4531 Ergebnisse - Zeige 1 von 20.

This is the first book-length, scholarly overview of the ongoing revolution in tabletop gaming design and culture. This revolution started in the late 20th century and it exploded to unprecedented levels of vitality in the 21st, leading to new ways of creating, marketing, and experiencing a game. Designers have become superstars in the hobby, publishers have improved production values and quality control, and the community of players has been ...

When a pet dog injures a human or another dog, the owner is left in a state of fear and confusion. If a dog wreaks havoc and destruction on a home, the owner is left feeling helpless. If an owner finds a dog uncontrollable, or if a dog becomes aggressive and a threat to the community, the dog becomes the one that is at risk for injury or death. Families living with these behaviorally challenged dogs may become isolated and wonder if there is h...

J. R. R. Tolkien's classic works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion comprise a legendarium with a complex world-system presented through an array of poetic forms. Through historical, geopolitical, and multicultural detail, combining elements of myth, romance, and the modern novel, Middle-earth is seen as much more than an adventure tale. This book analyzes Tolkien's narrative form and its relation to social contexts, while...

From Afghanistan to Angola, Indonesia to Iran, and Colombia to Congo, violent reactions erupt, states collapse, and militaries relentlessly pursue operations doomed to fail. And yet, no useful theory exists to explain this common tragedy. All over the world, people and states clash in violent crucibles outside their established political systems as unfulfilled demands of order, control, and productivity bend the modern state to a breaking poin...

History paints war out to be a man's business, but there is an army of women warriors who stand between the lines of history books, waiting to be seen. This biographical dictionary tells the story of the females who armed themselves against threats to self, family, home and country. Spanning 17 periods of world history, it compiles the names and daring deeds of 1, 622 female fighters, from Bronze Age archers and Viking raiders, to helicopter p...

Earl "The Twirl" Cureton was never a star player in the NBA, but then again, few people will ever be a celebrity athlete. Earl's story, instead, is about a life on the fringes of the league during its "Golden Era" of the '80s and '90s. A teammate of Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Michael Jordan, Charles Oakley, Muggsy Bogues, Hakeem Olajuwon, and others, Earl was a part of seven NBA teams in his twelve-season career. He won two championships dur...

By 1900 Maryland's Eastern Shore, along the western side of the Delmarva Peninsula, was acknowledged in the national press as a hotbed of baseball activity. By the 1920s the game was fully ingrained into local community life, central to the summer social season among the towns and villages that measured their worth by the quality of their teams. Providing fresh insight into early 20th century baseball at its grassroots, this book explores the ...

Anyone who has collected baseball cards understands the thrill of completing a set. And part of the fun is filling in the gaps along the way, one wax pack at a time, over months or even years. Or sometimes, as in Jamie Selko's case, decades. This memoir recounts the author's love affair with Topps' 1961 baseball card set and his quest to acquire a complete autographed collection--an effort that took almost 40 years and still is one card short...

This is the story of the vagabond canines that hopped on railroads across the United States, often becoming celebrities and national heroes. Chapters introduce canines like Owney, guardian of the railway mail service, Fala, FDR's beloved dog and train-companion, Annie, the Colorado railway ambassador, the K9 patrols who watch over the tracks, and many more. As railroads were changing America, these raildogs were changing the people who lived a...

Between December 28, 1975, and January 11, 1976, a groundbreaking hockey event took place: Super Series '76. Eight National Hockey League clubs each hosted a single exhibition game against one of two touring teams from the USSR: Central Red Army or Wings of the Soviet. Officially nothing was at stake, but serious hockey fans realized that a Cold War clash of political ideologies was occurring on North American ice surfaces. The top pro teams w...

During the 1980s, popular fear of World War III spurred moviemakers to produce dozens of nuclear threat films. Categories ranged from monster movies to post-apocalyptic adventures to realistic depictions of nuclear war and its immediate aftermath. Coverage of atomic angst films isn't new, but this is the first book to solely analyze 1980s nuclear threat movies as a group. Entries range from classics such as The Day After and WarGames to obscu...

Early dystopian science fiction like George Orwell's 1984 or Thea von Harbou's Metropolis show us bleak worlds where capitalism has no boundaries and has corrupted sovereign powers, exploiting the lower classes and benefiting only a select few at the top. Political laws and policies related to human life--or the biopolitical--devalue that life, making humanity little more than expendable "machines" producing for capitalism. Capitalism's focus ...

Most of the prominent figures from Ireland's revolutionary generation have been endlessly profiled and commemorated but the controversial General Eoin O'Duffy remains a pariah. Despite reaching the heights of leadership in the republican movement during the Irish revolutionary period--and subsequently becoming a key state-builder in early independent Ireland as head of the national police force--O'Duffy's legacy retains a whiff of sulphur. It ...

A sequel to the author's autobiographical trilogy--Shush! Growing up Jewish under Stalin, In the Jaws of the Crocodile, and Farewell, Mama Odessa--this book is part memoir and part cultural study about the challenges of immigration and American accculturation. With self-deprecating humor, the author, a former Soviet satirist who was punished for trespassing the boundaries of public criticism, recollects his growing pains as he overcame his ind...

Rebellion was recurrent in the Highlands because the Gaels (Scoti) were an often-oppressed indigenous minority in the nation, Scotland, to which they gave their name. They spoke a language, Gaelic, few outsiders would learn, and had their own family and social system, the clans. Warfare was bloody, culminating in the catastrophe of Culloden Moor during the doomed quest to restore the Stuart kingship to all of Britain. Economic hardship, includ...

Much is made of the test scores, earning power, and innovative contributions of highly intelligent kids, but we rarely ask what it's actually like to be "gifted." In a culture obsessed with exceptionalism, sorting by intelligence has become an educational norm, leading thousands of American students to be ushered through (or noticeably left out of) advanced academic programs. Stereotypes and generalizations about these students--from the socia...

This Civil War enthusiast's sourcebook organizes the crucial details of the war in an inventive format designed to enhance the reader's knowledge base and big-picture understanding of key events and outcomes. The war's causes, political and economic issues, important personalities, campaigns and battles are examined. Nearly 200 reader challenges stimulate review of critical moments, with suggested reading for further exploration. Photographs a...

In New England today, there are megalithic stones, stone chambers and structures, carvings and petroglyphs, even an unidentified skeleton in armor that defy easy explanation. From Maine to Massachusetts, this work presents an examination of various unexplained historical remains in New England. From the most notorious to the lesser known, it explores not only the layout and dimensions of such sites--some reminiscent of Stonehenge with their hu...

As a Harvard alumnus, diplomat, US President, member of Congress and attorney before the Supreme Court, John Quincy Adams had a unique relationship with slavery. Prickly and curmudgeonly, he danced with abolitionists, but never became one himself. However, Adams did harbor an intense hatred for the arguments of Southern slaveholders, and eventually found himself in the center of America's greatest struggle. Informed by Adams's revealing and of...

For the reader interested in learning more about working in sports or the avid fan that wants to have an inside look at what those inside the radio booth go through on a day-to-day basis, this book contains the secrets and successes of minor league baseball broadcasters with a combined century of experience telling the story of America's pastime. A host of decorated industry veterans discuss their careers, sharing tales of heralded baseball gr...