John Lennon was one of the greatest songwriters the world has ever known, creator of "Help!", "Come Together", "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Imagine", and dozens more. But it was in his correspondences that he let his personality and poetry flow unguarded. Now, gathered for the first time in book form, are his letters to family, friends, strangers, and lovers from every point in his life. Funny, informative, wise, poetic, and sometimes heartbreaking, his letters illuminate a never-before-seen intimate side of the private genius. This groundbreaking collection of almost 300 letters and postcards has been edited and annotated by Hunter Davies, whose authorized biography The Beatles (1968) was published to great acclaim. With unparalleled knowledge of Lennon and his contemporaries, Davies reads between the lines of the artist's words, contextualizing them in Lennon's life and using them to reveal the man himself.

    This textbook traces the history of video games, introduces the major theories used to analyze games such as ludology and narratology, reviews the economics of the game industry, examines the aesthetics of game design, surveys the broad range of game genres, explores player culture, and addresses the major debates surrounding the medium, from educational benefits to the effects of violence.Throughout the book, the authors ask readers to consider larger questions about the medium:what defines a video game? who plays games? why do we play games? how do games affect the player?Extensively illustrated, Understanding Video Games is an indispensable and comprehensive resource for those interested in the ways video games are reshaping entertainment and society. A Companion Website (www.routledge.com/textbooks/978041597...) features student resources including discussion questions for each chapter, a glossary of key terms, a video game timeline, and links to other video game studies resources for further study.

    Hunters have declared all out war on those with magic in their blood and everyone has been caught in the crossfire.But Hunters, it would seem, are far from the world's biggest threat.A dark evil has been unleashed. One driven by wrath and an insatiable hunger for vengeance.And the fate of the world and all those in it rest in a single pair hands.The final spell has begun.The end draws near.And Lilly Hooper's fate has been sealed.Volume three brings the gripping, dark and intense Last Witch trilogy to its climax.Get ready. This is no fairy tale.

    What impact do these images and ideas have on people's identities?The new edition of Media, Gender and Identity is a highly readable introduction to the relationship between media and gender identities today. Fully revised and updated, including new case studies and a new chapter, it considers a wide range of research and provides new ways for thinking about the media's influence on gender and sexuality.David Gauntlett discusses movies such as Knocked Up and Spiderman 3, men's and women's magazines, TV shows, self-help books, YouTube videos, and more, to show how the media play a role in the shaping of individual self-identities.The book includes:a comparison of gender representations in the past and today, from James Bond to Ugly Bettyan introduction to key theorists such as Judith Butler, Anthony Giddens and Michel Foucault an outline of creative approaches, where identities are explored with video, drawing, or Lego bricks a Companion Website with extra articles, interviews and selected links, at: www.theoryhead.com.

    The cruel bon mot which has its sting drawn from the laughter that ensues. It was Oscar Wilde who pointed out that no comment was in bad taste if it was amusing - and if for that reason alone it is worth while preserving these delightful examples of verbal dexterity.

    Stories about weaknesses in cybersecurity like the "Heartbleed" leak, or malicious software on the cash registers at your local Target have become alarmingly common. Even more alarming is the sheer number of victims associated with these crimes--the identities and personal information of millions is stolen outright as criminals drain bank accounts and max out credit cards. The availability of stolen credit card information is now so common that it can be purchased on the black market for as little as four dollars with potentially thousands at stake for the victims. Possibly even more catastrophic are hackers at a national level that have begun stealing national security, or economic and trade secrets. The world economy and geopolitics hang in the balance.In Cyberphobia, Edward Lucas unpacks this shadowy, but metastasizing problem confronting our security--both for individuals and nations. The uncomfortable truth is that we do not take cybersecurity seriously enough. Strong regulations on automotive safety or guidelines for the airline industry are commonplace, but when it comes to the internet, it might as well be the Wild West. Standards of securing our computers and other internet-connected technology are diverse, but just like the rules of the road meant to protect both individual drivers and everyone else driving alongside them, weak cybersecurity on the computers and internet systems near us put everyone at risk. Lucas sounds a compelling and necessary alarm on behalf of cybersecurity and prescribes immediate and bold solutions to this grave threat.

    My 4th book, "Let's Spend the NIght Together," was over long (imagine that!) and this scintillating chapter had to be excised. But here it is in all it's naughty, bawdy glory: the untold tales of groupies and their one night romps with rock gods.

    Philip Larkin's second collection, The Less Deceived was published by The Marvell Press in 1955, and now appears for the first time in Faber covers.The eye can hardly pick them out From the cold shade they shelter in, Till wind distresses tail and mane; Then one crops grass, and moves about - The other seeming to look on - And stands anonymous again.from 'At Grass'

    Thomas, the style and cultural reporter for Newsweek, takes a hard-hitting look at the world of new luxury, and argues that globalization and corporate greed have ensured that old-time manufacturing has bowed to sweatshops and wild profits to produce mediocre merchandise.

    An honest and affecting explorer of human experience, Richter turns tales from the fringe into stunningly intimate depictions of loss and loneliness. Her voice is distinctly original and deeply funny.The beauty treatment --An island of boyfriends --Goal --Sally's story --The first men --The ocean --Rats eat cats --Rules for being human --Prom night --My date with Satan --A groupie, a rock star --Goodnight --A prodigy of longing

    And because she’d quit drinking, she no longer had the comfort blanket of alcohol to tamp down her anxiety. How did sober people stay sane? In recent times, the self-help industry has exploded into a multi-billion dollar global industry – and along with it has come every imaginable type of therapy, healing or general woo-woo. In the past, Rebecca scoffed at this industry, mocking its reliance on half-baked science and the way it appears to prey on the mentally fragile.But as she searched for a meaning of life that did not involve booze, she found it increasingly hard to rationalize her default scepticism. This shit really seems to work for some people, she reasoned. And it’s not like I have any particularly solid alternatives.Rebecca lives in Cape Town, the undisputed epicentre of ‘alternative’ paths to peace and enlightenment in South Africa. She decided that over the course of a year, she would embark on a quest for personal wellness, spiritual enlightenment and good old-fashioned happiness. She was willing, within reason, to try anything. She would open herself to even the most outlandish contemporary fads in self-improvement.What followed was a twelve-month immersion in the world of auras, chakras, hallucinogenic drugs, sweat lodges, sangomas, past lives and more.And by the end of it? Maybe she would find some new ways of thinking and living. Or maybe she would emerge with her prejudices untouched.Either way, it would be a good story.

    Indispensable for understanding the culture of the '60s and the music that was at its heart." - starred review, Kirkus ReviewsIn 1966, at the ripe age of 22, Richard Goldstein approached The Village Voice with a novel idea. "I want to be a rock critic," he said. "What's that?" the editor replied.It was a logical question, since rock criticism didn't yet exist. In the weekly column he would produce for theVoice, Goldstein became the first person to write regularly in a major publication about the music that changed our lives. He believed deeply in the power of rock, and, long before it was acceptable, he championed the idea that this music was a serious art form. From his unique position in journalism, he saw the full arc of events that shaped culture and politics in the 1960s--and participated in them, too. He toured with Janis Joplin, spent a day at the Grateful Dead house in San Francisco, and dropped acid with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. He was present for Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the student uprising at Columbia, and the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention. He was challenged to a boxing match by Norman Mailer, and took Susan Sontag to her first disco. Goldstein developed close relationships with several rock legends--Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, to name two--and their early deaths came as a wrenching shock, fueling his disillusionment as he watched the music he loved rapidly evolve from a communal rite to a vast industry--and the sense of hope for radical social upheaval fade away.Another Little Piece of My Heart is the intimate memoir of the writer as a young man with profound ambition. It is also a sweeping personal account of a decade that no one else could provide--a deeply moving, unparalleled document of rock and revolution in America.

    Today it is damaged, discouraged, and fighting for its future. In Glass House, journalist Brian Alexander uses the story of one town to show how seeds sown 35 years ago have sprouted to give us Trumpism, inequality, and an eroding national cohesion.The Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world’s largest maker of glass tableware, was the base on which Lancaster’s society was built. As Glass House unfolds, bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders, and Lancaster’s citizens, Alexander shows how financial engineering took hold in the 1980s, accelerated in the 21st Century, and wrecked the company. We follow CEO Sam Solomon as he tries to rescue the company from the New York private equity firm that hired him. Meanwhile, Alexander goes behind the scenes, entwined with the lives of residents as they wrestle with heroin, politics, high-interest lenders, low wage jobs, technology, and the new demands of American life: people like Brian Gossett, the fourth generation to work at Anchor Hocking; Joe Piccolo, first-time director of the annual music festival who discovers the town relies on him, and it, for salvation; Jason Roach, who police believed may have been Lancaster’s biggest drug dealer; and Eric Brown, a local football hero-turned-cop who comes to realize that he can never arrest Lancaster’s real problems.

    Showing us how a single official text was created from the proliferation of different scripts, Beal traces its path as it became embraced as the word of God and Book of books. Among his surprising insights:• Christianity thrived for centuries without any Bible—there was no official canon of scriptures, much less a book big enough to hold them all. Congregations used various collections of scrolls and codices.  • There is no “original” Bible, no single source text behind the thousands of different Bibles on the market today. The farther we go back in the Bible’s history, the more versions we find.  • The idea of the Bible as the literal Word of God is relatively new—only about a century old. Beal’s is an inspiring new take on the Bible. In calling for a fresh understanding of the ways scriptures were used in the past, he offers the chance to rediscover a Bible, and a faith, that is truer to its own history—not a book of answers but a library of questions.