Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.How did the skateboard go from a menacing fad to an Olympic sport? Writer and skateboarder Jonathan Russell Clarkanswers this question by going straight to the sources: the skaters, photographers, commentators, and industry insiders who made such an unlikely rise to worldwide juggernaut possible. Skateboarders are their own historians, which means the real history of skating ex...

A minute-by-minute analysis of Francis Ford Coppola's paranoid thriller The Conversation (1974).Blending film criticism with creative nonfiction, each book in the Timecodes series focuses on one film, exploring it minute by minute beginning with minute one, and ending with the final minute before the closing credits.When it was released, The Conversation depicted the isolation and loneliness caused by a surveillance state we ourse...

Command and Control (C2) is the set of organizational and technical attributes and processes by which an enterprise marshals and employs human, physical, and information resources to solve problems and accomplish missions.C2 Re-envisioned: The Future of the Enterprise identifies four interrelated megatrends that are individually and collectively shaping the state of the art and practice of C2 as well as the mission challenges we face.These megatrends the book exami...

What is Inflection? On a prosaic level, Inflection is the new student-run journal of architecture and the built environment from the Melbourne School of Design and published by AADR – Art Architecture Design Research. Inflection is a themed journal, to be published annually and features work from students, academics and practitioners. Crucially, Inflection is also a physical object – an artefact to be touched, handled and read in depth. At a time when our engagement with architectural idea...

How did an obscure science fiction writer become one of the world's most notorious religious leaders?Bare-Faced Messiah tells the extraordinary story of L. Ron Hubbard, a penniless science fiction writer who founded the Church of Scientology, became a millionaire prophet, and convinced his adoring followers that he alone could save the world.According to his "official" biography, Hubbard was an explorer, engineer, scientist, war hero, and philosoph...

A curious thing happened when Larry Lizer woke up this morning.When he opened his eyes, he did not recognize his surroundings.Most people would have been put out by such a significant inconvenience, but it was not a feeling unfamiliar to Larry Lizer. In fact, he had been dealing with this particular interdimensional peculiarity for a long time.However, it will take the intervention of the angel Quieriel to give Larry Lizer the context to describe this phenomenon, an...

Lenora made a mistake. She trusted the wrong man, and in a moment of weakness, he stole a family heirloom from her. Her only chance to get it back will be during Samhain, when the Shadow Market opens and magical folk gather for three days to celebrate, and unfortunately she can’t do it alone. She needs a demon.Ramanu’s entire existence is making bargains. They’re a bargainer demon, after all. They’ve had their eye on Lenora for some time now, so they’re pleased when she summons the...

The 11th Hour Audio Anthology is a collection of eleven macabre tales created by masters of modern audio drama to haunt and terrify you.Intensive Care by James ComtoisAlex Ericson is checked into a New England Hospital after a major car accident. The more he wakes up, the more Alex realizes his condition is more critical than he could ever believe.Heavenly Deception by Steve SchneiderWhen Prudence reunites with her older sister Zara after 18 month...

Cross-dressing author, envoy, soldier and spy Charles d'Eon de Beaumont's unusual career fascinated his contemporaries and continues to attract historians, novelists, playwrights, filmmakers, image makers, cultural theorists and those concerned with manifestations of the extraordinary. D'Eon's significance as a historical figure was already being debated more than 45 years before his death.Not surprisingly, such sensational material has attracted the attention of enthusiasts, schol...

Originally published in 1968 to critical acclaim, Russell H. Greenan's brilliant, audacious mystery novel It Happened in Boston? quickly became an underground sensation and has emerged over forty years later as a genuine cult classic.In this breathtakingly imaginative book—now appearing in audio for the first time—we enter the mind of an unnamed artist of prodigious talent and intelligence who is determined to correct the world's wrongs via a direct confro...

With the continued advance of computing power and accessibility, the view that "real mathematicians don't compute" no longer has any traction for a newer generation of mathematicians. The goal in this book is to present a coherent variety of accessible examples of modern mathematics where intelligent computing plays a significant role and in so doi

From the pages of the Judge Dredd MegazineA shopping mall where droids sell organs harvested from street trash...A murderous imaginary friend...A psychotic composer drafting music from pain...All in a day’s work for the Lawman of the Future.Edited by and with an introduction by Dredd veteran Michael Carroll, Judge Fear’s Big Day Out and Other Stories gathers the very best short stories from more tha...