In this new version of the introduction to Arabic letters and sounds, English-speaking students will find an innovative integration of colloquial and formal (spoken and written) Arabic. Together, the book and new companion website provide learners with all the material necessary to learn the sounds of Arabic, write its letters, and begin speaking Arabic, including interactive, self-correcting exercises to enhance learning. The companion website also gives instructors additional online grading options.FEATURES- Four-color design throughout the book features over 100 illustrations and photographs- Gives learners and instructors color-coded options for the variety of language they wish to learn in speaking: Egyptian, Levantine, or formal Arabic (MSA)- Introduces over 200 basic vocabulary words in all three forms of spoken and written Arabic side by side, including expressions for polite social interaction, and activates them in interactive homework exercises and classroom groupwork- Includes video dialogues in Egyptian and Levantine, filmed in Cairo and Damascus- Includes video footage of an Arabic calligrapher, capsules on Arabic culture, and images of street signs from Morocco, Egypt, and Lebanon- Includes new English-Arabic and Arabic-English glossaries, searchable in the companion website- Textbook includes a convenient DVD with the basic audio and video materials (no interactive exercises) for offline study that will play in iTunes and compatible MP3 players- New companion website (sold separately)--alkitaabtextbook.com--features a fully integrated set of interactive exercises with all the video and audio materials and additional online course management and grading options for teachersAlif Baa provides the essential first 20-25 contact (classroom) hours of the Al-Kitaab program, accompanied by 40-50 homework hours. Students who complete Alif Baa should reach a novice-intermediate to novice-high level of proficiency.Companion Website Minimum System Requirements: WindowsOS: Microsoft Windows 98, NT, 2000, ME, XP, Vista, 7CPU: 233MHz Pentium BasedRAM: 128MBDISPLAY:1024x768, color displayBROWSER: Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher, or Firefox version 3.0 or higherCONNECTION SPEED: A high-speed connection with throughput of 256 Kbps or more is recommended to use audio and video components.EQUIPMENT: You will need speakers or a headset to listen to audio and video components.PLUG-INS: You must have the latest version of Adobe Flash Player.MacintoshOS: Mac OSXCPU: 233MHz Power MacintoshRAM: 128MBDISPLAY:1024x768, color displayBROWSER: Firefox version 3.0 or higher, or Sarari 3.0 or higherCONNECTION SPEED: A high-speed connection with throughput of 256 Kbps or more is recommended to use audio and video components. EQUIPMENT: You will need speakers or a headset to listen to audio and video components.PLUG-INS: You must have the latest version of Adobe Flash Player.

    Unlike many Hollywood stars who do their best to avoid the press, her openness about her complicated and often outlandish life has endeared her to fans worldwide. Her most famous screen roles are covered in this biography, from Gia to Lara Croft, which established her as one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood. Also explored is her reputation for living on the edge, and Angelina's refreshing honesty around tempestuous romantic relationships, bisexuality, wild partying, and breakdowns and thoughts of suicide. Finally, her recent roles as philanthropist, mother, and half of a Hollywood golden couple with Brad Pitt, are also discussed in this inspiring must-read book for fans of this continually fascinating global superstar.

    There is no longer such a thing as an American economy, say Robert Reich at the beginning of this brilliant book.  What does it mean to be a nation when money, goods, and services know no borders?  What skills will be the most valuable in the coming century? And how can our country best ensure that all its citizen have a share in the new global economy?  Robert B. Reich, the widely respected and bestselling author of The Next American Frontier and The Resurgent Liberal, defines the real challenge facing the United States in the 21st century in this trail-blazing book.  Original, readable, and vastly informed, The Work of Nations is certain to set a standard for the next generation of policy-makers.

    Innovations in numerous industries revived a sluggish post-World War I economy, and mass production methods allowed for the standardized, rapid production of various goods, the most notable of which was the automobile. The roar of thousands of newly manufactured vehicles filled the city streets, and the ripple effect of the industry spawned a myriad of ancillary industries, such as car dealerships and mechanic shops. Innovations in the entertainment industry heralded the Golden Age of Radio and resulted in the replacement of vaudeville with cinema as

    This manual contains fully worked-out solutions to all of the odd-numbered exercises in the text, giving students a way to check their answers and ensure that they took the correct steps to arrive at an answer.

    He was Stalin’s closest henchman. At one time he had a million armed men under his direct personal command. He was a sadist and a mass murderer. And he was also a vicious rapist with a compulsive appetite for young girls. This is possible: Beria may have kept a private diary in which he lovingly recorded his sexual activities, his murders, various scandals involving men now highly placed in the Soviet hierarchy — and the true facts of Stalin’s death. This is certain: The publication of Beria’s diary would cause the greatest political scandal the world has ever known — and set off a deadly manhunt for those responsible for its release … The private diaries of Beria — Stalin’s notorious chief of secret police — are a lurid, shattering indictment of Russian political methods and contain a new account of what really happened at Stalin’s death. They confirm Beria as one of the greatest human monsters of our time, both in his personal life and in his political manipulations of top Soviet politicians, some of whom are in power today. The Beria Papers are sold to an American publisher for three million dollars. On publication they are an immediate, sensational bestseller. They cause panic in Moscow and outrage everywhere — even in the upper echelons of the U.S. government, where there is fear that such revelations will create a dangerous precedent in smear campaigns against world leaders. So the world’s two most powerful secret services — the Soviet KGB and the American CIA — are ordered to track down the book’s origin. Their investigations range from New York to Washington, to London, Moscow, Munich, Budapest, Vienna and finally to a small island in the Indian Ocean where the activities of the two secret agencies come horrifically together. But can The Beria Papers possibly be a hoax? Praise for The Beria Papers: ‘Intriguing and gripping … compulsively exciting’ - Sunday Express ‘Both exciting and really convincing … fascinating. Part adventure, part thriller, part a documentary of might-have-been history, The Beria Papers is the best thing of its kind for a long time.’ - Sunday Times ‘The most interesting and original thriller since The Odessa File … a sharp and intelligent thriller that cries out for filming.’ - Daily Mail ‘Intriguing and gripping … not merely compulsively exciting entertainment, it is also so well researched and the background appears so absolutely authentic that the whole fantastic story could just be true.’ - Sunday Express Alan Emlyn Williams(born 1935) is an ex-foreign correspondent, novelist and writer of thrillers. He was educated at Stowe, Grenoble and Heidelberg Universities, and at King's College, Cambridge where he graduated in 1957 with a B.A. in modern languages. His father was the actor and writer Emlyn Williams.

    The story of art unfolds in its full historical, social, religious, economic, and cultural context, deepening students' understanding of art, architecture, painting, and sculpture. This Concise version features color photographs, a stunning design, and the most current research and scholarship. What's more, the ancillary package that accompanies GARDNER'S ART THROUGH THE AGES: A CONCISE HISTORY features a wealth of tools to enhance your students' experience in the course. With each new copy of the book, students receive a copy of the ArtStudy CD-ROM-an interactive electronic study aid that fully integrates with the text and includes hundreds of high-quality digital images, plus maps, quizzes, and more.

    A companion work to Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman's textbook Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, The Game Design Reader is a classroom sourcebook, a reference for working game developers, and a great read for game fans and players.Thirty-two essays by game designers, game critics, game fans, philosophers, anthropologists, media theorists, and others consider fundamental questions: What are games and how are they designed? How do games interact with culture at large? What critical approaches can game designers take to create game stories, game spaces, game communities, and new forms of play?Salen and Zimmerman have collected seminal writings that span 50 years to offer a stunning array of perspectives. Game journalists express the rhythms of game play, sociologists tackle topics such as role-playing in vast virtual worlds, players rant and rave, and game designers describe the sweat and tears of bringing a game to market. Each text acts as a springboard for discussion, a potential class assignment, and a source of inspiration. The book is organized around fourteen topics, from The Player Experience to The Game Design Process, from Games and Narrative to Cultural Representation. Each topic, introduced with a short essay by Salen and Zimmerman, covers ideas and research fundamental to the study of games, and points to relevant texts within the Reader. Visual essays between book sections act as counterpoint to the writings.Like Rules of Play, The Game Design Reader is an intelligent and playful book. An invaluable resource for professionals and a unique introduction for those new to the field, The Game Design Reader is essential reading for anyone who takes games seriously.

    Overseas, war is raging in Vietnam, Civil Rights marches are on the streets, and women’s liberation is stirring – but at home in Corrigan Charlie Bucktin dreams of writing the Great Australian Novel. Charlie’s 14 and smart. But when 16-year-old, constantly-in-trouble Jasper Jones appears at his window one night, Charlie’s out of his depth. Jasper has stumbled upon a terrible crime in the scrub nearby, and he knows he’s the first suspect – that goes with the colour of his skin. He needs every ounce of Charlie’s bookish brain to help solve this awful mystery before the town turns on Jasper. Kate Mulvany’s adaptation of Craig Silvey’s award-winning novel is wise and beautiful. A coming-of-age story, Jasper Jones interweaves the lives of complex individuals all struggling to find happiness among the buried secrets of a small rural community.Whether you know the book or not, this piercing adaptation is very much worth seeing for the way it depicts – and shows ways across – some of the deep and enduring divides in our society." - Jason Blake SMH

    Drugs, Behavior, and Modern Society, 6/e, examines the impact of drug-taking behavior on our society and our daily lives.  The use and abuse of a wide range of licit and illicit drugs are discussed from historical, biological, psychological, and sociological perspectives.  The use of Drugs in our lives and drug-taking behavior, legally restricted drugs in our society, legal drugs in our society, medicinal drugs, treatment, prevention, and education.  Forstudents, or people working with drug related topics in the fields of psychology and health.

    This brief, accessible introduction describes some of the most interesting research in the field and also enables readers to implement and experiment with genetic algorithms on their own. It focuses in depth on a small set of important and interesting topics--particularly in machine learning, scientific modeling, and artificial life--and reviews a broad span of research, including the work of Mitchell and her colleagues.The descriptions of applications and modeling projects stretch beyond the strict boundaries of computer science to include dynamical systems theory, game theory, molecular biology, ecology, evolutionary biology, and population genetics, underscoring the exciting general purpose nature of genetic algorithms as search methods that can be employed across disciplines.An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms is accessible to students and researchers in any scientific discipline. It includes many thought and computer exercises that build on and reinforce the reader's understanding of the text. The first chapter introduces genetic algorithms and their terminology and describes two provocative applications in detail. The second and third chapters look at the use of genetic algorithms in machine learning (computer programs, data analysis and prediction, neural networks) and in scientific models (interactions among learning, evolution, and culture; sexual selection; ecosystems; evolutionary activity). Several approaches to the theory of genetic algorithms are discussed in depth in the fourth chapter. The fifth chapter takes up implementation, and the last chapter poses some currently unanswered questions and surveys prospects for the future of evolutionary computation.

    Feeding Desire analyses this beauty ideal in the context of Islam, conceptions of health, and notions of desire Full description

    They sailed far out to sea. The blue one returned to the harbor. The red one sailed home too. But the yellow boat sailed up to the sun." Benjamin always concluded his bedtime ritual by saying, "Mom, you can be the red boat or the blue boat, but I am the yellow boat." This remarkable voyage of Benjamin was extensively developed and widely produced in America for several years, always to ovations. Cast of 4 men and 3 women.THE YELLOW BOAT is based on the true story of David and Sonja Saar's son, Benjamin, who was born with congenital hemophilia, and died in 1987 at the age of 8 of AIDS related complications. A uniquely gifted visual artist, Benjamin's buoyant imagination transformed his physical and emotional pain into a blaze of colors and shapes in his fanciful drawings and paintings. The story of THE YELLOW BOAT Is a glorious affirmation of a child's life, and the strength and courage of all children. Recommended for children of age 8 and older, parents, families and adults.

    In collective violence, social interaction immediately inflicts physical damage, involves at least two perpetrators of damage, and results in part from coordination among the persons who perform the damaging acts. Charles Tilly argues that collective violence is complicated, changeable, and unpredictable in some regards, yet also results from similar causes variously combined in different times and places. Pinpointing the causes, combinations, and settings helps to explain collective violence and also helps to identify the best ways to mitigate violence and create democracies with a minimum of damage to persons and property. Charles Tilly is the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. He has published more than twenty scholarly books, including twenty specialized monographs and edited volumes on political processes, inequality, population change and European history.

    Belkin must begin each day with the task he calls The Service: visiting Christian chat-rooms to reply to users innocent questions with mocking answers. “Why do they call the taking of the communion ‘Mass?’”? Belkin124 responds: “They call it the Mass because after Jesus was crucified, a mass of people rushed forward to the cross and ate him. Now they eat the wafer to remember it.” At forty-seven, balding, and mildly agoraphobic, Belkin is a man without direction. He rarely leaves his apartment (he refers to the outside world as The Pounding), and when he must leave, he meticulously recounts the day in his Thunder Book; a journal where he lists all that repulsed him that day.But everything changes the day Belkin returns to his apartment to find the building ablaze along with the suspected murder of the apartment building’s maintenance man. As police question him, Belkin meets the mysterious Pernice Balfour, the alluring, religiously obsessed neighbor accused of the crime. Soon, Belkin has no choice but to come out of his shell (and his apartment) to try to clear her name. But the more Belkin investigates, the muddier things become. Wandering through San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin district, Belkin begins to unravel the truth behind the murder, and encounters a bizarre series of characters and situations: "pansexual" crime-scene photographer, an idiot detective, and an all-knowing government operative.Whispering Bodies is comical offbeat exploration of the wisdom found in madness and the madness found in conventional life, all brought together in a classic tale of who-done-it.