Book picks similar to
The Pottery Kilns of Roman Britain by Vivien G. Swan
archaeology
it-wikipedia
pottery
roman
Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction
Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen - 2007
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.
I Hate the Internet
Jarett Kobek - 2016
As billions of tweets fuel the city’s gentrification and the human wreckage piles up, a group of friends suffers the consequences of being useless in a new world that despises the pointless and unprofitable. In this, his first full-length novel, Jarett Kobek tackles the pressing questions of our moment. Why do we applaud the enrichment of CEOs at the expense of the weak and the powerless? Why are we giving away our intellectual property? Why is activism in the 21st Century nothing more than a series of morality lectures typed into devices built by slaves? Here, at last, comes an explanation of the Internet in the crudest possible terms.
Goodbye to Berlin
Christopher Isherwood - 1939
It is goodbye to a Berlin wild, wicked, breathtaking, decadent beyond belief and already -- in the years between the wars -- welcoming death in through the door, though more with a wink than a whimper.~from the back cover
The Roaches Have No King
Daniel Evan Weiss - 1990
This grubby army who, up until now, had happily existed on the food debris littering his flat, now face a harsh future: eviction or death from starvation. Driven into a frenzy by their dark fate, a leader cockroach, Numbers, devises a diabolical plan which will forever rid them of Ruth and her damnable tidiness. Enlisting the unwitting help of Rufus, the local cocaine dealer, Elizabeth and his hot-blooded ex-girlfriend, the Gypsy, they act out a masterplan to save their home?and their lives.
Imperium
Christian Kracht - 2012
His destination: the island Kabakon. His goal: to establish a colony based on worship of the sun and coconuts. His malnourished body was found on the beach on Kabakon in 1919; he was forty-three years old.Christian Kracht's Imperium uses the outlandish details of Engelhardt's life to craft a fable about the allure of extremism and its fundamental foolishness. Engelhardt is at once a pitiable, misunderstood outsider and a rigid ideologue, and his misguided notions of purity and his spiral into madness presage the horrors of the mid-twentieth century.Playing with the tropes of classic adventure tales such as Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe, Kracht's novel, an international bestseller, is funny, bizarre, shocking, and poignant. His allusions are misleading, his historical time line is twisted, his narrator is unreliable--and the result is a novel that is a cabinet of mirrors, a maze pitted with trapdoors. Both a provocative satire and a serious meditation on the fragility and audacity of human activity, Imperium is impossible to categorize and utterly unlike anything you've read before.
Charlemagne
Matthias Becher - 1999
He founded the first empire in western Europe after the fall of Rome, and his court at Aix-la-Chapelle was a center of classical learning and a focus of the Carolingian Renaissance. This book is a splendid introduction to Charlemagne’s life and legend. Matthias Becher describes Charlemagne’s rise to emperor and traces his political and military maneuvering against the Saxons, the Lombards, and others, as Charlemagne incorporated these lands into his own realm. Becher points out that under Charlemagne, jury courts were introduced, the laws of the Franks revised and written down, new coinage introduced, weights and measures reformed, and a Frankish grammar begun. Charlemagne tried to give his kingdom a spiritual basis by referring to antique traditions, says Becher, and he explores the tensions that existed in Charlemagne’s court between modern ideas and traditional thinking. He concludes by discussing Charlemagne’s kinship network, the evolving arrangements for his succession, the effects of his reign, and his posthumous fame. Concise, insightful, and eminently readable, this biography of Charlemagne provides a wealth of information about a remarkable man and his times.
Monoceros
Suzette Mayr - 2011
And although he felt terribly alone, his suicide changes everyone around him.His parents are devastated. His secret boyfriend's girlfriend is relieved. His unicorn- and virginity-obsessed classmate, Faraday, is shattered; she wishes she had made friends with him that time she sold him an Iced Cappuccino at Tim Hortons. His English teacher, mid-divorce and mid-menopause, wishes she could remember the dead student's name, that she could care more about her students than her ex's new girlfriend. Who happens to be her cousin. The school guidance counselor, Walter, feels guilty—maybe he should have made an effort when the kid asked for help. Max, the principal, is worried about how it will reflect on the school. And Walter, who's secretly been in a relationship with Max for years, thinks that's a little callous. He's also tired of Max's obsession with some sci-fi show on TV. And Max wishes Walter would lose some weight and remember to use a coaster.And then Max meets a drag queen named Crepe Suzette. And everything changes.
Spin: 20 Years of Alternative Music: Original Writing on Rock, Hip-Hop, Techno, and Beyond
Will Hermes - 2005
Through the introduction of MTV and the alternative rock revolution, it's been many things. Rude. Brilliant. Soulful. Snotty. Angry. Delirious. In the past two decades, genres have spawned like mad, from goth, indie rock, and gangsta rap to emo and the garage rock revival. This twentieth-anniversary tribute celebrates the passion and fury of the music, with original essays, quotes, and photographs by contributors who are as hopelessly obsessed with it as you are. SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music features: Alan Light on Beastie Boys, Ann Powers on U2, Charles Aaron on R.E.M., Dave Eggers on The Smiths + Morrissey, Marc Spitz on Goth, Simon Reynolds on Depeche Mode + Synth-pop, Dave Itzkoff on ’80s Teen Movies, Chuck Klosterman on Weezer, Will Hermes on Radiohead, Neil Strauss on Nine Inch Nails + Industrial, Sacha Jenkins on Public Enemy, Andy Greenwald on Emo, RJ Smith on Gangsta Rap, Jon Dolan on The White Stripes, Chris Norris on Nirvana, Doug Brod on Oasis + Britpop, Jim DeRogatis on Smashing Pumpkins, Laura Sinagra on Courtney Love, Ta-Nehisi Coates on Tupac
Manhattan Transfer
John Dos Passos - 1925
From Fourteenth Street to the Bowery, Delmonico's to the underbelly of the city waterfront, Dos Passos chronicles the lives of characters struggling to become a part of modernity before they are destroyed by it.More than seventy-five years after its first publication, Manhattan Transfer still stands as "a novel of the very first importance" (Sinclair Lewis). It is a masterpiece of modern fiction and a lasting tribute to the dual-edged nature of the American dream.
Secrets of the Great Pyramid: Two Thousand Years of Adventures & Discoveries Surrounding the Mysteries of the Great Pyramid of Cheops
Peter Tompkins - 1971
Probes the mystery of the construction and significance of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, suggesting that it enshrines the scientific data of an advanced Egyptian civilization.
The Sword of the Templars
Paul Christopher - 2009
Army Ranger Lt. Col. John Holliday had resigned himself to ending his career teaching at West Point. When his uncle passes away, Holliday discovers a medieval sword-wrapped in Adolf Hitler's personal battle standard. But when someone burns down his uncle's house in an attempt to retrieve the sword, Holliday realizes that he's being drawn into a war that has been fought for centuries-a war in which he may be the next casualty.
When Rocks Cry Out
Horace Butler - 2002
Uncovered ancient maps and writings show the real ruins of four of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World that were thought to have vanished from the earth. The secrets hidden within those Wonders explode the very foundations of what we thought we knew about the world and where we had come from. Listed by the Dallas Community Colleges as a "must read," WHEN ROCKS CRY OUT ties together riddles from the Old Testament with ruins of abandoned cities that are thousands of years old...and thousands of miles away from where we thought those cities would be. Often reading like a page-turning novel, this could be one of the most important books written in the last 500 years. From the discovery of Egypt's lost ancient capital, Memphis, to a stunning hidden burial city built by the Pharaohs, to the secret ruins of King David's famed city, this book moves past recent promises about 'codes' and brings you to the real-life secret that was the explosive reason for the creation of the codes. Da Vinci's Code? Solomon's Key? Those clever puzzles can't reach the significance of the mysteries unraveled in this book. And the things in this book are real! WHEN ROCKS CRY OUT...it is a book for those who have reached a point in their life when they just want to know the truth. Finally, we can trace where our 'blood' has been and what our 'blood' has done.
The Renaissance
Peter Burke - 1964
He emphasises the survival of medieval traditions and the process of the creative adaptation of classical forms and values to their new cultural and social contexts in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. The story is carried down to the seventeenth century and the diffusion and disintegration of what had once been a coherent movement. Illustrated with black and white plates, this edition has been updated throughout to take account of recent scholarship, has a fully revised bibliography and will provide the student with a stimulating introduction to the subject. [Palgrave Macmillan]
The Lost Library
A.M. Dean - 2012
Their corruption spreads from the highest points of government to the assassins they hire to commit their crimes. They will kill for the ancient knowledge contained in the Library. And Emily Wess has exactly what they want.
Preston Falls
David Gates - 1998
Gates [has a] pitch-perfect ear for contemporary speech... and... [a] keen, journalistic eye."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York TimesIn this comic, fiercely compassionate novel, David Gates, whose first novel Jernigan was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, sends his protagonist on a visceral journey to the dark side of suburban masculinity, explores the claims youth makes on middle age, and the tenacious --at times perverse--power of love to assert itself.When Doug Willis has a mid-life crisis, he doesn't join a gym or have an affair. Instead he gets himself arrested while camping with his wife and kids, takes a two month leave of absence from his PR job, and retreats to his farmhouse in rural Preston Falls--where he plugs in his guitar and tries to shut out his life.While his wife, Jean, struggles to pay the bills and raise their sullen, skeptical kids, Willis's plans for hiatus crumble into Dewars-and-cocaine fueled disarray. A shattered window, an unguarded gun, and a shady small town attorney force a crisis--and Willis can't go home again. With its biting humor and harsh realism, Preston Falls confirms David Gates as a talent in the tradition of Russell Banks and Richard Ford: a master of dark truths and private longings.