For the first time in a stand-alone edition, the acclaimed poet's classic poem about his communication with Ephraim, a guiding spirit in the Other World, is here introduced and annotated by poet and Merrill scholar Stephen Yenser. "The Book of Ephraim," which first appeared as the final poem in James Merrill's Pulitzer-winning volume Divine Comedies (1976), tells the story of how he and his partner David Jackson (JM and DJ as they came to be known) embarked on their experiments with the Ouija board and how they conversed after a fashion with great writers and thinkers of the past, especially in regard to the state of the increasingly imperiled planet Earth. One of the most ambitious long poems in in English in the twentieth century, originally conceived as complete in itself, it was to become the first part of Merrill's epic The Changing Light at Sandover (1982), the multiple prize-winning volume still in print. Merrill's "supreme tribute to the web of the world and the convergence of means and meanings everywhere within it" is introduced and annotated by one of his literary executors, Stephen Yenser, in a volume that will gratify veteran readers and entice new ones.

Mystical poems explore the author's experiences communicating with a spirit named Ephraim through an Ouija board

A frontline witness account of the deadly urban combat of the Battle of Mosul told by former Navy SEAL and frontline combat medic Ephraim Mattos. After leaving the US Navy SEAL teams in spring of 2017, Ephraim Mattos, age twenty-four, flew to Iraq to join a small group of volunteer humanitarians known as the Free Burma Rangers, who were working on the frontlines of the war on ISIS. Until being shot by ISIS on a suicidal rescue mission, Mattos witnessed unexplainable acts of courage and sacrifice by the Free Burma Rangers, who, while under heavy machine gun and mortar fire, assaulted across ISIS minefields, used themselves as human shields, and sprinted down ISIS-infested streets-all to retrieve wounded civilians. In City of Death: Humanitarian Warriors in the Battle of Mosul, Mattos recounts in vivid detail what he saw and felt while he and the other Free Burma Rangers evacuated the wounded, conducted rescue missions, and at times fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Iraqi Army against ISIS. Filled with raw and emotional descriptions of what it's like to come face-to-face with death, this is the harrowing and uplifting true story of a small group of men who risked everything to save the lives of the Iraqi people and who followed the credence, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." As the coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestselling American Sniper, Scott McEwen has teamed up with Mattos to help share an unforgettable tale of an American warrior turned humanitarian forced to fight his way into and out of a Hell on Earth created by ISIS.

The ancient House of Israel consisted of 12 families, or tribes, named for the 12 sons of Jacob (Israel). Ten of those tribes were conquered, driven from their homelands, and scattered throughout the world. Although their bloodlines continue, they have lost their identity with the House of Israel. The remaining two tribes have retained their identity, and are now known as the Jewish people, named for the tribe of Judah. Over 2500 years ago, the prophet Ezekiel foretold a day when the spirit of YHWH would stir the scattered remnants of Israel and restore them to life (Ezekiel 37:11-14). He also prophesied of a second scriptural record to come forth from the tribe of Joseph to Judah, in the hand of Joseph’s son, Ephraim. This is that prophesied record. The Stick of Joseph in the Hand of Ephraimis a sacred, first-temple-period, Israelite text, written by a prophetic family from the tribe of Joseph, who fled Jerusalem in 601 BCE. YHWH led them for years in the wilderness and finally brought them “over the wall” to ancient America, in fulfillment of Jacob’s final blessing to Joseph. (Genesis 49:22) For 1,000 years, these ancient Israelites kept sacred records. When their civilization ended in destruction (420 CE), their final prophet, M’roni, hid this record in the ground, to come forth in the future for the prophesied restoration of scattered Israel to its former glory. This record is all of the following unique and extraordinary things: • The shofar sounding to scattered Israel as YHWH’s final attempt to gather His people; • A dire warning to the USA and a cry of repentance to the state of Israel. Any nation that does not honor the God of Israel will not survive; • An independent witness of the prophets, Mashiach, and the covenants given by YHWH to Israel; • A record of the means whereby all mankind can, as Moses, ascend to stand in the presence of YHWH; • An invitation to believe and receive the promises YHWH extends to those who will be His people. This is the only Hebrew Messianic/ascension document in existence that has not been influenced by entanglements with Babylon, Greece, or Rome, because those who kept the record left Jerusalem and the Eastern Hemisphere prior to the Babylonian captivity. It is the most sublime and direct Jewish ascension text available. This annotated Hebrew-roots English edition restores the ancient Hebraic nature of the record, to provide a clear understanding of Israel’s God, His work now underway, and the coming age of Mashiach. Whether you study religion in the Torah, Tanakh, Talmud, NIV Bible, Zohar, New Testament, Book of Mormon, Catholic writings, LDS scriptures, biblical commentary, or other holy books, this volume will inspire you to greater prophetic literacy, gifts in spirituality, understanding of history and theology, and most importantly, immerse your soul in a conversation and relationship with that God who loves, forgives, guides, and reconnects honest searchers with the tree of life. The Stick of Joseph is a greater discovery than the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Nag Hammadi library, though it has received far less attention. It is the preeminent Messianic document in the world, untwisting the false Greek caricature known as Jesus Christ of Nazareth. It restores the basics of the complete ancient Israelite faith and culture largely absent from modern, rabbinic Judaism. The ten commandments, temples, altars, Passover, the law of Moses, patterns, evidence, and much lost understanding all come together in this invaluable journal-record of wandering Israeli Hebrews who founded a great civilization.

The book of Ephraim is about the thirteen tribes of ancient Israel and, particularly, the 10 lost tribes that went into Assyrian slavery 131 years before the better known Babylonian captivity of the Southern kingdom called the Kingdom of Judah. The northern 10 tribes where known as the Kingdom of Israel. Unknown to most the Nation of ancient Israel split into two kingdoms after King Solomon's death and for hundreds of years quarreled and warred with each other. Although the southern kingdom of Judah returned from Babylonian captivity after 70 years, the 10 tribes of which Christ Yeshua (Jesus) refers to in the New Testament as the "lost sheep of the House of Israel", never returned to the holy land. The Book of Ephraim follows the biblical narrative as the tribes led by Moses develop from a mass of newly freed slaves into a loose assembly of Houses mostly governed by their own Princes. Under King David they are molded into a strong powerful nation. Under King Solomon Israel finally flourishes. It illustrates how the one nation eventually breaks up into two warring kingdoms and both kingdoms lose their way and descend into idolatry and finally are brutally scattered to the four winds, as prophet after prophet prophesied to the people would happen. It shows the connections to them and the historic and current day persecutions of western hemispheric descendants of Africa and particularly the birthright tribe of Ephraim. Ephraim was the second born twin of Joseph of the bible. He was born in Egypt, the land that his father was sold into slavery by his brethren but rose up to be a ruler in the land second only to Pharaoh. It explains that this little known tribe has always been the birthright tribe yet has been lost to history and forgotten and not unintentionally. The Book of Ephraim also speaks to the sacredness of name of the Almighty which every prophet testified to yet this ancient memorial name has been purposely pushed aside and the word "god" exalted in its place. It magnifies the memorial covenants established between the Ancient Nation of Israel and Yahovah their deliverer and how these covenants were violated and brought about the wrath of the Almighty until He removed them out of his sight. Among other things the Book of Ephraim quotes many of the holy books like the Muslim Holy Quran, the Ethiopian Kebra Negast and the Bible of Christianity in its search for answers to the age old questions that haunt every black man and woman in their quest for justice and equality. And finally it delivers the reader to a controversial conclusion that is impossible to dispute. REVIEWS Mr. Israel's book is the evidence of a remarkable awareness of Ethiopian ancient history and our historical legends that are the foundation of the church. The Kebra Negast and the prophecies of the bible records these legends that are not known to the world as yet but with his book I am sure they will come in to prominence. -- Abuna Paulos, Patriarch of Ethiopia The Book of Ephraim highlights biblical passages and prophecies that before now were unknown. It reveals many mysteries that have gone unknown until now. -- Girma Wolde-Giorgis President of Ethiopia

In 1806 an anxious crowd of thousands descended upon Lenox, Massachusetts, for the public hanging of Ephraim Wheeler, condemned for the rape of his thirteen-year-old daughter, Betsy. Not all witnesses believed justice had triumphed. The death penalty had become controversial; no one had been executed for rape in Massachusetts in more than a quarter century. Wheeler maintained his innocence. Over one hundred local citizens petitioned for his pardon--including, most remarkably, Betsy and her mother. Impoverished, illiterate, a failed farmer who married into a mixed-race family and clashed routinely with his wife, Wheeler existed on the margins of society. Using the trial report to reconstruct the tragic crime and drawing on Wheeler's jailhouse autobiography to unravel his troubled family history, Irene Quenzler Brown and Richard D. Brown illuminate a rarely seen slice of early America. They imaginatively and sensitively explore issues of family violence, poverty, gender, race and class, religion, and capital punishment, revealing similarities between death penalty politics in America today and two hundred years ago. Beautifully crafted, engagingly written, this unforgettable story probes deeply held beliefs about morality and about the nature of justice.