"The great American fantasy is about leisure: wooded getaways, Caribbean cruises, white-water rafting, the lights of Las Vegas. Yet one in four Americans does not take a vacation at all. We know how to work hard but not how to play. What we really need, argues Al Gini, is some time off. The Importance of Being Lazy takes us on family road trips, to Disneyland, on shopping sprees, on extreme sports adventures, and into the ultimate vacation - retirement - showing why we venerate vacations and why "doing nothing" is a fundamental human necessity. In a witty, breezy tour of our workaholic society, where the summer at the seashore has been supplanted by the long weekend, Gini draws on studies of Americans' vacation habits as well as interviews, personal stories, and the wry observations of philosophers, writers, and sociologists from Aristotle to Mark Twain to Thorstein Veblen. Without true leisure, Gini says, we are diminished as individuals and as a society. The Importance of Being Lazy is our road map for learning how to play, doze, gaze, amble and goof-off without guilt." - back cover.

An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date. As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.

Play is one of humanity's straightforward yet deceitful ideas: though the notion is unanimously agreed upon to be universal, used for man and animal alike, nothing defines what all its manifestations share, from childish playtime to on stage drama, from sporting events to market speculation. Within the author's anthropological field of work (Mongolia and Siberia), playing holds a core position: national holidays are called "Games," echoing in that way the circus games in Ancient Rome and today's Olympics. These games convey ethical values and local identity. Roberte Hamayon bases her analysis of the playing spectrum on their scrutiny. Starting from fighting and dancing, encompassing learning, interaction, emotion and strategy, this study heads towards luck and belief as well as the ambiguity of the relation to fiction and reality. It closes by indicating two features of play: its margin and its metaphorical structure. Ultimately revealing its consistency and coherence, the author displays play as a modality of action of its own. "Playing is no 'doing' in the ordinary sense" once wrote Johan Huizinga. Isn't playing doing something else, elswhere and otherwise ?

"Pianists young and old will find accessible arrangements of some of the best in contemporary Christian praise and worship music. These tunes have become a familiar part of the musical fabric of contemporary praise worship."--Publisher's website.

Explains how companies must pinpoint business strategies to a few critically important choices, identifying common blunders while outlining simple exercises and questions that can guide day-to-day and long-term decisions.

This book looks beyond the usual explanations of why sports fascinates, and also strives for a language that can frame the pleasure we take in watching athletic events. Gumbrecht argues that the fascination with watching sports is probably the most popular and potent contemporary form of aesthetic experience.

A BEST CHILDREN’S BOOK OF THE YEAR: New York Times, Washington Post, New York Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, Globe and Mail, Horn Book, and Boston Globe STARRED Reviews in Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, The Horn Book, School Library Journal A 2022 Best Book for Babies From Julie Flett, the beloved author and illustrator of Birdsong, comes a joyous new book about playtime for babies, toddlers, and kids up to age 7. Animals and kids love to play! This wonderful book celebrates playtime and the connection between children and the natural world. Beautiful illustrations show: birds who chase and chirp! bears who wiggle and wobble! whales who swim and squirt! owls who peek and peep! and a diverse group of kids who love to do the same, shouting: We play too! / kimêtawânaw mîna At the end of the book, animals and children gently fall asleep after a fun day of playing outside, making this book a great bedtime story. A beautiful ode to the animals and humans we share our world with, We All Play belongs on every bookshelf. This book also includes: A glossary of Cree words for wild animals in the book A pronunciation guide and link to audio pronunciation recordings

An engaging look at how mobile games are increasingly part of our day-to-day lives and the ways that we interact across real as well as digital landscapes. We often play games on our mobile devices when we have some time to kill--waiting in line, pausing between tasks, stuck on a bus. We play in solitude or in company, alone in a bedroom or with others in the family room. In Ambient Play, Larissa Hjorth and Ingrid Richardson examine how mobile gameplay fits into our day-to-day lives. They show that as mobile games spread across different genres, platforms, practices, and contexts, they become an important way of experiencing and navigating a digitally saturated world. We are digital wayfarers, moving constantly among digital, social, and social worlds.

Who of us cannot remember the pain and humiliation of being rejected by our classmates? However thick-skinned or immune to such assaults we may become as adults, the memory of those early exclusions is as palpable to each of us today as it is common to human experience. We remember the uncertainty of separating from our home and entering school as strangers and, more than the relief of making friends, we recall the cruel moments of our own isolation as well as those children we knew were destined to remain strangers. In this book Vivian Paley employs a unique strategy to probe the moral dimensions of the classroom. She departs from her previous work by extending her analysis to children through the fifth grade, all the while weaving remarkable fairy tale into her narrative description. Paley introduces a new rule—“You can’t say you can’t play”—to her kindergarten classroom and solicits the opinions of older children regarding the fairness of such a rule. We hear from those who are rejected as well as those who do the rejecting. One child, objecting to the rule, says, “It will be fairer, but how are we going to have any fun?” Another child defends the principle of classroom bosses as a more benign way of excluding the unwanted. In a brilliant twist, Paley mixes fantasy and reality, and introduces a new voice into the debate: Magpie, a magical bird, who brings lonely people to a place where a full share of the sun is rightfully theirs. Myth and morality begin to proclaim the same message and the schoolhouse will be the crucible in which the new order is tried. A struggle ensues and even the Magpie stories cannot avoid the scrutiny of this merciless pack of social philosophers who will not be easily caught in a morality tale. You Can’t Say You Can’t Play speaks to some of our most deeply held beliefs. Is exclusivity part of human nature? Can we legislate fairness and still nurture creativity and individuality? Can children be freed from the habit of rejection? These are some of the questions. The answers are to be found in the words of Paley’s schoolchildren and in the wisdom of their teacher who respectfully listens to them.