David K. Wyatt has also added new sections examining the social and economic changes that have transformed the country in the past two decades. Praise for the previous edition:“Wyatt knows his subject well enough and has enough enthusiasm for it to make his book . . . entertaining as well as eminently educational.”—David McElveen, Asiaweek“A very readable account. . . .We come away from reading it with a clearer understanding of where Thailand stands in relation to its neighbors, who the Thai people are, how the Thai government evolved into its present form.”—James Stent, Asian Wall Street Journal“Concise, thorough, and readable.”—John Gabree, New York Newsday

    for Social Anthropology in Oceania, Special Pubs. No. 1Hawaiian culture as it met foreign traders and settlers is the context for Sahlins's structuralist methodology of historical interpretation.

    It's no wonder so many development studios are struggling to survive. Fortunately, there is a solution. Scrum and Agile methods are already revolutionizing development outside the game industry. Now, long-time game developer Clinton Keith shows exactly how to successfully apply these methods to the unique challenges of game development. Keith has spent more than fifteen years developing games, seven of them with Scrum and agile methods. Drawing on this unparalleled expertise, he shows how teams can use Scrum to deliver games more efficiently, rapidly, and cost-effectively; craft games that offer more entertainment value; and make life more fulfilling for development teams at the same time. You'll learn to form successful agile teams that incorporate programmers, producers, artists, testers, and designers--and promote effective collaboration within and beyond those teams, throughout the entire process. From long-range planning to progress tracking and continuous integration, Keith offers dozens of tips, tricks, and solutions--all based firmly in reality and hard-won experience. Coverage includes Understanding Scrum's goals, roles, and practices in the context of game development Communicating and planning your game's vision, features, and progress Using iterative techniques to put your game into a playable state every two to four weeks-- even daily Helping all team participants succeed in their roles Restoring stability and predictability to the development process Managing ambiguous requirements in a fluid marketplace Scaling Scrum to large, geographically distributed development teams Getting started: overcoming inertia and integrating Scrum into your studio's current processes Increasingly, game developers and managers are recognizing that things can't go on the way they have in the past. Game development organizations need a far better way to work. Agile Game Development with Scrum gives them that--and brings the profitability, creativity, and fun back to game development.

    Going beyond the limits of an encyclopedia or a record guide, essays by musicians and music journalists illuminate such genres as techno, house, krautrock, disco, hip-hop, drum'n'bass, ambient, and down-tempo in more expansive detail than was possible in the film. From the "art of noise" proposed by then Italian Futurists to the musique concrete experiments of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, Modulations probes the conceptual origins of synthesized sound. Present day geographic trends and cross-fertilized styles are traced back to the experimental and groundbreaking work of diverse pioneers such as Iannis Xenakis, Kraftwerk, Giorgo Moroder, Robert Moog, and John Cage. The African-American roots of electronic music are also documented, from free-jazz fellow traveler Sun Ra to funk innovators Parliament/Funkadelic. Sections on fusion, dub, post-punk, breakbeats, latin freestyle, and Miami bass make this book an all-encompassing reference tool for devoted followers as well as an excellent introduction for curious newcomers.

    Men like Andrew Carnegie built empires like Carnegie Steel, and financiers like J.P. Morgan merged and consolidated them. The era also made names like Astor, Cooke, and Vanderbilt instantly recognizable across the globe. Over time, the unfathomable wealth generated by the businesses made the individuals on top incredibly rich, and that in turn led to immense criticism and an infamous epithet used to rail against them: robber barons. Dozens of men were called “robber barons”, but few of them were as notorious as Cornelius Vanderbilt, who also happened to be one of the nation’s first business titans. Vanderbilt was a railroad and shipping magnate at a time that the industry was almost brand new, but he rode his success to become one of the richest and most powerful men in American history. When historians are asked to name the richest man in history, a name that often pops up is that of John D. Rockefeller, who co-founded Standard Oil and turned it into the first real trust in the United States. Rockefeller had been groomed ambitiously by a huckster father nicknamed “Devil Bill”, who was just as willing to cheat his son as an unsuspecting public, and John certainly chased his dreams of living long and large. Rockefeller forged his empire in the first few decades of his life and nearly worked himself to death by the time he was 50, which helped compel him to retire for the last several decades of his life. At one point, Rockefeller’s wealth was worth more than 1.5% of the entire country’s gross domestic product, and by adjusting for inflation, he is arguably the richest man in American history if not world history. When robber barons across America took the reins of vast industries, they needed financing, and many of them turned to the most famous banker of all: John Pierpont Morgan. It was J.P. Morgan who bankrolled the consolidation of behemoth corporations across various industries, including the merging of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric Company, which subsequently became General Electric, still known simply as GE across the world today. Similarly, he financed Federal Steel Company and consolidated various other steel businesses to help form the United States Steel Corporation. While critics complained about the outsized influence that these gigantic businesses had, Morgan’s massive wealth also gave him unprecedented power in the financial sector and the ability to deal with politicians. In fact, Morgan played an important part in the Panic of 1907 and the subsequent decision to create the Federal Reserve as a monetary oversight. Ironically, one of America’s most famous robber barons, Andrew Carnegie, epitomized the American Dream, migrating with his poor family to America in the mid-19th century and rising to the top of the business world in his adopted country. A prodigious writer in addition to his keen sense of business, Carnegie was one of the most outspoken champions of capitalism at a time when there was pushback among lower social classes who witnessed the great disparities in wealth; as he once put it, “Upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends—the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions.

    Sega, on the other hand, was just a faltering arcade company with big aspirations and even bigger personalities. But that would all change with the arrival of Tom Kalinske, a man who knew nothing about videogames and everything about fighting uphill battles. His unconventional tactics, combined with the blood, sweat and bold ideas of his renegade employees, transformed Sega and eventually led to a ruthless David-and-Goliath showdown with rival Nintendo.The battle was vicious, relentless, and highly profitable, eventually sparking a global corporate war that would be fought on several fronts: from living rooms and schoolyards to boardrooms and Congress. It was a once-in-a-lifetime, no-holds-barred conflict that pitted brother against brother, kid against adult, Sonic against Mario, and the US against Japan.Based on over two hundred interviews with former Sega and Nintendo employees, Console Wars is the underdog tale of how Kalinske miraculously turned an industry punchline into a market leader. It's the story of how a humble family man, with an extraordinary imagination and a gift for turning problems into competitive advantages, inspired a team of underdogs to slay a giant and, as a result, birth a $60 billion dollar industry.