It's a great way to learn about nuclear physics!

    After a sensational trial, she was sentenced to die by lethal injection, and fifteen years later, on February 24, 2000, she was executed.

    Twelve days later, she was stabbed in a Shanghai stairwell. The actions of both police investigators and O'Brien's Chinese modeling agent soon aroused suspicion as her family sought answers from China's opaque legal system. Ultimately, their quest would put them face to face with her accused killer.At once a page-turning murder mystery and a work of deep investigation, And The City Swallowed Them is a true crime nonfiction story based on dozens of interviews with investigators, models, and both the victim's and the convicted murderer's families. The short book moves from Shanghai's back alleys to the seedy underbelly of high fashion, where young models travel alone to strange cities, often with falsified work papers, and sleep ten to an apartment between cover shoots. Set against the backdrop of Shanghai's explosive urbanization, the work also explores the world of China's liudong renkou, or floating population, where the hopes of newcomers from poor villages often turn to dust—leading some to horribly desperate acts.The debut digital title from the writers cooperative Deca, And The City Swallowed Them overturns assumptions about both China’s feared justice system, where the conviction rate for criminals is 99.9 percent, and the glamorous world of international modeling. More than a murder tale, And The City Swallowed Them lays bare the powerful forces that send two families on a collision course from distant sides of the Pacific.

    In the spirit of Dr. Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, acclaimed critic and scholar John Sutherland selects 294 writers whose works illustrate the best of every kind of fiction—from gothic, penny dreadful, and pornography to fantasy, romance, and high literature. Each author was chosen, Professor Sutherland explains, because his or her books are well worth reading and are likely to remain so for at least another century. Sutherland presents these authors in chronological order, in each case deftly combining a lively and informative biographical sketch with an opinionated assessment of the writer's work. Taken together, these novelists provide both a history of the novel and a guide to its rich variety. Always entertaining, and sometimes shocking, Sutherland considers writers as diverse as Daniel Defoe, Henry James, James Joyce, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, Michael Crichton, Jeffrey Archer, and Jacqueline Susann.Written for all lovers of fiction, Lives of the Novelists succeeds both as introduction and re-introduction, as Sutherland presents favorite and familiar novelists in new ways and transforms the less favored and less familiar through his relentlessly fascinating readings.

    Even the legend of Evil Mary doesn't put her off. After all, she knows ghosts aren't real. But when Mary makes her first appearance, Rosie realizes she might already be trapped. For more than a century, Wetherley House has been cursed. A horrific encounter on a remote road in the late 1800's has already caused a chain of misery and pain for all those who live at the house. Wetherley House was abandoned long ago, after a terrible discovery in the basement, something has remained undetected within its room. And even the local children know that Evil Mary waits in the house for anyone foolish enough to walk through the front door. Before long, Rosie realizes that her entire life has been defined by the spirit of a woman who died in agony. Can she become the first person to escape Evil Mary, or will she fall victim to the same fate as the house's other occupants?

    And while art criticism is ubiquitous in newspapers, magazines, and exhibition brochures, it is also virtually absent from academic writing. How is it that even as criticism drifts away from academia, it becomes more academic? How is it that sifting through a countless array of colorful periodicals and catalogs makes criticism seem to slip even further from our grasp? In this pamphlet, James Elkins surveys the last fifty years of art criticism, proposing some interesting explanations for these startling changes."In What Happened to Art Criticism?, art historian James Elkins sounds the alarm about the perilous state of that craft, which he believes is 'In worldwide crisis . . . dissolving into the background clutter of ephemeral cultural criticism' even as more and more people are doing it. 'It's dying, but it's everywhere . . . massively produced, and massively ignored.' Those who pay attention to other sorts of criticism may recognize the problems Elkins describes: 'Local judgments are preferred to wider ones, and recently judgments themselves have even come to seem inappropriate. In their place critics proffer informal opinions or transitory thoughts, and they shy from strong commitments.' What he'd like to see more of: ambitious judgment, reflection about judgment itself, and 'criticism important enough to count as history, and vice versa.' Amen to that."—Jennifer Howard, Washington Post Book World

    Travis Prinzi, author of 'Harry Potter and Imagination' and webmaster at The Hog's Head, has tapped his Potter Pundit friends in Fandom and at better universities around the country for their insights about the literary magic of the seven novels, from their ring composition to the symbolism of the planets, from the Dante, Spencer, and MacDonald echoes to exploration of the meanings of magic and technology. Profound and far-reaching as these ideas are, the essays are all written in accessible style and tone. Serious readers of Harry Potter will delight in the conversation each chapter offers with another lover of the Hogwarts Saga and its greater depths.

    Undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Prodigious, powerful boxer who won 50 of his 58 fights -- 44 by knockout. Lesser known is how Tyson became one of the fiercest fighters of all time. The absolutely improbable tale began when a troubled young kid met a cantankerous old trainer at a small boxing gym in the sleepy town of Catskill, New York. Cus D'Amato would change the whole trajectory of Tyson's life, teaching him everything he knew about success in and out of the ring, before dying just a year before his protege became the youngest heavyweight champion of the world at the age of 20. How did this hard-boiled trainer turn a kid who'd been abandoned by his parents, mercilessly bullied, and imprisoned for dozens of crimes, into a pedigree pugilist? How did he take an unfocused, insecure, lost young man and turn him into a champion who lived to train, fought with an unconquerable spirit, and positively lusted after victory? Cus did it by teaching Tyson the way of the warrior monk -- the art of focus and ferocity. In this short and punchy book, we uncover the five universally-applicable strategic principles of Cus' philosophy. Included are details on: The contents of Cus's library, and the books he gave Tyson to read Tyson's training routine The mental affirmations and tactics Cus shared with Tyson to strengthen his mind Cus's approach to making fear your friend instead of your foe No matter what kind of fight you're in, the savage wisdom of one of boxing's greatest minds will help you come out the victor.

    

    For fans, this book is a unique insight into an area of the show's history that has previously been shrouded in mystery. For those with a wider interest in the creative processes of television drama, it is a fascinating account of the individual's creative vision at odds with the machinery of broadcasting. It features a foreword by the Seventh Doctor, Sylvester McCoy.

    Marooned in the run-down seaside resort of Cole Bay, his life is a horrible comedy of errors that has trapped him in the country's most dismal place at the worst possible time - the early '70s. He dreams of escaping the crumbling pier and the grumbling pensioners, of finding a place where he is appreciated, but it's the one thing he can't do. Until he discovers a faraway land with characters who are impossibly exotic, but strangely familiar. In the kingdom of Calabash he can have everything he's ever wanted from life. There's only one small problem. Calabash doesn't actually exist. In an England that's still hungover from the 60s, Kay finds it all too easy to retreat from reality. Everyone in Cole Bay expects him to conform, but Kay is prepared to risk everything to find out what makes him different, what his life really holds, and what will happen if he believes in the impossible.

    As the Time Lord and her friends investigate, they uncover a mystery that will take them from a secret mountain base to the depths of the ocean - and if they cannot solve it, one of them will perish.In order to save her friend, the Doctor must solve the riddle of... The Maze of Doom!

    Richard Marson brings his dramatic, farcical, sometimes scandalous, often moving story to life with the benefit of his own inside knowledge and the fruits of over 100 revealing interviews with key friends and colleagues, those John loved to those from whom he became estranged. The author has also had access to all of Nathan-Turner’s surviving archive of paperwork and photos, many of which appear here for the very first time.

    Alternative history has long been the stuff of parlor games, war-gaming, and science fiction, but over the past few decades it has become a popular stomping ground for serious historians. The historian Richard J. Evans now turns a critical, slightly jaundiced eye on a subject typically the purview of armchair historians. The book's main concern is examining the intellectual fallout from historical counterfactuals, which the author defines as "alternative versions of the past in which one alteration in the timeline leads to a different outcome from the one we know actually occurred." What if Britain had stood at the sidelines during the First World War? What if the Wehrmacht had taken Moscow? The author offers an engaging and insightful introduction to the genre, while discussing the reasons for its revival in popularity, the role of historical determinism, and the often hidden agendas of the counterfactual historian. Most important, Evans takes counterfactual history seriously, looking at the insights, pitfalls, and intellectual implications of changing one thread in the weave of history. A wonderful critical introduction to an often-overlooked genre for scholars and casual readers of history alike.

    Now, for the first time, with his trademark wisdom and philosophical generosity, he turns his attention to his most important role yet: grandparent.In Grand, Johnson shares stories from his life with his six-year-old grandson, Emery, weaving in advice and life lessons that stand the test of time. “Looking at the problems I see in the world around me,” Johnson writes, “I realize that there are so many things I want to say to him about the goodness and beauty that life offers. What are the perennial truths that I can impart to Emery that might make his journey through life easier or more rewarding?” Johnson shares these truths and more, offering profound meditations on family, race, freedom and creativity.Joyful, lucid and deeply comforting, Grand is Johnson at his most accessible and profound, an indispensable compendium for new grandparents and growing grandchildren alike, from one of America’s most revered thinkers.