Tatyana McFadden is one of the all-time great athletes in sports history. "Ya Sama Moments from My Life" chronicles the incredible journey from her birth with "spina bifida" in Russia in 1989 and her early years in a St. Petersburg orphanage, to her U.S. adoption and international success in wheelchair racing. "Ya sama" is a Russian expression that means "I can do it." Since her earliest memories ya sama has been Tatyana's guiding belief that she could do anything she set her mind and imagination to do. The result is a life that goes beyond just surviving tragedy to actually using her unique...

As reclusive Professor Emeritus George Gordon Bombazine rises at dawn on his seventieth birthday, he plans to kill himself that night. He lives with his old dog Argos; his wife has left him for another professor; his estranged son and sister despises him, and he's been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He knows precisely the time and place he'll suicide, yet hopes that something might happen today to make him want to go on living. As the day progresses, things do happen-sex, love, friendship, forgiveness, even a chance for a movie screenplay. But do they happen in time, and will they be...

More than 200 million people living in dryland regions of Sub-Saharan Africa make their living from agriculture. Most are exposed to weather shocks, especially drought, that can decimate their incomes, destroy their assets, and plunge them into a poverty trap from which it is diffi cult to emerge. Their lack of resilience in the face of these shocks can be attributed in large part to the poor performance of agriculture on which their livelihood depends. Opportunities exist to improve the fortunes of farming households in the drylands. Improved farming technologies that can increase and...