An Islamo-facist terrorist with shifty eyes who ends up being nothing more than a red herring. A CNN anchorwoman who is too attractive to have gotten her job based solely on her questionable credentials. A wizened and respected CNN anchorman whose famous beard could be its own situation room topic. A nuclear physicist with precognitive abilities and fondness for being killed by buses in the first act. A black man/rap mogul who goes against type and actually lives to the end of the movie. A flatfooted rookie cop who kills a lot of people before all is said and done. A liberal congressman who never met a regulation he didn't like. An aging movie star desperate for attention. Two British Lords ripped from their own time and get a lesson in modern racial etiquette and fighting techniques. A teenage girl on a journey of self-discovery and other-discovery. Two sarcastic Gen Xers who die and nobody cares that they die. A spaced-out feminist folk singer with hairy armpits and terribly broad definitions of rape. A nameless couple who fights all the time and use their kids as emotional weapons against each other. Two Mafia musclemen who try their hardest to not bolster stereotypes about their culture. What do these people have in common? In the real world; absolutely nothing. In my fantasy world I've thought up so I can escape the harsh and overbearing realities of life? Everything. They come together (except for the fighting couple; they're just filler material and give me some space to backhandedly complain about the bad parents of the world I see) and stop a diabolical villain from blowing up New York City.

A riveting account of the chilling precursors and deadly aftermath of the 1986 Soviet nuclear disaster from the bestselling author of Alive. This highly readable and deeply researched exposé draws upon unclassified data from the former Soviet Union and a wealth of firsthand interviews to give a complex and human account of one of the worst nuclear catastrophes in history. Starting in 1942, when a young Russian physicist named Georgi Flerov warned Stalin that the Americans were building an atomic bomb, author Piers Paul Read recounts the birth and growth of atomic energy in the USSR—and the construction of the V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station at Chernobyl. Embedded in this story are the KGB cover-ups, power grabs, safety oversights, and risky decisions that set the stage for the explosion of the station’s fourth reactor on April 26, 1986. According to Soviet authorities, only thirty-one people lost their lives due to the Chernobyl disaster, but its consequences were far too big for even the Kremlin to sweep under the rug—though the authorities certainly tried. Radiation burns and nuclear debris could not be concealed, and the cloud of radioactive material spewing from the damaged reactor was monitored throughout Europe. In the areas most immediately affected, there was a leap in the incidence of thyroid cancer. Moment by moment, Read takes us through the chaos and horror of the meltdown, and voice by voice, he records the stories that reveal the lasting repercussions of that day. Set in a regime where demotion was considered a fate worse than death and silence had the power to kill, Ablaze tackles the social and technological chain reactions that wreaked havoc not only on the USSR’s power supply but on the strength and stability of the nation. It is a must-read for anyone interested in Soviet-era history or the promises and perils of nuclear power.

"Turning away from the hard angles and edges of conventional modernism, bliobjects are the design of now, and the future. Blobjects & Beyond is the first survey of the explosion of amorphic, organic, and curvaceous design. A formless from with roots in Surrealism and the kidney-shaped motifs of the 1950s, the ever more biological blobject has come into its own, embodying and reflecting the new international ethos of fluidity." "Authors Steven Skov Holt and Mara Holt Skov - curators of a major exhibition of blobjects at the San Jose Museum of Art - and contributors Phil Patton and Bruce Sterling, parse the various manifestations of the blobject, bringing together the realms of art, architecture, industrial design, graphics, digital design, furniture, and pop culture. As a counterpoint to the effusive popularity of the blobject, the authors also address more recent, post-9/11 forms that are mutated and disturbed, dangerous and intimidating - the dark side of the blobject." "A manifesto for fluidity across disciplines, cultures, and international boundaries, Blobjects & Beyond documents the first major design language to bridge the last millennium with the new one."--BOOK JACKET.

Dealing with the guilds of seventeenth-century Istanbul, this volume provides new information and insights into guild organization, issues of traditionalism and change, and the complex nature of the relationship between the Ottoman state and its guilds.

Fluidity of Place - now in paperback - presents an interdisciplinary conversation with theories of space-time, place, and globalization at the cutting edge of social theory. Focusing on the construction of urban space in the context of hyper-mobility, it examines the social relations that form 'place' in a globalized world. The first half of the book discusses globalization theory and looks at place in relation to the fluidity brought about by recent technological advances. The second half details the construction of understandings of Asian mega-cities, particularly Jakarta, and examines the realities behind narratives of over-urbanization in light of globalization and the concomitant fluidity of place. The book makes a compelling argument about the competing claims to place in a world where the nation-state has lost control of its borders.