A Billion Suns is a wargame of interstellar combat that puts you in command of fleets of powerful starships, from squadrons of agile, but fragile, fighters, to hulking and powerful capital ships. When combined with some spaceship miniatures, a tape measure, a deck of playing cards and some dice, this rulebook provides everything you need to play exciting and tense tabletop games of interstellar exploration and combat. Using simple dice pool mechanics, you must carefully manage your resources and seize the opportunities that come your way in order to lead your fleet to victory and assert your dominance over the stars.

How are the nuclear power plants we call "stars" formed? Where do they get their energy and how do they die--and what does this suggest about the future of the universe? One of the most popular books written on astrophysics, 100 Billion Suns provides an exhilarating and authoritative life history of the stars.

A Billion Suns is a wargame of interstellar combat that puts you in command of fleets of powerful starships, from squadrons of agile, but fragile, fighters, to hulking and powerful capital ships. When combined with some spaceship miniatures, a tape measure, a deck of playing cards and some dice, this rulebook provides everything you need to play exciting and tense tabletop games of interstellar exploration and combat. Using simple dice pool mechanics, you must carefully manage your resources and seize the opportunities that come your way in order to lead your fleet to victory and assert your dominance over the stars.

A story of passion and commitment and faith?qualities that drove one working-class kid to not only build a sports empire, but also to change the way the entire sports industry has done business. This book is a tale of determination, faith, and, most assuredly, good timing and good luck. In truth, this isn’t one story?but many. Sports executive and businessman Jerry Colangelo weaves together a lifetime of great moments in sports and tense times in business. In How You Play the Game, sports executive and businessman Jerry Colangelo details a lifetime of stories, including: How he emerged from the tough streets of Chicago Heights as a high school and college sports star How he helped create and build the Chicago Bulls?at a time when the NBA was a second-tier professional league, and two basketball teams had already failed in the Windy City How he moved to Arizona and started the Phoenix Suns, an organization that fought its way to become the ninth richest franchise in all of sports And how he then began baseball’s newest team, the Arizona Diamondbacks. Peppered with stories about players and coaches, including Charles Barkley and Connie Hawkins, Red Holzman, and Buck Showalter, as well as owners, general managers, investors, reporters, and more, How You Play the Game is truly an insider’s look at the sports world.

Often called the ”Pulp Era”, the years between the two World Wars have seen a tremendous surge in interest among wargamers. A World Aflame captures the adventurous nature of the time period to present a fun, fast-paced set of tabletop miniatures rules that can handle the many diverse conflicts of the period, from the Chinese Civil Wars and the “Great Game” in Central Asia, to the Irish War of Independence and the bitter ideological warfare of the Russian and Spanish Civil Wars. The rules also contain options for the “Very British Civil War”. This gaming trend has sprung up in recent years, following a “what-if” scenario that has Edward VIII refusing to abdicate the throne, thrusting the country into civil war in 1938. It is a quirky, fun setting, and one that is surprisingly popular. Written by a life-long wargamer, A World Aflame focuses on the daring and heroism of battles fought in the last great era of adventure.

Dorothy Yoshida is a telepath, and a really rather good one at that. She's also a scientist, and when a small planet begins to manifest some unusual signs she is sent to investigate. The planet is more than it seems, and on further investigation the scientists begin to suspect it has been artificially altered. But despite their suspicions the only life they can detect is on the surface, none of which has advanced far above the level of animals. And despite the hopes of mankind to find something which will help them in a burgeoning war against other species, there seems to be nothing there to aid them. With Dorothy's arrival, however, they are in for some surprising discoveries.

In 1919, the US Government declared the production, distribution, and sale of alcohol illegal. America officially became a 'dry' land. That didn't stop people from drinking, however, and the rise of the 'speakeasy' offered huge new opportunities for organized crime. Soon, cities both large and small became battlegrounds as various crime syndicates vied for control of the underground alcohol trade. In Mad Dogs With Guns, players form their own small gangs of fedora-wearing, tommy gun-wielding gangsters and battle it out with their rivals. With numerous different gangs to choose from, including cops and G-men, a fully integrated campaign system, and rules for special situations such as car chases, the game offers a huge variety of tactical challenges. Bribe public officials, attend a gangland funeral, but always watch your back – there is always another gang waiting to poach your territory...

In the blasted, radiation-scorched, wastelands of the Earth's surface, towering mecha do battle, defending the interests of one of the few remaining arcology governments, providing security for wilderness outposts, or seeking out loot and supplies as a mercenary company. With detailed rules for designing and customizing your mecha, from size and propulsion type to payload and pilot skills, and a campaign system that allows pilots to gain experience and skills as they patrol the shattered Earth, Gamma Wolves is a fast-playing game of post-apocalyptic mecha warfare.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties. Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic.