Brutal Fantasies

Brutal Fantasies PDF Author: John Hands
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780061011252
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
When a bomb slaughters American men, women and children and shatters the Northern Ireland peace process, CIA officer John Darcy goes on a frenzied mission to capture the terrorist, and redeem himself in the process.K.

Everything to Play For

Everything to Play For PDF Author: Marijam Did
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1804293245
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
An insider’s account of the videogame industry telling how gaming can become a force for good Everything To Play For asks if videogames can achieve egalitarian goals instead of fuelling hyper-materialist, reactionary agendas. Combining cultural theory and materialist critiques with accessible language and personal anecdotes, industry insider Marijam Did engages both novices and seasoned connoisseurs. From the innovations of Pong and Doom to the intricate multiplayer or narrative-driven games, the author highlights the multifaceted stories of the gaming communities and the political actors who organise among them. Crucially, the focus also includes the people who make the games, shedding light on the brutal processes necessary to bring titles to the public. The videogame industry, now larger than the film and music industries combined, has a proven ability to challenge the status quo. With a rich array of examples, Did argues for a nuanced understanding of gaming’s influence so that this extraordinary power can be harnessed for good.

Cosmosapiens

Cosmosapiens PDF Author: John Hands
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 146831324X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 711

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Book Description
“A critical overview of scientific orthodoxy in an attempt to answer the fundamental questions “what are we?” and “why are we here?” (Kirkus Reviews). Specialist scientific fields are developing at incredibly swift speeds, but what can they really tell us about how the universe began and how we as humans evolved to play such a dominant role on Earth? John Hands’s extraordinarily ambitious book merges scientific knowledge from multiple disciplines and evaluates without bias or preconception all the theories and evidence about the origin and evolution of matter, consciousness, and mankind. The result, a “pearl of dialectical reasoning” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), provides the most comprehensive account yet of current ideas such as cosmic inflation, dark energy, the selfish gene, and neurogenetic determinism. In the clearest possible prose, it differentiates the firmly established from the speculative and examines the claims of various fields to approach a unified theory of everything. In doing so it challenges the orthodox consensus in those branches of cosmology, biology, and neuroscience that have ossified into dogma. Its “shocking and invigorating” analysis (Daily Telegraph, A Best Science Book of 2015) reveals underlying patterns of cooperation, complexification, and convergence that lead to the unique emergence in humans of a self-reflective consciousness that enables us to determine our future evolution. This groundbreaking book is destined to become a classic of scientific thinking. Praise for Cosmosapiens “This is a truly exceptional piece of work.” —Tim Crane, Knightsbridge Professor of Philosophy, The University of Cambridge “A game-changer. In the tradition of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, this lucidly written, penetrating analysis challenges us to rethink many things we take for granted about ourselves, our society, and our universe. It will become a classic.” —Peter Dreier, E P Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, Occidental College “Hands is an astute observer of recent trends in scientific ideas bold enough to point out what he sees as sense and nonsense and intelligently explain why. Even in cases where one might disagree, the arguments are thought-provoking.” —Paul Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor in Science, Princeton University

The End of Reciprocity

The End of Reciprocity PDF Author: Mark Osiel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521513510
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 677

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Book Description
This book examines reciprocity between asymmetrical sides in war and conflict.

Leopards in the Temple

Leopards in the Temple PDF Author: Morris Dickstein
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674006041
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
The 25 years after World War II were a fertile period for the American novel and an era of transformation in American society. Offering a social as well as literary history, Dickstein provides a frank assessment of more than 20 key figures.

Bad Girl Reputation

Bad Girl Reputation PDF Author: Elle Kennedy
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 1250796768
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
*USA Today bestseller* Bestselling author Elle Kennedy returns to Avalon Bay in this sexy second chance story about two exes who can't stay away from each other, Bad Girl Reputation. When former bad girl Genevieve West returns home for her mother’s funeral, she’s prepared to keep her distance from her ex-boyfriend, Evan Hartley. Their history is rife with turbulence. And passion. A heck of a lot of passion...which she’s trying desperately to forget. But it’s impossible not to run into Evan in the small coastal town where they once ran wild. And the moment she sees her gorgeous ex again, it’s clear to Gen that Evan is still as unruly, sexy, and irresistible as ever. This time around, however, she’s resolved to walk a new path. No more partying. No more foolish mistakes. Her plan is to temporarily remain in town to help her father run his business, but the second he finds somebody else, she’s out of there. Evan has other ideas. He knows they can be good together, but he just has to convince Genevieve of that, even if it means turning over a new leaf himself. But can a bad reputation ever truly be shed? Do second chances really work? Genevieve and Evan are about to find out.

Black Coat Day

Black Coat Day PDF Author: Frank Pendlebury
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1664115730
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Sam Daniels; - Entrepreneur, investor, businessman. The model of success. However, Sam lives a second, covert existence. One in which he gets to indulge his greatest passion - The practice of homicide. Although, Sam only targets the guilty. None of his victims are innocent. Lacking remorse or sympathy for those he slays, Sam has few worries. Apart from his methods of murder. Which he begins to question, as he loses control, time and again. Setting him on a journey of self-discovery, left littered with corpses.

Palaces of Pleasure

Palaces of Pleasure PDF Author: Lee Jackson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030022463X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
An energetic and exhilarating account of the Victorian entertainment industry, its extraordinary success and enduring impact The Victorians invented mass entertainment. As the nineteenth century's growing industrialized class acquired the funds and the free time to pursue leisure activities, their every whim was satisfied by entrepreneurs building new venues for popular amusement. Contrary to their reputation as dour, buttoned-up prudes, the Victorians reveled in these newly created 'palaces of pleasure'. In this vivid, captivating book, Lee Jackson charts the rise of well-known institutions such as gin palaces, music halls, seaside resorts and football clubs, as well as the more peculiar attractions of the pleasure garden and international exposition, ranging from parachuting monkeys and human zoos to theme park thrill rides. He explores how vibrant mass entertainment came to dominate leisure time and how the attempts of religious groups and secular improvers to curb 'immorality' in the pub, variety theater and dance hall faltered in the face of commercial success. The Victorians' unbounded love of leisure created a nationally significant and influential economic force: the modern entertainment industry.

Secret Historian

Secret Historian PDF Author: Justin Spring
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429932945
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
2010 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction Drawn from the secret, never-before-seen diaries, journals, and sexual records of the novelist, poet, and university professor Samuel M. Steward, Secret Historian is a sensational reconstruction of one of the more extraordinary hidden lives of the twentieth century. An intimate friend of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Thornton Wilder, Steward maintained a secret sex life from childhood on, and documented these experiences in brilliantly vivid (and often very funny) detail. After leaving the world of academe to become Phil Sparrow, a tattoo artist on Chicago's notorious South State Street, Steward worked closely with Alfred Kinsey on his landmark sex research. During the early 1960s, Steward changed his name and identity once again, this time to write exceptionally literate, upbeat pro-homosexual pornography under the name of Phil Andros. Until today he has been known only as Phil Sparrow—but an extraordinary archive of his papers, lost since his death in 1993, has provided Justin Spring with the material for an exceptionally compassionate and brilliantly illuminating life-and-times biography. More than merely the story of one remarkable man, Justin Spring's Secret Historian is a moving portrait of homosexual life long before Stonewall and gay liberation.

DON'T ASK FOR SUGAR

DON'T ASK FOR SUGAR PDF Author: Bernhard Christoph Lichtinger
Publisher: B.C. Lichtinger
ISBN: 1738612317
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 772

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Book Description
NOTHING BUT THE PURE TRUTH DON'T ASK FOR SUGAR is a spiritual and humorous love, crime and spy novel, that only real life can write. Learn from the dearly paid missteps of a globetrotter in the Australian desert and from his risky trips to Asia, until you regain your consciousness in an East German prison cell after a stopover in Moscow. BUT FIRST THE YEAR IS 1985, Christoph is in Bangkok and has just fallen madly in love with a beautiful New Zealander woman who has been touring the world for years. In Western Australia, the two have a challenging but satisfying life. Christoph, who struggles along as a garden helper for lack of a work permit, admires the experienced Suzanne, who works as a well-paid model at Perth's university. One weekend in a small chapel, the future is predicted for the two of them. The fortune teller says, that Suzanne will soon be living happily in the south, but when she holds Christoph's hand, the seer begins to tremble and sees dark forces and sinister demons. Shortly afterwards, Suzanne is offered an extraordinarily cheap plane ticket to New Zealand, and as she hasn't been home for a long time, she makes a spontaneous decision, whereupon the world falls apart for Christoph, as he loses the love of his life. A FEW DAYS LATER Christoph pulls himself together, sells his car and hitchhikes through the middle of the Australian desert to get some fresh ideas from new impressions. After three weeks in New South Wales, he meets Dave, an Australian, and Bryce, a Scotsman, who have been in a car accident. Pulling the mudguard out again, the three young men decide to drive north for two days as the small coastal town of Cairns on the Great Barrier Reef turns into a party hotspot at the end of the year when divers from all over the world wash up on its beaches along with jellyfish, - but can Christoph forget his Suzanne just like that?

Harbart

Harbart PDF Author: Nabarun Bhattacharya
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811224740
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 117

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Book Description
This beloved cult novel—about a young man who makes a business of relaying messages from the dead—is now in a sparkling English translation Poor, poor, hard-luck Herbert Sarkar: born into a fancy Calcutta family but cursed from birth (his philandering movie director father is killed in a car crash and his mother dies soon after, when he’s still just a baby), he is taken as an orphan into his uncle’s house, only to fall further and further down the family totem pole. Despite good looks (“Hollywood-ish, Leslie Howard-ish)” and native talents, he is scorned by all but his kind aunt. Poor Herbert: so lovable but so little loved. Cheated of his inheritance, living on the roof in cast-off clothing, he pines for love, but all is woe: his own nephews beat him up. At twenty, however, he suddenly seems to possess the gift of speaking with the dead. Herbert is bathed in glory. From less than zero to starry heights—what an apotheosis. The wheel of fortune turns again, all too soon... Legendary, scathingly satiric, wildly energetic, deeply tender, Herbert is an Indian masterwork.