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  The Men Who Would Be King - An...

  Nicole LaPorte

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  For sixty years, since the birth of United Artists, the studio landscape was unchanged.Then came Hollywood's Circus Maximus-created by director Steven Spielberg, billionaire David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who gave the world The Lion King-an entertainment empire called DreamWorks. Now Nicole LaPorte, who covered the company for Variety, goes behind the hype to reveal for the first time the delicious truth of what happened. Audiences will feel they are part of the creative calamities of moviemaking as LaPorte's fly-on-the-wall detail shows us Hollywood's bizarre rules of business. We see the clashes between the often otherworldly Spielberg's troops and Katzenberg's warriors, the debacles and disasters, but also the Oscar-winning triumphs, including Saving Private Ryan. We watch as the studio burns through billions, its rich owners get richer, and everybody else suffers. We see Geffen seducing investors like Microsoft's Paul Allen, showing his steel against CAA's Michael Ovitz, and staging fireworks during negotiations with Paramount and Disney. Here is Hollywood, up close, glamorous, and gritty.

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  Making Mental Might - How to...

  Bernard Patten

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  Doctor Bernard Patten―erstwhile Memory Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, founder of the first memory clinic at the Neurological Institute of New York, and author of scientific papers on memory therapy and memory problems―wants to help you to a better mind, a better memory, and, consequently, a better life. 
  Memory degradation happens to everyone. Even people in good health forget where they park their cars or leave their reading glasses. Some draw a blank entering their PIN. Is the stove off? Cat fed? Door locked? Did you take your medication? Not sure? How come? These memory problems only get worse as we get older unless we employ mental exercises to improve memory now. 
  Mountains of scientific research prove that mental exercise benefits the brain as much as physical exercise benefits the body. Mental gymnastics boosts brainpower, augments memory, and (in some cases) actually increases brain size. It can help prevent dementia, mental decline, and the much-feared Alzheimer's disease. 
  Making Mental Might does not aim to increase your IQ or show you how to get smarter. It offers the proper mental training to look, sound, and perform worlds better. These techniques have helped hundreds of students at Rice University's School of Continuing Studies under Doctor Patten improve their working memory. They can do the same for you.

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  Atmosphere of Hope - Searching...

  Tim Flannery

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  The author of the #1 bestseller, The Weather Makers, pens “a brilliant examination of where we are with climate change and where we might be able to go” (The National Observer, Vancouver).   Almost two decades ago, Tim Flannery’s #1 international bestseller, The Weather Makers, was one of the first books to break the topic of climate change out into the general conversation. Today, Earth’s climate system is fast approaching a crisis. Political leadership has not kept up, and public engagement with the issue of climate change has declined. Opinion is divided between technological optimists and pessimists who feel that catastrophe is inevitable.   Around the world people are now living with the consequences of an altered climate—with intensified and more frequent storms, wildfires, droughts, and floods. For some it’s already a question of survival. Drawing on the latest science, Flannery gives a snapshot of the trouble we are in and more crucially, proposes a new way forward, including rapidly progressing clean technologies and a “third way” of soft geo-engineering. Tim Flannery, with his inimitable style, makes this urgent issue compelling and accessible. This is a must-read for anyone interested in our global future.   “What Flannery provides—a convincing defense for the position that a path to averting catastrophic climate change still exists—is invaluable.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

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  Merville Battery & the Dives...

  Carl Shilleto

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  This battlefield guide is the companion work to Pegasus Bridge & Horsa Bridge. Together, these two books form the fully revised and updated edition of the previous best selling Battleground Europe Series book Pegasus Bridge & Merville Battery.This book examines, in great detail, the attack by 9 Para Bn of the British 6th Airborne Division on the German gun emplacement known as the Merville Battery on D-Day, 6 June 1944. The actions of 8 Para, 12 Para, Canadian 1 Para, attached engineer and support units, and commando raids in this area of Normandy are also told. In particular, the importance of destroying the five bridges, and a drainage culvert, in the Dives valley are explained along with the importance of taking and holding the high ground to the north-east of Caen. These combined actions resulted in the protection and securing of the left flank of the greatest combined military operation in history; Operation OVERLORD.In addition to explaining how these objectives were achieved, this battlefield guide relates the battles to the area as it is today. The book contains details of the museums, memorials, cemeteries and associated organizations. All of which will unravel the history of the area to the visitor and armchair traveler alike.To further aid the battlefield tourist, GPS data is also provided for either satellite navigation by vehicle or for viewing on Google Earth.

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  The Internet Is Not What You...

  Justin E. H. Smith

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  An original deep history of the internet that tells the story of the centuries-old utopian dreams behind it—and explains why they have died todayMany think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, Justin Smith offers an original deep history of the internet, from the ancient to the modern world—uncovering its surprising origins in nature and centuries-old dreams of radically improving human life by outsourcing thinking to machines and communicating across vast distances. Yet, despite the internet’s continuing potential, Smith argues, the utopian hopes behind it have finally died today, killed by the harsh realities of social media, the global information economy, and the attention-destroying nature of networked technology.Ranging over centuries of the history and philosophy of science and technology, Smith shows how the “internet” has been with us much longer than we usually think. He draws fascinating connections between internet user experience, artificial intelligence, the invention of the printing press, communication between trees, and the origins of computing in the machine-driven looms of the silk industry. At the same time, he reveals how the internet’s organic structure and development root it in the natural world in unexpected ways that challenge efforts to draw an easy line between technology and nature.Combining the sweep of intellectual history with the incisiveness of philosophy, The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is cuts through our daily digital lives to give a clear-sighted picture of what the internet is, where it came from, and where it might be taking us in the coming decades.

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  Sex in the Sea - Our Intimate...

  Marah J. Hardt

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  Forget the Kama Sutra. When it comes to inventive sex acts, just look to the sea. There we find the elaborate mating rituals of armored lobsters; giant right whales engaging in a lively threesome whilst holding their breath; full moon sex parties of groupers and daily mating blitzes by blueheaded wrasse. Deep-sea squid perform inverted 69s, while hermaphrodite sea slugs link up in giant sex loops. From doubly endowed sharks to the maze-like vaginas of some whales, Sex in the Sea is a journey unlike any other to explore the staggering ways life begets life beneath the waves.Sex in the Sea uniquely connects the timeless topic of sex with the timely issue of sustainable oceans. Through overfishing, climate change, and ocean pollution we are disrupting the creative procreation that drives the wild abundance of life in the ocean. With wit and scientific rigor, Marah J. Hardt introduces us to the researchers and innovators who study the wet and wild sex lives of ocean life and offer solutions that promote rather than prevent, successful sex in the sea. Part science, part erotica, Sex in the Sea discusses how we can shift from a prophylactic to a more propagative force for life in the ocean.

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