Book cover for The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

The Georgian “Profanisaurus”.

From the 1790s to the 1820s, numerous editions of the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue were published. Looking at the slang and vernacular language of the time, this dictionary pre-dated Roger Mellie’s best-selling Profanisaurus by a good 200 years. Reprinted here, it covers the rude, the crude and the downright vulgar.

Learn how the Georgians and early Victorians would insult each other and find out how some of today’s words and derivations have come about. But most of all, just dip in and see how our ancestors considered and talked about such subjects as sex and the workings of the human body.

Book cover for Seeing Sideways

Doony, Ryder, Wyatt, Bodhi. The names of Kristin Hersh’s sons are the only ones included in her new memoir, Seeing Sideways. As the book unfolds and her sons’ voices rise from its pages, it becomes clear why: these names tell the story of her life.

This story begins in 1990, when Hersh is the leader of the indie rock group Throwing Muses, touring steadily, and the mother of a young son, Doony. The chapters that follow reveal a woman and mother whose life and career grow and change with each of her sons: the story of a custody battle for Doony is told alongside that of Hersh’s struggles with her record company and the resulting PTSD; the tale of breaking free from her record label stands in counterpoint to her recounting of her pregnancy with Ryder; a period of writer’s block coincides with the development of Wyatt as an artist and the family’s loss of their home; and finally, soon after Bodhi’s arrival, Hersh and her boys face crises from which only strange angels can save them. Punctuated with her own song lyrics, Seeing Sideways is a memoir about a life strange enough to be fiction, but so raw and moving that it can only be real.

Book cover for The Declaration Of Independents

Everywhere in America, the forces of digitization, innovation, and personalization are expanding our options and bettering the way we live. Everywhere, that is, except in our politics. There we are held hostage to an eighteenth century system, dominated by two political parties whose ever-more-polarized rhetorical positions mask a mutual interest in maintaining a stranglehold on power.The Declaration of Independents is a compelling and extremely entertaining manifesto on behalf of a system better suited to the future–one structured by the essential libertarian principles of free minds and free markets. Gillespie and Welch profile libertarian innovators, identify the villains propping up the ancien regime, and take aim at do-something government policies that hurt most of those they claim to protect. Their vision will resonate with a wide swath of frustrated citizens and young voters, born after the Cold War’s end, to whom old tribal allegiances, prejudices, and hang-ups about everything from hearing a foreign language on the street to gay marriage to drug use simply do not make sense.

Book cover for The Pirate Hunter

Everybody knows the legend of Captain Kidd, America’s most ruthless buccanneer. Few people realize that the facts of his life make for a much better tale. Kidd was actually a tough New York sea captain hired to chase pirates, a married war hero whose secret mission took a spectacularly bad turn. This harrowing tale traces Kidd’s voyages in the 1690s from his home near Wall Street to Whitehall Palace in London, from the ports of the Caribbean to a secret pirate paradise off Madagascar. Author Richard Zacks, during his research, also unearthed the story of a long forgotten rogue named Robert Culliford, who dogged Kidd and led Kidd’s crew to mutiny not once but twice. The lives of Kidd and Culliford play out like an unscripted duel: one man would hang in the harbor, the other would walk away with the treasure. Filled with superb writing and impeccable research, The Pirate Hunter is both a masterpiece of historical detective work and a ripping good yarn, and it delivers something rare: an authentic pirate story for grown-ups.

Cover for The Republic of Pirates

The untold story of a heroic band of Caribbean pirates whose defiance of imperial rule inspired revolt in colonial outposts across the world. In the early eighteenth century, the Pirate Republic was home to some of the great pirate captains, including Blackbeard, “Black Sam” Bellamy, and Charles Vane. Along with their fellow pirates—former sailors, indentured servants, and runaway slaves—this “Flying Gang” established a crude but distinctive democracy in the Bahamas, carving out their own zone of freedom in which servants were free, blacks could be equal citizens, and leaders were chosen or deposed by a vote. They cut off trade routes, sacked slave ships, and severed Europe from its New World empires, and for a brief, glorious period the Republic was a success.

Cover for The Sex Lives of Cannibals

At the age of twenty-six, Maarten Troost who had been pushing the snooze button on the alarm clock of life by racking up useless graduate degrees and muddling through a series of temp jobs decided to pack up his flip-flops and move to Tarawa, a remote South Pacific island in the Republic of Kiribati. He was restless and lacked direction, and the idea of dropping everything and moving to the ends of the Earth was irresistibly romantic. He should have known better. The Sex Lives of Cannibals tells the hilarious story of what happens when Troost discovers that Tarawa is not the island paradise he dreamed of. Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles through relentless, stifling heat, a variety of deadly bacteria, polluted seas, toxic fish, and worst of all, no television or coffee. And that’s just the first day. Sunburned, emaciated, and stinging with sea lice, Troost spends the next two years battling incompetent government officials, alarmingly large critters, erratic electricity, and a paucity of food options. He contends with a cast of bizarre local characters, including “Half-Dead Fred” and the self-proclaimed Poet Laureate of Tarawa (a British drunkard who’s never written a poem in his life), and eventually settles into the ebb and flow of island life, just before his return to the culture shock of civilization. With the rollicking wit of Bill Bryson, the brilliant travel exposition of Paul Theroux, and a hipster edge that is entirely Troost’s own, The Sex Lives of Cannibals is the ultimate vicarious adventure. Readers may never long to set foot on Tarawa, but they’ll want to travel with Troost time and time again.

Book cover for The Art of Slow Writing

In a series of conversational observations and meditations on the writing process, The Art of Slow Writing examines the benefits of writing slowly. DeSalvo advises her readers to explore their creative process on deeper levels by getting to know themselves and their stories more fully over a longer period of time. She writes in the same supportive manner that encourages her students, using the slow writing process to help them explore the complexities of craft. The Art of Slow Writing is the antidote to self-help books that preach the idea of fast-writing, finishing a novel a year, and quick revisions. DeSalvo makes a case that more mature writing often develops over a longer period of time and offers tips and techniques to train the creative process in this new experience.

DeSalvo describes the work habits of successful writers (among them, Nobel Prize laureates) so that readers can use the information provided to develop their identity as writers and transform their writing lives. It includes anecdotes from classic American and international writers such as John Steinbeck, Henry Miller, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence as well as contemporary authors such as Michael Chabon, Junot Diaz, Jeffrey Eugenides, Ian McEwan, and Salman Rushdie. DeSalvo skillfully and gently guides writers to not only start their work, but immerse themselves fully in the process and create texts they will treasure.

Book cover for The Ultimate History of the 80s Teen Movie

A trip back to the era of troubled teens and awesome soundtracks; of Reagan, rap, and Ridgemont High; of MTV, VHS, and “Axel F”; of outsiders, lost boys, and dead poets; of Bill and Ted, Brooke Shields, and the Brat Pack; of three Porky’s flicks, two Coreys, and one summer when “Baby” refused to be put in a corner.

The Ultimate History of the ’80s Teen Movie goes behind the scenes of a genre where cult hits mingled with studio blockbusters, where giants like Spielberg and Coppola rubbed shoulders with baby-faced first-timers, and where future superstars Sean, Demi, and Tom all got their big break. Music, comedy, and politics all play a part in the surprisingly complex history of the ’80s teen movie. And while the films might have been aimed primarily at adolescents, the best tackle universal issues and remain relevant to all ages.
From a late ’70s Hollywood influx to an early ’90s indie scene that gave youth cinema a timely reboot, film expert James King highlights the personal struggles, the social changes, and the boardroom shake-ups that produced an iconic time in movie history.

Book cover for The Devil in the White City

Bringing Chicago circa 1893 to vivid life, Erik Larson’s spell-binding bestseller intertwines the true tale of two men–the brilliant architect behind the legendary 1893 World’s Fair, striving to secure America’s place in the world; and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling. Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.

Book cover of Page Turner

What makes a page-turner? What mysterious literary essence holds a reader so hard they feel they must keep reading? And then tell friends, “I couldn’t put it down!”

And what do literary agents and publishers really look for in a manuscript?

Internationally-acclaimed author and story coach Barbara Kyle reveals the answers in Page-Turner with insights into:

– the essentials of story structure
– how to create a “storyline”
– the power of “deep character”
– the art of crafting dialogue
– mastering point of view
– maximizing settings
– plus practical advice on how to query agents and get published
… and more

Page-Turner shows how to create the kind of novel that brings offers from publishers and praise from readers.

For emerging writers who want to break in, and published authors who want to produce a breakout book, Page-Turner is an indispensable guide.

Book cover for Fire Cannot Kill A Dragon

The official, definitive oral history of the blockbuster show from Entertainment Weekly‘s James Hibberd, published with HBO’s official support.

It was supposed to be impossible. George R.R. Martin was a frustrated television writer who created his bestselling A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels to be an unfilmable saga bound only by the limits of his vast imagination. Then a pair of first-time TV writers teamed with HBO to try and adapt Martin’s epic. We’ve all seen the eight seasons of the Emmy-winning fantasy series that came next. But there is one Game of Thrones tale that has yet to be told: the 13-year behind-the-scenes struggle to pull off this extraordinary phenomenon.

In All Men Must Die, award-winning Entertainment Weekly writer James Hibberd chronicles the untold story of Game of Thrones, from the creative team’s first meetings to staging the series finale and all the on-camera battles and off-camera struggles in between. The book draws from more than 50 revealing new interviews, rare and stunning photos, and unprecedented access to the producers, cast, and crew who took an impossible idea and made it into the biggest show in the world.

Book cover for Where Good Ideas Come From

The printing press, the pencil, the flush toilet, the battery–these are all great ideas. But where do they come from? What kind of environment breeds them? What sparks the flash of brilliance? How do we generate the breakthrough technologies that push forward our lives, our society, our culture? Steven Johnson’s answers are revelatory as he identifies the seven key patterns behind genuine innovation, and traces them across time and disciplines. From Darwin and Freud to the halls of Google and Apple, Johnson investigates the innovation hubs throughout modern time and pulls out the approaches and commonalities that seem to appear at moments of originality.

Book cover for Green Eyes

A carnival worker dead of alcohol poisoning, Donnell Harrison has been reborn with new memories and a profound literary talent. To reconnect him to the world and make him pliant, the reanimation team employs Jocundra Verret, a therapist who has gained the trust of numerous subjects, but when Donnell finds his latent power to control energy, Jocundra shares his doubts about the scientists’ goals. Together they flee on a quest to discover Donnell’s true origins and potential, and ultimately to confront evil at the heart of a fabulous bayou dynasty, where Donnell must restore order among strange and brutal alternate worlds.

Book cover for The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales

The Cthulhu Mythos was H. P. Lovecraft’s greatest contribution to supernatural literature: a series of stories that evoked cosmic awe and terror through their accounts of incomprehensibly alien monsters and their horrifying incursions into our world. The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales collects 23 of Lovecraft’s greatest weird tales, including “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Colour out of Space,” “The Dunwich Horror,” “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” and “The Shadow out of Time.” It also features six collaborative “revisions” through which Lovecraft expanded the scope of his dark mythology.

In these stories, monstrous entities traverse the gulfs of time and space and humankind cowers in fright at the havoc they wreak. The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales is your passport to realms of unimaginable horror.

Contents:
1. Dagon
2. Nyarlathotep
3. The Nameless City
4. Azathoth
5. The Hound
6. The Festival
7. The Call of Cthulhu
8. The Colour out of Space
9. History of the Necronomicon
10. The Curse of Yig
11. The Dunwich Horror
12. The Whisperer in Darkness
13. The Mound
14. At the Mountains of Madness
15. The Shadow over Innsmouth
16. The Dreams in the Witch House
17. The Man of Stone
18. The Horror in the Museum
19. The Thing on the Doorstep
20. Out of the Aeons
21. The Tree on the Hill
22. The Shadow out of Time
23. The Haunter of the Dark

Book cover for Nightflyers & Other stories

On a voyage toward the boundaries of the known universe, nine misfit academics seek out first contact with a shadowy alien race.

But another enigma is the Nightflyer itself, a cybernetic wonder with an elusive captain no one has ever seen in the flesh. Soon, however, the crew discovers that their greatest mystery – and most dangerous threat – is an unexpected force wielding a thirst for blood and terror….

Also included are five additional classic George R. R. Martin tales of science fiction that explore the breadth of technology and the dark corners of the human mind.

Book cover for Blackfish City

After the climate wars, a floating city is constructed in the Arctic Circle, a remarkable feat of mechanical and social engineering, complete with geothermal heating and sustainable energy. The city’s denizens have become accustomed to a roughshod new way of living, however, the city is starting to fray along the edges—crime and corruption have set in, the contradictions of incredible wealth alongside direst poverty are spawning unrest, and a new disease called “the breaks” is ravaging the population.

When a strange new visitor arrives—a woman riding an orca, with a polar bear at her side—the city is entranced. The “orcamancer,” as she’s known, very subtly brings together four people—each living on the periphery—to stage unprecedented acts of resistance. By banding together to save their city before it crumbles under the weight of its own decay, they will learn shocking truths about themselves. 

Blackfish City is a remarkably urgent—and ultimately very hopeful—novel about political corruption, organized crime, technology run amok, the consequences of climate change, gender identity, and the unifying power of human connection.

Book cover for Cinnamon and Gunpowder

A gripping adventure, a seaborne romance, and a twist on the tale of Scheherazade – with the best food ever served aboard a pirate’s ship.

The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail. To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he’s making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider.

But Mabbot – who exerts a curious draw on the chef – is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur hidden on her ship, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. As Wedgwood begins to sense a method to Mabbot’s madness, he must rely on the bizarre crewmembers he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the deaf cabin boy who becomes the son Wedgwood never had.

Cinnamon and Gunpowder is a swashbuckling epicure’s adventure simmered over a surprisingly touching love story – with a dash of the strangest, most delightful cookbook never written. Eli Brown has crafted a uniquely entertaining novel full of adventure: the Scheherazade story turned on its head, at sea, with food.

Book cover for Catch-22

The novel is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. It mainly follows the life of Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Italy. The novel looks into the experiences of Yossarian and the other airmen in the camp, who attempt to maintain their sanity while fulfilling their service requirements so that they may return home.

Book cover of Custodians of the Internet

A revealing and gripping investigation into how social media platforms police what we post online—and the large societal impact of these decisions

Most users want their Twitter feed, Facebook page, and YouTube comments to be free of harassment and porn. Whether faced with “fake news” or livestreamed violence, “content moderators”—who censor or promote user‑posted content—have never been more important. This is especially true when the tools that social media platforms use to curb trolling, ban hate speech, and censor pornography can also silence the speech you need to hear.
 
In this revealing and nuanced exploration, award‑winning sociologist and cultural observer Tarleton Gillespie provides an overview of current social media practices and explains the underlying rationales for how, when, and why these policies are enforced. In doing so, Gillespie highlights that content moderation receives too little public scrutiny even as it is shapes social norms and creates consequences for public discourse, cultural production, and the fabric of society. Based on interviews with content moderators, creators, and consumers, this accessible, timely book is a must‑read for anyone who’s ever clicked “like” or “retweet.”

Book cover for Broad Band

Women are not ancillary to the history of technology; they turn up at the very beginning of every important wave. But they’ve often been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don’t even realize.

Author Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her social history of the Broad Band, the women who made the internet what it is today. Learn from Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, who wove numbers into the first program for a mechanical computer in 1842. Seek inspiration from Grace Hopper, the tenacious mathematician who democratized computing by leading the charge for machine-independent programming languages after World War II. Meet Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler, the one-woman Google who kept the earliest version of the Internet online, and Stacy Horn, who ran one of the first-ever social networks on a shoestring out of her New York City apartment in the 1980s. Evans shows us how these women built and colored the technologies we can’t imagine life without.

Join the ranks of the pioneers who defied social convention and the longest odds to become database poets, information-wranglers, hypertext dreamers, and glass ceiling-shattering dot com-era entrepreneurs.

Book cover for Shadow Star

In Shadow Moon and Shadow Dawn, George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, and Chris Claremont, author of the bestselling X-Men adventures, created a new world of myth, magic, and legend unlike any before. Now they bring their epic trilogy to an unforgettable conclusion in a novel of blazing imaginative brilliance…

Elora Danan has done the unthinkable. She has slain the dragons that were the embodiment of the soul of Creation. It was a desperate act–the only way to save the dragons from the Deceiver, who would have used them to rule the Realms. Yet in Elora’s possession are two last dragon eggs. To protect them, Elora spellbinds herself to her faithful companions Thorn Drumheller, the Nelwyn sorcerer and her sworn guardian, and Khory Bannefin, the long-dead woman warrior whose body is inhabited by a demon’s offspring. It is a dire spell that ensures none of them will betray their cause…even at the cost of their lives. And if one of them dies, the magic of the eggs is lost forever.

Pursued through a land of shadow predators by the dreaded Black Rose, the Deceiver’s commando assassins, Elora and her allies must reach the free city-state of Sandeni. There they will be reunited with old friends: the brownies Franjean and Rool, the eagles Anele and Bastian, and the young warrior-scribe Luc-Jon. But Sandeni is besieged by mighty armies fueled by the Deceiver’s sorcery, warrior wizards, and engines of evil magic. With defeat all but certain, Elora must convince the Sandeni people to continue the fight. What she doesn’t tell them is that the greatest enemy lies within her. For the Deceiver is her own dark twin from a potential future of unimaginable evil…an evil that lies dormant in Elora’s soul. And the only way Elora can stop the future is to befriend an enemy whose insatiable appetite for destruction could destroy all of Creation. Or is that, too, part of the Deceiver’s plan?

Seamlessly weaving together the many strands of this rich tapestry, Shadow Star is guaranteed to satisfy its many fans…and leave them breathless.

Book cover for Shadow Dawn

From George Lucas, creator of Star Wars(r) and Indiana Jones, and Chris Claremont, author of the bestselling X-Men adventures, comes the thrilling sequel to “Shadow Moon,” taking readers deeper into a stunningly original world of magic, myth, and legend.


The momentous Ascension of Princess Elora Danan should have brought peace to the Thirteen Realms. Instead, an intense Shadow War rages, spearheaded by the evil Mohdri. He has dispatched his dread Black Rose commando assassins to capture Elora and her sworn protector, Thorn Drumheller. But Mohdri himself is just a facade for a more dangerous entity: the Deceiver. But who–or what–is the Deceiver? And how can Elora, Thorn, and their ragtag band defeat this unspeakable force? The answer lies in a perilous journey to a land undisturbed since the dawn of time. A journey that will end at the unbreachable citadel of the dragon, where a chilling betrayal will change the fate of Elora, Thorn, and the Thirteen Realms forever.

Book cover for The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called “surveillance capitalism,” and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior.

In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth.

Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new “behavioral futures markets,” where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new “means of behavioral modification.”

The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a “Big Other” operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff’s comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled “hive” of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit–at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future.

With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future–if we let it.

Cover for Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life In A Noisy World

Georgetown computer scientist Cal Newport’s Deep Work sparked a movement around the idea that unbroken concentration produces far more value than the electronic busyness that defines the modern work day. But his readers had an urgent follow-up question: What about technology in our personal lives?

In recent years, our culture’s relationship with personal technology has transformed from something exciting into something darker. Innovations like smartphones and social media are useful, but many of us are increasingly troubled by how much control these tools seem to exert over our daily experiences–including how we spend our free time and how we feel about ourselves.

In Digital Minimalism, Newport proposes a bold solution: a minimalist approach to technology use in which you radically reduce the time you spend online, focusing on a small set of carefully-selected activities while happily ignoring the rest.

He mounts a vigorous defense for this less-is-more approach, combining historical examples with case studies of modern digital minimalists to argue that this philosophy isn’t a rejection of technology, but instead a necessary realignment to ensure that these tools serve us, not the other way around.

To make these principles practical, he takes us inside the growing subculture of digital minimalists who have built rich lives on a foundation of intentional technology use, and details a decluttering process that thousands have already used to simplify their online lives. He also stresses the importance of never clicking “like,” explores the underappreciated value of analog hobbies, and draws lessons from the “attention underground”–a resistance movement fighting the tech companies’ attempts to turn us into gadget addicts.

Digital Minimalism is an indispensable guide for anyone looking to reclaim their life from the alluring diversions of the digital world.