Masters of Imagination presents an overview of the careers and works of the 13 world-class cartoonists elected to the Comic Book Artists Hall of Fame. More than 250 full-color illustrations plus illuminating commentary by Mike Benton offer insight into the creative processes that made these artists the very best in the world.

Winner of the Living Now Awards 2013, International Latino Book Awards 2013 and Moonbeam Children Books Awards 2013. There is a door in every one of us that leads to our imagination, a world where anything is possible. Dou you dare to embark on the most wonderful journey to our inner-self? One day when I was reading my story, I breathed in one of the words and something magical happened... I entered my imagination! We have always been told about the power of imagination, but what is imagination? How does it work? There is a magical place where you can always be yourself. In there you can turn on your light and illuminate your life with it. That place is your imagination. Your imagination has a life and a voice of its own. It is like a voice that speaks inside of you and paints everything around you with vivid colors. Within your imagination you are the king or queen of your creation. Open the door and discover how that place where we can always be ourselves is like and how does it work. And within your imagination... what is there? Read the first pages of Inside my imagination here below:

The human imagination manifests in countless different forms. We imagine the possible and the impossible. How do we do this so effortlessly? Why did the capacity for imagination evolve and manifest with undeniably manifold complexity uniquely in human beings? This handbook reflects on such questions by collecting perspectives on imagination from leading experts. It showcases a rich and detailed analysis on how the imagination is understood across several disciplines of study, including anthropology, archaeology, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and the arts. An integrated theoretical-empirical-applied picture of the field is presented, which stands to inform researchers, students, and practitioners about the issues of relevance across the board when considering the imagination. With each chapter, the nature of human imagination is examined - what it entails, how it evolved, and why it singularly defines us as a species.

Does heaven exist? If so, what is it like? And how does one get in? Throughout history, painters, poets, philosophers, pastors, and many ordinary people have pondered these questions. Perhaps no other topic captures the popular imagination quite like heaven. Gary Scott Smith examines how Americans from the Puritans to the present have imagined heaven. He argues that whether Americans have perceived heaven as reality or fantasy, as God's home or a human invention, as a source of inspiration and comfort or an opiate that distracts from earthly life, or as a place of worship or a perpetual playground has varied largely according to the spirit of the age. In the colonial era, conceptions of heaven focused primarily on the glory of God. For the Victorians, heaven was a warm, comfortable home where people would live forever with their family and friends. Today, heaven is often less distinctively Christian and more of a celestial entertainment center or a paradise where everyone can reach his full potential. Drawing on an astounding array of sources, including works of art, music, sociology, psychology, folklore, liturgy, sermons, poetry, fiction, jokes, and devotional books, Smith paints a sweeping, provocative portrait of what Americans-from Jonathan Edwards to Mitch Albom-have thought about heaven.

The inclusion of experts in communicability in the software industry has allowed timeframes to speed up in the commercialization of new technological products worldwide. However, this constant evolution of software in the face of the hardware revolution opens up a host of new horizons to maintain and increase the quality of the interactive systems following a set of standardized norms and rules for the production of interactive software. Currently, we see some efforts towards this goal, but they are still partial solutions, incomplete, and flawed from the theoretical as well as practical points of view. If the quality of the interactive design is analyzed, it is left to professionals to generate systems that are efficient, reliable, user-friendly, and cutting-edge. The Handbook of Research on Software Quality Innovation in Interactive Systems analyzes the quality of the software applied to the interactive systems and considers the constant advances in the software industry. This book reviews the past and present of information and communication technologies with a projection towards the future, along with analyses of software, software design, phrases to use, and the purposes for software applications in interactive systems. This book is ideal for students, professors, researchers, programmers, analysists of systems, computer engineers, interactive designers, managers of software quality, and evaluators of interactive systems.

"Masters Of Spanish Comic Book Art is a celebration of the great artists who revolutionized American horror comics in the 1970s with their work on Warren's Vampirella, Creepy, and Eerie horror comics. This first-ever comprehensive history of Spanish comic books and Spanish comic artists reveals their extraordinary success -- not just in Spain and America, but around the world. Their global influence has been little known until this celebration of their contributions. Containing artwork from over 80 artists, this in-depth retrospective includes profiles of such legends as Esteban Maroto, Sanjulian, Jose Gonzalez, Jordi Bernet, Enrich, Victor De La Fuente, Jose Ortiz and Luis Garcia Mozos. With 500 illustrations, over half scanned directly from the original artwork, Masters Of Spanish Comic Book Art honors the "Golden Generation" whose artwork inspired the imagination of comic book lovers everywhere."--

The concepts and theories surrounding the aesthetic category of the grotesque are explored in this book by pursuing their employment in the films of American auteurs Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, the Coen Brothers and David Lynch. The author argues that interpreting these directors' films through the lens of the grotesque allows us1to situate both the auteurs and the films within a long history of the grotesque in art and aesthetics. This cultural tradition effectively subsumes the contribution of any artist or1genre that intersects it but also affords the artist or genre--the auteur and the genre filmmaker--a pantheon and an abundance of images, themes, and motifs through which he1or she can subversively represent the world and our place in it.

“Big ideas that just might save the world”—The Guardian The founder of the international Transition Towns movement asks why true creative, positive thinking is in decline, asserts that it's more important now than ever, and suggests ways our communities can revive and reclaim it. In these times of deep division and deeper despair, if there is a consensus about anything in the world, it is that the future is going to be awful. There is an epidemic of loneliness, an epidemic of anxiety, a mental health crisis of vast proportions, especially among young people. There’s a rise in extremist movements and governments. Catastrophic climate change. Biodiversity loss. Food insecurity. The fracturing of ecosystems and communities beyond, it seems, repair. The future—to say nothing of the present—looks grim. But as Transition movement cofounder Rob Hopkins tells us, there is plenty of evidence that things can change, and cultures can change, rapidly, dramatically, and unexpectedly—for the better. He has seen it happen around the world and in his own town of Totnes, England, where the community is becoming its own housing developer, energy company, enterprise incubator, and local food network—with cascading benefits to the community that extend far beyond the projects themselves. We do have the capability to effect dramatic change, Hopkins argues, but we’re failing because we’ve largely allowed our most critical tool to languish: human imagination. As defined by social reformer John Dewey, imagination is the ability to look at things as if they could be otherwise. The ability, that is, to ask What if? And if there was ever a time when we needed that ability, it is now. Imagination is central to empathy, to creating better lives, to envisioning and then enacting a positive future. Yet imagination is also demonstrably in decline at precisely the moment when we need it most. In this passionate exploration, Hopkins asks why imagination is in decline, and what we must do to revive and reclaim it. Once we do, there is no end to what we might accomplish. From What Is to What If is a call to action to reclaim and unleash our collective imagination, told through the stories of individuals and communities around the world who are doing it now, as we speak, and witnessing often rapid and dramatic change for the better.

Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to co-create the most notoriously successful game franchises in history—Doom and Quake—until the games they made tore them apart. Americans spend more money on video games than on movie tickets. Masters of Doom is the first book to chronicle this industry’s greatest story, written by one of the medium’s leading observers. David Kushner takes readers inside the rags-to-riches adventure of two rebellious entrepreneurs who came of age to shape a generation. The vivid portrait reveals why their games are so violent and why their immersion in their brilliantly designed fantasy worlds offered them solace. And it shows how they channeled their fury and imagination into products that are a formative influence on our culture, from MTV to the Internet to Columbine. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry—a powerful and compassionate account of what it’s like to be young, driven, and wildly creative. “To my taste, the greatest American myth of cosmogenesis features the maladjusted, antisocial, genius teenage boy who, in the insular laboratory of his own bedroom, invents the universe from scratch. Masters of Doom is a particularly inspired rendition. Dave Kushner chronicles the saga of video game virtuosi Carmack and Romero with terrific brio. This is a page-turning, mythopoeic cyber-soap opera about two glamorous geek geniuses—and it should be read while scarfing down pepperoni pizza and swilling Diet Coke, with Queens of the Stone Age cranked up all the way.”—Mark Leyner, author of I Smell Esther Williams

Would you like to have personal experience with spiritual masters that people all over the world--since the beginning of time--have looked to for guidance, protection, and divine love? Are you tired of feeling you're going it alone, yet want to retain the freedom to make choices and determine your own values? Are you curious why some people seem certain that God personally intervenes in their lives? Would you like to be one of them? Then this book speaks to you. Inside are true stories that will amaze you and at the same time may strike a familiar chord in your heart. You may be one of the countless people who have been touched by a meeting with an ECK Master, or you may simply know deep inside that you are indeed special to God. These spiritual Masters of yesterday, today, and tomorrow want to share with you what they have achieved--the fulfillment of a spiritual destiny. The ECK Masters are Co-workers with God who can help you make the most of every decision you will ever face, meet your daily challenges on higher ground, and experience the boundlessness of God's love. Would you like to meet one? Look inside. of a lifetime awaits you. Eckankar is a modern-day spiritual teaching with ancient roots founded in 1965 by Paul Twitchell. Harold Klemp is the current spiritual leader of Eckankar since 1981.