Payne dipana i fili intricati della vita pubblica e privata di Hitler per rivelare il vero volto di un individuo dotato di immenso e sinistro magnetismo, che colpì decine di milioni di uomini, facendone dei seguaci del nascente partito nazista. Nonostante il fallito putsch di Monaco, Hitler trascorse i mesi di prigionia scrivendo il Mein Kampf, che aumentò il suo seguito. Giunto al comando indiscusso del Partito, promise ogni cosa ai suoi sostenitori, per poi eliminarli a sangue freddo prima che potessero reclamare una fetta del potere, ormai sua unica fonte vitale. Divenuto Cancelliere, snaturò e distrusse pezzo per pezzo i poteri dello Stato per soddisfare le sue manie ossessive, riarmando la Germania, massacrando i suoi nemici (reali o immaginari), ricattando uno a uno i leader europei e facendo infine precipitare il mondo nel caos della Seconda guerra mondiale.

La storia del despota asiatico e zar Ivan IV (1530-1584), fondatore della potenza imperiale russa.

Robert Payne racconta la straordinaria e avventurosa vita di Heinrich Schliemann, l'archeologo tedesco vissuto nel XIX secolo e divenuto celebre grazie alla scoperta della mitica città di Troia. Storie di eroi e preziosi cimeli dimenticati sotto il suolo ellenico per secoli, ma da sempre vivi nella mente di Schliemann, rapito fin dall'infanzia dal mondo evocato dai versi dell'Iliade e dell'Odissea. L'autore ci guida attraverso la travagliata biografia di quest'uomo eccezionale: l'infanzia nel villaggio di Neubukow, nel Meclenburgo, e ad Ankershagen; i problemi finanziari e l'apprendistato come facchino e poi contabile tra Germania e Olanda; l'agognato successo come commerciante in Russia e i suoi tre grandi amori: Minna, Caterina e Sophia. Il destino, infine, lo condusse nella direzione dell'archeologia: grazie agli scavi effettuati in Anatolia insieme alla moglie Sophia, Schliemann porterà alla luce il meraviglioso Tesoro di Priamo e, presso Micene, la città dell'oro secondo la tradizione omerica, scoprirà tombe, gioielli e reperti di ogni tipo, tra cui la famosissima Maschera di Agamennone. 'L'oro di Troia' non è soltanto la storia di una scoperta dalla portata immensa, ma anche quella di un uomo colto, ostinato e ricco di contraddizioni. Un uomo che, instancabile conoscitore di lingue straniere e dotato di una irrefrenabile voglia di scoprire e imparare, realizzò un sogno che aveva da sempre: ritrovare i luoghi che avevano ospitato le affascinanti gesta omeriche.

Liking, sharing, friending, going viral: what would it mean to recognize these current modes of media interaction as promiscuous? In a contemporary network culture characterized by a proliferation of new forms of intimate mediated sociality, this book argues that promiscuity is a new standard of user engagement. Intimate relations among media users and between users and their media are increasingly structured by an entrepreneurial logic and put to work for the economic interests of media corporations. But these multiple intimacies can also be understood as technologies of promiscuous desire serving both to liberalize mediated social connection and to contain it within normative frames of value. Payne brings crucial questions of gender, sexuality, intimacy, and attention back into conversation with recent thinking on network culture and social media, identifying the queer undercurrents of these current media dynamics.

At first encounter, North Brother Island is among the most unexpected of places: an uninhabited island of ruins in New York City that hardly anyone knows, existing today almost in secret. But in some fundamental sense it is also quite ordinary, for just as they have in other parts of the city, people have lived, worked, studied, healed, and died here for centuries. The island has been bought and sold, used and re-used many times over. For a while, though, it was famous: In 1885, it became the home of the Riverside Hospital, which had been established to isolate and treat people with infectious diseases. By 1895, the hospital had grown to such an extent that the social reformer Jacob Riis wrote that there 'was nothing like it in the world.' Later, the island's reputation grew mostly in infamy: In 1904, the passenger steamship General Slocum caught fire in the East River, leaving more than a thousand souls dead on the shores of North Brother Island, the single greatest loss of life in New York City to that time; in 1908, the hospital received as a patient Mary Mallon, better known as 'Typhoid Mary,' who would die on North Brother in 1938.

North Brother Island is both part of the City of New York and a world apart from it. Its twenty acres sit low in the East River, just north of Hell Gate, with twenty-five or so buildings in various states of decay. As there is no public access, it's most easily seen as you lift off the tarmac at LaGuardia. Look to the west for a brown smudge stuck in the blue-gray East River, close up against Rikers Island and not far from the Bronx shoreline. That's NBI.

Photographer Christopher Payne, renowned for his work at abandoned state mental hospitals, received permission to visit and photograph the island over a period of years, and this book, North Brother Island, is the result of that work. His collaborator and co-author is Randall F. Mason, Chair of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania, who has studied the island and its history as a unique example in the annals of urban planning and policy.

North Brother Island features an essay and more than 80 large-scale color images by Christopher Payne and a highly illustrated study by Professor Mason, including images from throughout the island's history, official documents, and other supporting graphics.

This book documents architectural installations developed by Beesley and collaborators from 1995 through 2007. The collection includes architectural sculptures located in natural sites and works integrating kinetic components and interactive systems. Projects in the past several years have focused on immersive digitally fabricated lightweight 'textile' structures, and the most recent generations of his work feature responsive systems that use dense arrays of microprocessor, sensors and actuator systems. With contributions by:Jean Gagnon, Eric Haldenby, Christine Macy, Andrew Payne, Robert Pepperell, Michael Stacey and Charles Stankievech.

How to Yodel offers the lessons, tips, techniques, and music you need to get that long-awaited degree in the high art of yodeling, while finally being able to bask in the attention of adoring fans and lovesick coyotes.

A lighthearted companion to the best-reviewed film of the yeara pocket-sized illustrated guide to the locations and wines featured in Sideways including maps, winery listings, tips for drinking wine, and Oscar-winning dialogue.

Yesterday, you didn't know Pinot Noir from film noir.

Now, after seeing the marvelous movie Sideways, you are living the life uncorked, and this is the perfect little book to celebrate your own sideways journey. Inside you will find:
Wine recommendations, tips for tasting wine, and a list of bottles featured in the film
Places and wineries to visit in the Santa Ynez Valley in Santa Barbara County that were featured in the movie
Excerpts from the Oscar-winning screenplay
Web sites and information for planning your own trip.

This hilarious and useful guide is fully illustrated in color with movie stills, location stills, and delightful drawings by artist Robert Neubecker, who created the film's poster.

Originally created as a specialty item for wineries and tourist sites, The Sideways Guide to Wine and Life has been featured widely in articles (USA Today, The New York Times, and Wine Spectator) about the Sideways phenomenon and the surge in Pinot Noir's popularity across the country. Now available in an expanded trade edition for the first time, this is a terrific gift and countertop book year round.

Although highly intelligent, well-read, and deeply religious, Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584) favored a life of unbridled licentiousness and bestial cruelty for much of his reign. Proclaimed tsar in 1547, Ivan led Russia to power, but the interminable wars led to opposition at home, where he mercilessly tortured, executed, and massacred those who defied him - including the entire populaces of many villages and cities. In his most notorious and horrifying act, suffering from increasing fits of rage and paranoia, Ivan murdered his own beloved son.
Based heavily on original Russian sources, and offering a chilling portrait of the brutal age in which he lived, Ivan the Terrible is a rich and revelatory biography of a ruthless monarch who invoked terror in his subjects and enemies alike.

An in-depth study of the Crusades provides a comprehensive history of the medieval wars over control of the Holy Land and the resultant clash and mingling of East and West

Selected stories from each period of Chekhov's career offer a humorous look at ordinary people in trying situations