Feeding Desire: Fatness, Beauty and Sexuality Among a Saharan People: Fatness and Beauty in the Sahara


Rebecca Popenoe - 2003
    Feeding Desire analyses this beauty ideal in the context of Islam, conceptions of health, and notions of desire Full description

Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism


Stephen Graham - 2009
    From the slums of the global South to the wealthy financial centers of the West, Cities Under Siege traces the spread of political violence through the sites, spaces, infrastructure and symbols of the world’s rapidly expanding metropolitan areas. Drawing on a wealth of original research, Stephen Graham shows how Western militaries and security forces now perceive all urban terrain as a conflict zone inhabited by lurking shadow enemies. Urban inhabitants have become targets that need to be continually tracked, scanned and controlled. Graham examines the transformation of Western armies into high-tech urban counter-insurgency forces. He looks at the militarization and surveillance of international borders, the use of ‘security’ concerns to suppress democratic dissent, and the enacting of legislation to suspend civilian law. In doing so, he reveals how the New Military Urbanism permeates the entire fabric of urban life, from subway and transport networks hardwired with high-tech ‘command and control’ systems to the insidious militarization of a popular culture corrupted by the all-pervasive discourse of ‘terrorism.’

Caetana Says No: Women's Stories from a Brazilian Slave Society


Sandra Lauderdale Graham - 2002
    The slave woman struggled to avoid an unwanted husband and the woman of privilege assumed a patriarch's role to endow a family of her former slaves with the means for a free life. Sandra Lauderdale Graham casts new light on larger meanings of slave and free, female and male, through these compact histories.

The Big Three and Me


Billy Casper - 2012
    And yet, when golf historians write about the legends of the game, with special attention paid to the above-listed "Big Three," his name is often left out of the discussion, or is at best an afterthought. In this fascinating autobiography, Casper tells his life story, shining candid insight into the man who quietly collected fifty-one PGA Tour victories, the seventh highest total in history.

Dajjal: The Anti Christ


Ahmad Thomson - 1997
    However, this best-selling book is not simply a catalogue of these events. Rather it examines and compares the outward existential behaviour, along with its inward psychological reality, both of those who do not base their way of life on Prophetic guidance and those that do.

A Companion To Easter Island (Guide To Rapa Nui)


James Grant-Peterkin - 2010
    This guidebook includes the island's history, culture and all of its significant archaeological sites. It also contains all of the practical information needed for your visit, including island activities and up-to-date restaurant and shopping recommendations. It will also tell you the best times to visit the sites in order to get the optimal light for photography and to avoid the crowds, as well as many other 'local' tips that no other guidebook will tell you. Contains over 100 color photos of Easter Island, as well as color maps of both the island and the one town, Hanga Roa. New, Updated edition (2014).

Made in Tokyo: Guide Book


Junzo Kuroda - 2001
    Born of a functional need rather than aesthetic ideal, golf range nets span spaghetti snack bars and a host of 70 other remarkable combinations are pictured and described in this quintessential glimpse of Tokyo's architectural grass roots.

The Last Gangster: My Final Confession


Charlie Richardson - 2013
    Boss of the Richardson Gang and rival of the Krays, to cross him would result in brutal repercussions. Famously arrested on the day England won the World Cup in 1966, his trial heard he allegedly used iron bars, bolt cutters and electric shocks on his enemies.The Last Gangster is Richardson’s frank account of his largely untold life story, finished just before his death in September 2012. He shares the truth behind the rumours and tells of his feuds with the Krays for supremacy, undercover missions involving politicians, many lost years banged up in prison and reveals shocking secrets about royalty, phone hacking, bent coppers and the infamous black box.Straight up, shocking and downright gripping, this is the ultimate exposé on this legendary gangster and his extraordinary life.

The Kennedy Conspiracy: 12 Startling Revelations About the JFK Assassination


Bill Sloan - 2012
    Author Bill Sloan, award-winning journalist and co-author of JFK: THE LAST DISSENTING WITNESS, was working at the City Desk of the DALLAS TIMES HERALD just four blocks away when the fatal shots were fired. He helped cover the fast-moving sequence of events that followed, and later interviewed many of the people involved. Accounts in THE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY include those of Ed Hoffman, who saw the man who shot the president (and it wasn’t Oswald)—but was unable to communicate it to the authorities because he was deaf and mute; Gary Cornwell, deputy chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, who saw the classified information still withheld from the public, and reveals how the FBI turned the investigation into “a joke, a farce, and a national disgrace”; James Tague, who was wounded by a bullet that the Warren Commission insisted was never fired; and Dr. Joe D. Goldstritch, who was in the Parkland ER when Kennedy’s body was brought in, and who witnessed the surgical procedure that destroyed the neat entry wound in the president’s throat.

Isms: Understanding Architecture


Jeremy Melvin - 2005
    Each spread is devoted to a distinct architectural movement and explains when it first emerged, the historical period to which it applies, the principal disputes over its applicability, and illustrates important structures, practitioners, key words, and distinctive features. From Hellenic Classicism and Expressionism to Brutalism and Blobism, with many stops along the way, these sixty well illustrated and clearly defined "isms" help put all of the "built environments" of the world into context.

The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life


Richard Florida - 2002
    Weaving storytelling with masses of new and updated research, Richard Florida traces the fundamental theme that runs through a host of seemingly unrelated changes in American society: the growing role of creativity in our economy. Just as William Whyte's 1956 classic The Organization Man showed how the organizational ethos of that age permeated every aspect of life, Florida describes a society in which the creative ethos is increasingly dominant. Millions of us are beginning to work and live much as creative types like artists and scientists always have-with the result that our values and tastes, our personal relationships, our choices of where to live, and even our sense and use of time are changing. Leading the shift are the nearly 38 million Americans in many diverse fields who create for a living-the Creative Class. The Rise of the Creative Class chronicles the ongoing sea of change in people's choices and attitudes, and shows not only what's happening but also how it stems from a fundamental economic change. The Creative Class now comprises more than thirty percent of the entire workforce. Their choices have already had a huge economic impact. In the future they will determine how the workplace is organized, what companies will prosper or go bankrupt, and even which cities will thrive or wither.

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia


Anthony M. Townsend - 2013
    A century ago, the telegraph and the mechanical tabulator were used to tame cities of millions. Today, cellular networks and cloud computing tie together the complex choreography of mega-regions of tens of millions of people.In response, cities worldwide are deploying technology to address both the timeless challenges of government and the mounting problems posed by human settlements of previously unimaginable size and complexity. In Chicago, GPS sensors on snow plows feed a real-time "plow tracker" map that everyone can access. In Zaragoza, Spain, a "citizen card" can get you on the free city-wide Wi-Fi network, unlock a bike share, check a book out of the library, and pay for your bus ride home. In New York, a guerrilla group of citizen-scientists installed sensors in local sewers to alert you when stormwater runoff overwhelms the system, dumping waste into local waterways.As technology barons, entrepreneurs, mayors, and an emerging vanguard of civic hackers are trying to shape this new frontier, Smart Cities considers the motivations, aspirations, and shortcomings of them all while offering a new civics to guide our efforts as we build the future together, one click at a time.

Backwoods Genius


Julia Scully - 2012
    After his death, the contents of his studio, including thousands of glass negatives, were sold off for five dollars. For years the fragile negatives sat forgotten and deteriorating in cardboard boxes in an open carport. How did it happen, then, that the most implausible of events took place? That Disfarmer’s haunting portraits were retrieved from oblivion, that today they sell for upwards of $12,000 each at posh New York art galleries; his photographs proclaimed works of art by prestigious critics and journals and exhibited around the world? The story of Disfarmer’s rise to fame is a colorful, improbable, and ultimately fascinating one that involves an unlikely assortment of individuals. Would any of this have happened if a young New York photographer hadn't been so in love with a pretty model that he was willing to give up his career for her; if a preacher’s son from Arkansas hadn't spent 30 years in the Army Corps of Engineers mapping the U.S. from an airplane; if a magazine editor hadn't felt a strange and powerful connection to the work? The cast of characters includes these, plus a restless and wealthy young Chicago aristocrat and even a grandson of FDR. It’s a compelling story which reveals how these diverse people were part of a chain of events whose far-reaching consequences none of them could have foreseen, least of all the strange and reclusive genius of Heber Springs. Until now, the whole story has not been told.

Silver Dolphins: The Emblem of the Enlisted Submariner


Richard Hansher - 2015
    The author doesn't pull any punches describing the good, the bad, the funny and the just plain ridiculous of the Submarine Service. Besides a wealth of information about what it's like to serve on a submarine, you'll meet real life characters like Tongue, Snake and Button Butt John. Did submarines make them rude, crude, and crazy. Or does the Submarine Service act as a magnet for every nut in the Navy? One thing is sure, after two months underwater, and with their back pay in their back pocket, Sub Sailors are as wild as cowboys after a cattle drive. Bar the doors and hide your daughters. Every reader owes it to themselves to use Amazons "Look In" feature to take a peek inside this unique and entertaining book.

Learning to Breathe Fire: The Rise of CrossFit and the Primal Future of Fitness


J.C. Herz - 2014
     One of the most illuminating books ever on a sports subculture, Learning to Breathe Fire combines vivid sports writing with a thoughtful meditation on what it means to be human. In the book, veteran journalist J.C. Herz explains the science of maximum effort, why the modern gym fails an obese society, and the psychic rewards of ending up on the floor feeling as though you're about to die.  The story traces CrossFit’s rise, from a single underground gym in Santa Cruz to its adoption as the workout of choice for elite special forces, firefighters and cops, to its popularity as the go-to fitness routine for regular Joes and Janes. Especially riveting is Herz’s description of The CrossFit Games, which begin as an informal throw-down on a California ranch and evolve into a televised global proving ground for the fittest men and women on Earth, as well as hundreds of thousands of lesser mortals.  In her portrayal of the sport's star athletes, its passionate coaches and its “chief armorer,” Rogue Fitness, Herz powerfully evokes the uniqueness of a fitness culture that  cultivates primal fierceness in average people. And in the shared ordeal of an all-consuming workout, she unearths the ritual intensity that's been with us since humans invented sports, showing us how, on a deep level, we're all tribal hunters and first responders, waiting for the signal to go all-out. From the Hardcover edition.