Bøger af Jack Williams

J.D. Packer has been with the B&A Construction Engineering Company now for several years, which years have been a steady uphill climb for this young man. He is now located in the San Francisco Home Office of the company as a Manager of Construction Manpower Development Department and is living in Novato north of San Francisco. On several assignments he had gotten to know many of the senior VP's in the company and has worked hand in hand installing major development programs with these men's lieutenants in their various divisions. On one occasion he participated on a planning project for a major industrial city in Saudi Arabia and is now seen as an "expert" in the new emerging field of Transfer of Technology. In this continued chronicle of J.D.'s Journey Into Life, J.D. has been seconded to the company's Research and Development Division to work on a special Transfer of Technology project in Algeria. This project will consume his full-time efforts while his assistant in his absence runs the Construction Manpower Department. Working on this project will require J.D. to travel to Algeria eight times over one and one half years.

Journey Into Life, Book One: Prelude, is the first of six autobiographical novels chronicling the adult life of J.D. Packer from the time he is about eighteen years old to the winter of his life when he retires. His life goes through several major changes driven not by plans and career goals, but rather by being in the right place at the right time. Book One shows how J.D. Packer falls into his many and varied careers after high school when he first goes to work for a mining company in Utah, leaves that company after fourteen many years, joins a local Civil Engineering firm for about two years and then find himself and his family moving around the country with a major Construction Engineering Firm. J.D. is always on the alert for new and exciting ventures many of which takes him into career fields in which initially he has no knowledge. But through it all his wife Marilyn supports his choices and follows him into the unknown.

Many of the Mormon Pioneers that came to Utah Territory during the mid-to late 1800's settled in the southwest half of the Salt Lake Valley of Utah, west of the Jordan River. They cleared and worked the land, built homes, had children, saw their children die of disease and problems in child-birth, bore more children and saw their older survivors marry and have children. By the early 1900's several viable communities had been created in the southwestern section of Salt Lake Valley and most of the first-generation settlers had died. West of the River is a collection of short stories about some of these people and their offspring that settled in one of those west of the river communities: West Jordan Utah.

Adam North is a man who in his younger life dreams and finds himself having many special talents that let him fly without a conveyance of any kind, allows him to travel to parts of the world he had never been to in his mind, and read the minds of people close to him. These talents plague him much of the time and most of his friends shun him when he tells about these occurrences or used them on his friends. Later on they ruin his relationships, causing several breakups with girls and women he loves and difficulties in his life in general. He goes through this for many years until his mid twenty's when he receives instructions from another person that was communicating with him from far away using some of those same paranormal techniques that he possesses. His instructions required him to travel to New Mexico from California and camp out in a very special place in Northern New Mexico. There he meets the women who called him and finds ways of using his special powers in very positive ways for the first time in his life.

Drawing on methods from religious studies, philosophy, and cognitive science, Jack Williams develops a unique and interdisciplinary approach to the study of religious conversion. This is the first major philosophical study of conversion to treat the phenomenon as a long-term process, shaped by the convert's embodiment and immersion in a linguistic, social, and ritual community. Williams' analysis of the conversion process is rooted in a view of cognition as both embodied and affective, and is informed by the latest research in phenomenology, affect theory, neuroscience, and enactivist cognitive science. In conversation with diverse conversion narratives, he advances a theory of conversion that is not restricted to a modern, Western context but that can be applied to experiences of conversion across global history and culture. Rethinking Religious Conversion displays an original approach to the philosophical study of diverse religious practices. By bringing together a diverse array of contemporary and historical scholarship, it revitalizes the study of conversion for both philosophy and religious studies.

This book of seven short stories contains reflections that my mother, Lila Leon Kearney Williams, recorded before her death in 1976. She lived part of her life in the West Desert in the village of Callao located on the northern part of an eighty mile long valley called Snake Valley that extends from Gold Hill Utah to Baker Nevada. Some of her stories were passed down to her from aunts and uncles and some are about her life as a youth in this desert region. Other reflections are my own, extrapolated from experiences I've had myself traveling to this desert region to camp, to explore and to relive some of the heritage I claim from this area.

An older gentleman is somehow driven to travel to the West Desert of Utah to an old ghost town where he had visited sometime before. While camping out there he has some paranormal challenges that he acts on and learns the reason he was so driven to travel there.

In the year 2004 I embarked on a life journey to Ethiopia that would change the way I thought about things and especially how small contributions to people in need can make a major difference in their lives. I learned that the best gift I could receive in my life was in the giving of myself to others. This memoir in two parts contains the accounts of that journey that began in June 2004 and ended in July 2006 when I volunteered and later became part of a humanitarian organization that would later have me traveling to Ethiopia three times living and serving there for over one and one half years. The work includes my real experiences and the realities I lived with, but it also includes many of the myths that people rely on that I learned or heard about. There were many mysteries about this place and when I couldn't figure them out I twisted the facts to make them look rational and created stories about those mysteries. Some of those twisted stories are included along with the way I used them on unsuspecting volunteers that came on expeditions or were my partners as Interns.

In this segment of J.D. Packer's Journey Into Life, Book 4: Go Back To A Day, he is alone again, but continues what he has known for several years as a steady reasonable income-producing consulting career. He has landed a somewhat intriguing and different consulting contract that was going to require some serious research in an attempt to find a man that is on the run from a company from which he took some vital data. J.D. didn't like the details of research himself much and thought this would be a good time to find someone that did like that type work to joint-venture with him on this project. After thinking it over for some time he remembered years before when Liz Young worked with him on the Algerian Project, and what a great job she had done in searching out the details of the work and eventually contributing heavily to the success of the project. After considering this option, J.D. was prompted to call Liz to invite her to join with him on the project. They meet in Phoenix where the joint venture takes them to an old mining town in Eastern Arizona. With more research and investigation they follow the tracks left by this man finally ending in New Mexico. Along the way J.D. and Liz renew their old friendship and intimacy they had known years before

Throughout my life I have worked in various mediums of art. Early in life like other children I colored and filled in comic paper characters with colored crayons. Going farther than that from the First Grade I loved to draw and sketch. This was never supported by my family so I had to wait until high school to really begin to study art. It was there I met an art teacher, Mr. Donald Olsen, who became my mentor and even set me up for a scholarship at the Art Barn in Salt Lake for an entire summer art training. Through my married years (including two marriages) I did very little art work except for a couple of years between marriages when I painted some pictures. Many of these were put in two one-man shows in galleries in Salt Lake where I was able to sell some of them. Writing of books (novels, memoirs, biographies) and poetry became another passion that I followed most of my life eventually publishing several of my books with Kindle/Amazon. Sculptures of a variety of types were also part of my art compendium throughout the years along with crafts and music. All these different genres are presented in this book that brings me up to the present (2016) where I am continuing several art projects as time allows.

The mountains and plains of the West Desert of Utah are a grand and wonderful place in which to have a retreat, to explore, to visit the past, to collect antiquities or to be alone. On Casey Tibbets' third trip there in an area he wanted to revisit near Joe's Canyon north of Delta, after watching a sunset from an open hillside he is driven by some inner and unusual urge to follow a deer trail down to a wooded area where he comes across an old cabin hidden in the quaking aspens. While at the cabin, puzzled but open to all possibilities, Casey experiences several paranormal occurrences that lead him to an old abandoned mine near the cabin. The story continues while Casey draws from the desert's memories, its sounds, its expanse and its beauty, from its rocks, hills and trees, and then from its enchantment.

Since the start of time, man has been searching for ways to live a productive and meaningful life. Everyone goes through this thought process, either consciously or subconsciously. The key to finding that answer is to begin asking the right questions. A great starting point for asking the right questions is a question I asked myself thirty years ago. That question was, What are my core values, principles, or beliefs? In other words, what is truly important to me. I simplified that question to this--What do I believe? Going through answering that question led to the creation of my personal I Believe list. This was by far one of the most meaningful and life-changing experiences in my life. My only regret is I didn't ask that question till I was forty-four. Regardless of your age, asking the question (What do I believe?) and creating your personal I Believe list will be one of the most important questions and activities you can do to position yourself to living the productive and meaningful life we all long for.The Question: A Guide to Answering Life's Most Important Question shares my journey of answering that question and then how I used my responses to guide me on each day's adventure called life.

During 1991, a banner year for me, I launched into a campaign to record as many of my experiences as I could in the form of poems and in that year created over fifty of them. In this writing I have compiled a few of them into something of a chronological set. In what results in metaphors I now see these stories and sketches as part of my life's experiences and want them to be available to others that may be experiencing similar struggles and challenges, so I present them here in what I call "Vi¬gnettes." All of the sketches begin with a poem that was the starting place for my record of the experience. The poems are outlines of the vignettes. All are true. These Vignettes represent a part of my struggle for identity, for image, for learning and for growth. For the reader they may represent something different. For all I promise an experience.

In this autobiographical sketch that begins about 1980 and concludes in 1987 my career was moving along with many new and exciting moments. My marriage, I believed was doing fine. We had five children that were growing up and doing what lovely active and creative children do. And above all to me, I believed that we were happily married. We had been moving a lot with the company I was working for since 1968, which in some ways strengthened all of us and gave us experiences that provided us all with growth opportunities. For me it was a time of much concentration on my family's welfare, my status in the workplace, providing adequate finances for the family and taking care that I made something of myself. Many things were missed as a result, but I didn't know it at the time and kept on plugging "ahead," while I forged my path to becoming a master at all I did. There was a price to pay for all that, and I would pay it later with penalties and interest. But that was to come another time and is not discussed in this sketch of my life. I look back on that period of my life (1980-1987) with great interest, comparing it somewhat to the life of Don Quixote who fought with windmills for a good part of his life. His life was a satire as was mine during this part of my life, and so for the reader, I have recorded this period of my life as a satire with lessons learned on how to become a master.

Jerry Spencer who had been a tenured professor in Indiana, leaves the university to begin a new career and is hired by Qualtek, a Chicago based Service Company, to do ISO 9001 Training and Certification for a Zambian textile firm. While in Zambia Jerry discovers a new opportunity and decides to leave Qualtek to start his own consulting business. Months later when his job with Qualtek is finished Jerry leaves the company and is ready to face the world in a new and different way as an Intendent Consultant. Back home free from Qualtek and ready to leave Chicago to relocate in Seattle, Jerry by coincidence finds out about a woman with whom he had a relationship many years before is now living in Chicago. They realize that reestablishing their relationship is now desirable, but still plagued with the same long-distance complications that made their earlier relationship impossible. To add to his complicated new start, Jerry's leaving Qualtek is not easily accepted by his former boss who now wants to sue Jerry for breach of his Non-Compete Contract.

In this chronicle of J.D. Packer's life, Journey Into Life, Book 3 Camel Trails and Desert Winds he has been in Los Angeles for over three months working on the consulting job for a Health Care Institution. The project has been going well, but at home though J.D. had called Marilyn almost daily to discuss the matter of their relationship, things between them have not changed for the better them. Nearing the end of his contract in Los Angeles J.D. gets an opportunity for a new contract, this time with a large consulting firm that wants him to work on a project in Saudi Arabia. Marilyn is especially looking forward to J.D.'s return from Los Angeles so they can go ahead with planning the final papers for their divorce before he leaves for Arabia. Soon after his return home, J.D.'s and Marilyn's divorce papers are signed and he is off to Riyadh Saudi Arabia for a scheduled two years.

This account, Journey Into Life, Book 5: Lighthouse In the Desert, continues the chronicle of J.D. Packer and Liz Young, now Mrs. Packer. It begins after the two of them have finished consulting assignments in Zambia where they lived for two years. Their aim in going to Zambia was to keep out of the way of people that had pursued them for turning coat on a contract in the U.S. that went bad for them. When their contracts were complete in Zambia, J.D. and Liz at last believed they could have a life of peace and tranquility after years of intrigue, stress and adventure in their lives. So they returned home, built a home they called "Their Retreat" and set about to examine what other options the universe had to offer them. It was not long before they were involved again, this time in a new and exciting, albeit challenging adventure.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is a agency within the U.S. Department of Interior. BOEM has four sections that cover the United States' waters: Alaska OCS Region, Pacific OCS Region, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region and the Atlantic OCS Region. The Gulf of Mexico OCS Region is responsible for almost 160 million acres of lands off the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Currently, more than 31 million acres are leased for gas and oil development, and six million are actually producing oil and natural gas. The Gulf of Mexico Region is in charge of addressing the Environment, Leasing and Plans, and Resource Evaluation. The publish a variety of documents with topics such as: Marine Biology, Natural Gas, Oil Spills, Transportation, Chemical Products, etc. This is one of those publications.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is a agency within the U.S. Department of Interior. BOEM has four sections that cover the United States' waters: Alaska OCS Region, Pacific OCS Region, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region and the Atlantic OCS Region. The Gulf of Mexico OCS Region is responsible for almost 160 million acres of lands off the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Currently, more than 31 million acres are leased for gas and oil development, and six million are actually producing oil and natural gas. The Gulf of Mexico Region is in charge of addressing the Environment, Leasing and Plans, and Resource Evaluation. The publish a variety of documents with topics such as: Marine Biology, Natural Gas, Oil Spills, Transportation, Chemical Products, etc. This is one of those publications.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is a agency within the U.S. Department of Interior. BOEM has four sections that cover the United States' waters: Alaska OCS Region, Pacific OCS Region, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region and the Atlantic OCS Region. The Gulf of Mexico OCS Region is responsible for almost 160 million acres of lands off the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Currently, more than 31 million acres are leased for gas and oil development, and six million are actually producing oil and natural gas. The Gulf of Mexico Region is in charge of addressing the Environment, Leasing and Plans, and Resource Evaluation. The publish a variety of documents with topics such as: Marine Biology, Natural Gas, Oil Spills, Transportation, Chemical Products, etc. This is one of those publications.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is a agency within the U.S. Department of Interior. BOEM has four sections that cover the United States' waters: Alaska OCS Region, Pacific OCS Region, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region and the Atlantic OCS Region. The Gulf of Mexico OCS Region is responsible for almost 160 million acres of lands off the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Currently, more than 31 million acres are leased for gas and oil development, and six million are actually producing oil and natural gas. The Gulf of Mexico Region is in charge of addressing the Environment, Leasing and Plans, and Resource Evaluation. The publish a variety of documents with topics such as: Marine Biology, Natural Gas, Oil Spills, Transportation, Chemical Products, etc. This is one of those publications.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is a agency within the U.S. Department of Interior. BOEM has four sections that cover the United States' waters: Alaska OCS Region, Pacific OCS Region, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region and the Atlantic OCS Region. The Gulf of Mexico OCS Region is responsible for almost 160 million acres of lands off the coast of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Currently, more than 31 million acres are leased for gas and oil development, and six million are actually producing oil and natural gas. The Gulf of Mexico Region is in charge of addressing the Environment, Leasing and Plans, and Resource Evaluation. The publish a variety of documents with topics such as: Marine Biology, Natural Gas, Oil Spills, Transportation, Chemical Products, etc. This is one of those publications.

Through a clerical error, superintendent of schools Jack Cole finds himself called to active duty in the United States Navy at the beginning of WWII. Cole was never in the Navy and responds accordingly. Thinking he is trying to avoid military service the Bureau of Naval Personnel has him apprehended and flown to Washington DC where he is given the choice of active duty or Portsmouth Naval Prison.Cole accepts active duty and finds himself stumbling from one hilarious situation after another, completely out of his element and totally unprepared to deal with Naval policy and procedures. Aided by the misinterpretation of his actions by his crew and his unusual leadership style, Cole succeeds far beyond his abilities and becomes a valuable asset to naval operations in the Mediterranean. Along the way, he encounters several love interests and quite by accident is able to prevent some top brass from falling victim to embarrassing incidents.When the Bureau of Naval Personnel discovers their clerical error, they realize it would be an embarrassment if the public was to find out. To prevent this from reaching the public, a bloodhound Navy captain is sent to apprehend Cole and remove him from duty without disclosing the Navy's mistake.As the Navy captain tries to close in on Cole, Cole's crew and superiors do everything they can to keep the Bureau of Naval Personnel from finding him. However, after being recognized for heroic actions during the invasion of Sicily, the Navy captain finds Cole and he is put on trial. Things look dire for Cole, but through the intervention of his loyal crew, his superiors, and his love interest's uncle Lyon, who turns out to be Canadian Prime Minister Lyon Mackenzie King, Cole is exonerated.Though fraught with potential peril at every turn, the misunderstandings and outlandish actions of Cole and his crew are one hilarious adventure after another, which epitomize the nature of every American who when faced with a challenge rolls up his or her sleeves and gets the job done. You will laugh and cry as you ride along with Cole and his crew in this adventure, but for everyone who has ever seen military duty or who has been placed in a situation far beyond their abilities and training you should find kindred spirits in this tale to enjoy as they fumble their way to success.

DON'T LET IT CAPTURE YOU! Unable to finish his last year of college due to financial aid denial, Joey Long's promising future is instantly halted and he is forced to return home to live with his mother in a low income community in Chicago. The pressures of real life are becoming unbearable and weigh heavily on his shoulders. With his mother's health on the decline and working a dead end job, Joey is tormented by the thoughts of being a nobody and is desperate to escape this life. He meets a mysterious German man, Viktor Halle, who preys on Joey and promises him a trip to Germany could change his life. Determined for change, Joey agrees to go to Germany. On his new venture into unknown territory, he manages to drag his best friend Vince Owens with him. Things take a turn when Joey wants out of the game to resume his normal life, a decision Viktor nor Vince approves of. The royalties and thrill keeps Vince a prisoner of the game and with Viktor fueling it, a rift between best friends begins. Viktor knows without Joey, the rewards won't be the same and he knows the perfect plan to get him back on the team.

Tom is a young man without a plan. After graduating from university in the UK, he embarks on a doctorate in political philosophy at Laughton in the search of something meaningful. When he secures a scholarship from the Willoughby T. Forsyth Foundation, the future's looking bright across the pond...

Examines cricket and race in England over the past century and a half. This work considers how far and in what respects cricket has reflected the racist assumptions of whites, and its role as an arena for ethnic conflict as well as understanding and harmony in England.