Roger Strauss was a pilot for the US Air Force, a young soldier with a promising career. His record was impressive enough for him to be chosen to test an experimental vehicle, the like of which the which the world had never seen before, and of which most of the world had never imagined. In theory, the vehicle would instantly travel from one point in the universe to another by leaving the physical universe and coming in at a different point. But what would happen when the vehicle was actually tested, and where would the pilot go when it left the physical universe? Would it even work at all? Those were the questions that Roger Strauss was to answer, and the answers would be more than he had ever imagined.

A mysterious disease quickly brings humanity to it's knees. The infected become mindless killing machines, tirelessly seeking the uninfected in their desperate rage. What's the point of survival in the face of such destruction?

A different look at heterosexuality in the twenty-first century A straight white girl can kiss a girl, like it, and still call herself straight—her boyfriend may even encourage her. But can straight white guys experience the same easy sexual fluidity, or would kissing a guy just mean that they are really gay? Not Gay thrusts deep into a world where straight guy-on-guy action is not a myth but a reality: there’s fraternity and military hazing rituals, where new recruits are made to grab each other’s penises and stick fingers up their fellow members’ anuses; online personal ads, where straight men seek other straight men to masturbate with; and, last but not least, the long and clandestine history of straight men frequenting public restrooms for sexual encounters with other men. For Jane Ward, these sexual practices reveal a unique social space where straight white men can—and do—have sex with other straight white men; in fact, she argues, to do so reaffirms rather than challenges their gender and racial identity. Ward illustrates that sex between straight white men allows them to leverage whiteness and masculinity to authenticate their heterosexuality in the context of sex with men. By understanding their same-sex sexual practice as meaningless, accidental, or even necessary, straight white men can perform homosexual contact in heterosexual ways. These sex acts are not slippages into a queer way of being or expressions of a desired but unarticulated gay identity. Instead, Ward argues, they reveal the fluidity and complexity that characterizes all human sexual desire. In the end, Ward’s analysis offers a new way to think about heterosexuality—not as the opposite or absence of homosexuality, but as its own unique mode of engaging in homosexual sex, a mode characterized by pretense, dis-identification and racial and heterosexual privilege. Daring, insightful, and brimming with wit, Not Gay is a fascinating new take on the complexities of heterosexuality in the modern era.

Forced Marches is a collection of innovative essays that analyze how the military experience molded Mexican citizens in the years between the initial war for independence in 1810 and the consolidation of the revolutionary order in the 1940s. The contributors—well-regarded scholars from the United States and the United Kingdom—offer fresh interpretations of the Mexican military, caciquismo, and the enduring pervasiveness of violence in Mexican society. Employing the approaches of the new military history, which emphasizes the relationships between the state, society, and the “official” militaries and “unofficial” militias, these provocative essays engage (and occasionally do battle with) recent scholarship on the early national period, the Reform, the Porfiriato, and the Revolution. When Mexico first became a nation, its military and militias were two of the country’s few major institutions besides the Catholic Church. The army and local provincial militias functioned both as political pillars, providing institutional stability of a crude sort, and as springboards for the ambitions of individual officers. Military service provided upward social mobility, and it taught a variety of useful skills, such as mathematics and bookkeeping. In the postcolonial era, however, militia units devoured state budgets, spending most of the national revenue and encouraging locales to incur debts to support them. Men with rifles provided the principal means for maintaining law and order, but they also constituted a breeding-ground for rowdiness and discontent. As these chapters make clear, understanding the history of state-making in Mexico requires coming to terms with its military past.

Five books in one! With nonstop action, huge plot twists, and tons of humor, this series will quickly have your 7- to 12-year-old video game fan begging for just one more chapter. Getting sucked into a video game is not as much fun as you'd think. Sure, there are jetpacks, hover tanks, and infinite lives, but what happens when the game starts to turn on you? In this best-selling series, 12-year-old Jesse Rigsby finds out just how dangerous video games-and the people making those games - can be. Book One: Trapped in a Video Game Jesse hates video games - and for good reason. You see, a video game character is trying to kill him. After getting sucked into the new game Full Blast with his best friend, Eric, Jesse quickly discovers that he's being followed by a mysterious figure. If he doesn't figure out what's going on fast, he'll be trapped for good! Book Two: The Invisible Invasion Jesse's rescue mission has led him into the world of Go Wild, a Pokemon Go-style mobile game full of hidden danger and invisible monsters. Can Jesse stay alive long enough to sneak into the shady video game company and uncover what they're hiding? Book Three: Robots Revolt The robot villains from Super Bot World 3 have been released into the real world, and it's up to Jesse to get them back. This is Jesse's most dangerous mission yet, because this time, the video game is real. And in the real world, there are no extra lives. Book Four: Return to Doom Island In this retro adventure, Jesse will need to outsmart a superintelligent android, outlast a tireless drone, and outswim an eight-bit shark. If he can somehow pull all that off, Jesse will discover that he hasn't even gotten to the scary part yet. Book Five: The Final Boss Jesse and Eric have 10 minutes to save the world. In those 10 minutes, they're supposed to dive into a massive video game universe, track down an all-powerful madman, and stop his evil plan before it's too late. Sound impossible? It's super impossible. The clock is ticking.

Eddie Mackie didn't know whether they would come out alive. But he had to go. He put the Glock in the holster and the .38 in his waist and headed for the cabin. Albert knew that Mackie had to come. Then he would pick up the 250 grand from Warren. There was an old fishermen's cabin down by circle bend on the Mohawk River. That hadn't been used in years. Albert checked it out. Cleaned it up a bit and thought it was the perfect place for the Mackie hit. He starts to follow Angie around on her doings in Port City. After a week of this, he makes his move. On Fridays, Angie goes down to Center Mall and meets Alice for coffee and treats. She always parks her car in the mall garage. When she got out of the car and locked it, Albert was there. "Miss Cantini?" She turned and saw a man standing by the cement stanchion. He was short, chubby, wearing a tan jacket, gray pants and white sneakers. She stepped back. "Do I know you?" "You do now. I have a gun in my pocket and it's aimed at you. Don't say one more word. Just step into that white Ford next to your car."

In the tradition of In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song, this haunting, insightful, and surprisingly intimate portrait of Saddam Hussein provides “a brief, but powerful, meditation on the meaning of evil and power” (USA TODAY). The “captivating” (Military Times) The Prisoner in His Palace invites us to take a journey with twelve young American soldiers in the summer of 2006. Shortly after being deployed to Iraq, they learn their assignment: guarding Saddam Hussein in the months before his execution. Living alongside, and caring for, their “high value detainee and regularly transporting him to his raucous trial, many of the men begin questioning some of their most basic assumptions—about the judicial process, Saddam’s character, and the morality of modern war. Although the young soldiers’ increasingly intimate conversations with the once-feared dictator never lead them to doubt his responsibility for unspeakable crimes, the men do discover surprising new layers to his psyche that run counter to the media’s portrayal of him. Woven from firsthand accounts provided by many of the American guards, government officials, interrogators, scholars, spies, lawyers, family members, and victims, The Prisoner in His Palace shows two Saddams coexisting in one person: the defiant tyrant who uses torture and murder as tools, and a shrewd but contemplative prisoner who exhibits surprising affection, dignity, and courage in the face of looming death. In this thought-provoking narrative, Saddam, known as the “man without a conscience,” gets many of those around him to examine theirs. “A singular study exhibiting both military duty and human compassion” (Kirkus Reviews), The Prisoner in His Palace grants us “a behind-the-scenes look at history that’s nearly impossible to put down…a mesmerizing glimpse into the final moments of a brutal tyrant’s life” (BookPage).