Filmed on a shoestring budget after hours at a convenience store, it was crude (in technique and language), realistic and, above all, hilarious. The movie's nationwide success helped launch the indepedent film boom of the 1990s and catapulted its director, Kevin Smith, to full-fledged stardom. Smith's work is explored in AN ASKEW VIEW, the first ever study of his films. John Kenneth Muir examines all of Smith's movies. including MALLRATS, CHASING AMY, and the hugely controversial and variously interpreted DOGMA. Muir discusses Smith's themes and obsessions in depth: his New Jersey boosterism, the cast of characters that pop in and out of all of his films, and the references to STAR WARS and other icons of pop culture. AN ASKEW VIEW is a fascinating and detailed history of the art of this visionary filmmaker, New Jersey's favorite local-boy-makes-good since Bruce Springsteen.

    This biography reveals the secrets of the sometimes strange and often sad private life that was concealed behind the matronly facade.

    The poster art from the noir era has a bold look and an iconography all its own. During noir's golden age, studios commissioned these arresting illustrations for even the lowliest "B" thriller. The Art of Noir is the first book to present this striking artwork in a lavishly produced, large-format, full-color volume. The more than 300 dazzling posters and other promotional material range from the classics to rare archive films such as The Devil Thumbs a Ride and Blonde Kiss. With rare offerings from around the world and background information on the illustrators, The Art of Noir is the ultimate companion for movie buffs and collectors, as well as artists and designers.

     #2 gives us shortcuts to help us get results in a short span of time. The book that you are holding in your hands right now is for people who want to sprint on the second path.  The Growth Hacking Book is an almanac for growth in today’s hyper-competitive business world! Curated by GrowthMedia.AI, this book features more than 35 marketing experts, trailblazing entrepreneurs, industry thought leaders and successful companies from all over the globe who share radical ideas on how you can grow your business using unconventional marketing strategies. Each chapter is a treasure trove of growth ideas that businesses in the “The Valley” try to shield from the public.  But they are not secrets anymore. This book is for you if you want to learn about:  The concept of Growth Hacking  The best growth strategies from Growth Hackers for Growth Hackers The mindset, skillset and toolset for Growth Marketers  Identifying and analyzing growth channels  The future of Growth Marketing  ...and more. The fact that you are examining to buy this book is proof that you are hungry to learn growth marketing tactics.  It proves the maxim that says — you don’t choose a book; the book chooses you. Our Contributing Authors: Amit Kumar Arun K Sharma Badr Berrada Christian Fictoor Deep Kakkad Deepak V.

    Painter, sculptor, writer, and filmmaker, Salvador Dali (1904-1989) was one of the century's greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics - and was rewarded with fierce controversy wherever he went. He was one of the first to apply the insights of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis to the art of painting, approaching the subconscious with extraordinary sensitivity and imagination. This lively monograph presents the infamous Surrealist in full color and in his own words. His provocative imagery is all here, from the soft watches to the notorious burning giraffe. A friend of the artist for over thirty years, privy to the reality behind Dali's public image, author Robert Descharnes is uniquely qualified to analyze Dali - both the man and the myth.

    When inexperienced entrepreneurs ask my advice about their idea for a tech startup, they often worry "What if Google decides to compete with us? They will crush us!" I respond that far more startups die of suicide than homicide. If you can avoid hurting yourself, then you are already better off than most of your competitors. Startups are a chance to build something entirely original with brilliant and ambitious people. But startups are also dangerous. Limited money means there is little room for mistakes. One bad decision can mean bankruptcy. The potential payoff attracts capital, which in turn attracts scam artists. The unscrupulous often lack the skills needed to succeed, but sometimes they are smart enough to trick investors. Even entrepreneurs who start with a strong moral compass can find that the threat of failure unmoors their ethics from their ambition. Emotions matter. We might hope that those in leadership positions possess strength and resilience, but vanity and fragile egos have sabotaged many of the businesses that I’ve worked with. Defeat is always a possibility, and not everyone finds healthy ways to deal with the stress. In this book I offer both advice and also warnings. I've seen certain self-destructive patterns play out again and again, so I wanted to document one of the most extreme cases that I've witnessed. In 2015 I worked for a startup that began with an ingenious idea: to use the software techniques known as Natural Language Processing to allow people to interact with databases by writing ordinary English sentences. This was a multi-billion dollar idea that could have transformed the way people gathered and used information. However, the venture had inexperienced leadership. They burned through their $1.3 million seed money. As their resources dwindled, their confidence transformed into doubt, which was aggravated by edicts from the Board Of Directors ordering sudden changes that effectively threw away weeks' worth of work. Every startup forces its participants into extreme positions, often regarding budget and deadlines. Often these situations are absurd to the point of parody. Therefore, there is considerable humor in this story. The collision of inexperience and desperation gives rise to moments that are simply silly. I tell this story in a day-to-day format, both to capture the early optimism, and then the later sense of panic. Here then, is a cautionary tale, a warning about tendencies that everyone joining a startup should be on guard against."

    David Hamilton's interest in this topic was inspired by the field research tests he conducted for chemical companies. Realising that placebo tests produced comparable results with the sample that received the actual drug, Hamilton sets about understanding why.

    Yet the man who could be accessible and charming on screen retreated to a deeply private world he created behind closed doors.    Glenn Ford: A Life chronicles the volatile life, relationships, and career of the renowned actor, beginning with his move from Canada to California and his initial discovery of theater. It follows Ford’s career in diverse media—from film to television to radio—and shows how Ford shifted effortlessly between genres, playing major roles in dramas, noir, westerns, and romances.     This biography by Glenn Ford’s son, Peter Ford, offers an intimate view of a star’s private and public life. Included are exclusive interviews with family, friends, and professional associates, and snippets from the Ford family collection of diaries, letters, audiotapes, unpublished interviews, and rare candid photos. This biography tells a cautionary tale of Glenn Ford’s relentless infidelities and long, slow fade-out, but it also embraces his talent-driven career. The result is an authentic Hollywood story that isn’t afraid to reveal the truth.Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Reviewers

    In this fully illustrated memoir, author Michael Uslan recalls his journey from early childhood fandom through to the decades he spent on a caped crusade of his own: to bring Batman to the silver screen as the dark, serious character he was at heart. Uslan s story traces his path from the wilds of New Jersey to the limelight of Hollywood, following his work as Executive Producer on every Batman film from Tim Burton s 1989 re-envisioning to 2012 s The Dark Knight Rises. Through it all, he helped to create one of the most successful pop culture franchises of all time.

    From the leopard who develops an unlikely bond with a human, to a young boy who discovers a shelf of books in an old forest bungalow, from Timothy, the tiger cub that Grandfather brings home to tame, to the man-eater that terrorizes an entire village-here is a world where man and wild beast come together in surprising fascinating ways.Interesting FactsTold in simple, lyrical prose that characterizes Bonds writing, The Jungle Omnibus brings together in one delightful volume, a selection of stories and poems from the jungle spanning across the sixty years of Ruskin Bonds writing career.This volume effectively captures a world where man and beast come together in order to survive, thus raising relevant questions about the environment and the need to protect the forest and its many inhabitants.In turns thrilling, thoughtful, funny and heart-warming, this is a collection that will delight both children and adults alike.

    It demands mental resilience and resistance to pain. It explores character, beyond a capacity to endure punishment. Dylan Hartley, one of England's most successful captains, tells a story of hard men and harsh truths. From the sixteen-year-old Kiwi who travelled alone to England, to the winner of ninety-seven international caps, he describes with brutal clarity the sport's increasing demand on players and the toll it takes on their mental health, as well as the untimely injury that shattered his dreams of leading England in the 2019 World Cup.The Hurt is rugby in the raw, a unique insight into the price of sporting obsession. 'Few have had more twists and turns in a pro rugby career' Robert Kitson, Guardian ' Anyone who cares about the game, in which he won 97 caps for England and played 250 times for Northampton, should read Hartley's book' Don McRae, Guardian

     Christopher McKinlay has been featured in Wired Magazine for his groundbreaking analysis of OkCupid. For the first time he’s showing non-experts how to turn Internet dating on its head. This concise guide will show anyone (straight, gay, male or female) the procedure McKinlay used to meet his fiancee and how the same ideas can transform their lives and bring them from browsing to contact. One summer evening while logged into a supercomputer in Colorado waiting for a large computation, McKinlay was killing time on OkC when he was troubled by a problem: what if large groups of people responded to OkCupid’s personality questionnaire in statistically similar ways? He created custom software to scrape data from the site, collecting over 6,000,000 answers to OkC’s “match questions” from more than 20,000 real users. This data made clear he’d been using the site the wrong way. Based on his findings, McKinlay (a mathematics PhD), optimized his own profile. The transformation was profound. He went from showing a “match percentage” of 90% with a few hundred women in the L.A. area to showing 90% or higher with over 30,000 local women. Unsolicited messages from attractive strangers began flooding his inbox. With a foreword by Jon Finkel, McKinlay’s insightful how-to will teach you how to benefit from the buried statistical patterns of online romance.

    Equal parts memoir/family saga/film book, Growing Up with Manos: The Hands of Fate shares the behind-the-scenes story of the making of Manos: from creator Hal Warren's alleged bet with TV producer Stirling Silliphant that "anyone could make a movie," to the tragic suicide of John Reynolds (Torgo), right up through the newest Manos-related projects that are carrying the film into the digital age. Jackey's stories dispel much of the Manos mythology while crystallizing a unique time and place in America, where a crew of actors with a bad script and a rented camera set out to make a bad movie-and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Jackey Neyman Jones is a professional artist living in the Great Northwest. Laura Mazzuca Toops is a writer/editor with more than 30 years' experience in business and fiction writing. She is the author of three historical novels.

    It's a lot like asking a woman who's just come home from a girls' dinner 'What did you talk about?'  The short answer?  Everything! When Mia Freedman talks, people listen. Perhaps not her husband. Or her children. But other people. Women. Mia has a knack for putting into words the dilemmas, delights and dramas of women everywhere. The new rules for dating in the internet-romance age? Yep, tricky stuff. Things are not what they used to be. And sex talk at the dinner table? Appropriate or not? Perhaps not, unless in an educational capacity and even then some things are best left unsaid . . . With intrepid curiosity and a delicious sense of humour, Mia navigates her way through the topics – great and small – of modern life.

    But this is only the beginning. Your new body needs a new nutrition plan—starting now. The decision to have bariatric surgery is a life-changing one. Though not an all-in-one solution, for many people it marks a profound moment in their journey towards renewed health. According to the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS), factors such as rethinking nutrition and modifying what you eat will play a vital role in determining your long-term weight loss success. But where do you begin?Bariatric dietician Sarah Kent helps bariatric patients by providing a range of pre- and post-operative nutritional services. Sarah knows how important it is—and how challenging it can seem—to rethink the way you eat. She also knows it’s totally possible, as do the hundreds of bariatric surgery patients who’ve benefitted from her support groups at Froedtert Hospital’s accredited Center of Excellence for bariatric surgery.With that in mind, Sarah sought out to create a bariatric cookbook that was easy to use, so you can get started right away. In Fresh Start Bariatric Cookbook, Sarah offers healthy, delicious takes on your favorite foods, so you can eat what you love without the fear of undoing the results of your surgery. With Fresh Start Bariatric Cookbook, you’ll discover: More than 100 recipes that address the dietary necessities after a variety of weight loss surgeries, including: vertical sleeve gastrectomy, laparoscopic adjustable gastric band placement, and more Accurate serving size guidance, nutritional information, and labeling specific to your current post-op stage: from full liquids to purees, soft foods to general diet…this bariatric cookbook has it all Helpful identification of prep time, cook time, and total time so you can choose the bariatric cookbook recipe that works best for your schedule Simple, easy-to-follow bariatric cookbook recipes account for the importance of adequate post-op protein intake with the inclusion of useful tips for how you can increase the amount of protein in each meal Fresh Start Bariatric Cookbook has everything you need to continue along your post-bariatric surgery journey and discover the healthy life you deserve.