returned, fleeing alien attack in another sector. The Phoenix asked both atevi and human communities to help reopen the orbital station and rearm the ship. Bren coordinated an atevi shuttle-building program and trained the Phoenix representative, Jase Graham, in living on a planet and dealing with aliens. Now he faces family crises while ensuring that the atevi remain equal partners in the space effort. He must deal with the very different culture of the Phoenix crew and the alien space station environment while maintaining cooperation with the colonists and representing atevi interests.

Precursor ends abruptly. Are the aliens coming? Will the Phoenix crew, colonists, and atevi be able to protect their system together? Will Bren be able to retain any of his humanity? If you enjoy stories that make you think about how space travel and contact with aliens would really play out, treat yourself to this meaty SF series. --Nona Vero.
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This succinct overview of the development of Western music can help students of all levels understand the evolution of musical styles. Although the text is only half the size of most music histories, it is enhanced by the many cross-references to the best anthologies and recordings for further information and examples..
Price: $35.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In Therapy With Difficult Clients, Fred J. Hanna suggests that therapeutic change hinges on seven factors If the client has hope that change is attainable, feels the necessity to change, is aware, is willing to experience anxiety or difficulty and willing to confront issues, if the client will exert will or effort and has social support, the prognosis will be positive, no matter what the therapist's theoretical orientation or techniques. On the other hand, if these change catalysts, or precursors, are absent or deficient, there will be roadblocks to therapeutic change no matter how skilled the therapist, how potent the theory, or how close the relationship. The good news for any therapist who has ever encountered a client who believes change is frightening, unattainable, or a waste of time, is that the obstacles are not insurmountable. In this practical guide, Hanna offers a tool for assessing clients' readiness for change. He offers an abundance of strategies, examples, and insights for enhancing the precursors that are lacking and leveraging those that are present. This model offers invaluable guidance for the stalled client and therapist alike..
Price: $22.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Humans first used carbon as chars from firewood in ritual paintings and primitive metallurgical processes Natural forms of carbon have been known since antiquity, yet the knowledge of the carbon element in chemistry and its technical applications on a larger scale are a relatively recent development. The industrial revolution in Europe two centuries ago led the way to the numerous applications of these graphitic forms that are still used today. Graphite and Precursors features short tutorial articles on different topics related to the science and technology of carbons intended for engineers, students of Materials Science and scientists who are seeking a fundamental understanding without "reinventing the wheel." This first volume of the World of Carbon book series focuses on graphite and its precursors, including its origin and various implications. The basic properties of hexagonal graphite are developed, and several theoretical and experimental approaches explain why this crystalline solid is fascinating insolid state physics. Also featured are the numerous applications connected to thermal, mechanical and chemical graphites, as well as their various industrial uses in polycrystalline form. Finally, carbon precursors are introduced..
Price: $109.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Networked collaborations of artists did not begin on the Internet In this multidisciplinary look at the practice of art that takes place across a distance -- geographical, temporal, or emotional -- theorists and practitioners examine the ways that art, activism, and media fundamentally reconfigured each other in experimental networked projects of the 1970s and 1980s. By providing a context for this work -- showing that it was shaped by varying mixes of social relations, cultural strategies, and political and aesthetic concerns -- At a Distance effectively refutes the widely accepted idea that networked art is technologically determined. Doing so, it provides the historical grounding needed for a more complete understanding of today's practices of Internet art and activism and suggests the possibilities inherent in networked practice.

At a Distance traces the history and theory of such experimental art projects as Mail Art, sound and radio art, telematic art, assemblings, and Fluxus. Although the projects differed, a conceptual questioning of the "art object," combined with a political undermining of dominant art institutional practices, animated most distance art. After a section that sets this work in historical and critical perspective, the book presents artists and others involved in this art "re-viewing" their work -- including experiments in "mini-FM," telerobotics, networked psychoanalysis, and interactive book construction. Finally, the book recasts the history of networks from the perspectives of politics, aesthetics, economics, and cross-cultural analysis..
Price: $12.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

NEW BOOK BY LAVANIMAL ECLIPSES SOUTH PARK FOR GROTESQUE HUMOR AND OUTRAGEOUS INSIGHTS INTO LIFE'S CONUNDRUMS Exploiting life's adversities, Lavanimal masterfully paints analogies that ring true with religious fervor (he's a devout Mormon as well as a complete moron). Lavanimal's explosively descriptive imagery will indelibly stain the toilet bowl of your mind! A plethora unmentionable chapters, including a unique peek into the true meaning of a decades-old Church Primary song, will spark off a duck-fit in the most serious moments of your life. "Chicken Poop from the Hole" by Ilyan Kei Lavanway, a.k.a Lavanimal, is unlike any book you may have ever read before. Focusing on the frailties and adversities that afflict mortal life, this compilation of anecdotes and real life experiences is brimful of scatological humor that borders on the outrageous and obnoxious. Lavanimal's disclaimer states, "WARNING: Lude, Crude, Rude, and Socially Unacceptable. Read at your own risk!" If you are squeamish or scandalized by toilet humor, "Chicken Poop from the Hole" is definitively not for you. However, if you need a "butt-load of humor" to cheer you up and dispel your gloominess or you would like a fresh and hilarious insight into your "shituation," this book is definitely recommended. With a forthright candor and an ability to laugh at himself, Lavanimal draws scatological analogies to everything in life. His stories range from ordinary events to the most painful experiences, from childhood memories to present-day professional problems, and from his experiences as a missionary to that as a certified nurse assistant at a geriatric care facility. According to Lavanimal, you cannot control the "swirl of the toilet bowl of life," but you can certainly choose to be a floater instead of a sinker and find humor amidst the worst of circumstances and situations. Although he is beset by a host of health problems and has endured a lot of "crap" as an officer in the United States Air Force, the author shares how he has faced his challenges and hardships with a sense of humor and without wallowing in self-pity. While recounting his experiences, Lavanimal is absolutely unmindful of being subtle and inoffensive in his graphic details. His "shit-shack short-liners" and poems are equally shocking. An example of his vivid descriptions is, "Seismic reverberations propagating from the depths of my rectal epicenter warned me of a tectonic bowel movement in play." Another gem is, "A fart is actually a bowel- generated aerosol propellant for microscopic defecatory particulates." A particularly interesting analogy he gives is, "As a simple clap or shout sets off an avalanche on snow-laden mountain terrain, an internal tremor caused by sulfurous methane bubbles in the upper bowels resonated through my intestinal topography, triggering a titanic assvalanche!" Besides his real life stories and perceptive insights, the author shares invaluable tips too. He explains how to raise a stink if you are pissed off with your superiors, what you can do to prevent someone from accidentally shutting the lights off on you when you are in a restroom "unloading your colon," or how to wake up a slumbering partner by teasing the person's olfactory nerve with a whiff of "sulfurous squalor." Beware! By the end of "Chicken Poop from the Hole," you are likely to explode with "heinous paroxysms of hilarity." However, if you dislike this book, follow the suggestion given by Lavanimal at the outset, "Just tear out the pages and wipe your butt with them.".
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This book provides a detailed comparison of nonhuman primates and human infants with regard to key abilities that provide the foundation for language. It makes the case for phylogenetic continuity across species and ontogenetic continuity from infancy to childhood. Examined here are behaviors fundamental to language acquisition, such as vocalizations, mapping of meaning onto sound, use of gestures to communicate and to symbolize, tool use, object concept, and memory. The author provides evidence linking these abilities with language acquisition. Similarities and differences across species in these precursors are analyzed and how these may have influenced the evolution of language. Hypotheses about the origins of language are described..
Price: $13.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Explores the roots of modern transpersonal psychology and spirituallity through psychobiography .
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