When published in 1973, Gravity’s Rainbow expanded our sense of what the novel could be. Pynchon’s extensive references to modern science, history, and culture challenged any reader, while his prose bent the rules for narrative art and his satirical practices taunted U.S. obscenity and pornography statutes. His writing thus enacts freedom even as the book’s great theme is domination: humanity’s diminished “chances for freedom” in a global military-industrial system birthed and set...

The burgeoning field of 'visual social science' is rooted in the idea that valid scientific insight into culture and society can be acquired by observing, analyzing and theorizing its visual manifestations: visible behavior of people and material products of culture. Reframing Visual Social Science provides a well-balanced, critical-constructive and systematic overview of existing and emerging modes of visual social and cultural research. The book includes integrated models and conceptual ...

Spring of the year 1720...Young girl of the bourgeoisie, Blandine Veyre lives with her family in the majestic Phocaean city located in the South of the French Kingdom. On her sixteenth birthday, she receives a wonderful gift, a leisure voyage in the company of her brother, a naval Officer, onboard an impressive three-masted ship called ‘Lacydon’. However, very soon the first journey will turn into a series of unexpected and sometimes painful as well as solitary adventures. Finally, she wil...

Luc Debieuvre is a French banker who between 2003 and 2005 wrote a fortnightly opinion column for the United Arab Emirate-based English-language daily "Gulf News". The period of Debieuvre's association with the newspaper has been among the most significant and memorable in recent history. The aftermath of America's War on Terror has unleashed forces that the world will have to contend with and endure long after the protagonists have left the stage. Now collated into book form for the first...

Jonathan Fly, XIII’s official father, was once a respected, famous journalist. Unfortunately, his radical ideas, deemed anti-American, led him to be discredited, arrested, and eventually sent to jail. Having served his sentence, he moved to the small town of Green Falls with his son Jason … who grew up mostly on his own, as Jonathan had never given up the fight and remained driven and distracted. Until, one day, a powerful man arrives in Green Falls, and the tragedy begins …

Discover the truth behind AI's most dangerous myth: that machines can truly createIn The AI Illusion: Why Machines Aren't Creative, Luc Julia, co-creator of Siri and Chief Scientific Officer for the Renault Group, dismantles the hype surrounding generative AI by revealing what these technologies can actually do (as of today) versus what their promoters claim. Drawing on over 35 years' experience in the tech industry, Julia exposes the fundamental truth tha...

**"Roll over Maigret. Commissaire Dupin has arrived." —M.C. Beaton on Death in Brittany"Very satisfying…along the lines of Martin Walker’s novels set in Dordogne, or M.L. Longworth’s Aix-en-Provence mysteries." —Booklist on Murder on Brittany Shores**The Missing Corpse is internationally bestselling author, Jean-Luc Bannalec’s fourth novel in the Commissaire Dupin series. It’s picturesque, suspenseful, and the next best thing to a...

New Edition: Introduction to Earth Sciences (2nd Edition)Geophysics is concerned with the physical processes and properties of the Earth and its surrounding environment, and with the use of quantitative methods for their analysis. This book provides the general public, including students, faculties, and universities with a comprehensive presentation of geophysics suitable for first year undergraduate classes. The key focus is to familiarize readers with the concepts of elastic and electrom...

Hydraulic parameter identification is a crucial step in hydrogeological investigations. The book proposes a unique and generalized interpretation method for single and multiple pumping tests made in groundwater reservoirs with layered heterogeneity and with or without lateral anisotropy. This method eliminates the drawbacks of the numerous and frequently applied interpretation methods. The book also presents an introduction to inverse modeling, resulting in optimal parameter values with th...

"If you need motivation to ride, run, or just eat better, you'll find Carl to be an inspirational cheerleader for the healthy rock 'n' roll life." — Bicycling MagazineLüc Carl fit the part as a bar manager in New York City's gritty Lower East Side with his snakeskin spandex pants and hot rod. And life was good for this Omaha, Nebraska, transplant—a talented drummer who originally moved to the big city to pursue his rock 'n' roll dreams—unt...

In all of Commissaire Georges Dupin’s time living in Brittany, there has never been a murder on his home turf, until now, in Jean-Luc Bannalec's The Body by the Sea.A town on the sea, Concarneau’s nickname is Ville Bleue, or the Blue Town. With three harbors at its center, visitors can see enormous ships, sailors, fishermen, and the industry that goes alongside it. Because of its geographical location, Concarneau has shown it’s perfectly positioned to prot...

Arizona, 1948. Novelist François Combe has taken up residence with his wife, his son, and his mistress in the strange no man's land of the Santa Cruz Valley. His imagination is sparked by the surrounding desert, its ghost towns, and other vestiges of the pioneer past. The present, too, draws him in, especially in the border town of Nogales, where luxury and lust come together against a backdrop of misery and servitude... and where games of the flesh are paid for in blood. Sometimes the gra...