. . not banging chicks?" The search is over. Now, with the help of The Playbook, you'll be able to approach any beautiful woman, discover her innermost passion, and use that to trick her into sleeping with you. You'll master more than 75 seduction techniques, developed by pickup guru and all-around good guy Barney Stinson, guaranteed to turn you into a bona fide ladies' man.

    Illustrated with comically apt reproductions by the nineteenth-century artist George Cruikshank, Armed Gunmen, True Facts, and Other Ridiculous Nonsense is an antidote to a growing tendency in contemporary usage - and the perfect book for grammarphobes, word-geeks, and language lovers alike.

    I write poetry... I believe poetry is a primal impulse within all of us. I believe we are all capable of it and furthermore that a small, often ignored corner of us positively yearns to try it. —Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled Stephen Fry believes that if one can speak and read English, one can write poetry. Many of us have never been taught to read or write poetry and think of it as a mysterious and intimidating form. Or, if we have been taught, we remember uncomfortable silence when an English teacher invited the class to "respond" to a poem. In The Ode Less Travelled, Fry sets out to correct this problem by giving aspiring poets the tools and confidence they need to write poetry for pleasure. Fry is a wonderfully engaging teacher and writer of poetry himself, and he explains the various elements of poetry in simple terms, without condescension. His enjoyable exercises and witty insights introduce the concepts of Metre, Rhyme, Form, Diction, and Poetics. Aspiring poets will learn to write a sonnet, on ode, a villanelle, a ballad, and a haiku, among others. Along the way, he introduces us to poets we've heard of, but never read. The Ode Less Travelled is a lively celebration of poetry that makes even the most reluctant reader want to pick up a pencil and give it a try. BACKCOVER: Advanced Praise: “Delightfully erudite, charming and soundly pedagogical guide to poetic form… Fry has created an invaluable and highly enjoyable reference book.” —Publishers Weekly “A smart, sane and entertaining return to the basics… If you like Fry’s comic manner… this book has a lot of charm… People entirely fresh to the subject could do worse than stick with his cheerful leadership.” —The Telegraph (UK) “…intelligent and informative, a worthy enterprise well executed.” —Observer (UK) "If you learn how to write a sonnet, and Fry shows you how, you may or may not make a poem. But you will unlock the stored wisdom of the form itself." —Grey Gowrie, The Spectator (UK) “…intelligent and informative, a worthy enterprise well executed.” —Observer (UK)

    Included are idioms from Native American and African American speech as well as the Bible, Aesop, and Shakespeare.

    You’ve read both Dungeon Master’s guides. You’ve run a few games. You pick up ideas here and there on the net. Or maybe you're an old grizzled vet who has run games for 20 years.Maybe your game is feeling a little stale. Maybe your encounters didn’t run exactly as you wanted them too. Maybe you feel like you're stuck in a rut. Maybe you feel a bit overwhelmed when you have to come up with an exciting, creative game every week.You’re not looking for a huge tome on game theory. You don’t need yet another take on world-building. You’re looking for some practical tips you can use today to help you focus your energy in the right places and make some kick-ass D&D games for you and your friends. You want something you can read quick and start using right away.My friend, here is the book for you.This book was written to give you solid usable tips to help you build your story, design exciting encounters, and run a great game when you’re at the table. It’s a short book, designed to be read quickly and referenced often.Oh yeah, and it’s got some awesome original artwork by Jared Von Hindman of Head Injury Theater.This is a completely original book. Every chapter was written from scratch to help you focus on what’s important and get past some of the roadblocks we all face when designing a D&D game.

    Perfect for those who want to pick up some new slang and those who want to translate it, Urban Dictionary is a gritty and witty look at our ever-changing language.Urbandictionary.com is a wildly successful site that encourages users to define the world with their own unique terms. In Urban Dictionary, site founder Aaron Peckham culls his more than 170,000 definitions for the funniest, and most provocative phrases that define the modern slang scene.Within urbandictionary.com's lively lexicon are:* business provocative--Attire used to provoke sexual attention in the workplace.* compunicate--To chat with someone in the same room via instant messenging service instead of in person.* dandruff--A person who "flakes out" and ditches their friends. * wingman--A guy who takes one for the team by hooking up with a hot girl's ugly friend so his own friend can hook up with the hot girl.Perfect for those who want to pick up some new slang and those who want to translate it, Urban Dictionary is a gritty and witty look at our ever-changing language.Urban Dictionary covers the language that encompasses the trials and tribulations that anyone under 30 encounters--and leaves everyone over 30 scratching their heads but wanting to know more.

    This book helps students, academics and nonfiction writers to get more done, write intelligent texts and learn for the long run. It teaches you how to take smart notes and ensure they bring you and your projects forward. The Take Smart Notes principle is based on established psychological insight and draws from a tried and tested note-taking-technique. This is the first comprehensive guide and description of this system in English, and not only does it explain how it works, but also why. It suits students and academics in the social sciences and humanities, nonfiction writers and others who are in the business of reading, thinking and writing. Instead of wasting your time searching for notes, quotes or references, you can focus on what really counts: thinking, understanding and developing new ideas in writing. It does not matter if you prefer taking notes with pen and paper or on a computer, be it Windows, Mac or Linux. And you can start right away.

    There are over 50,000 entries, including the most common meanings. Japanese terms are shown in romanized Japanese and standard Japanese characters. The romanized entries are listed in alphabetical order, so no knowledge of Japanese is required.

    With humor and insight, Melissa Mohr takes readers on a journey to discover how "swearing" has come to include both testifying with your hand on the Bible and calling someone a *#$&!* when they cut you off on the highway. She explores obscenities in ancient Rome and unearths the history of religious oaths in the Middle Ages, when swearing (or not swearing) an oath was often a matter of life and death. Holy Sh*t also explains the advancement of civility and corresponding censorship of language in the 18th century, considers the rise of racial slurs after World War II, examines the physiological effects of swearing and answers a question that preoccupies the FCC, the US Senate, and anyone who has recently overheard little kids at a playground: are we swearing more now than people did in the past?A gem of lexicography and cultural history, Holy Sh*t is a serious exploration of obscenity.

    The Sociology Book takes on some of humankind's biggest questions: What is society? What makes it tick? Why do we interact in the way that we do with our friends, coworkers, and rivals? The Sociology Book profiles the world's most renowned sociologists and more than 100 of their biggest ideas, including issues of equality, diversity, identity, and human rights; the effects of globalization; the role of institutions; and the rise of urban living in modern societyEasy to navigate and chock-full of key concepts, profiles of major sociological thinkers, and conversation starters galore, this is a must-have, in-a-nutshell guide to some of the most fascinating questions on earth.The Sociology Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas Simply Explained series, designed to distill big ideas and elusive theories into graspable, memorable concepts, using an approachable graphic treatment and creative typography.

    With this hands-on guide, you'll learn how to write effective, idiomatic Python code by leveraging its best and possibly most neglected features. Author Luciano Ramalho takes you through Python's core language features and libraries, and shows you how to make your code shorter, faster, and more readable at the same time.Many experienced programmers try to bend Python to fit patterns they learned from other languages, and never discover Python features outside of their experience. With this book, those Python programmers will thoroughly learn how to become proficient in Python 3.This book covers:Python data model: understand how special methods are the key to the consistent behavior of objectsData structures: take full advantage of built-in types, and understand the text vs bytes duality in the Unicode ageFunctions as objects: view Python functions as first-class objects, and understand how this affects popular design patternsObject-oriented idioms: build classes by learning about references, mutability, interfaces, operator overloading, and multiple inheritanceControl flow: leverage context managers, generators, coroutines, and concurrency with the concurrent.futures and asyncio packagesMetaprogramming: understand how properties, attribute descriptors, class decorators, and metaclasses work"

    Each entry deals with one fallacy, explaining what the fallacy is, giving and analysing an example, outlining when/where/why the particular fallacy tends to occur and finally showing how you can perpetrate the fallacy on other people in order to win an argument. Originally published to great acclaim in 1985 as "The Book of Fallacy", this is a classic brought up-to-date for a whole new generation.

    Albert Mohler became the youngest president in the 153-year history of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was the driving force behind the school's transformation into a thriving institution with an international reputation characterized by a passionate conviction for truth. In the process he became one of the most important and prominent Christian voices in contemporary culture.What will it take to transform your leadership?Effective leaders need more than administrative skills and vision. They need to be able to change the hearts and minds of those they lead. Leadership like this requires passionate beliefs that can stand up to pressure from without and within.Now for the first time, Dr. Mohler reveals 25 principles to crystallize your convictions, revolutionizing your thinking, your decision-making, your communication, and ultimately those you lead.

    What do an Italian cardinal, a Connecticut blacksmith, and a German diplomat have in common with an MIT linguist, a Hungarian translator, and a Scottish church organist? They were all "hyperpolyglots," "language superlearners," or "massive multilinguals." In Babel No More, Michael Erard delves into the lives and minds of these intriguing individuals both past and present and discovers the upper limit of the human ability to learn, speak, and remember languages. Hyperpolyglots - people who, by one definition, can use six or more languages - are fascinating not simply because what they do is out of the ordinary. Rather, their accomplishments serve as a point of reference for the rest of us; in some ways they are what the author calls a gifted neural tribe, absorbing language for reasons, and with methods, that few people would emulate. But they are also marked by simple, if dogged, methods: the most prolific multilingual in history, Cardinal Mezzofanti, used flashcards. Taken together, their pursuits present a natural experiment into the limits and the nature of memory and language. Part scientific detective story, part travelogue, part valentine to anyone who's ever hoped to sprechen or parler something other than a mother tongue, Babel No More takes us all over the world to look at language learning in an entirely new way.

    Whether you're creating perfect professional documents, spectacular school papers, or effective personal letters, you'll find this handbook indispensable. From word choice to punctuation to organization, English teacher Susan Thurman guides you through getting your thoughts on paper with polish. Using dozens of examples, The Only Grammar Book You'll Ever Need provides guidelines for: –Understanding the parts of speech and elements of a sentence –Avoiding the most common grammar and punctuation mistakes –Using correct punctuating in every sentence –Writing clearly and directly –Approaching writing projects, whether big or small Easy to follow and authoritative, The Only Grammar Book You'll Ever Need provides all the necessary tools to make you successful with every type of written expression.