A Season on the Med: Riviera Football in Italy and France (With a Trip to Athens for Stan) is a story of football where the sun always shines - with a difference. In the wake of Brexit, writer Alex Wade decamped to Menton, the last town on the Cote d'Azur. During a swim between France and Italy, he realised two things. An array of great football clubs - from Nice, Marseille and Monaco to Genoa, Sampdoria and Spezia - were on his doorstep on the French and Italian Rivieras. Plus his hero, Q...

This book positions the Cold War as a liminal time and space that holds sway in the second quarter of the 21st century, informing a broad and deep analysis of how contemporary society was – and continues to be – fashioned by the societies of distribution found in Cold War Sociology.As a conflict that spanned the second half of the 20th century, the influence of the Cold War continues into the second quarter of the 21st century. Its chief organizing concept was distribution, seen in...

This eclectic mix of surfing stories has something for everyone, from classic tales of monster waves and epic battles to stories of when life among the breakers goes wrong. There are accounts of death and disaster, as well as bravery and triumph. The bizarre and the extreme rub shoulders with perfect breaks and beautiful beaches. Be thrilled by legendary surfers, as well as learning about local heroes who never made the headlines. Each compelling tale has been chosen to stoke the fire of a...

Through interviews with developers, gamers, and journalists examining the phenomena of bedroom coding, arcade gaming, and format wars, mapped onto enquiry into the seminal genres of the time including driving, shooting, and maze chase, Playback: A Genealogy of 1980s British Videogames examines how 1980s Britain has become the culture of work in the 21st century and considers its meaning to contemporary society. This crucial and timely work fills a lacuna for students and researche...

Being a cop isn't easy. Just ask motorcycle patrolman Adam King, who has just been suspended following a shooting incident. Worse yet, he is unable to assist in the investigation into the stabbing of his childhood pal. Luckily, his brethren in the department have got his back. Is it fate, or divine intervention that sees him through the ordeal? "Knifing through the gridlock at high speed,silently pushing his way past pedestrians, a motorcycle patrolman weaves his way to the scene. In one f...

No Good Way To Die is the dramatic story of Pryson Dare, a seasoned United Nations diplomat who seeks answers to his son’s mysterious death, the result of a supposed scuba diving accident in The Bahamas. With the aid of his son’s girlfriend, a private investigator, and a handful of kindly Bahamian locals, he uncovers the ugly truth. Despite thwarting the international arms dealer behind his son’s disappearance, Dare is ultimately unable to cope with his loss. Inspired by Dante’s The Infern...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this "wonderfully vivid, kinetic narrative" (The New York Times), the bestselling author of Voices in the Ocean captures colossal, ship-swallowing waves, and the surfers and scientists who seek them out.For legendary surfer Laird Hamilton, hundred foot waves represent the ultimate challenge. As Susan Casey travels the globe, hunting these monsters of the ocean with Hamilton’s crew, she witnesses first-hand t...

**A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, Amy Gentry's propulsive and suspenseful Good as Gone is a "smart, crisply written thriller" (Minneapolis Star Tribune)."So gripping you might start to question your own family’s past."—Entertainment Weekly**Anna’s daughter Julie was kidnapped from her own bedroom when she was thirteen years old, while Anna slept just downstairs, unaware that her daughter was being ripped away from her. For e...

****Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography**Included in President Obama’s 2016 Summer Reading List“Without a doubt, the finest surf book I’ve ever read . . . ” —The New York Times Magazine**Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way ...

One man's spiritual journey to rediscover how much he hates spiritual journeys. "A dizzyingly fun parody" ( Publishers Weekly).In Drink, Play, F@#k, Bob Sullivan, a jilted husband, sets off to explore the world, experience a meaningful connection with the divine, and rediscover his passion. His travels lead him from his home in New York City to a drinking bender across Ireland, through the glitz and glamour that is Las Vegas, and to the hedonistic...

An exploration of the way videogames mount arguments and make expressive statements about the world that analyzes their unique persuasive power in terms of their computational properties.Videogames are an expressive medium, and a persuasive medium; they represent how real and imagined systems work, and they invite players to interact with those systems and form judgments about them. In this innovative analysis, Ian Bogost examines the way videogames mount arguments...

Over the coming decades, Artificial Intelligence will profoundly impact the way we live, work, wage war, play, seek a mate, educate our young, and care for our elderly. It is likely to greatly increase our aggregate wealth, but it will also upend our labor markets, reshuffle our social order, and strain our private and public institutions. Eventually it may alter how we see our place in the universe, as machines pursue goals independent of their creators and outperform us in domains previo...